Chapters 2, 3, and 4

Chapter Two: In Which The Alien Comes To Stay With Me Temporarily

From there, things moved relatively quickly. Fortunately, we were near a hardware store, so I went in and bought a tarp to cover the alien’s stuff while I hurried home to borrow Ramona (my roommate)’s car. Also fortunately, she was actually home, but busy with something so she didn’t ask any questions when I told her I needed the car.

“No problem, I’m gonna be in here all night,” she said when I popped my head in her bedroom and asked. She was sitting at her desk, so she just tossed me the keys from there. “Shut the door, ‘k?” More good luck on my part.

Once the car was loaded (and I really do not know how we managed this without any interference from any passersby), things got a little more tricky. That was the first point it occurred to me that I would have to put his stuff somewhere. The hub was okay, I could easily see it fitting under the couch, but the other machinery (the alien refused to tell me what it all was) would have to stay in the car’s trunk until I could get some kind of storage set up. I did my best to keep it covered with the tarp and just hoped that Ramona wouldn’t need to put anything in the trunk until then. And also that our schedules would intersect again once I was ready to unload it. Usually this wouldn’t be a concern, but lately her schedule and mine just haven’t meshed for whatever reason. But I’d deal with that when I got to it. In the meantime, I carried the hub into the apartment building, with the alien and the tools he needed, tucked into a reusable shopping bag Ramona had left in the car, hitching a ride over my shoulder. I hoped this looked nonchalant, but with more good luck, I didn’t encounter anyone who would ask any questions, and so I made it back to the apartment and snuck into my room, deposited the hub on the floor and the alien on the bed.

“Okay, you can go around the whole apartment, but when Ramona’s around, try to stay in here,” I whispered to him, still in the shopping bag. I wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted to let Ramona in on this. Not that I didn’t trust her. I just wasn’t sure how she’d react to a. finding out aliens were real, and b. having one living with us.

“Ramona?” The alien asked, quietly, while getting out the bag.

“My roommate, er, the other girl who lives here,” I said, clarifying just in case. I sat down on the bed. “It shouldn’t be too hard, she hasn’t been around too much lately, and she usually just stays in her room when she’s here. Unless there’s something she wants to watch on TV, I guess.” I noticed that the alien had pulled out the tablet again. “So what, that translates for you or something?”

“Among other things,” the alien replied. He looked around my room, and I did, too. Granted, it wasn’t very big, with just enough room for my bed, a bureau, and a smallish desk, but it wasn’t like I needed a ton of space. The only thing I wished I had room for was a bookshelf, since I mostly monopolized the one Ramona had in the living, and while she said she didn’t mind, I still felt kind of bad about it.

While I was thinking about my room, my stomach reminded me that it still hadn’t gotten anything to eat, so I stood up again. “I’m going to get something to eat now,” I told the alien quietly, “Do you want anything, or do you have some kind of space rations?”

“I’ll be fine,” he said, and so I left him in my room for the time being and went to grab something I could eat on the quick. I didn’t have the patience to heat anything up at the moment, so I grabbed a chocolate chip cookie to eat while I figured out what I really wanted for dinner. I checked the fridge, but there wasn’t too much in the way of leftovers. I’m not a big cook or anything, but Ramona makes stuff sometimes that she either doesn’t like or doesn’t want to finish, and she isn’t shy about foisting those off on me. And really, I usually can’t taste anything wrong with them, so I don’t know what her problem is. Must be something about the actual cooking process that gives her qualms. Whoever said ignorance is bliss must have been referring to not knowing what’s in your food. With a lack of things I wanted to eat at the moment in the fridge, I turned to the freezer, and picked out a frozen meal of Salisbury steak and mac and cheese. The mac and cheese part usually wasn’t that great, but the steak part was okay. And at this point, I wasn’t feeling too picky.

