Missing Space Alien by Nathaniel Krenkel

I’ve lost my stoned alien, but I am over my panic attack.

I realize it’s later than I’d thought, virtually the middle of the night. I’ve been broken and sleeping on the floor for hours. I search the house for my Dash friend, going so far as to look under beds despite knowing that Florida could never fit under any of the furniture. He’s gotten too stoned and wandered off. He’s out there in the wild, on the streets of Portland. My fear is confirmed when I return to the basement and discover the back door to the garden is unlocked and ajar.  How long can he last out there, undetected?

Unmolested.

Unprobed.

What will happen when someone sees him? Will they call the cops? And when the cops arrive, will they just shoot him? Assume he’s some sort of wild animal? Will they make videos and upload them to their social media accounts? Will conspiracy theorists flock to town? Will the local economy boom? Will Florida become Maine’s Loch Ness Monster? Will he replace the lobster on all those terrible shirts, bibs, hats and socks they sell in the Old Port? Will government scientists wrap our house in plastic, at which point, I’ll have to get my friends to come over on their dirt bikes and help me break him out? Inevitably, we’ll steal a white van and drive west into the suburbs, dragging a long plastic tube behind…

I force on my shoes and slip out the front door.

I move methodic, looking up every driveway, behind every shrub and fence. I return to the thought of calling friends over to help me rescue Florida from probing Feds in white lab coats, but the thing is, I don’t really have any friends. That’s the biggest misstep in this fantasy. When you have kids, you’re always finding yourself in situations where your potential friend-pool is arbitrarily determined by who the other moms and dads are in your child’s class. It’s similar to high school in this manner. You’re stuck with peers based solely on the day and year you were born. It has nothing to do with aptitude, common-interests, a need for diversity, horniness, or test-results. It’s all just age and, in most cases, geography. Now, three decades after escaping from the zoo of public schooling, I’m back to looking at the pool of potential adult friends and finding that it too has the same random, annoying quality. The big difference in my case is that Nat and I chose to send the kids to a cultish, progressive-ed school, so the parents, one assumes, are similar in terms of priority and ideology. And this has proven, in broad-strokes, to be the case. We all want no phones, and sex-ed, pride flags, and history taught through a variety of intersectional post-colonial lenses.

Though, this lot does love themselves some anti-vax praxis.

Still, I have found the dads to be lacking, regardless of their views on consent or the plague. As is always the case, I run though the potentials, find fault with each, and then realize the problem is not them, it’s me. I’m a judgy bitch, end of story.

I’m standing on a random corner looking up and down for any signs of Florida. Footprints, a trail of crumbs, a panicked squirrel, anything. But there’s nothing. I head toward the Western Prom. A woman in a torn pink jacket pushing a shopping cart is singing Nothing Compares 2 U toward the airport which is dark apart from a string of sleeper-mode runway lights.  I ask her if she’s seen a funny little round creature with one arm and she says “maybe, maybe not,” then starts to sing More Than This by Roxy Music.

She has a nice voice.

There is no one else around.

It’s the middle of the night.

Where the fuck are you, Florida?

I walk along the Prom, hands in pockets, tugging at threads. If Florida is lost, if Florida is found by the wrong person, if Florida falls in the water, if Florida gets struck by a barge, if Florida…up ahead is the statue of Thomas Reed[1]. Only now he has two heads.

“Florida, get down from there.”

“Oh thank goodness you’re here, I was starting to worry.”

“You were starting…? Fuck, I…come on, I’m serious. We need to get home before someone sees you.”

“Did you meet Carol?”

“Carol? No. Who? You mean…?”           

“The woman with the lovely voice.”

“I…no, I mean yes, I met her. She was singing…”

“Prince.”

“Yes. No. I mean, not his version, Sinead’s. But good on you for knowing who wrote it. Wait.  Did you talk to her? Did she actually see you? Did you scare her?”

“She’s a jakie.”

“That’s not a nice thing to say.”

“She’s down and out.”

“Yes, she is.”

“Down and out in Portland.”

“Yes well, it’s a problem everywhere isn’t it, I mean, these private equity fuckers buying all the homes then letting them sit empty to jack up rents and then you’ve got those goddamn air b & b assholes filling rooms with weed tourists from Florida and…”           

“Hey now, leave me out of your rant, please,” Florida says.           

“Look, I’m serious, we need to get home.”

“Can Carol come? It’s no good out here on the streets.”

            “No,” I glance around, half expecting Carol to pop out from behind a tree. I don’t see her anywhere, but on the breeze I hear her singing Hokey Pokey[2].

            She’s a creepy clown; me, a frozen child.

Florida’s arm launches from the top of his head, then hinges one hundred and eighty degrees with the use of his two elbows, until his palm is pressed firmly on the path before the statue. He jumps up off the shoulder of Thomas Reed and balances on his arm, looking for a moment like a modern piece of lollipop-inspired art. Then he lowers himself slowly to the ground, with the grace and exhale of a yoga master. It’s like watching modern dance, and for a moment I’m at a loss for words.

            “Carol!” he calls.

            “Shhh…seriously, she can’t come home with us.”

            “Why not?”

            “Listen, if you want to help her, we’ll go make her a plate, or a go-bag of snacks.”

            “Weed cookies?”

            “Dosing the unhoused with weed cookies is problematic. We’re not The Grateful Dead.”

            “. . .”

            “Come on, let’s go home before someone more credible sees you.”

            We walk back across Pine Street. The neighborhood is empty. No joggers, no drunks, no stalkers, no poets. We reach our street and turn left. A block ahead, in the intersection, a suspicious white van with the bemusing logo appears, driving along West Street toward the Prom. I push Florida into a shrub. The van drives on.

            “What the hellscape, Earthum?” Florida says.

            “Uh, nothing. Sorry, I’m just tired and seeing things. Come on, let’s get home.”

            “I’m hungry.”

            I help my alien friend out of the bush and give him a hug, an affectionate pat/rub on the body/head.

            We arrive home. None of the lights are on in the neighboring houses. No cars on the street. No one is around to witness a man and an alien entering a house together, where they live.

Everything is kyle, for now.

[1] “The best system is to have one party govern and one party watch.”

[2] The Linda and Richard Thompson song. Richard Thompson, I’ve come to realize, is Nick Cave for people that live to be as old as Nick Cave.