Alien Tango

don’t know. Just didn’t seem like your thing.”
    “What did seem like my thing?” Tried not to get pissed off. Failed.
    “I’m not trying to insult you. But, like Conspiracy Chuck. I mean, what could that guy be doing other than still living in his parents’ house and haunting UFO sites? Maybe working at a Circle-K.”
    “Chuckie worked at Circle-K in college.” Tried not to anticipate my next statements with joy. Failed.
    “See?”
    “He went into their management program in our freshman year, left it in junior year, and started his own local convenience store as his upper-level class project. This turned into a state-wide chain before graduation. Got bought out by Circle-K five years ago for undisclosed multimillions. He lives half the year in Australia and half the year in D.C. He sends me nice presents from Europe and Australia all the time. He’s also taken me to Vegas, skiing in Aspen and Vail, and to New York. Because, in addition to the first multimillions, he made another whopping set of millions in the stock market. He’s not Bill Gates level . . . yet . . . but if you want to know who should win ‘Most Successful’ at the reunion, it’s him.”
    Maybe I should have married Chuckie, now that I thought of it. Sure, he’d been joking when he’d suggested it, but we did have a lot in common, his parents adored me and mine adored him, and no one would ever think he was a geek these days. Ah, well, another opportunity gone.
    “You’re kidding!”
    “No, I’m not. You saw a geek. I saw a cool guy with similar interests.” Tried not to anticipate his next question. Failed.
    “Did you date him?” Brian sounded horrified.
    “No.” Thank God he hadn’t asked if I’d slept with him. Dating and a wild fling in Vegas for a week were not the same things. I tried to remember why we hadn’t flung more. Couldn’t. Oh well. Sex with Martini had pretty much wiped out my clear memories of the men who’d come before him. Though, if I tried, it wasn’t all that hard to remember the fling—before Martini, Chuckie had been the gold standard. Still the best human male I’d ever been intimate with. Which would have begged the “why didn’t we do it more” question if we weren’t in a life-and-death situation.
    “Well, good.”
    I noted another difference between Martini and Brian—Martini absolutely would have asked if I’d slept with Chuckie. Because he knew me better than Brian. Chuckie knew me better than Brian, too. Chuckie might know me better than Martini, but, again, not the right time to ponder that. Frankly, it was easier to come up with those who didn’t know me better than Brian than those who did.
    The rest of our team arrived. “Um, girlfriend? What the hell are you doing?” Reader sounded mildly freaked.
    “Making Serene go psycho so Jeff can track her. She’s been kidnapped by the Club 51 Goon Squad.”
    “She’s not enjoying it,” Brian added, sounding disappointed and somewhat insulted.
    “Jeff going to believe that?” Reader asked.
    “Sure,” Michael chimed in. “She’s making out with Bri, not me. Now, if she were making out with me, Jeff’d have a reason to worry.”
    “Everyone’s a comedian. You think we can stop now? Could she really continue to buy that we’re in a love clinch with the rest of you around?”
    “Kitty, she’s a psycho,” Jerry said. “I think she could believe it if you were in the middle of O’Hare.”
    Probably true. Brian and I continued to cuddle. I found myself bored. Maybe it was just that he was a human, and I was already aware of the benefits of A-C stamina. More likely, of course, was the fact that I wasn’t remotely interested, let alone in love with him.
    My phone rang. Martini must have put it back into my purse when I was unconscious. Dug through, happily, it was him. “Jeff, are you okay?”
    “Yeah, baby, we’re fine. We have Serene, but her kidnappers got away.” He sounded pissed. “You can stop fondling Brian now.”
    “Gladly.” I pulled away and went over to Reader. “How’s her mental state?”
    “Oh, beyond great.” His sarcasm was on high. “Just this side of frothing at the mouth.”
    “How are you handling her?”
    “Roughly, because we’ve had no choice. Christopher said to tell you that she’s not quite as bad as the alligator, though.”
    “Can you get back to us?”
    “Not using hyperspeed. We got to her just in time. A couple more miles and she’d have been too far for us to