Chapters 23 through 28 (End)

Chapter Twenty Three: A Girl’s Night of Cooking and Movies

Ramona was in a daze the whole next day at work. It had taken her a while to wind down after they had gotten back to the apartment, despite her roommate going straight to sleep (although being unconscious earlier and sleeping a little in the car probably had something to do with that, too). And even with what little focus she could summon, she couldn’t stop thinking about the events of the previous day. The whole thing had an unreal feeling to it. But it had happened, she knew that for sure. And it was making her question her whole life. First, she had discovered that aliens were real, and then just a few days later she learned that villains like the ones in movies actually existed, along with shadowy agencies to counter them. What next, she wondered, leprechauns? (That would actually be pretty cool, she thought, but if they really did exist, they were probably only found in Ireland, and she didn’t have any funds for a vacation there or anything.) Was she going to become a kind of ‘weirdness magnet’ from now on. “No!” she vowed (silently). She would get her life back to the normality she had known for all the years she’d been alive (which was about two and a half decades, but still).

The mundane nature of work on a slow Wednesday (no matter what, Wednesdays were slow, with the one exception being the day before Thanksgiving) was not enough to give her back a feeling of normality, though. As she went through the motions of her CDH work, mostly just bagging, with the occasional foray into helping a customer find a particular product, she thought about what made her life before this past week so normal. Mostly this just made her think of the lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” though. “Is this the real life, is this reality?” indeed.

By the end of her shift, she had come to the conclusion that what she really wanted wasn’t just a return to normality, but some closure. And she had just the idea of how to do it. When her shift was over, she called up Sheila before she left the store. “Guess what’s on sale this week?” she said asked her roommate.

“I have no idea,” Sheila said, “What’s on sale this week?”

“Ribs are on sale this week!” Ramona answered brightly.

“And?” Sheila asked.

“Well,” Ramona continued, “I have this great recipe for ribs, and I was thinking that I could cook them up tonight, and we could watch a movie or something.”

“That sounds good,” Sheila said, “What movie?”

“Your pick,” Ramona told her.

“Gotcha.”

“Okay, I’ll be home in a few.”

Ramona changed out of her work clothes and picked up a few other things she would need for the recipe, but she was stuck when got to the meat section. It was the usual quandary she ran into when there was a good sale on meat. And it was a good sale. Should she pick up a lot and freeze some of it in hopes she’d remember to use it before there was another good sale. How much room was left in the freezer, anyway? She couldn’t quite remember. Ribs were bulkier than other cuts of meat, so they took up more hypothetical space. But if she only bought what she needed, she would probably regret it later. But then, how often did she really want ribs? Usually only when there was a good sale, she reasoned. So she picked up a smaller package, and checked out on the self checkout.

“Got something planned?” asked Roger, the associate on self check duty, when he came over to bag her groceries. The self checkers were not obligated to bag, but most of them did. Ramona had often described self checkout as “glorified bagging,” but she knew, as did most of the associates on self checkout, that bagging was a very good way to keep an eye on the customers, and also helped to keep the associate visible, in case a customer you weren’t bagging for needed help. One of her biggest pet peeves on self checkout was people who walked away from the self check lanes when the associate didn’t show up to help them after a minute (this was mostly because a customer who abandoned the self checkout lanes usually wasn’t distinguishable from an out-and-out walk off).

“I do,” she replied, “Having a girl’s night tonight,” she told him. Although this was not entirely accurate, as Em would probably get involved, too, but for her purposes, it was close enough.

“Cool,” he replied, and moved on to bag at the next lane.

Once she was back at the apartment, Ramona got right down to business. “Okay, it’ll be faster if we both work on this,” she told Sheila. “I’ll chop up the ribs if you’ll put together the sauce.”

“I can do that,” Sheila said. “What do I need to do?”

“All you need is to mix three tablespoons of each ingredient together,” Ramona said, handing her the recipe book.

Sheila took the book and looked over the ingredient list. “Okay,” she said, and started to pull out the various condiments and seasonings that made the sauce. “Let’s see, ketchup, mustard, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, honey, onion powder.”

While Sheila got a bowl and started measuring out her ingredients, Ramona took a knife with a serrated blade, placed the package of ribs in the sink, and cut the package straight open, trying to keep the blood from getting outside the sink. She worked her way through the meat, cutting it into pieces of two ribs each, her preferred method. She stacked each piece on a plate by the sink.

“So, about yesterday…” she said. She wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about it, but felt that if Sheila did, then she shouldn’t rob her of the opportunity.

“I’m pretending it didn’t happen,” Sheila said right away.

“Yeah, me, too,” Ramona said, with relief. Then she noticed Sheila mixing the sauce up with a wooden spoon. “It’s easier to mix if you use a whisk,” she advised her.

“Got it,” Sheila said, and picked up the whisk from its place among the other various cooking implements in a canister on the counter. She ran the whisk through the ingredients, enjoying the skiff skiff skiff sound the whisk made as it hit the sides of the bowl. Round and round, round and round, though a couple of times she was a little too hard on it and some sauce sloshed out of the bowl.

“Okay, if the sauce is ready, I’m all set with the ribs,” Ramona told her.

“The sauce is probably as ready as it’ll ever be,” Sheila said, handing her the bowl.

Ramona dipped each piece of meat into the bowl of sauce and then placed them into a disposable aluminum pan she had picked up specifically for this. Easier on the clean up at the end. Once all the pieces of meat were in the pan, she poured the remaining sauce on top and placed the pan in the preheated oven. “And now, we wait.”

“For how long?” Sheila asked.

“For about an hour and a half,” Ramona replied.

“That long?” Sheila asked. “Maybe we should start the movie while we wait.”

“Well, I baste them every half hour,” Ramona said, “so as long as you don’t mind pausing, that’s probably a good idea.”

“Sounds fine to me,” Sheila replied.

“So what are we watching tonight?” Ramona asked.

“Well, I was looking at the movies,” (most of them were Ramona’s, but a few were hers, so she referred to them collectively as “the movies”) “and I picked out Enchanted.”

“Good choice,” Ramona said, giving her a thumbs up.

“Come on, Em, we’re gonna start the movie now,” Sheila called into her room.

