Walter Stickle and the Galactic Rangers, page 14
“You can’t be too careful these days,” he said.
Lenny led them into his living room and sat down. Heavy drapes blocked the windows, keeping the light and summer heat out. The room was sparsely furnished and lit by a floor lamp next to the old man’s easy chair where he had been watching a daytime soap opera with the sound off and the captions on. There were no other seats in the room, so Walter and Vivien stood by the window.
“Vivien tells me that you okayed my Social Security. Thank you. You’re a good man, Walter.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Walter shrugged. “I was just the paper pusher.”
“Come on. Why so glum? Your socks match.”
“I joined Sockaholics Anonymous. It’s not easy being a recovering sockaholic.”
The old man laughed. “That’s a good one, Walter. You should write that down and send it in to that funny guy who’s on every night after the news.”
“Maybe I’ll do that.”
“And my Prius?” said Lenny. “Did you bring it back in one piece, Vivien?”
“Yes, Lenny. Thank you. Here’s the key. Walter was kind enough to drive me.”
“I told you he was a nice man. You really should get a license, you know. I could teach you.”
“I don’t think I’ll have the time,” she said.
The TV recaptured the old man’s attention, and the conversation fell into an awkward silence.
Walter cleared his throat. “The Prius is a nice car,” he said, “but they’re expensive, aren’t they?”
“Watch this,” Lenny pointed at the TV. “This show is a riot, funniest thing on TV.”
“But I guess you’ll make it up in gas savings, eventually,” Walter said.
The scene on the TV was tender and heartbreaking. The man was a sailor leaving his love on the dock with one last kiss before getting onto his ship and putting out to sea for who knows how long. Lenny began to laugh. “These guys crack me up. They don’t make comedy like this anymore.”
“I should be going,” Walter said. “It was good seeing you again, Mr. Genischewitz.”
“Lenny, call me Lenny,” the old man said, laughing as the woman on the TV broke down and cried.
Vivien kissed Lenny on the forehead and said good-bye. She and Walter went outside.
“Thanks again,” she said, extending her hand to him.
Walter shook it. “Okay, sure. You’re welcome,” he said.
The only thing separating them was a one-inch sidewalk expansion joint, but it might as well have been a mile wide.
“Do you want to do something tonight?” he said. “I think the movie changes at the Broadway on Fridays. I’ll treat you to a cone at Dip-Dips after the show — best ice cream in town.”
“I can’t. I’ve got something I have to take care of tonight.”
“What about tomorrow? I was going to go to…”
“I’m busy all day tomorrow,” she interrupted. “Sorry.”
“Will I see ever you again, Vivien?”
“Yes, Walter. I’ll see you before I leave. I promise. Bye,” she said.
“Bye.”
Walter felt like a lost puppy waving good-bye to Vivien in front of Lenny Genischewitz’s apartment. He wandered down to the lake, found a bench, and sat down. On the other side, some kids were playing Galactic Rangers on the jungle gym. They wore pillowcases for capes and had squirt guns that they were refilling from the lake. It was an epic battle.
Walter called his office, asking to speak with Mr. Ruben.
“Walter, how are you feeling?”
“I’m okay, I guess. How’s my computer?”
“Better than you, it sounds like. Everything checked out okay.”
“Thank God,” said Walter.
“I taped your new passwords to the underside of your middle drawer.”
“Great. Thanks, Mr. Ruben.”
“Will I see you at the Comic-Con tomorrow?”
“I don’t know, maybe. I’ll see how I’m feeling.”
Walter wished him a nice weekend and hung up.
Even lost puppies eventually find their way home. When Walter did, he put the broken screen back in the door, returned the sawhorses to the shed, took a shower, changed, and lay down on the front porch glider. It was a lazy summer day, the kind that suggests in no uncertain terms to anyone relaxing on a porch glider that they should be taking a nap. An hour later, he awakened from a dream about space travel and battles beyond the moon. He realized that he hadn’t read the comics that day.
