Alien Tango

screamed woman on the edge to me. “Daniel, are there some seriously unhinged women who work with or around you guys?”
    “Could be a man, you know,” Gower said dryly.
    I shook my head. “I don’t think it is, and not because Brian’s straight. Argh. I need to make a call.” She was going to be pissed, but oh, well. “Hi, Mom, sorry to bother you.”
    “That’s okay, the President feels what’s going on at Kennedy is more important.” I wondered if he would agree that this particular issue fell under that “more important” category and decided not to ask.
    “Great. Remember Brian Dwyer?”
    “Yes, the nice boy you dumped.” Yep, she and Dad had loved him.
    “Yes, him. Guess what? He’s an astronaut and one of the ones in quarantine.”
    “He still in love with you?”
    “Funny you should ask. In a really John Hinckley kind of way, yes.”
    “Well, I don’t know why you’re surprised.”
    “Okay, I am surprised. Why aren’t you surprised?”
    Mom sighed. “He told you at grad night he was going to go off and do something that would make you proud of him, and then, when he was successful, rich, famous, whatever, he’d come back and convince you that you two were meant to be.”
    Oh. Right. I remembered . . . not so much. Okay, it was official—I did attract the really clingy, needy, possessive, stalker types. Then again, if I was going to spend the rest of my life with one, I wanted him to also be so godlike in bed that I didn’t care. Ergo, I was Martini’s, and Brian was out of luck.
    “Okay, well, that might explain some of what’s going on.”
    “You didn’t remember that?” Mom sounded shocked.
    “Um . . . no. I haven’t thought of Brian much in recent years and not at all in the last several months.”
    “You were in love with him.”
    “I was sixteen. I was also in love with Steven Tyler and Joe Perry.”
    “You’re still in love with them.”
    “Okay, bad example. But, I can’t believe he’s still into me. It’s not like we stayed in touch. Though, he stayed in touch with Sheila apparently in order to keep tabs on me.”
    “How sweet.”
    “Mom, are you drinking? If this wasn’t your dearly beloved Brian, wouldn’t you think this was freaking insane behavior?”
    She sighed. “Yes, probably. But he’s an astronaut.”
    “He’s an astronaut with some outer-space entity inside him, so, sorry if I’m not eager to resume the relationship.”
    “Fine, fine. Jeff’s probably better suited to deal with you anyway.”
    “What is that supposed to mean?”
    She barked a laugh. “So cute. So, why did you call, just to tell me you’ve run into Brian?”
    “No.” I filled her in on all the various chaos that we were embroiled in. “So, I want to get rid of my stalker so we can concentrate on the things that actually matter, like staying alive and getting whatever creepy thing’s inside the astronauts out and neutralized.”
    “Let me talk to Jeff.”
    I handed the phone to Martini. “You’re up.”
    He gave me the “what?” look which received the “fake it” gesture from me. He plastered a smile onto his face—I realized if he weren’t so good at what he did, he could have quite the career in telemarketing.
    “Hi, Angela, sorry we’re taking up your time. Uh-huh. Yes. Yes. No. Thanks, it’s nice to still be alive. No, I don’t think there are entities within the astronauts just because I don’t like whatshisname. Right, Brian. Got it. You know, Christopher’s still available, too; should I just let the two of them fight it out for her?”
    Christopher and I exchanged a look. Yeah, this wasn’t going as planned.
    “Yes, that was sarcasm. Yes, as I told my own mother only yesterday, I’ve always been sarcastic, you’ve just never noticed. No, never about Kitty. Yes, I’d like to find out if her mysterious caller is after Brian because it makes it easier to block whatever murderous move they’re going to make against Kitty. Yes, against Kitty. What part of ‘leave Florida or we kill you and your boyfriend’ isn’t coming through clearly?”
    Martini shot me a “you’ll pay for this” look. “You know, maybe I should talk to Sol about this. No, I don’t think he has more experience with stalkers. I just don’t think we’re making progress here, and I have several hundred A-Cs in, if we take the signs to be accurate, mortal peril. I have three astronauts with something very alien inside them, which is also inordinately interested