While Sheila was getting Em, Ramona picked up the DVD remote and settled in on the green chair. Sheila and Em sat on the sofa, and got ready to watch the movie.

“You’re gonna like this,” Ramona told Em, “It’s a send-up slash homage of the Disney Animated Canon, with songs by Alan Menken.”

Em nodded, though the words were mostly meaningless to him. Then the three of them started watching the movie. As the computer animated logo appeared on the screen, Sheila commented, “I think this was the first movie I saw with the new logo.”

“Really?” Ramona said, “It debuted back in the summer with the second Pirates of the Caribbean.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t see that in theaters,” Sheila said, “Oh, it’s starting.”

And so they watched as an animated pop-up book offered exposition, and both Ramona and Sheila sang along to “True Love’s Kiss.” They got about as far as the scene where Giselle had just finished singing “Happy Working Song” (which they also sang along with) when the timer on the stove went off.

“Good timing,” Ramona commented. She paused the DVD. “Ah, okay, this’ll be just a sec,” she said, getting up from her chair.

She went to the kitchen and took the pan out of the oven (using oven mitts, of course) and used a forke to turn over each piece of meat. Now that they were cooked a little, it was easier to move them in the pan. Then she slurped up the juices in the pan with a turkey baster (as this was generally the only thing she used it for) and squirted them out again onto the ribs. It took a couple of times through to get all the pieces, but soon she had the pan back in the oven and ready to cook for another half hour before she repeated the process.

She went back to the living room and she turned the DVD back on. During the “That’s How You Know” sequence, she laughed out loud when the bikers hit Prince Edward mid-note. “That’s funny every time,” she commented, and it was true. Back when the movie had been coming out in theaters, there was at least one commercial that showed this scene that played all the time, and it made her laugh each time she saw it. In fact, that commercial was probably a big part of why she saw it in theaters.

She once again turned and basted the ribs in the middle of the scene with Nathaniel and Prince Edward, and then, just as the disguised Queen Narissa tempted Giselle with the promise of “all this will go away” to get her to bite the third and final poison apple, the timer went off for the third and final time.

“Augh, what timing!” Sheila groaned as Ramona once again paused the DVD.

“But this time, they should be ready,” Ramona pointed out. She went to the kitchen again and pulled out the pan. The ribs were indeed done cooking, and smelled, in her own opinion, deliciously awesome. “All right, the ribs are done,” she called to the living room, “You can pick the ones you want.” And she pulled out a couple of plates.

Sheila was quick to show up in the kitchen, “Yum,” she said when she saw the finished product. “You want to try these, Em?” she asked the alien, who had tagged along into the kitchen with her.

“Sure, why not?” Em replied, and so she got him a plate, too.

Soon the three of them were back in the living room, and they enjoyed some very tasty ribs as Narissa turned into a dragon and made off with Patrick Dempsey, all the way through to things ending up happily “Ever Ever After” (the only song that Sheila and Ramona did not sing along to).

After the movie was over, Ramona retreated to her room to do all the computery stuff she hadn’t gotten to do earlier. Especially check her e-mail, but also checking on a couple of forums that had been unusually active lately.

As her computer came back to life from hibernation, her IM client opened up automatically. Almost as soon as her it was loaded, she got an instant message. It was from Conway. “Hello?”

“Hi, what’s up?” Ramona IMed back.

“Hey” “Just seeing how you’re doing” Conway wrote back to her.

“Well, I’m doing all right.” “Went to work, did a little cooking, watched a movie.” Ramona told him. That, in essence, was her normal life, especially now that she was talking to him. She felt a little bit of satisfaction that (so far) her plan for a return to normalcy was working. “But how are you doing? You went through more than I did.” “I mean, you got captured twice, but I only got captured once.” She was kind of surprised she could be so flippant about it. But with over twenty four hours having past since the beginning of yesterday’s adventure, it was starting to seem even less real than it had in the morning.

“I’m okay. I have to get a new cellphone, though,” he said.

“That’s right, I forgot about your phone,” Ramona said, for in all the hectic helter skelter of what went on the night before, she had entirely forgotten that it was his cellphone that had lead to her part in the escapade.

“Yeah, I’m gonna see if I can get a replacement tomorrow”

“Good luck with that.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem” “I have a pretty good plan”

“That’s good, then.” “So how’re things over there?” Ramona asked. She usually referred to his job as ‘over there’ for no particular reason.

“*shrug* The same as usual” Conway IMed. “Steve came in, and he said that Marissa’s all pissed off about how their mission went”

“I’m not surprised.” Ramona wrote back. “She was probably the one whose idea it was to go on the crazy mission was in the first place.”

“It was” Conway agreed. “Steve said she’s already trying to figure out how to get in there again. But he’s going to stay out of it next time.”

“Good plan.” “Sheesh, that girl is unstoppable.” Ramona wrote “She’s got to leave that to the guys in the suits.”

“Yeah, that’s what I told him”

Ramona laughed a little when she read that. It was probably unintentional, but she had read it as a kind of “that’s what she said” equivalent. She and Conway chatted for a while longer, talking about all manner of things, some related to the previous night’s adventure, but most of them not. It made Ramona feel better to know that just because there might be strange things out there in the world, her own life could remain pretty much unchanged.

Chapter Twenty Four: In Which I Get Debriefed and Later Watch a Movie With Ramona and Em

That morning, I woke up with no recollection of the strange rescue at all, and managed to stay that way through my shower, eating breakfast, and all the way to work. But when I got in the door and saw the reference desk, it all came flooding back to me. I tried to stay nonchalant about it, though. There was plenty to do, after all. I pounced on checking in all the books and other media materials from the book drop, but I forgot to set the computer system to ‘no fines’ for the first three books. After that, I did my best to keep myself together, even though part of me was itching to mention it to someone. What a strange world we lived in, I thought, that there could be such a thing as a weather controlling device. But as I had once read in reference to Jurassic Park (I don’t remember if it was about the book or movie, but it works for both), “that would be awesome. Oh, wait, that wouldn’t be awesome, that would be horrifying.” After all, in the wrong hands, and it was in the wrong hands at the moment, who knows what chaos there could be? Although, really, making it snow out of season (and not even a huge blizzard, just a regular snowfall) was far from nefarious. The whole thing just seemed so comic book-ish, when I thought about it.

