Book One: Lederer’s
1. The woman in the pumpkin-colored uniform . . .
The woman in the pumpkin-colored uniform showed me an optimistic smile, a little stripe of red tongue visible between her white, undersized front teeth. "Cheer up, it can't be that bad," she said, snapping her Juicy Fruit. She was twiggy thin, with olive skin and a narrow, kind face; her irises were blacker than the truck-stop coffee she poured. Cheap earrings, green enameled marbles, wobbled crazily two inches below her lobes. Her brown hair lifted off her scalp into a stiff bouffant that had been frozen in place with hair shellac.
"It's bad enough," I groused. Indeed, I had my reasons for feeling petulant. As late as June (it was the first week in November) I'd flown a single-prop airplane the size of a bus over Southeast Asia, unloosing terror and destruction on the inhabitants; now, because one foggy morning I'd keeled over like a sissy and passed out cold on the flight line, I was beginning a new life as a grad student in humdrum English. Though I had an urge to write some of my experiences, I'd come at the height of the anti-war movement and could expose my recent vital interests only among strangers, most of whom I encountered while touring the bars around Lincoln. That's how I came to be in Lederer’s, an all-night cafe and filling station a few miles west of town, at three o'clock on a Friday morning. I had to teach Composition to a classroom full of freshmen in six short hours, and I hoped that if I ate something I'd feel less ill when daylight came around.
"What do you do when you can't sleep?" I continued. "I've tried everything but weird sex." Upon hearing myself say sex, I reddened uncomfortably; sober, I'm a shy fellow.
"I can sleep if I get the chance, between working the night shift here and listening to my roommate's brats," she said, her breath a fragrant breeze across my face. "Have you tried T. M.?"
"What's that, some new kind of sleep medicine?"
"Transcendental Meditation," she replied coolly. "It's supposed to help you focus your Alpha waves."
Then my tongue got further ahead of me. "Focus, eh? A good focus, that's exactly what I need." I ducked my head, deeply embarrassed, and glanced at her imploringly from under my eyebrows.
She posed with the coffeepot, her mouth hooking up at the corner. "Hmp!" she said. "OK, Mr. Weird Sex, what'll you have? Oops!" She glanced around, covering her lips with her thin fingers. "I didn't mean that quite like it sounded!"
"Oh yes she did," came a deep voice from the kitchen. Now we were both blushing; I sneezed, she choked, and I noticed how pretty she became when the color rose up in her tanned cheeks. I managed to get a Denver omelet ordered without saying anything suggestive, but she blushed deeper and giggled harder than before.
"Do you want s-s— Do you want ssss-ss—" Helpless, she put the coffeepot down and covered her mouth with her hands.
The safer, nerdy side of my personality emerged. "Do I want sour cream on it?" She nodded. "I think I'd better pass on that," I said. "Jeez, what kind of place is this, anyway?"
"A boring place," intoned the deep voice from the kitchen. "It's bizarre, but boring." Grace—she wore a name tag—escaped, going to put in my order; I stared deep into my filled cup, trying to keep from smiling as I heard the cook ask her, in a kind of stage whisper, "So, did he say he wants somebody to cream on it?" After a while I stepped out to the corridor and bought myself a Lincoln Star. I turned to the funnies page to check my horoscope. "Romance in picture," it said. "What seemed a mistake may rebound in your favor. Analyze finances, be ready to negotiate. Gemini, Pisces dominate interesting scenario."
"Read mine." Grace was back, looking busy, carrying the coffeepot around.
"Which is it?"
"Pisces," she said. "Couldn't you tell? We're so sweet." She gave me that goofy smile again as she said the word sweet; behind the carefully overdone makeup, I glimpsed a wry intelligence in her dark eyes.
"Let's see," I said, playing it straight. "'You'll receive recognition that's long overdue. One who has been working behind scene may confront you; be prepared with facts. Horizons due to expand, you could be on verge of major breakthrough.'"
"All right!" she said. "New horizons! I could use some of those."
I scanned the front page like a foreigner looking for scraps of news from home. There was a big Vietnam headline—North Viets Attack in Delta—but what followed was worthless except for a brief mention of the U Minh Forest, of which I had some general knowledge. Newspapers "in the World" seldom gave any useful information about what was going on in Nam; you couldn't find out what your former friends were doing, who was flying where and dropping what, who was safe on R&R in Thailand. There were sometimes pictures with X's and the names of towns, or broadly-outlined arrows showing movement of troops, and you might try to guess if anyone you'd had a beer with was on such-and-such an operation, but guessing was all you could do until some name you knew showed up M.I.A. and you tried to recall what that person had looked like. Most people gave it up pretty quickly once they touched-down on a real American runway, like about five seconds after they stepped off the plane. I'd kept it up longer than I should have, but it was useless anyway. The average stateside editor didn't know Vietnam from a hole in the ground.
A man in creased trousers came in and sat at the counter a couple of stools away. I slid the paper toward him. "Thanks," he said, turning to the sports section. "Say, what do you think of those Huskers? Think they'll be able to handle Iowa State?"
"Who? The Huskies?" Anyone who's from Nebraska can't help knowing who the dickhead Huskers are, but you can usually escape from a sports conversation by refusing to take it seriously.
"The University of Nebraska Cornhuskers. Are you a hitchhiker?"
"Nope."
"You're not from around here, I can tell that. Otherwise you'd know about the Cornhuskers."
"No, I'm from Mars," I said. "No football on Mars. Not enough gravity." Grace switched her skinny butt past, still carrying the pot. I winked at her; she stuck out her tongue at me. It looked like we were getting to be old friends.
"You'd throw a pass to your tight end, he'd be out of sight over the horizon before the ball came down," I said. The salesman ordered a poached egg on toast. He asked for grits. "You don't look like a grits person," I said. He rattled his paper at me. My paper. "I don't care for grits," I said. "I can eat 'em, but I don't like 'em."
He glanced over at me. "Who asked you?" he said.
"Yeah," Grace said, snapping her gum. "Who cares what you like, you Martian?"
The salesman looked up at her. "You know this guy?" he asked.
"I've known him about ten minutes," Grace said. "He's harmless."
"I can see that," he said. She traipsed to the window, clipped his ticket to the rack, and spun it. My omelet was up; she buttered some toast and brought me my order, giving me that wacky smile.
"Harmless, am I, Earth Woman," I growled under my breath. "You watch me rape and pillage these poor eggs."
"Give me a whistle if you need any help," she said.
"She didn't mean that like it sounded," the voice from the kitchen said.
Walking away, Grace glanced over her shoulder. "He doesn't know," she said to me. "Maybe I did."
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