While I waited for the meal to heat up in the microwave, I flipped through the mail that Ramona had brought in and put on the kitchen table, as usual. Nothing too interesting, but there was a new Entertainment Weekly. I read that while I waited, and then while I ate. And then I finished it after I finished my meal (and had another cookie). When I went back into my room to check on the alien, I saw that he had fallen asleep on my bed. I decided to give him a little privacy and ended my day by stretching out on the couch and reading a couple of chapters of The Lovely Bones (rereading, really. I had seen the movie recently, but hadn’t read the book that recently, so I wanted to go after it again and see how it held up in comparison).

My roommate is a big movie buff, or at least she has a lot of movies on DVD, and she’s always getting movies in the mail from Netflix or whatever program she uses (I know it’s one of the other ones, but I don’t remember which exactly), so I end up seeing more movies than I used to, if I’m around when she’s watching something. She usually watches them on the TV in the living room (not that we have any other TVs), but I know she watches some on her computer in her room. I prefer that, frankly, since the living room is the most comfortable space for reading, and while I can read with the TV on in a pinch, more often than not I get distracted by the sound and I can‘t get into my book. But tonight it was nice and quiet (aside from the muffled sound of the TV playing in the apartment below ours, so I guess my roommate was either already asleep or up to something in her room. Just as well for me, I suppose. I wasn’t sure what I would say if she asked why I’d needed to borrow her car, and it would be easier for me if that didn’t come up.

When I was done reading and ready for bed (unlike some people I know, I can’t stay up all night and still function at work the next day), I crept into my room quietly, in case the alien was still asleep. And sure enough, he was. Right in the middle of my bed. That was something I hadn’t really considered. Where should he sleep? Could he stay in the bed as long as he wasn’t in my way? Should he stay in the bed? I vaguely had an image of him sleeping at the foot of my bed, and then another of him in a dog bed on the floor next to the hub-thing. Well, maybe… In the meantime, I shook him a little to wake him up and let me in bed at least. The alien didn’t budge. “Hey,” I hissed, trying to be loud enough to wake him but still quiet enough to not be heard by Ramona. Nothing. “Hey, a-” I started, when it occurred to me that I didn’t know his name. I had gotten used to thinking of him as “the alien,” but he had to have an actual given name, surely. I shook him a little again. This time, he stirred a little, then sat up and opened his eyes. I handed him his tablet, which he‘d left on my desk. “What’s your name?” I asked him.

What he said sounded a lot like a string of gibberish to me, but it sorted of sounded like it started with “Emeraudel,” so I asked him if I could call him “Em” for short.

“If you must,” he replied, although he looked like he’d rather I didn’t. “And what is your name?”

“I didn’t mention that?” I was surprised, but when I thought about it, I realized that it had never come up. “My name is Sheila Watts,” I told him, and held out my hand to shake. “Please to meet you.”

Em stared at my hand for a moment, then fiddled with his tablet, and finally took me up on it. As we shook, I noticed his skin had an odd quality to it that I couldn’t quite place. Or maybe I was just too tired to think about it too hard. As if on cue, I yawned, and then saddled up into the bed, pushing Em to the side. “You can sleep here for tonight, but tomorrow we’re figuring something else out.” With that I rolled over and fell asleep.

Chapter Three: In Which I Have a Lot of Worries

I woke up the next morning none the wiser, having mostly forgotten the events of the previous day. It wasn’t until I was in the shower, wishing a better song than “With or Without You” would play for once (setting the station is too annoying to waste time on in the shower in the morning, so we stick to just one), that I started to remember I had invited an alien into my home, and now had to keep him a secret from anyone I knew, possibly including my roommate, who was still asleep. At least, I figured she was asleep, since I didn’t smell any coffee. I’m not too crazy about the drink myself, although when iced and heavily flavored with chocolate, I’ve been known to give it a chance, but my roommate is a caffeine fiend, for reals. She also has a less regular schedule than I do, so she’s either is still asleep when I get up or she’s already gone.

