He didn't know what to make of it at first.
The crickets slipped. It was nearly sunset, and the sun on the neighbor's strangled clutch of poppies made them look like squeezed tubes of paint – soon to be used in daubing the clouds, inflaming the sky, scrimlighting the horizon.
He thought it may have been from the airport a mile north. But it left no jetstream. There was no supersonic pop, no roar dragged behind it – it didn't even have wings, as far as he could tell. It stopped directly above his house. He could hear the ratchet of sprinklers, and the color from the grass fading like old southern crimes, until it shucked beneath your feet in August.
The trailer park was silent. Ignacio realized what he was looking at. Somehow, he wasn't surprised. These things happened in California.
The UFO hovered. From his perspective, it was about the size of a dime.
From the southeast and the northeast, two identical vessels flew toward the first, and stopped, in perfect equilateral symmetry. He dropped the hose he was using to water their little garden.
Maria, he called. The back door was open. He could hear the sump pump through the screendoor. There was a radio playing.
*
It was still hot. They left the windows open as they got ready for bed. The crickets continued their transmission; the nightfrogs croaked from under porches, beneath next-door above-ground swimming pools. Their calls dusty, leaving rings in the dark, like jars removed from pantry shelves. He was already in bed. And sweating. They had the thinnest sheet. He couldn't sleep without some kind of covering. However menial, there was a degree of comfort and safety in a bedsheet. Like a touch in the dark. Something to keep the small hours away. He knew he or Maria would kick it off in the middle of the night. Invariably, he would wake, pull it back over them, damp with sweat.
She crawled into bed beside him after putting the baby in the crib at the foot of the bed. Quietly, as if he were asleep. But he wasn't. He was staring at the ceiling which was water damaged, swelling and discolored.
He couldn't get them out of his head.
What they implied.
He was used to the idea that they were alone in the universe – the way someone stranded on an island gets used to the idea of living the remaining thirty years of their life in solitude. And then realizing that all along there had been someone in a hut not fifty yards away. How had they moved in separate, unbisecting orbits, like sunless planets?
All the romance gone. Now, complications. The expectation to socialize. Jealousy. A kind of hurt.
But he was amazed, too. And grateful – he had now joined the ranks of paranormal pariahs, insisting, intractable. A holy tabloid order. It made him feel a little patriotic.
Maria.
Yeah.
Do you think they'll be back tomorrow?
I think that they're not what you think they are.
Aliens.
Yeah.
How do you explain them?
Military, government, a couple of kids in a park playing with remote controls.
Kids.
These things happen.
It wasn't kids. And it didn't move like something military.
And you would know.
Sure, he said.
Well, when the aliens come back with Jesus Christ, I give you my blessing to board their spaceship and live among the stars.
Blasphemer.
Where'd you put my lightning rod?
They laid in silence for the next ten minutes. Little noises, whirrs, hums from the kitchen, the laundry room. He could almost hear the baby breathing. A sound small and reverent, like a prayer by candlelight. He realized that the older one gets, the louder they breathe. Maybe because, subconsciously, there lies a more desperate need to assert oneself in the quiet jostling of the night, the slow creak of a revolving galaxy. An old man will snore. He is letting his wife, the people on his block know that he is still alive. It will get louder each year. As if there is some widening canyon across which it is necessary to shout. To be heard. Adding decibels with decades.
I am still here.
Maria was slipping into sleep.
Maria, he said.
What.
What are we going to name him?
I don't know. Do we have to talk about it now?
It's bad luck, you know.
What is?
For a child to go unnamed for so long.
You are as superstitious as my mother, Ignacio.
He looked back up at the ceiling. Folded his hands across his chest. A pair of headlights from the road slid across the wall. The cars sounding so sad passing in the dark.
*
The front left wheel was squeaking on the shopping cart. He pushed it through the parking lot, over a speed bump. The automatic doors folded back. He felt nervous – having tripped a switch, cut off a beam of light, reflected a signal.
He needed milk, cheese, and tomatoes. They always needed tomatoes. They never bought enough tomatoes. He walked through the vegetable and fruit aisle – the bruised and spotted peaches in leprosarium, bright bell peppers, the coconuts rutted and ancient-hulled, like Galapagos tortoises. He came to the tomatoes. Filled them in a plastic bag. Used a twist-tie to secure the bag. When he weighed it in the produce scale, there was a good feeling in the way the bag of tomatoes pulled at the needle, sagged the dish – heavy and proud as family secrets. Ignacio felt good buying these weighed tomatoes, eighty-eight cents a pound. Pesticide free. That was good, too.
