Page 14 of Anywhere with You
Cara would probably run away from a copperhead, too, but she’d also know exactly what species it was and whether it was juvenile or adult and how many eggs it laid, whereas I would just be running because it was snake-shaped.
Cara and I spent the night at a midrange hotel a few miles on the other side, finally, of the Texas-New Mexico border.
I was worried that it would be a little awkward—I hadn’t shared a room with anyone but Bridget since college. But there wasn’t any time for awkwardness. We played rock, paper, scissors for who had the shower first. I won, and as soon as I was out and mostly dry, I put on my pajamas, brushed my teeth, braided my mass of hair so it wouldn’t strangle me in the night, and curled up under the thick duvet.
Cara hadn’t even gotten out of the shower before I was asleep.
* * *
I was a little embarrassed about how eager I was to see the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell the next day. It wasn’t as though I had anI Want to Believeposter on my wall. Anymore. But I had read more about this stop than any other that Cara and I had talked about, trying to convince myself that it wasn’t worth our time and failing completely.
“How much time do we have scheduled for Roswell?” I asked as I found a parking spot.
“No, we’re not doing that,” Cara said.
“Doing what?”
“We’re not scheduling out our days by the hour. My job runs on a literal bell. I can make my peace with alarm clocks and check-in times, but I’m not going to set a timer for our actual adventures.” Her cheeks went faintly pink. “I mean, excursions…destinations…whatever.”
“No, I likeadventures,” I said, bumping her shoulder with mine. I’d always had the impression that she was shorter than me, but our shoulders were very nearly even. Huh. “You went with the average amount of time spent here feature on your maps app, didn’t you?” I asked as we paid for our tickets.
Cara smiled and tried to hide it. “It’s just an estimate, Honey.”
“Alright,” I teased. “Get ready for fourteen hours of alien evidence.”
The elderly man behind the ticket counter said, “We, uh, close at five p.m.”
“Did you account for the time dilation associated with light speed travel?” I asked.
Cara grabbed my arm and dragged me inside.
And oh.
This place found the line between believable evidence and outrageous conspiracy theory and played it like a jump rope.
There were staged alien dissections attended by CIA agents in suits and bowler hats, newspaper clippings and photographs of close encounters framed on each wall, and depictions of science fiction aliens through the ages.
I spent entirely too long at a wall with information—quote, unquoteinformation—about the first documented alien abduction case in the US and was soon joined by an elderly woman who was eager to tell me about the night that she, too, had been abducted and kept for three years beforetheyreturned her. They had, of course, left an undetectable tracking device in her belly button.
Cara just stood beside me and sighed loudly and pointedly until the woman left.
Cara wasn’t having a terrible time, though. I could tell that she found the tiny papier-mâché aliens charming, and that she was as delighted as I was when the UFO at the center of the room started spinning, lighting up, and emitting fog.
At the end of all the delightful madness was the weirdest gift shop I’d ever seen. I bought Badger an alien costume that he’d hate and bought myself a bobblehead and a bright green alien hunter hard hat with attached light. After half a moment’s hesitation, I bought a hard hat for Cara, too.
“Not exactly what I had in mind for our first Mesmio reel, Honey,”she said, “but…it’s perfect. It’s not at all the kind of thing Lorenzo would expect me to do.”
We recorded ourselves in front of a life-sized UFO, laughing and switching our headlamps on.
It wasn’t a long video. It certainly wasn’t anything that would bring us followers.
But, as Cara pointed out, that wasn’t the point. The point was that while the exes were on their stupid cruise, we were out having fun too, and if we shared that fact with our loved ones and despised ones, well that was just a bonus.
Down the street, we found Alien Zone and paid our three dollars each to pose with aliens wearing boxer shorts in a 1980s-style dorm room, then sitting in an outhouse. Cara and I took turns on the examination table while a plastic alien medic loomed over us. And we played foosball with another. Halfway through, we were laughing so hard that neither of us could operate our legs properly, let alone post to Mesmio. We had to give it up until we recovered.
We sat at the bar with the alien bartender, telling him our troubles and appreciating his terrific listening skills.
“If only all men were like you,” Cara crooned, leaning over to adjust his bow tie.