On top of that, I had to figure out what to do about the sleep situation. And he said he had to get more fuel for the hub-thing, so where would that come from? Would he have to leave the apartment to get it? Would that even be possible without something terrible happening? I was starting to wish I’d thought of all this the day before. Maybe I should have left the alien where I found him. Now all his problems were technically mine, too. I continued to think and worry as I dried off, got dressed and poured myself some corn flakes for breakfast.

While I was eating, my roommate came out of her room and immediately went over to get her coffee started, then went back into her room again. I was used to this by now. With the sounds of the coffee machine doing its thing and the aroma of the ground coffee heating up and being filtered in the pot below, I started to relax a little. One way or another, things would work out. Somehow I knew.

Once the coffee was ready, Ramona came out of her room again and poured half the pot’s content into a mug emblazoned with strawberries, then carried it over to the fridge, where she got her half-and-half out, poured a bit in, and then placed it back on the shelf, all without closing the door. I kind of wish she wouldn’t do that, but as she was paying the electric bill this month, it was her prerogative. I watched her lift the cup to her lips and take a deep sip. I would have blown on it first, but I guess she didn’t need to. Maybe she had a more heat-tolerant tongue than I did. I’d read that different people have different levels of taste buds on their tongues, so maybe there was a similar thing, with different people having different levels of how much hot (and conversely, cold) their tongues could handle. Or maybe the half-and-half cooled it down enough for her? But I couldn’t stick around thinking about this, I still had to finish getting ready for work, and see if Em was awake, and maybe give him some instructions or something.

“So, you up to anything?” Ramona asked as I started to stand up, empty bowl in hand. I froze for a moment, then continued on my path to the sink.

“What do you mean?” Feigning innocence for the moment felt like the right course of action, as I deposited my bowl in the sink for washing later.

“You know, tonight or something,” Ramona clarified, then yawned. Seeing her due it gave me the urge to yawn, too (I’ve read that it’s all in your mind, so much so that just thinking about yawning will make you do it), but I fought it.

“Not really,” I replied, “Probably just gonna hang out here tonight.”

“Huh.” She seemed disappointed, but I really couldn’t tell. Maybe the caffeine just hadn’t kicked in yet. “Yeah, same here,” she added.

“So when are you working today?” I usually didn’t ask, but I figured I could give Em a heads up.

“Well, I’m was supposed to go in at one, but they asked me to come in early again, so I‘ll be going in at eleven. It’s been one of those weeks,” Ramona replied.

“Yeah, I hear ya,” I said, even though I didn’t really have the same sort of situation going on at work. I was called in on the occasional day off, though, but those were usually scheduled pretty well in advance. Covering shifts while the full-timers went to a local convention, that kind of thing. “I’ll see you, then,” I added, and went back in my room. Em was up by then, and flipping through one of the books I had piled by my bed.

“Okay, here’s what’s going down,” I whispered, hoping that Ramona in the kitchen wouldn’t be able to hear, or wouldn’t notice, “Ramona will be out of here a little before eleven, so just stay in here until then. Don’t answer the phone if it rings, or the door, I guess, but no one should be coming around anyway.”

Em looked at me strangely for a time, fiddling with the tablet but not looking at it either. Then he finally said, “All right.”

“Good, good,” I said, more to reassure myself than him. “I’ll be back around five thirty, and we’ll hash things out further then. I have to finish getting ready and get to work,” I told him, and feeling a bit rude, left him in my room while I raced to dry my hair, put on a little makeup, and grab what I needed for the day ahead.

When the weather is nice, I like to walk to work, and it was definitely a nice day out. Almost as if someone had planned it like this. The sky was perfectly blue with just a hint of cloudiness, and the sun was just high enough to feel warm without making me sweat. I wished that I had a little more time to linger, but as it was, I had to hustle on down to make it in time. I work at the library, usually checking books in and out at the circulation desk, but I’m called on to handle other tasks from time to time. Like calling in the reserved books, or corralling the kids at story time. Most of the time I enjoy it, and it’s close enough that I can walk, which is definitely a plus. Today, though, I just spent the whole time thinking about Em and his situation, and how it was going to affect me from now on. When the clock hit eleven, I started to wonder what Em would do with the apartment to himself, and just hoped it was fairly quiet.

