Pictures of Houses with Water Damage: Stories by Michael Hemmingson Page A

my people.’ I’m like, ‘What?’ and Helen goes, ‘I was hoping we’d have a moment, but my people are calling me back.’ The next thing I know, she’s standing under the ship, and this beam of light comes down, engulfing her, and she disappears.”
    “And?”
    “And then I watch the UFO fly away.”
    “And?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “I remember walking back to the party. The cops were there, dispersing people. Mark grabbed me and said, ‘Let’s go!’ In the car, he said, ‘Where the hell did you take off to?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ And I really didn’t. I was in a daze. Mark thought I was drunk off my ass.”
    “And Ginny was at the motel room.”
    “Yes.”
     
     
    Ginny wasn’t in bed. The bathroom door was closed, and I heard her crying. The door was locked.
    “Ginny,” I said.
    “Go away,” she said.
    “Let me in,” I said.
    “No,” she said, crying.
    “LET ME IN!”
    She opened the door. She was a mess. She pointed to the toilet. There was blood everywhere.
    “It’s gone,” she said.
    Anne and I washed the dinner dishes together.
    “She had a miscarriage,” Anne said.
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “How’d you feel?”
    “I don’t know. Remorse, in a way. It was our baby. But also relief. I wasn’t going to be a father. I didn’t have to tell my parents anything. Responsibility was gone. I was free. I looked into Ginny’s eyes and I saw the same, but I also saw a mother who’d lost a child. I think I aged five years in that single moment.”
    “You were too young. You weren’t ready, neither of you. Think of what your life, your life and her life, would be like right now.”
    “Sometimes I think about it,” I said.
    “So what happens next in the story?”
    “What happens next,” I said, my hands covered in soap suds. “We still lived a secret life. We couldn’t tell anyone, and I called an ambulance to take her to the hospital. They cleaned her out. Prom night was over. She started to go to church a few weeks later. She said God was telling us something. She became born again. She wanted me to join. I wasn’t into Jesus and sin. We broke up, I guess. She met a guy in church, he got her pregnant. They got married. I went to state college.”
    “Helen?”
    “Never saw or talked to her again.”
    “She went back to her planet,” Anne laughed.
    “Sure.”
    “Sorry.”
    Anne and I went to the bedroom. We undressed, and got into bed.
    “Senior prom,” Anne said. “I went with a jack whose only interest was to shove himself up my cunt. Do you want to make love?”
    My hand was on the wiry pubic hair of her sex. “I don’t know.”
    “I’m not in the mood. I will if you want to.”
    “I’m not in the mood,” I said.
    “Okay.”
    “Oh God,” I said and laughed.
    “’Oh God’ is right.”
    “We’re talking like some kind of old married couple,” I said.
    “We’re comfortable,” she said, hugging me.
    We made love anyway.
    “What about,” I started to say.
    “What?” she said.
    “Nothing.”
    “Tell me.”
    “No.”
    “Tell me.”
    “Solid Bill,” I said.
    “There is no Bill no more,” she said softly.
     
     
    I drove up to Presidio Park the next night. It was midweek and there were a few high school kids drinking beer and hanging out. I parked my car, and started walking to the place Helen took me to, thirteen years ago. I hadn’t been up here since. I had a small bottle of tequila in my jacket. I found the tree Helen and I had sat under, and I sat. The tree looked the same, if memories serve me well. Memory was my nemesis, this I knew. So I drank. I tried to think of Helen’s kisses, her skin, the way she smelled, the way her tits felt. I knew those sensations during my hypnosis session, but I couldn’t grasp them now. I could only think of the way Ginny felt, tasted, and smelled.
    I looked at the city. The sky was mostly clear, a few clouds. Lots of stars, as always. I imagined one star coming alive, and getting bigger,