Around the time I was taking my first break, the librarian at the reference desk, not Pam this time, but Marianne, told me that Ms. Grier had asked to see me. I figured it had to do something with what happened last night, so I hurried on over to her office.

I knocked on her door, and then went in. “You wanted to see me?” I said.

“I take it your friend was rescued without incident?” she asked me.

“Oh, yes,” I said, wondering whether I should have let her know about that sooner. I had assumed that she would have either already known or not wanted to know, I guess. “Thank you very much for, uh,” I wasn’t sure what to say, or even how much we could say, even though we were in her office. Was she a part of whatever organization had come to Ramona and the other’s rescue, or did she just know of them through some other, most likely reference-related, way?

“You’re welcome,” Ms. Grier said, smiling. I felt a little less tense once she had. She continued. “I imagine your friend told you a little about what she was up to over there?”

“Well, kind of,” I said, feeling it was probably better not to mention that I had actually gotten the (mostly) whole story from Em, not Ramona. I wanted to ask her more about what she knew of the situation, but she seemed to know this and spoke preemptively.

“You most likely have more questions than you thought you would, but I am going to tell you now, I do not want to hear them, nor would I be able to answer them even if you asked. It will be better for everyone involved, including yourself, if you do not mention what happened last night to anyone.”

“I kind of figured that one, ma’am,” I told her.

“Well, it never hurts to be too cautious,” Ms. Grier replied. “You may go now, I’m sure your break is over by now.”

I looked at my watch, and it was the exact end of my break. How had she done that? Rather than ask, I instead thanked her again, and went back to my post at the circulation desk. This, of course, had only raised more questions, but I did my best to not think of them and focus on work for the rest of the day. For the most part I succeeded.

When I got back to the apartment, Em was in my room, observing his fuel apparatus and making notes on his tablet. “How’s it going?” I asked him.

“Not bad,” he answered, “It should be ready in just another day.”

“That’s great,” I said, though I felt a little wistful as I said it. I was kind of getting used to having an alien in my bedroom. But I left Em to his observations and relaxed in the living room, giving The Lovely Bones one more chance before it was due back at the library (while as a librarian, I did not have to pay fines, I still tried to keep from accruing any anyway). I read for a while, getting to the part where Mr. Harvey goes back to the old neighborhood after so many years, when my cellphone started going off. I picked it up almost right away, and it was Ramona on the other end.

“Guess what’s on sale?” she asked me.

“I have no idea,” I replied. “What’s on sale this week?”

“Ribs are on sale this week!” Ramona answered, sounding more excited than I expected her to be.

“And?” I asked. I mean, it was just ribs.

“Well,” Ramona continued, “I have this great recipe for ribs, and I was thinking that I could cook them up tonight, and we could watch a movie or something.”

That sounded like fun, and I told her so. It would be nice to do something a little mindless, and even better to do it with good food. “What movie?” I asked, wondering whether something good had come in the mail recently.

“Your pick,” Ramona said.

“Gotcha.” I was already thinking about what kind of movie I would want to watch most, what would be most distracting and fun.

“Okay, I’ll be home in a few,” Ramona said, and then she hung up.

I went over to check out our collection of DVDs, mentally making note of which ones I might feel like watching, but when I saw Enchanted, I knew that had to be it. I pulled the DVD off the shelf and set it next to the DVD player.

I poked my head back into my room. “Hey, we’re going to watch a movie tonight,” I told Em. “Want to join us?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Okay, I’ll call you when we’re ready. Ramona’s not even home yet, and she’s gonna make something first.”

“Sounds great,” Em said, then went back to making notes on his tablet.

Once Ramona got home, she enlisted me to help her make the ribs. While she chopped up the meat, I mixed together the ingredients for the sauce. I was doing okay, even if the soy sauce bottle had a wonky way of dispensing the soy sauce, until I got to the honey. It poured out soo slowly that I could barely stand it. And then once I was trying to mix it all up, the honey just stayed at the bottom of the bowl, not coming together at all.

While I was trying to get the sauce to come together, Ramona started to say, “So, about yesterday…” But I had done so well not thinking about it for most of the day that I wasn’t going to get started on it again, so I immediately jumped in with, “I’m pretending it didn’t happen.”

Ramona seemed relieved, actually, so I didn’t feel too bad about shutting her down like that. Then she told me that the sauce would come together better if I used the whisk. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Probably ’cause I never cook anything beyond heating up noodles in a pot. I took the whisk out of the canister we use for the random kitchen implements that don’t fit in a draw well, like wooden spoons, the meat tenderizer mallet, and, well, the whisk, and started whisking up a storm. As Ramona predicted, the sauce started coming together much more easily, though I lost a little when I whisked a little too quickly.

Once Ramona was done cutting up the meat, I gave her the sauce and let her have at it. I watched as she fit them all into an aluminum pan, though I would have thought she’d have needed two, and then she put the whole thing in the preheated oven.

“And now, we wait,” she said, standing over the stove and setting the timer.

“For how long?” I asked. I was kind of hungry already. Probably from mixing up the sauce.

“For about an hour and a half,” Ramona replied, though I noted she had set the timer for a half hour.

“That long?” I asked. “Maybe we should start watching the movie while we wait,” I suggested. Ramona agreed, so I went to put the DVD in the DVD player.

“So what’s the movie?” Ramona asked, following me into the living room.

“Well, I was looking at the movies, and I picked out Enchanted,” I told her, and she gave me a thumbs up. I had a feeling she would like it, since it’s her copy. I should get my own copy sometime, I thought, but then moved on to the task at hand. I got the DVD started on loading, and then went to get Em from my room.

“Come on, Em, we’re gonna start the movie now,” I told him.

“Okay,” he said, and left his apparatus to join us. He and I sat on the sofa and Ramona took the green chair (and the DVD player remote), and we started watching the movie. And we had an awesome time. Ramona and I sang along with all the songs, just for fun.