Majorie, the head of the circulation department, printed out the list of requested materials and asked me to take care of them, which I didn’t mind. Getting out among the stacks would take my mind off my problems, I hoped, although I didn’t mention that to her. So I took the reserves cart and made my way through the CDs, videos and DVDs, and fiction books without too much trouble, but only minor distraction. And once I got started on the nonfiction requests, I did get distracted, but not in the way I wanted. Starting in the 000s, I suddenly noticed, as I never had before, there was a whole section of books about alien encounters, 001.942. I had no idea there was that much interest, or rather, that many happenings to write that many books on the subject. I leafed through a couple, and put one on the cart for myself (as I tended to do). One of the perks of working in circulation is that I can check myself out (not like that, though), and thanks to the system we have, I don’t even have to pull out my library card. I can just type in my last name and bam, there’s my record. I can look anyone up this way, but to avoid fraud, we prefer to have patrons show us their cards. But it does make renewing materials over the phone a lot easier.

Other than my strangely coincidental find, it was a typical day. I spent a little more time putting together the bundles that go out to the other libraries in our consortium than I usually do, but that was more out of nervousness as the day went by than anything else. But five o’clock came at last, and I ducked out as soon as I could and rushed home.

“I’m back,” I called out, hoping that I wasn’t disturbing Em at a crucial moment. But I knew Ramona was still at work (or otherwise out), since her car wasn’t in its usual place, and I figured that we should take advantage of her absence. “Did you get a lot done today?” I was thinking of his hub, which reminded me that I needed to look into getting a storage locker or something to hold the things I had left in Ramona’s trunk (and again hoping that she wouldn’t look in there, or notice something amiss, until I could take care of them). I came into the living room and found him sitting on the couch, with the TV on.

“Not at all,” Em told me after a quick fiddle with the tablet. I was getting used to that by now, “I cannot work on it without ruining your flooring. I need a cover.”

I was kind of surprised that he would be that conscientious. “Now that you mention it, that does make sense.” I wondered how I had avoided getting some kind of alien grease on my clothes from carrying it the night before, but decided not to ask, and the explanation would no doubt involve words I wouldn’t be able to comprehend yet again, and I’d rather save myself the trouble. I joined him on the couch, sitting at the opposite end so I could stretch out. “I’ll run out and get a drop cloth later on tonight. So, what did you do all day, then?”

“Watched television, mostly,” Em replied, motioning to the TV, which was on, but muted.

“Huh.” That wouldn’t have been my first guess at what he would do, left to his own devices, but then, there probably wasn’t much else to do. “Do you have TV shows on your plent?” I meant to say planet, but it came out wrong, and I didn’t bother to correct myself at first, but when I saw the quizzical look on Em’s face, I repeated what I said, this time with the right phrase. I wondered how exactly that tablet of his worked to translate. Should I be enunciating more? Then again, my regular speech hadn’t been a problem yet, so it probably didn’t matter.

“Not exactly the same thing, but close enough,” Em told me. He worked on his tablet for a couple of minutes, but I waited to hear his thoughts on American TV. “Our series are not so overwrought, so full of overwhelming emotions. At least, none that I have seen were that way. And there is much more variety. Here, I have found on several different channels variations of the same show at any time of day.”

“Watching a lot of crime dramas, huh?” I said. I was starting to feel hungry, so I stood up and started to head to the kitchen. “Hey, I’m going to have some dinner, do you want anything?”

“I’ll be fine,” Em said, and so I went into the kitchen by myself. I took a look in the freezer and saw the bag of pizza rolls, which made me feel like having those, even though I knew it wasn’t exactly the best thing to have for dinner. I vowed to have something healthier later in the week to make up for it, and dumped a handful on a plate. The nice thing about pizza rolls (besides how yummy they are) is that they cook up pretty quick, just about a minute in the microwave. A definite plus in my book. Speaking of books, I picked up the alien book I had taken out (and placed on the kitchen table when I came in earlier) and started to flip through it. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to find out, and really, I was already living it, wasn’t I? But I felt a little better knowing that there were (maybe) other people who had encountered aliens. And even more so that there were books about it. There were few things in my life that couldn’t be made more reassuring by reading a book about it.