Either the paperboy had a sore arm or he had gotten his little brother to deliver the newspaper. Walter found it in a bush and stood in the garden reading Galactic Rangers.
The first panel showed Sparks at his console and Captain Kleeg pacing the deck.
“This is Galactic Ranger Scout Ship Alpha calling Stickle. Come in, Stickle.” The message looked like little lightning bolts — a radio transmission. Kelso was clever that way. “Captain, there’s no response,” said Sparks.
“That’s right, Sparky,” said Walter. “Mr. Stupid doesn’t live here anymore.”
A ringed planet filled the view screen in the next panel. It had to be Saturn. That was the only planet other than Earth that Kelso could have drawn that would lead even the most uneducated reader to the conclusion that the Rangers were in our solar system. Pure genius. Pure evil genius.
“Keep trying, Mr. Sparks,” said the captain.
The final panel showed Captain Kleeg’s hardened blue countenance staring at the distant Earth on the view screen with Gak standing behind him.
“Captain, our options are limited at this point.”
“We have little choice, Mr. Gak.”
“Next: Scout Ship Alpha!”
Chapter 12
During the summer, Walter always mowed his lawn on Saturday afternoons after doing his laundry in the morning. There was something about the ritual of working up a good sweat behind the mower after sweating all morning in the Laundromat that made Saturdays feel like his Saturdays growing up. It was what everyone did in Pitville. It was what they were used to doing. It was the normal Saturday afternoon thing to do in normal America.
So, why was Walter mowing his lawn that Friday afternoon with a vengeance? Why had he mowed over a row of his floodlight neighbor’s marigolds that were actually infringing on his property? Why had he not stopped to go next door to apologize and offer to replant them? And why couldn’t he stop thinking about Vivien Benoit?
“Mr. Sticky, my dad says you’re going to kill that grass if you keep mowing it so short,” little Jenny said. She and Billy, two of his grade school bus stop friends, fourth graders, twin brother and sister, and offspring of the dreaded floodlight man, were staring at him from the front sidewalk.
Walter turned off the mower and knelt in front of them. “Jenny, please tell your dad that my name is ‘Stickle,’ not ‘Sticky.’ Can you do that for me… again?”
“Okay.”
“And tell him, he’s right. So, I’m going to stop now.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is school out already?”
They nodded together.
“What’s that?” Billy pointed to the grass.
On one side of the sidewalk that bisected Walter’s lawn and led to his front door was the letter “G” mown into the grass. On the other side, Walter had mown an “R” almost down to the topsoil.
“It’s like a crop circle,” he said.
“What’s that?” asked Jenny.
“It’s a big sign that says ‘land here.’ It’s for the Galactic Rangers. You like them, don’t you?”
They nodded again and followed Walter to the backyard where he put away the mower. When he closed the shed door, the handle broke off.
“Why can’t something go right for a change?” he said.
“What’s wrong?” Jenny asked. “Are you sick?”
“No.”
“Then why are you crying?”
“It’s just one more thing I messed up.”
“Are they going to let the bad guy kill you?” Billy asked. “Biff said you were toast.”
“I don’t know. Has Biff ever been wrong before?”
They shook their heads “no” in unison.
“Then, I guess I’m toast,” he said.
Walter let them help him fill the bird feeder, and they sat for a bit watching the cardinals and blue jays argue over the seed. When the kids got bored and left, Walter took his laundry to the Laundromat a day early. It was a different crowd there late Friday afternoons. Walter knew most of them. They exchanged pleasantries, talked about the weather and the little league baseball game the night before, but his heart wasn’t in it. The part of him that thought that normal people did their laundry before going on a trip hoped Vivien would show up. The rest of him knew she wouldn’t. He wouldn’t know what to say to her anyway. So, he washed his clothes, folded someone else’s when he needed their dryer, dried and folded his own, and went home.
It was getting late. He didn’t feel like making dinner. He wasn’t all that hungry, but he knew that he should eat something. He called Vivien.
“You have reached the office of Benoit Elder Law. Please leave a message.”