During the first break where Ramona went to take care of the meal, Em asked asked me, “So, is it mandatory to sing when the characters on screen are singing?” “Well, no, not really,” I told him, “We’re just doing it because it’s fun, plus we both know all the words. You don’t have to worry about it.”

“I wasn’t worried, I was just curious,” Em insisted.

Over the course of the film, I fell in love with Amy Adams all over again and swooned over James Marsden, animated and live action. Ramona and I did our best to pick out most of the connections to other Disney movies (though if it was a competition, she definitely won). And right before the last big scene, the ribs were finally ready, and they were totally delicious. Even Em tried them, and as far as I could tell, he liked them.

It was probably the most fun I’d had watching a movie with Ramona that I could remember.

Chapter Twenty Five: In Which I Voice My Concerns to Em

As much fun as watching Enchanted with Ramona and Em had been, it only served as a minor distraction. Later that night, as I was getting ready to go to bed, all the questions that I had been trying not to think about came flooding back. I did my best to push them back, but as I lay in my bed, my thoughts kept flitting around, keeping me awake. I knew that it would be better if I just did my best to forget what had happened, but I had to get something off of my chest, and there was only one person I could talk to about it.

“Em, are you still up?” I asked the darkness.

“Sure, why?” Em replied.

“I can’t sleep,” I said.

“And?”

“I was getting to that,” I continued. “It’s just, well, I don’t know…” I was having trouble putting all my thoughts into words. “About what happened yesterday, you know, I just don’t know what I’m supposed to think any more.”

“About what?” Em asked.

“About anything,” I explained, though even I could tell how lame that sounded. “I mean, there are actual super villain types out there, and secret government organizations,” (although I didn’t actually know whether whatever group Mr. Hammecher belonged to was related to the government or not, come to think of it), “that fight them. I’ve lived my life unaware of all this, and yet, who knows how long these things have gone on. And what kind of other things have been going on without my knowledge? Most of my life is a lie! What am I supposed to think about that?”

“You know, you didn’t seem to have this kind of trouble when you first found out about me,” Em pointed out.

“Yeah, I guess not,” I said, realizing that he was right. While I’d been surprised at first, I had taken finding an actual, real life alien in incredible stride. “But this is different,” I said, trying to put my finger exactly on why this was. “I guess… I don’t know.” Why was it so much more plausible to my mind that there could be aliens, and not secret government organizations (which might not be government-related at all) and villains to be opposed by them?

“Is there something you want me to say to you?” Em asked me when I didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes.

I wasn‘t sure. “Do you ever have these kind of problems on your planet?” I asked instead.

“Not really, no,” Em replied, “But then, I usually don’t go confronting ‘villains’ as you put it.”

“Meh,” I said, and rolled over. “I just don’t know how I’m supposed to just go about life as usual knowing what I know. At the very least, how can I ever trust the weather again?”

“Well, that man in the suit did say the professionals were working on it. I guess you just have to trust in his group to take care of the problem.”

“I guess so,” I said, and that was all we said for the rest of the night. But Em did give me something to think about. There was plenty wrong in the world that I knew about, and yet I generally didn’t worry about any of that to the extent that I couldn’t go to work and do the things I usually did. I did spend a lot of my life trusting that the proper people would handle all the problems of the world, or the ones that would affect me, anyway. I mean, I walked to work and back home again on a nearly daily basis, and I almost never worried about being mugged or assaulted because I knew it wasn’t that kind of neighborhood, and that mostly because of police surveillance, wasn’t it? I would just have to trust in “the professionals” as Em said. I fell asleep eventually while thinking this over.

Chapter Twenty Six: Ramona Proposes a Send Off Party For Em

The next morning, Ramona and Sheila were up at the same time, so Ramona made scrambled eggs for them all. Em, however, was still in Sheila’s room when the eggs were ready, so Ramona just set his portion aside.

“I hope it’s not too slow at work today,” Sheila commented in between mouthfuls for egg. She was usually too lazy to cook anything in the morning, so the warm eggs were a welcome change.

“Yeah, same here,” Ramona replied, mentally adding ‘bacon bits’ to the grocery list. She just needed to remember to put it on there for real, unlike the past couple of times that she had made scrambled eggs and remembered too late that they didn’t have any more. She liked to add bacon bits to scrambled eggs more than actual bacon, for some strange reason that even she couldn’t explain.

Em came out of Sheila’s room around the same time that both girls were finishing up. “Hey, we saved you some eggs,” Sheila told him when she saw him.

“Eggs will have to wait,” Em said.

“But they’ll get cold,” Sheila pointed out, “and cold eggs are so nasty.”

“And you can’t just microwave them, either,” Ramona added, “They never taste as good.”

Em wrinkled his brow momentarily, but then went back to normal and continued with what he was going to say in the first place, before the two girls went off on that tangent about eggs. “What I mean,” he explained, “is that the fuel is finally ready, and I can leave.”

“What?! Really?” both girls said at the same time. Only Sheila thought to add “Jinx!” Ramona rolled her eyes, but went along with the game for the moment.

“That’s great, Em,” Sheila said.

Ramona gave him a thumbs up.

“What do you need to do? Do you need us to take you and your stuff somewhere, or can you leave from here?”

“I will need to go back to where you and I originally met,” Em said.

“So you’re going to need my car, then…” Ramona said.

“Aw, Ramona…” Sheila whined, but Ramona just fixed her with a significant look and continued.

“…to get your stuff over there?”

Em nodded, “That’s right.”

“Yeah, well, the thing about that is, I’m going to be going to work pretty soon, and I need my car to get there. So you’re going to have to wait until I’m back.”

“But I’ll still be at work then,” Sheila pointed out, “and I want to be there when you go, Em.”

“Understandable,” Em replied to both statements. “I suppose I can wait a little longer.”

“Hm…” Ramona had a thought. “You know, since you have to wait a little longer anyway, maybe we should have some kind of unofficial send-off.”

“Like a party?” Sheila asked.

“Well, kind of. Just something fun we could all do to end Em’s time here on Earth with a metaphorical bang.”

“What do you have in mind?” Em asked. He felt that the time they’d spent yesterday was enough of a send off, honestly.