Once the pizza rolls were done cooking, I took the plate and a glass of milk into the living room so I could eat and keep Em company (and finish watching an episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit). I would have rather watched What Not to Wear or something like that, but it was already half over, so I just went with it.

“It can’t actually work like that,” Em commented, as the suspect was finally revealed.

“Supposedly the episodes are based on real cases,” I said, “But yeah, it’s probably not as dramatic in real life.” With my pizza rolls and milk finished, I stood up again. “I’m going to see about finding a place to stash your other stuff,” I told Em, “So I’ll be in my room for a while, probably.”

“I’ll help,” Em said, pushing off the couch.

“Uh, okay, just turn the TV off first,” I said. I wasn’t really sure how he would be able to help, but who knows? “I’m just going to look at some places online, so you can just watch for right now.”

I settled in at my small desk and turned on my computer. Em climbed up on the bed and tried to find a good spot to sit so that he could see the computer, too. But there really isn’t one, since my bed and desk are right next to each other, so eventually he just took a spot near the middle of the bed and sat down.

“I’m just going to check my e-mail real quick,” I told him, “and then I’ll get right to searching.” And while that might have sounded like something that would preface twenty minutes to a half hour of internet time wasting, I did only take a couple of minutes to glance at my e-mails (not too many to begin with), and only opened the ones that were from people I knew. And I only replied to the most urgent one before going to the online Yellow Pages and looking for storage. I was actually able to find a place with the space I needed that wasn’t too far away and just a little over 30 dollars a month (with an internet coupon) pretty quickly.

“Well, that was easy,” I commented, with the words out of my mouth before I realized how much I sounded like a commercial. I coughed to cover my minor embarrassment and then said, “Now I just need to find a time when I can drive over there and deposit your stuff.”

“And get a drop cloth,” Em added.

“Well, I can do that anytime,” I pointed out, “There’s a couple of different places that I can walk to from here. In fact, I can do it right now.” I put my computer into sleep mode and got up to get ready. “You better stay in here, in case Ramona comes back before I do,” I told Em.

“All right,” he agreed. He seemed to genuinely be all right with it, but I couldn’t help feeling like I was caging him in. Well, it would only be for a little while, I hoped. I was kind of surprised that Ramona wasn’t back yet, actually, but thanked God for small blessings. I still made an effort to be quick, hoping to get back before Ramona.

I ended up getting a drop cloth at the same hardware store where I picked up the tarp yesterday. Different clerks, thank goodness, although I guess it wouldn’t really seem that odd to buy a drop cloth after a tarp, would it? I decided that it wouldn’t, and made my way back to the apartment. It was a cool, clear night, so I took my time a little getting home. Until I remember I was trying to get back before Ramona, that is. Then I hurried (a little). And she still wasn’t back when I got there. For the time being, I assumed, and made sure not to tempt fate any more than I already had, by going in my room and closing the door after myself. “How’s this?” I said, showing Em the drop cloth.

“Good,” he said, making “okay” signs with both his hands. I guess he picked that up from all the TV he watched today, but I didn’t remark on it. Instead I just helped Em to spread the drop cloth out over my floor, and then we moved the hub onto the drop cloth together. Em eagerly pulled out his tools, which were stashed under the bed, and got to work. I sat on the bed and watched him for a while. After a bit, I opened one of the drawers on my desk and pulled out a chocolate orange from my stash of snacks. I took it out of its box and whacked it on the desk to break the “slices” apart, which didn’t disturb Em at all, somehow. I unwrapped the chocolate confection and ate a couple of pieces right off the bat.

“So, what’s your whole reason for being here on Earth?” I asked, while silently chanting “Don’t say world domination, don’t say world domination.”

