“I’ll give you two seconds,” he said.

  He didn’t even see the punch. It landed square on his chin.

  “Graham,” shouted Mary.

  But she couldn’t have caught him even if she wanted to. There was a dull thud as the back of his head hit the pavement and then everything went deathly quiet.

  “Oh fuck,” said The Man leaning over. “He’s alright, isn’t he?”

  Mary collapsed on the ground holding Graham in her arms. She didn’t scream for help; not at first. None of it seemed real. He looked perfectly fine to be honest, not a scratch on him. It made no sense at all that he wouldn’t wake up.

  “You saw, lady. He started it. That was self-defense.”

  The Man was already backing away. And then at one point he just turned and ran. Nobody saw which direction he went and even if they did, it wouldn’t have mattered. He was invisible; just a grain of sand in a desert of vagrants and prostitutes.

  “Help,” screamed Mary, her face shaped like a crooked letter.

  The last time she screamed like that was when her children were born.

  “Help me, please! Someone call an ambulance!”

  Were this a movie, there would be blood all over the place. Sirens would be sounding and helicopters would be hovering overhead; they might even be on the way to the hospital by now. But this wasn’t a movie; there was no blood and it took an awful long time for help to come.

  “Don’t worry,” said Isabel, holding Nathan’s hand. “Dad will be ok.”

  She didn’t know if that was true or not, she hoped it was; it was just something that bigger sisters said. In spite of that, it was hard to tell which of the two was more scared.

  Track 30 (Blue)

  “So here’s something I don’t get.”

  “Holy shit,” said Isaac with the look on his face alone. “It’s her. I mean, it’s you,” he said.

  The Girl put her hand on top of his as if it was nothing at all and leaned in close and intimate as if they were about to kiss. He had never been so happy in his life, and at the same time, he’d never felt so damn scared.

  “In Black Dog,” she said, her voice so soft and cool it could put out a fire. “When Robert Plant sings, ‘Ah ah child way ya shake that thing; gonna make you burn, gonna make you sting,’ is that a threat?”

  Her face was shaped like a Christmas tree.

  “I feel like he’s saying, ‘Hey girl, you’re so pretty I wanna give you gonorrhea.’”

  Then she had a shot of grape juice and skipped off towards the stage, not even bothering to look back because she knew she didn’t have to. Isaac followed her every step as she ducked and dove and weaved through the crowd, bouncing around like a tiny atom with giant spectacles and long frizzy hair. And only now, as she was being lifted onto the stage, did his heart finally start beating and he felt himself capable of saying hello.

  “This one goes out to Captain Happy Pants over there,” she said.

  And the whole crowd turned; their faces like magnets, drawn to the man at the back of the club whose face was shaped like a head-on collision.

  Her eyes locked with his and without any music whatsoever she sang.

  “Close your eyes and forget your name, step outside yourself and let your thoughts drain.”

  And then the whole club sang with her.

  “As you go insane, go insane!”

  And then, as the song started, she jumped into the crowd, microphone and all. The dance floor instantly came alive, sweeping her up like a leaf on the crest of a wave before carrying her around the club as she sang along, her voice wailing like diver bomber. The whole time, her eyes locked on Isaac’s as if he were some escaping warship, smiling with maddened delight as the wave of hands swelled and gently pushed her towards him.

  The Girl threw the microphone into the air and grabbed both of Isaac’s hands, dragging him into the middle of the club.

  “Let’s dance,” she shouted.

  Her energy was unstoppable.

  “I don’t know-how,” shouted Isaac.

  “Who cares?”

  Then she swung his arms so that he had no choice but to swing his hips just as she swung hers and, whether he wanted to or not, within seconds he was dancing. And he had no idea what he looked like – if he was cool or if he looked ridiculous. He had no idea whatsoever and he didn’t care in the slightest. He felt like a balloon, free of a young child’s grasp, floating off towards the clouds. Free from the heavy burden of his awkward self-consciousness, he jumped around the dancefloor – sometimes with The Girl in hand and sometimes terrifically alone – gyrating his body this way and that, and the whole time, wearing the most stupendous smile as if it were his favourite accessory.

  If the entire of his fears were nestled within a single grain of sand, then she was the ocean, dissolving them as she pulled him into her current and she didn’t dare let him go; that’s not to say that he wanted to. What he wanted to do was say, ‘I love you’, and he did, shouting it as loud as he could as the crowd swarmed around them; his voice mute beneath a wall of blast beats and roaring applause.

  They danced for maybe an hour – maybe a minute, it was hard to tell. It didn’t really matter anyway. She was somewhere outside of time altogether. When she held his hand, Isaac felt like he had known her for his whole life; he felt like they had been dancing like this for days. Yet the second she let go, he felt as if their time had only just begun and he ached for one second more.

  “I have to pee,” she shouted. “Will you be here when I get back?”

  Isaac nodded manically as if she’d just proposed.

  “You’re cute,” she said. “Totally my favourite human at the moment. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “I’ll come with you,” shouted Isaac.

  “Pretty sure I got this.”

  “No, I mean I’ll wait for you – outside.”

  “That’s kinda creepier. Do you often hang out outside doors while girls pee?”

  Isaac’s face was shaped like a squashed tomato.

  “I uh…”

  The Girl laughed, pulling him out with her.

  “I’m kinda creepy too,” she said. “I like creepy – but not in a creepy way.”