“Well, we can’t really go out, so it’d have to be something we could do here,” Ramona said, thinking out loud. “And not watching movies again, that’s not send-offy enough.”

“Send-offy?” Em wasn’t sure what Ramona was going to come up with.

“We could have a game night,” Sheila suggested.

“Well, maybe,” Ramona said, not too keen on it, until she had another thought, “What if we had a game tournament?”

“What do you mean?” Sheila asked. Her idea of a game night involved Apples to Apples or Settlers of Catan, neither of which lent themselves to tournaments very well.

“I’ve got some good multiplayer games for my PS2,” Ramona explained, “and if we invite Conway, then we can play a couple of other games in teams of two and two.”

“Wait, why Conway all of a sudden?” Sheila asked.

“Well, he knows about Em now, too, so why shouldn’t he get to see Em off, too?”

“Sounds perfectly reasonable to me,” said Em.

“Well, all right,“ Sheila reluctantly agreed. “I’m not really that good at video games,” she said, “But if you’re up for it, Em, then sure, why not?”

“Sounds like fun,” Em said. Unbeknownst to either girl, he had been playing some of the games Ramona had left by the game system when he was alone in the apartment, especially once the fuel distillation process had begun. It was really quite boring otherwise.

With the plans set, Ramona went to call Conway and invite him over that evening, and Sheila went to use the bathroom so she’d be out for Ramona to use it before she went to work. It was really very rare that the two of them were going to work around the same time, so she wasn’t used to thinking about someone else in her schedule.

Ramona had already started bringing up Conway’s contact info on her phone before she remembered that his phone was AWOL at the moment. She wished he had a landline, but knew that she could e-mail him if need be. She logged onto her computer and waited for her IM client to load, hoping he might be on. But she scanned the list of usernames and did not find his there. So she shot him a quick e-mail invite, explaining about Em leaving and wanting to give him a send off party of sorts. As she hit send, she said a short prayer that Conway would either check his e-mail in a timely manner, or that he would get his phone replaced sooner than later and give her a call. Of course, in thinking about when she wanted him to call him, she realized that she would probably be in the middle of her shift at work, and it would do her no good to have him call her then. So she amended her prayer to add that if Conway did call her, it would be while she was on her break.

Ramona found that the more she wanted a day to fly, the more it tended to drag. This was nothing new, of course; didn’t Christmas seem to take forever to arrive when she was young and didn’t have any holiday obligations but to wait; but it was annoying all the same. Not that things weren’t busy. It was a Thursday after all, so things still needed to be done, just not as many as she would have liked. The week’s sales ran from Friday to Thursday, so the store always got a boost from people coming in to take advantage of the old sales before they were over.

But there were small mercies in the day, mostly in the form of anonymous homemade cheesecake in the break room when she went on her break. It was set up with a sign saying “Please have some,“ so Ramona helped herself to a slice. As she tried a bite, she mused on how everything is made better with cheesecake, especially cheesecake that tasted as good as the anonymous one in the break room. She wished it wasn’t anonymous, so she could thank whoever made and left it there, but there was no helping that.

After her break, she asked a the other CDHs if they knew who made it, but they didn’t know either. Angie hadn’t even known there was cheesecake in the break room, anonymous or not, so she was pleased just to find it out. Her quest to find out who made the cheesecake was interrupted by Tracy, who had the afternoon self checkout shift.

“Guess what happened to number four again,” Tracy said, but answered before Ramona could guess (not that there was any need to guess), “A cash machine error.” As the two ladies walked over to the fourth self checkout register, Tracy continued, “And the customer still needs 5 dollars of his change.”

“Okay, let’s see,” Ramona said once they were at the offending register. While all the registers were not immune to having something go wrong either with the cash dispenser or the receiver, number four had more of a tendency to go down in this regard than the others. Eventually, the call would go out for a professional to come in and fix it, but that had yet to happen yet. And since Ramona wasn’t authorized to do a ‘quick fix,’ all she could do was have the register print out a voucher for Tracy to put in her pay station’s tray while she got him the change the register refused to relinquish, and close the register for the time being.

With register four taken care of (to the extent she could take care of it, anyway), she went back to the CDH podium to see who was coming in. Brent would be coming in in about a half hour, so she could leave it for him. As she was about to get back to her usual CDH tasks, she saw Conway, out shopping. This, she realized, was an even better option than trusting him to check his e-mail and/or getting a new phone already. Since there was a bit of a break in the action, as far as she could tell, she grabbed a couple of the perishable items that needed to be returned (a pack of yogurt and some cream cheese. From the same customer, or accumulated, she wondered) and made a (not too conspicuous, she hoped) beeline for her boyfriend.

“Conway, hi,” she said once she was close enough. She hadn’t wanted to rush right over, since that could be dangerous for the shoppers, but even her quickest walk, which she liked to think of as “maximum bustle,” didn’t quite get her where she wanted to be fast enough.

“Hey,” Conway said, stopping once he heard her.

Ramona knew she didn’t have a lot of time to spend talking to Conway, especially since she had to get the perishables to the dairy section, so she got right down to business. “Did you get the e-mail I sent you?”

“No, I didn’t check my e-mail yet,” he told her.

“I figured as much,” she replied. “Well, let me ask you now, then. See, Em’s finally ready to go home, so we’re having a little going away party for him at the apartment. Just, you know, the three of us, and you, if you want to come.”

“That sounds like fun,” Conway said, “What time?”

Ramona had to think about that. They hadn‘t officially decided on a time, just a generic ‘after work.’ “Well, I get off at four, but Sheila usually doesn’t get home until sometime after five, usually closer to five thirty,” she thought aloud, “So… let’s say six o’clock.”

“Got it,” Conway said, “Should I bring something?”

“Nah, we’re just going to play video games and eat pizza,” Ramona told him, “So we’re already set. Anyway, I have to get these back to where they belong,” she indicated the items she was holding, “before they go bad.”

“Okay, I’ll see you tonight,” Conway said, and the two of them parted ways.

Once her shift was over, Ramona picked up a few things for the impromptu party they were throwing: some chips, a couple of extra bottles of soda, and two frozen California Pizza Kitchen Pizzas. Not as good as getting the real thing from the actual restaurant, but they were still pretty good as far as Ramona was concerned. And they were on sale this week, two for seven dollars, which was not too bad, though she never saw it any lower.