Two women were talking by the cantaloupe – middle-aged, wide-hipped.
One said, Best veggie patty I've ever had. With real cheddar cheese. None of this squirt-on stuff that they give you at Arby's. For like, 2.99. You really can't find a better deal.
Wouldn't be able to eat it anyway.
Don't worry about carbs. Just order minus the bun. They'll wrap it in a shell of lettuce. Holds things together really nice actually.
Progress, progress, progress, said the other.
They laughed. Moved on. Carts rattling and filled.
Ignacio put the tomatoes in his shopping cart, which he felt was emptier with the addition. He wanted to walk around the store with a full cart, and a scroll of a shopping list dangling behind him like a kite-tail.
Instead, he smelled the cantaloupe for ripeness. Pressed it with his fingertips.
*
There were commercials on the radio. He turned it down at the intersection. Car with a stiff-legged shift, gears that ground like teeth in the night. Ignacio's hands were dirty. They smelled of pesticides and pear skin, and the windshield of his car was dusty and difficult to see through. His airconditioning didn't work, and so he had the window rolled down and he could feel the heat from the asphalt radiating, like heat from the close skin of a shared bed.
It was about that time again. He looked up. Scanned the sky for flying silver discs. It had been a couple weeks, but he watched the sky every day promptly at the beginning of sundown. He hadn't talked to anyone about his sighting. Who do you talk to about things like this? People nod, smile. Maybe you're pulling their leg. Maybe you've been in the sun a bit too long.
It was a deeply religious experience – not being able to tell anyone about something special for fear of being thought lunatic, and persecuted.
He kind of liked it.
The sky revealed nothing.
He wondered what their purpose in coming had been.
Cows, human dissection, agricultural samples. The usual, he imagined.
And it was always in a group of three, wasn't it? These sorts of things were always manifested in the shape of a triangle, the geometry of all things unknowable. Ignacio knew. These things happened.
It was just a matter of finding someone to talk to. Where was the statistic at times like these? Where were the registries? The support groups. For everyone, Ignacio knew, there was a commiserator. Someone to talk to. This was something he relied on.
Behind him, a honked horn. The light was green. His car jerked ahead and he figured it was about time to fix the clutch. But that was pretty expensive.
*
Ignacio looked at the sky with a beer in his hand.
The sprinklers throttled next door.
I am still here, he thought.
His wife's flowers bobbed like the underbird of a mating pair. There was a freeway not too far from the trailer park. He liked to listen to the sound of the cars on the overpass. It didn't make him feel so solitary, or grounded. It was a comfort to know that someone was going somewhere. That not everything had stopped for everyone after 1983. He liked listening to it at night, especially. To know that he wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep.
There was a whippoorwill looping calls like dropped stitches. He tried to ignore the throb in his back from working at the reter and co. pear orchard all day long.
When he wondered if they would ever come back, Maria let the screendoor close behind her. It shut with a bony rattle. She stood beside him. Looked up.
Doesn't your neck hurt?
Nothing new.
What would you do if they came back?
He thought about it. I don't know. Probably ask you to come out and see.
This isn't healthy.
It's like watching the sunset. It relaxes me.
She rubbed her arms. It wasn't cold.
She said, It makes me nervous. Like you know something we all don't. Waiting for the end of the world on this porchstep. And so casually, drinking a beer. That won't end up well for any of us.
Now look who's superstitious.
It's just a little strange. They were stars.
In the daytime. Moving like that.
Yes.
I wonder what they wanted.
You're right. He needs a name. I've decided on one.
What.
Mateo Gray. Like the soap opera. Don't you like the sound of it. It sounds very sexy.
He swirled the beer in the can. Looked back up. These things happened, he supposed.
Ignacio said he'd think about it. His wife went back inside. He couldn't hear the crickets, which he thought was strange, and was conscious of his own sounds.
His feet in the grass, the thump of his heart in his ears, his loud breathing.
He shaded his eyes with his hand, and kept looking.