“Hm?” Em looked up from his work.

“Oh, right, no tablet,” I said, though he picked up the tablet as I said that. Once he had it in hand, I said, “What I said was, ‘why are you here on Earth?’ And it better not be scouting for world domination or anything like that, because I will kick you right out if it is.” I probably shouldn’t have said that last part. What if world domination really was his goal here? Although looking at him, I didn’t really think he’d be much of a threat. Way too short and not really scary-looking. But then again, if he pulled out some kind of superior alien weapons, there’s no telling what kind of damage he could do.

“That is not why I am here,” Em replied, “In fact, I did not mean to be here on this planet at all.” But that was all he said before going back to work.

“What, so like a crash landing?” But Em just shot me a look and kept working. “Fine,” I said, and lay back on the bed. While I tried to think of what else an alien would be doing in this neck of the galaxy, I fell asleep.

Chapter Four: Ramona Has a Nice Life (and Breakfast, Among Other Things)

Ramona Elizabeth Engels was fairly pleased with how her life was going. As she sat, sipping her coffee carefully, not really caring that it was still too hot to really drink, but not wanting to burn her tongue, either, she reflected that while she never foresaw herself as a front end manager at a major supermarket, she found it rewarding just the same. She enjoyed the feeling of satisfaction she got when she solved people’s problems, and that was what she did all day, every day. Even more than that, she enjoyed interacting with people, although she had to admit that she was not all that keen on dealing with the more difficult customers, but someone had to do it, and while she was usually the one that had to do it, she was able to pass them off on another CDH from time to time.

Feeling the caffeine starting to kick in, she picked herself up and took the smallest of her three frying pans from the cabinet. She wished she had a pegboard to hang them from, but had yet to find a place to get one. She weighed the pros and cons of making scrambled eggs vs. sunny-side up eggs, and decided to go with scrambled, mostly because she didn’t care for egg yolks most of the time. She liked the idea of sunny-side up eggs, the same way she liked the idea of hard-boiled eggs (but not soft-boiled), but rarely finished them if she actually had some. So scrambled it was. Two eggs, a dash of milk and salt, and soon she had her breakfast set. Tilting the pan to get the eggs on a plate, she soon had the whole ensemble (or rather, her plate of eggs, a fork, and her cup of coffee) back in her room, set on her desk, so she could check her e-mail and do various other computery things while eating breakfast at the same time.

She checked her e-mail messages on her different accounts, but nothing really leapt out at her. A couple comments on a video she had posted on youtube the other day where the best of the bunch, really. After that she browsed various forums she liked to visit and other random blogs she checked in on from time to time until she felt compelled to go and take a shower. She enjoyed the days when she got to go in at three, since it gave her a chance to enjoy the morning, and the quiet of having the apartment all to herself. True, she had to stay at the store later into the night, which meant that she couldn’t really enjoy what she considered the other best part of her life, but as the song said, “You can‘t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need.” Which in her case meant money, which was definitely worth standing around with not too much to do because few people bothered shopping after 9 pm.

The truth of the matter was that Ramona was only an assistant front end manager, but then, so technically were the other CDHs, except for Schedule Dan (so called by her because he wrote the schedules, and it wasn’t for a year after meeting him that Ramona realized he was the actual Front End Manager with capital letters. Probably because he spent more time upstairs in the management offices than down in the front end when he was in, but again, that’s why he was the actual FME and not just a CDH like herself and her colleagues). And while some days there were lots of problems to be solved, leading to plenty of running around and wishing she could be in two places at one time, or at least someone could, there were some days where the tasks that came up where things she could not handle. If one of the self checkout registers had a “cash machine error,” she had to wait for someone from the cash office to handle it, even if it was just a jammed dispenser. Similarly, if that error turned out to be something unrelated to the actual cash dispensers, and wasn’t solved by turning the register’s computer off and on again (which she was certified to do, but just barely), then someone (usually not her) had to call in a service call, and then an official self checkout maintenance man (it was always a man, she noted, and sometimes two) would eventually come, take everything apart and put it back together, and somehow this would fix the problem, whatever it was. She was not yet at the point where she got to find out what the actual problem was, which didn’t really bother her, just as it hadn’t bothered her when she kept an eye on the self checkouts on a regular basis, even though people would occasionally ask why such-and-such register was down and she couldn’t give them an answer. They usually accepted, “a computer error,” so that was what she usually said.