Back at the apartment, she put the pizzas in the freezer, since she didn’t really have to start cooking them for another hour and a half, and then poked her head into the living room, where Em was sitting on the couch, watching Deal or No Deal.

“Getting in a few more episodes before you leave, eh?” Ramona commented.

“Just waiting,” Em replied enigmatically.

“Yeah, about that,” Ramona said, “I was thinking about it at work, and you should probably have your stuff all set to go, if you haven’t done that already.”

“I did do that already,” Em replied. “Do you want to put it in your car now?”

“No, let’s wait,” Ramona said. She hadn’t thought about the fact that she might be expected to help move whatever things the alien had in the apartment, and had in fact been planning to make Conway do most of the moving, and told the alien as much.

“If you say so,” Em said, and Ramona went to her room to do her usual online computer things, seeing as she wouldn’t have the chance later. She felt a little bad for leaving Em on his own, though, but still felt kind of awkward around him, despite their shared adventure a couple of days earlier.

Chapter Twenty Seven: In Which a Good Time is Had by All

On my way to work that morning, I briefly noted that the weather seemed to be more in line with what the normal weather for this time of year would be. Had the villain backed off on his machine, or had he been thwarted already? But I pushed that thought out of my mind. I was going to work, and going to work inside all day, so it really didn’t matter what the weather was like. But I was glad that it wasn’t raining, at least. A little sun would have been nice, though, even if I couldn’t really appreciate it while on the job.

I spent the majority of my day at the library calling in reserved books. We usually let the books accumulate for the volunteers that come in (our Volunteer Coordinator managed to get a different volunteer for each day the library is open), but yesterday’s volunteer never showed, and the volunteer who was supposed to come today called a couple of hours in and said she wouldn’t be able to come in. So we drew straws and it fell on me to take care of the backlog. And once I got started, there was just no stop to it. But it did make the day go quickly, as I took the opportunity to read a little bit of some of the books that people had requested, since I spent a lot of time waiting for phones to go to answering machines, and getting the occasional actual person at home. One person even asked me to take her off the list for a certain offer because the books were “too kinky” for her.

With so many books, I took breaks every now and then to put them on the pick-up shelves. But eventually all the books were called in and I got to go home. I hurried home as soon as I got off work. When I got back to the apartment, Ramona was in the kitchen, putting a pizza in the oven.

“Hey,” I said, “Looks good.”

“Yeah, I got two, just in case,” Ramona said, “But I’m going to cook them one at a time. Otherwise, they don’t heat up right.”

“That makes sense,” I added.

“Anyway, Conway’s going to be showing up around six, so we’ve got a little time before we’re getting started,” Ramona said.

“That’s good,” I said, glad for a chance to relax a little. While I really would have preferred to have the game night be just me, Ramona, and Em, I knew I had to make concessions for Ramona, especially since the whole party had been her idea. I wouldn’t have thought of doing anything special, honestly, but it made sense. Who knew when or even if we would see Em again? Speaking of Em, I went to see what he was up to in all this, while Ramona went past me to set up her Playstation 2.

He was in my room, setting up his things to go. “Maybe we should take these to the car while we’re waiting,” I commented when I saw it.

“No, Ramona said to wait until Conway is here,” Em told me, “So that we can make him do it.”

“That is a good thought,” I replied, remembering how heavy the hub had been when I first carried it up the stairs and into the apartment. Of course, I’d also been carrying Em at the time, so that might have had something to do with it, too. How nice, I thought, to have a man to push things off onto. Was that the reason Ramona like Conway so much?

Out in the living room, I heard music coming from the TV and figured that Ramona was done getting her system set up. Em and I went to see what she was up to, and found her choosing a file from a title screen, and then scrolling through some options on the screen. They looked like song titles.

“What’re you doing?” I asked.

“Since we’ve got a little time, I figured I’d play a little Karaoke Revolution before we get down to the actual tournament game,” she replied.

“I didn’t know you had that,” I said, though the truth was I didn’t even know there was such a game. “What’d you do?”

“Well, you pick a song, and a venue, and then you sing for points,” Ramona explained. “The better you do, the more stuff you unlock in the game. Here, I’ll show you.”

And so she picked out a song and a venue, and then the actual game loaded up, showing her character on a stage. Ramona picked up a microphone that was hooked into the Playstation 2. “Turn it up, turn it up, turn it upside down,“ she sang. As she sang, the character did, too, and even started to glow at one point. The words to the song showed up on the screen, with a little arrow indicating how on pitch Ramona was.

“Turn the beat around, love to feel percussion. Turn it upside down, love to hear the percussion. Love to hear it,” Ramona sang.

“Hey, that’s pretty cool,” I said. It didn’t seem to hard, either. I usually wasn’t one for karaoke, but if we could do it here at the apartment, well that was a different matter.

“And when the guitar player starts playing that syncopated rhythm with the scratch, scratch, scratch, makes you wanna move your body, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And when the drums starts beating that beat, beating out that beat with the syncopated rhythm and the rat, tat, tat, tat of the drum, hey!” The crowd in the game cheered as Ramona sang the verse and then went back to the chorus that repeated over and over again. “more lyrics?”

“You’re really good,” I told Ramona when the song was over.

“Lots of practice,” Ramona said, deferring the compliment, but sounding proud all the same. “Want to give it a try?” she held the microphone out to me.

“Uh, sure,” I said. I had thought she would sing a couple more songs, but I was up to trying it now. I picked up the controller and started going through the song list. “Oh, hey.” I picked “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”

“Good choice,” Ramona said as the game loaded the song. As the music started, she added, “You don’t have to worry about knowing all the words. As long as you hit the notes, the game doesn’t know the difference.”

“Oh really,” I said. That changed everything, kind of. But I held that thought as the song started. I sang along as the words and pitch bars appeared on the screen.

“I come home in the morning light. My mother says "When you gonna live your life right?" Oh,mother,dear, we're not the fortunate ones, and girls, They wanna have fu-un. Oh,girls just wanna have fun.”

