The room was still dark, but sunlight was finding its way in and around the closed window blinds; birdies were tweeting and paperboys were missing porches and milkmen were clattering bottles and traffic was just starting to flow.
I sat up. I felt incredibly rested; never slept better in my life, and if I’d been dreaming, whether about spacemen or pretty girls or an imaginary day at the racetrack, I had no memory of it.
Hair pinned up under the cocked overseas hat, Maria was sitting in the kitchen, in her khaki nurse’s uniform, having toast and coffee, looking cuter than Shirley Temple. And these days Shirley Temple was looking pretty cute.
“Must be morning,” I said.
“Yes,” she purred, and her smile was gently wry, even if her toast was white. “Question is, what morning?”
I pulled up an eyebrow and a chair and sat. “What do you mean?”
Her lush lips formed a mocking kiss. “Are you hungry, by any chance?”
“Actually … now that you mention it, yeah! Ravenous.”
“That may be because you’ve been sleeping since the night before last.”
“What? Straight through?”
My private nurse rose and began making me breakfast; she was prepared: a skillet waited on the stove, and-on the counter nearby-two eggs in a bowl, a bottle of milk, several strips of crisp bacon already shedding their grease on a paper towel, toast in a toaster poised for pushing down.
“How do you like ’em?” she asked, an egg in hand.
“Like my brains, scrambled. Maria, tell me I didn’t sleep straight through.”
She cracked two eggs and started scrambling. “You roused once and wanted to know where the bathroom was. And I showed you. And you used it. And went right back to bed, to sleep.”
“God, I don’t remember that, at all. They must’ve pumped a lot of drugs into me, for me to need to sleep it off like that…. What about the car?”
“I got it. Notebook, too.”
“Any sign of trouble out at the base?”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I called in sick yesterday to baby-sit you. Today I start back on morning shift.”
I rubbed my face; heavy beard but not outrageous. “Jesus-we’re lucky they didn’t put your absence together with my ‘jailbreak.’”
She stirred the eggs, adding some milk. “If they haven’t connected us by now, they’re not going to. But I did have a call from the commanding officer, himself.”
“Blanchard! What the hell did he want?”
“I’m being transferred. Remember, I had that hanging over me? The colonel wanted to thank me personally for my ‘fine service.’”
“Transferred to where?”
“I haven’t received my orders yet.”
“Could it have anything to do with …”
“I don’t think so-this has been a long time coming. Anyway, Nathan, if they knew about us, they’d be here, wouldn’t they?”
“You would think. You would think. Maria, I have to go.”
“Go sit down. I’ll serve you.”
I sat, and soon she placed the plate of scrambled eggs and bacon before me, and a glass of orange juice, buttered toast and a cup of coffee. “Where do you have to go, Nathan?”
I began eating; God I was starved. “Not home. I’m going underground for a few weeks, maybe longer-my friends in Chicago will tell me if the heat is on or off.”
Her brow furrowed. “What if the heat is on? And what if it stays on?”
“I don’t know.” I took a bite of toast, chewed as I talked; we knew each other well enough for that. “I do have a few friends in high places, and low ones, and I’ll call on them, if need be. But I won’t make an issue out of this unless I have to. I just want my life back. Maria, I have learned one thing from my investigation, and one thing only: that I do not give a flying shit whether men from outer space crashed near your fair city.”
Her expression was blank. “Then maybe your stay at the guesthouse served its purpose. Maybe that’s all they were after.”
“Then they succeeded. Flying colors.”
When I’d finished my breakfast-which was soon-she took the dishes to the sink and ran water over them.
I stood and found a small notepad and pencil by the fridge. “Maria, this is my business number. Call that when you know where your new duty assignment is.”
She took the slip of paper, folded it, and snugged it in her breast pocket. Then she slipped her arms around my waist; the blue eyes looked up at me, as if daring me to dive in. “Does this mean you want to see me again, Nathan?”
“Yeah-anywhere but Roswell.”
“Aren’t you going to kiss me goodbye?”
“Sure …”
I kissed her, and she kissed back, and it was passionate and sweet and I asked, “When do you have to be at work?”
“Not for a while yet …”
“How would you feel about hiking up that skirt and taking off your panties and really saying goodbye. …”
“I think that could arranged,” she said with a wicked little smile.
“And please,” I said, “leave the little hat on….”
“Where shall we …?”
“How about one of these chairs….”
“Oh my,” she said, a little while later, breathing hard, still straddling my lap; me, I was ready for another long nap. “Nathan, that … that was out of this world….”
“I bet you say that to all the Martians.”
My car was, as promised, in the garage across the alley. My nurse-her skirt only slightly wrinkled-waved goodbye from the kitchen doorway and, wearing her late husband’s clothes, I waved back at her, like she was the little woman and, like a good breadwinner-even if I was unshaven and lacked a lunch pail-I might have been heading for work.
Not preparing to hide my sorry ass.