And so, while problems she couldn’t yet solve happened in other parts of the store, Ramona stayed up front and made up for the lack of baggers, spot-solving minor cashier problems, and letting the girl on the self checkouts scan her Audit card when the handheld scanners came due. It was all so terribly mundane that she started to sing in a small voice as she bagged.

“Now that you’re here, now that you’re near…” Ramona sung quietly to herself. Three years of being inundated by all manner of songs over the PA system had branded the words to almost every song into her head, but that wasn’t the one that was playing. Looking up entirely by chance, she happened to spot a familiar figure pushing a shopping cart through the store. Her face automatically broke into a grin, though she turned to hide it from the customer, who might think it weird to find a bagger suddenly grinning while placing cans of creamed corn into a plastic bag.

Luck, Ramona decided, was on her side, as there was no else in line after that order, and all the other open registers that had customers were covered by actual baggers. So she slipped away, promising herself to be just a moment, and went to follow after her boyfriend.

His name was Conway Rivers, and he was, in order of importance to Ramona, tall (taller than her, anyway), cute, and funny. True, he was not the sharpest tack in the box, a little scruffy-looking, and could probably stand to lose a few pounds, but Ramona loved him anyway, and more importantly, he loved her right back, which as far as she was concerned was about the greatest miracle there was. Moulin Rouge had hit it right on the nail when Ewan McGregor sang “The greatest thing you'll ever learn/is just to love and be loved in return.” (And it was just awesome in general, in her opinion, especially once she learned how much work it had taken Baz Luhrmann to get all the songs in the movie.) And so she felt no shame at leaving her post (Schedule Dan was at the podium, after all, and he wasn’t scheduled to leave for another half hour) for a few minutes to say hi to someone special.

She hustled a little to catch up with him in aisle nine. “Hi there, you,” she said, once she was close enough to make herself known.

“Oh, hey, you’re working today?” Conway stopped mid-aisle, which she hadn’t expected, but she managed to stop without making that evident.

“Yeah, and well into the night,” she told him, “So we won’t be able to do anything later.” (Not that they had had plans, but it seemed to follow that if he saw her at work, they would go out when she was done.)

“Well, we’ll just have to do something now,“ he said, and suddenly pulled her into his arms. They had had to work out how much of a display was too much while she was on the job, and had decided that a hug was the limit. But Conway was a very good hugger, Ramona reflected, and though she hated to pull away, pull away she must.

Without realizing it, she started humming the tune she had been singing earlier. When she caught herself, she laughed a little.

“What’s so funny?” Conway asked.

“Oh, nothing really,” she told him, and continued, “I’ve had the theme from Xanadu stuck in my head all day, that’s all.”

“Wasn’t that that movie…” he started, then faltered, so she jumped in to finish his thought, as she was wont to do.

“The one that came out in the 80’s, starring Olivia Newton-John with the songs of ELO. It was also Gene Kelly’s last movie.”

“Who?” Ramona nearly face palmed right then and there, but she resisted the urge.

“Gene Kelly, you know, Singing in the Rain?”

Conway just shrugged. “Never heard of it.”

“Gah,” Ramona groaned, “Xanadu I would let you get away with, but not at least knowing of Gene Kelly? That is seriously inexcusable.” She was just teasing him, mostly. Still, she made a mental note to put Singing in the Rain and Xanadu in her rental queue on Netflix. “Well,” she said, “I need to get back to the front, but I’m mostly just bagging right now, so I’ll try to bag on the lane you go through, okay?”

“I look forward to it,” Conway told her, and they grinned at each other for a moment before Ramona hurried back.