I did well enough that the crowd in the game started clapping. Em and Ramona clapped along. This was actually a little distracting, but I didn’t have a chance to tell them, since I was singing.

“That’s all they really wa-a-a-nt, some fu-u-un. When the working day is done, oh, girls, they wanna have fun, girls just wanna have fun.”

“You’re not too bad yourself,” Ramona told me when the song was over.

“Yeah, that was pretty good,” Em said.

“Thanks,” I told them both. “Can I do another one?”

“Go for it, we’ve still got time before Conway gets here,” Ramona said.

I scrolled through the songs again and picked “Like a Virgin.” But when the song started, I didn’t singing the words on the screen. Instead, I sang, “I finally made it through med school. Somehow I made it throo-ough, I’m just an intern, I still make a mistake or two-o, I was last in my class, barely passed at the institute. Now I’m trying to avoid, yeah I’m trying to avoid a malpractice suit!”

Ramona laughed in the background, but she was trying to keep it to herself, I could tell.

“Like a surgeon, cutting for the very first time! Like a sur-ur-urgeon, organ transplants are my line. Better give me all your gauze, nurse. This patient’s fading fa-ast. Complications have set in, don’t know how long he’ll last. Let me see that IV, here we go, time to operate. I’ll pull his insides out, pull his iiiiinsides out and see what he ate. Like a surgeon, hey! Cutting for the very first time. Like a sur-ur-urgeon, here’s a waiver for you to sign. Who-o-o-a. It’s a fact, I’m a quack. The disgrace of the AMA, ‘cause my patients di-i-ie, yeah my pa-a-atients die before they can pay! Like a surgeon, hey! Cutting for the very first time. Like a sur-ur-urgeon, got your kidneys on my mind. Like a surgeon, oooo, like a surgeon. When I reach inside with my scapel, and my foreceps, and retractors. Ooooh-hoooo, baby. I can hear your heart beat for the very last time.”

Ramona finally did burst out laughing once the song was over. “Oh man, that was great!”

“What was so funny?” Em asked.

“She did a parody version of that song,” Ramona explained to him.

“Yeah, I was really big into Weird Al when was in high school, and there are a bunch of songs that I can’t listen to without hearing his version. I’m surprised I remembered all the words, though.” I was even more surprised that I actually did pretty well, considering I was winging it.

“I know what you’re talking about,” Ramona said, “Back when the The Phantom Menace came out, I had a boyfriend who couldn’t get enough of his version of “American Pie,” and now whenever it comes on the radio, I mentally hear half of the words of that version.”

I tried to remember when exactly The Phantom Menace came out, and couldn’t quite place it. So I asked Ramona, who was pretty likely to know, especially if she had a boyfriend at the time.

And she did know, right off the top of her head. “It was nineteen ninety nine.”

“Wow, that was a long time ago…” I couldn’t help commenting.

“I think I saw that the other day,” Em said, but before he could get any further, there was a knock at the door.

“I’ll get that, then,” Ramona said, and went to let Conway in.

“We’ll stay here,” I said as she left the room.

“Can you take the disc out of the PS2?” Ramona asked from the hall.

“Sure,” I replied, and pressed the eject button to release the disc, and put it back in its box.

“All right, my friends,” Ramona said as she came into the living room with Conway, “It’s time to begin our Farewell to Em Party and Tournament.”

“Hi, Conway,” I said, giving him a little wave.

“Hey, good to see you,” Conway replied, returning my wave, “You, too, Em.”

“Ahem,” Ramona was not too thrilled that we had ignored her introduction, though frankly, I hadn’t been aware that there was more to it than that. “Anyway, I bet you’re all wondering just what game this tournament will be for, right?”

“I was kind of curious,” I commented.

“What is the game?” Conway asked.

“A classic remained for today’s game systems,” Ramona said, and pulled out a game box from somewhere that I didn’t readily notice. “Puyo Pop Fever!”

“What, really?” I said, while Em and Conway both said, “What’s Puyo Pop Fever?”

“A classic game of matching and making chains,” Ramona explained. “It’s kind of like Bejeweled,” she added to Conway. “We’ll do a few practice rounds before starting the tournament proper.”

“I know how to play,” I pointed out, “It’s the same as Kirby’s Avalanche, and I used to play that all the time when I was a kid.”

“Yeah, I used to play Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine,” Ramona said, getting a little nostalgic as she continued, “It was the first game that was really mine, y’know. I used to beat everybody.”

“So that’s why you picked this game?” Em said. He looked like he was trying not to smile or something, but I wasn’t quite sure.

“Well, no, that’s not why I picked it,” Ramona said, “It’s just a fun game, and it makes for a good tournament, due to the two-player mode. We’ll go in teams of two and then the winners of those games will play each other for total Puyo Puyo Dominance!”

“Puyo Puyo?” Conway was confused. “I thought it was-”

Ramona cut him off, “That’s the name of the series in Japan. It’s like a sound effect or some such.”

And so we got down to playing the practice rounds. Ramona and I went against each other, and she trounced me. I hadn’t realized that I would need so much practice. While Conway and Em went against each other, Ramona and I went to get the first pizza out of the oven. It was barbeque chicken, always a favorite around here. Ramona cut it into slices while I put the second pizza, margherita, in the oven. “Too bad we didn’t know we were gonna do this earlier, we all could have trained,” I said. Mostly me, I meant.

“Yeah, this could have been so cool,” Ramona said, “I mean, it’s cool anyway. I haven’t done something like this since I was in college. But yeah, if we were all at the same level, this would be even better.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, and we both went back into the living room with the pizza. Next, I practiced with Em, who also trounced me. Was I that bad at the game? I just couldn’t seem to get a better chain than four, and Em kept burying me in those clear beans. There were a few more practice games, and by the time the first pizza was done, we were ready to get started on the tournament for real.

“All right, here’s how it’s going to go,” Ramona said again, “Everyone pick a piece of paper from this bowl,” she produced a bowl with four slips of paper in it, “and whoever has the letter that matches yours is your opponent.” As the guest of honor, Em picked first. Then Conway, then me, and then Ramona took the last piece of paper.