“Hi, Vivien. This is Walter. I was going to head over to the diner to get something to eat and was wondering if you’d be interested in joining me there. I guess since you’re out, you’re still busy, but everyone has to eat sometime, right? Anyway, I’ll see you. Bye.” He hung up the phone. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he said, and headed over to the diner.
He asked for a booth in the back and ordered a bowl of clam chowder. Walter hated clam chowder. He especially hated those little oyster crackers they insisted on putting in it. They were like Goldfish crackers only white not orange and without any salt or any taste. Cardboard Goldfish — that’s what they were. The soup was particularly distasteful that night — too salty and too fishy — but Walter kept slurping it up until he decided that even the old nun’s adage “Suffering is good for the soul” had its limits. He pushed the bowl back, wiped his mouth with his napkin, and stared at the remains of the soggy crackers.
Walter knew by name or face most everyone who frequented that diner. So, when he noticed someone out of the corner of his eye coming down the aisle, he pretended to look out the window so they wouldn’t make eye contact and he wouldn’t have to act like he was happy to see them.
“I almost didn’t see you hiding back here,” Vivien said.
Walter half stood up, bumping his head on the chrome light that hung over the booth. “Hi. You got my message?”
“Yes. Sorry, I couldn’t get to the phone in time. May I join you?”
“Sure.”
She slid in across from him and made a face at his soup. “What’s that?”
“Clam chowder. I’d offer you the rest, but I promised Millie I’d never do anything to hurt you.”
A waitress came over, removed the soup, and took their orders from that page of the menu where nothing had gills or fins, or had ever breathed in any way, shape, or form underwater.
“I’m glad you came,” Walter said. “Are you still busy tonight?”
“I am, but everyone has to eat sometime, right?” She began to play absentmindedly with the buttons on the booth jukebox.
“I’ve got a quarter. Anything you’d like to hear?” Walter asked.
“Not really.”
“What’s wrong, Vivien?”
“I’m leaving,” she said. “Tomorrow.”
On the street outside the window, a woman was walking her crying daughter home from a party, dragging the little girl’s deflated birthday balloon on the ground behind them.
“France isn’t such a long way off, is it? I get three weeks vacation a year, and I’ve never taken a day. Maybe I can come visit you some time.”
“I don’t think you’d like it where I’m going. The people there aren’t very nice, especially to outsiders.”
“I can learn French. My fifth grade teacher always said I was good with languages. How’s this? Ou là là.”
“It’s oh là là, Walter.”
“Oh.”
“Là là,” she smiled.
Walter spotted Marilyn at the front door and slouched down in his seat, but it was too late. She waved to him and paraded over to their booth.
“Hello, Walter,” she said. She was wearing a gold mini-skirt, fringed boots, and a flimsy cowgirl-like top, inappropriate for anything other than roping and branding cowboys.
“Hello, Marilyn. You look nice.”
“Oh, this little thing? I’m going line dancing over at Almost Heaven with some of my girlfriends. Aren’t you going to introduce me?” she asked.
“I’m sorry,” said Walter. “Marilyn, this is Vivien. Vivien, Marilyn.”
“I love your glasses,” Marilyn said.
“Thank you,” said Vivien.
“Marilyn works at Social Security, too,” Walter said.
“I taught him everything he knows,” said Marilyn. “Everything,” she winked, dislodging one of her false eyelashes. That brought out the compact and a hasty rearrangement.
“You’re welcome to join us for dinner, if you like,” Vivien said.
“Oh, no. I’m just meeting a friend. She’s our designated driver. We’re going to need one, if you catch my drift,” she laughed. “Oh, there she is now. Betty, Betty,” she called and waved. “Nice to meet you, Viv,” she said, and to Walter, she added, “Now don’t you do anything you’d be embarrassed to tell me about Monday. You know how I get.”
She pranced away, swinging her hips back and forth like a Roller Derby queen.
“That was certainly strange,” said Walter, when they were alone again.
“Are you two dating?” Vivien asked.
“No way. We went out once two years ago, and she threw up on me. That’s when I realized she wasn’t my type.”
“Well, you must be her type. I think she likes you.”
“Stop grinning. It’s not funny.”
“Maybe she’s your type and you just don’t know it.”
“No,” Walter said. “My type has the most beautiful eyes in the world and ugliest glasses I’ve ever seen.”
Their food came, and they ate without saying much. Both passed on dessert, just ordering a refill on their coffees.
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” Walter said, stirring more sugar into his.
“I do too.”
“Then, why won’t you let me come visit you? Why does it have to end like this?”
“Walter, you’re a nice man, and I like you very much. Someday you’ll meet someone less complicated than me, someone who you can settle down with and have a family and a normal life.”
“Maybe I don’t want a normal life. Maybe I’m tired of normal,” he said. “I’m tired of waking up every morning at 6:03 a.m. I want to sleep till 6:05 a.m. sometime. Is that too much to ask? I’m tired of my neighbor’s floodlights, and of wearing the same suit every day, and of doing the same things day in and day out. If I want to take a day off, I should be able to take a day off.”
“You can, Walter,” Vivien said, putting her hands on his. “You can do anything you set your mind to.”
“Anything?” he said.
“Anything.”
Walter put a quarter in the jukebox and a Righteous Brothers song started playing. He reached across the table, removed Vivien’s glasses, and looked into her blue and green eyes. “Anything?”
“Anything,” she said.
“Then, dance with me.”
“Here? Now?”
“Sure. Why not? If you’re going away forever, and I have to go back to being normal again, I think I deserve one last dance.”
Walter was not a dancer. His idea of slow dancing was of someone who had been hit by Z-rays plodding around the room looking for someone else’s brain to eat, but when he took Vivien in his arms it didn’t matter that they were blocking the aisle, and it didn’t matter that everyone else in the diner stopped to watch, or that some of the other more adventurous couples got up to dance too. Mrs. Caville dimmed the lights and the Setzer brothers, who were the short-order cooks there, came out of the kitchen lip-synching into their spatulas. The three waitresses on duty joined in as back-up dancers, everyone in the diner began to sing along, and Walter closed his eyes and danced. When the music ended, they kissed, and Vivien left him standing alone in the Pitville Diner.
Chapter 13
Walter went home, but if home is where the heart is, he was far from it. He was in a house that he had owned for almost four years, on a sofa he had owned for a little less than that, in a room with a big screen TV, a computer, and all the other things normal people have to fill the emptiness in their lives. He moped around for hours, read a little, dozed off, had a beer, and finally settled into the chair in front of his computer to look at pictures of France. He’d never been there, never really had much desire to go there or anywhere for that matter until recently, but he wanted so much to be somewhere else just then. He typed, “Why does it have to hurt so much?” and pressed ENTER.
The computer screen began to shimmer, but not just the screen. The room was shimmering. Walter looked out the front window where it was just another summer night in Pitville, New Jersey. When he looked back, his hand was dripping off the keyboard onto the carpet in little globs of light. His arm went next, then his shoulders, then the rest of him, and he felt himself exploding from the inside out and being sucked into a vacuum cleaner all at the same time.
He had no eyes anymore, yet he could see everything. He had no mouth, yet he was screaming at the top of his nonexistent lungs. Walter was no longer Walter. He had become a collection of sparkling lights that shot through the ceiling, through the roof, into the sky, and into space. He was on a collision course with the moon, and two hundred forty thousand miles and a little over one second later, he blasted through it with an odd flumping sound like a rock falling onto the sand and sinking. When he looked back, the gray, lifeless moon was shrinking and beyond it the Earth, and he was heading into outer space.
Walter didn’t know if he was alive or dead. He had no idea if he was on his way to heaven or hell. He had no body, no substance, no life in the usual sense, only consciousness and an awareness of the vastness of the universe into which he was traveling. The Earth, his home, and his normal existence had become little more than a blue dot in a sea of lights, an insignificant speck on an endless canvas. Time was irrelevant and space a concept without distance or dimension. He was touching the infinite, and it touched him back.