I looked at the piece of paper I picked. It had a capital A on it. “I’ve got A,” I said.

“I have A, too,” Em said, holding up his paper.

“Looks like we’re going head-to-head,” Conway said to Ramona.

“Looks like,” Ramona replied, grinning. I wondered whether this was the outcome she had been looking for.

“All right, standard rules apply,” Ramona said as Em and I took the controllers. I did better this time than I had before, and even gave Em a pretty good counter attack at one point, but in the end I was the loser.

“And Em is the winner!” Ramona announced. “Next up, Ramona and Conway.”

“Man, you’re good at this,” I said to Em as we got up to make way for Ramona and Conway’s battle.

“Well, I did practice a little,” he confided to me, speaking low so that Ramona wouldn’t hear. “When you two were out and there was nothing good on TV.”

“That explains it, then,” I said, also quietly.

And so Conway and Ramona began their round in the tournament. The two of them seemed to be evenly matched, and for a while no refuse puyos fell at all. But little by little, Ramona’s advantage began to show itself, and in the end, she was the victor.

“And Ramona is the winner!” Em and I called when the game was over.

“It was pretty close there for a while,” Ramona admitted. “Good game,” she said to Conway.

“Thanks,” Conway said, and got up to let Em take his place.

“And so begins the long-awaited battle between reigning champion Ramona and brash newcomer Em,” Ramona narrated as Em joined her on the couch. Then the timer went off in the kitchen. “Man, what timing,” she groaned.

“I’ll take care of it,” I said, getting up, “You two can start, I’ll be right back.”

“Okay, then, here we go,” Ramona said, and they began to play.

I did my best to take care of the pizza as quickly as possible, taking it out and turning off the oven in record time, but by the time I had sliced up the pizza and brought it into the living room, the battle was already done. Ramona had let out a loud, “What was that?!” and apparently Em had let loose an amazing chain attack that completely filled Ramona’s screen. Having missed it by being in the kitchen, I had to hear it secondhand from everyone else.

“And so we dub Em with the title of Complete Puyo Puyo Champion,” Ramona said, taking a slice of pizza, “And we present you with this slice of pizza in honor of your achievement.”

“Thank you very much,” Em said, taking the piece of pizza from Ramona. “It was an honor to play against all of you.”

Chapter Twenty Eight: In Which We Say Goodbye to Em

We all managed to finish off the second pizza, and once that was done, it was time to get down to the real business of the evening, getting Em back to the place where we first met each other. As with the rest of the evening, Ramona took charge.

“Okay, first we need to get Em’s things into my car,” she said, and lead us to my room. I didn’t mind letting her take the lead, though. It meant I didn’t have to think about what was about to happen.

“Conway, if you could get that big thing,” Ramona said, “And Sheila, you take that other thing.”

“No problem,” Conway said, hefting the hub thing up. He didn’t seem to have any problem. I took what Ramona dubbed the other thing, and I didn’t have a better name for it, so that’s what I called it, too.

Em was putting on his disguise clothes, and soon he too was picking up his things and we all trooped out of the apartment with our things, hoping no one would come by and wonder what we were doing. Well, if they did, I thought, then just let them wonder. We wouldn’t answer any questions. But no one did come by, and we got to Ramona’s car without any trouble. Most of Em’s other stuff was still in the trunk, since I’d never gotten around to renting a storage unit. Considering he was here for almost two weeks, I probably should have, but there wasn’t any point in worrying about it now. With Em’s things from the apartment loaded up, we all piled into the car and drove off.

It wasn’t very far from our apartment, but not close enough that we would have wanted to walk, and we wouldn’t have wanted to walk anyway, to make sure that we didn’t run into anyone who might have wanted to find out what we were doing. Once we got to the same alleyway where Em and I had first encountered each other, we all got out again and made a pile of the things from the trunk in the alley. It must have looked strange to anyone who noticed what we were doing, but if anyone did, they didn’t say anything.

Once everything was out of the trunk, Em started to set everything into formation. It didn’t take very long, so I guess he had done this many times before. When it was ready, he turned to us. “Thank you all very much for your hospitality in my time of need.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“It was weird, but okay,” Ramona said.

“I don’t think I had that much to do with it,” Conway said. These all came out at the same time, so we weren’t sure which one he actually heard. Or maybe he heard all of them.

“We may never meet again, so farewell, my friends,” Em said then.

“Have a good trip,” Conway told him.

“Goodbye,” Ramona said, “But if you do come back, how about a rematch?”

“I’ll miss you,” I told Em, and gave him a goodbye hug. It felt like the right thing to do.

“I’ll miss you, too,” Em said. We parted, and then he went over to his apparatus. He pressed a button on it, and then he was suddenly gone.

The three of us stood there for a few minutes. It had all come so quickly. And then Ramona started to sing.

“There’s a starman, waiting in the sky. He’d like to come and meet us, but he thinks he’d blow our minds. There’s a starman waiting in the sky, he told us not to blow it ’cause he’s knows it’s all worthwhile. He told me, ’let the children lose it, let the children use it, let all the children boogie.”

“We should probably stop standing in an alley now,” Conway said, and Ramona and I agreed. And we all got back in the car and drove back to the apartment.

When I woke up the next morning, the sun shining so brightly I almost couldn’t believe it, I didn’t remember right away that Em wasn’t there. But then I looked over to see his apparatus and found it not there, and I suddenly remembered. I had a feeling of ennui the whole rest of the day. Hard to believe that I was so ready to be rid of him not even two weeks earlier.

It was a couple of weeks after we said goodbye to Em that Ramona told me she had heard from Conway, who learned it from his friend Steve, who apparently was also involved in the escapade earlier that month, even though I hadn’t seen him there, that apparently Harloch’s weather machine had been shut down for good, but I still didn’t trust the weather for a while after that. But eventually it faded from my mind as a concern, as new ones took its place, as happens so often in life.

For years after that, I would occasionally look up to the sky and wonder, just what was Em up to? Was he going to other worlds, or had he settled down on his planet once again? Did he even remember the time we spent together? And sometimes, just sometimes, I was almost certain that I saw a bright spark flare in the sky, and that it was a sign from him, that he did remember and was thinking about me, too.