  “I’m a nice guy,” said Isaac. “I promise.”

  “Hmmm,” said The Girl studying him as if he were a fly in her soup. “That’s exactly what I would expect a creep would say.”

  Then she winked and walked away.

  Isaac followed her out through the backdoor into the garden area where the cold was sharp and, instead of music, hundreds of conversations and arguments competed with one another. And every second the sound surged in a capricious crescendo of turbulence and trouble, hinting towards a fistfight or a glassing at a moment’s whim, before instead erupting into an orgy of laughter and drunken prose. It seemed as if anything could go wrong at any second and for that reason alone, nothing ever did.

  “I’ll wait here,” said Isaac, a stone’s throw from the only toilet, its door nary hanging onto the last of its hinges.

  “My creepy cavalier,” she said, smiling. “It’s cute, but you think too much. Not every dark corner leads to a scary monster, you know. Most of the time it’s just another boring old street.”

  “I know,” said Isaac. “But still….”

  “You really are persistent.”

  “At least let me stand at the door to make sure nobody can see in.”

  “Who’s gonna wanna watch me pee?”

  Isaac pointed to at least a half dozen men who looked as if watching women urinate in public bathrooms was the first thing they thought about when they woke up each morning.

  “Alright,” said The Girl, conceding. “To suffice your childhood traumas, I’ll let you hold up the door for me. But this doesn’t mean you’re gettin’ some later on.”

  Isaac turned red again.

  “It’s not what I was thinking,” said Isaac. “I didn’t want to…”

  “You don’t want to have sex with me?”

  Isaac’s heart stopped.

  “No,” he said. “I mean, not like that.”

  If his words were stones, he tripped over each one.

  “Don’t get me wrong, you’re beautiful,” he said, his cheeks almost exploding with ripe nerves and shame. “And I….”

  If his words were keys, he’d be spending the night out in the cold.

  “I’m just messing,” said The Girl. “Besides, I don’t have a vagina.”

  “What?”

  “Strange, I know. Imagine how I felt then when I tried on my human suit for the first time. I’m an alien,” she said. “Do you believe in aliens?”

  This was not the conversation he’d imagined having.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s entirely possible, yes, but at the same point…”

  “Well, you’re talking to one right now. I’d tell you where I’m from but even if these human vocal cords could pronounce it, your human ears wouldn’t be able to understand it. When I’m finished peeing I can point out my home planet for you in the sky.”

  Were it anyone else, he would have already walked away. He wouldn’t have wasted a morsel of his logical mind trying to read between the lines. For whatever lack of reason, he neither believed nor disbelieved her and instead listened with honest attention, as if she believed.

  “You see this is where science got it wrong,” she said. “In the movies, they are always looking into the far off galaxies for the oldest stardust thinking that intelligent life – more intelligent than your own – would exist in the farthest and oldest regions of space. It’s not true,” she said, as she wiped, flushed, and buttoned up her jeans. “Why you ask? Good question.”

  Then she zipped past him, grabbing his hands as she did and brought him with her, forcing him to skip as she too skipped along.

  “Oh this is my favourite song,” she said as she jumped around,

  “What song?” said Isaac. “There’s no music out here.”

  “This,” she said. “Humans talking. Humans having fun. There’s no sweeter sound. I freaking love it.”

  This wasn’t an act. It wasn’t some attempt to seem eclectic or strange. The look on her face as she danced around was as genuine as it was mesmerizing. And her smile, as she spun around with her eyes closed, it wasn’t the kind that one could easily fake.

  “Your scientists have been looking in the wrong part of the universe,” she said, bouncing around as if gravity were a choice.

  “I’m a scientist,” said Isaac.

  “Oh yeah? Well, you’ve been looking in the wrong place.”

  The whole while, she didn’t once open her eyes or miss a beat.

  “Where should we have been looking then?” said Isaac without a hint of irony or fickle skepticism in his voice.

  “You don’t look for evolution in your grandfather,” she said as she did The Twist. “You find it in your son. Evolution is always being born, it is never getting old. All your telescopes point to the edge of space looking for intelligent life, hoping to find ancient ancestors with superior technology and unfathomable wisdom. You don’t even assume for a second that you are the aliens; you are the ancestors. You have all the answers. You have the divine wisdom. You know the meaning of life. You came first.”

  “And what does that make you?”

  “Evolution,” she said, stopping to hug anybody who walked by and telling each of them, ‘I am so glad that you exist’. “A curious alien,” she said. “In a human suit having an amazing time. Is this your first time with an alien?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Isaac, now wondering if she was or was not wearing a human suit.

  “Science always proposes the first encounter as the end of humanity where aliens come to reap the seed they sowed.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “I’ll tell you what I know is true if you like.”

  “Ok then. What is true?”

  “I come from a very new galaxy where many planets are habitable. Oh, I love this bit,” she shouted, getting as close as she could to a young couple who were just one or two words into a splendorous heartfelt apology; arriving just as their forgiving tears wetted their impassioned lips. “Like you, we questioned our place in the universe and went searching of divine wisdom and advanced technology; and more than anything, a meaning to all of this,” she said, speaking as if every word were the absolute truth – as if this truth alone were absolution.

  “You don’t want to destroy us?”

  “Why would I?”

  “Humanity is terrible,” said Isaac.

  “Sure, if you focus on the terrible. Any painting up-close looks messy and its edges jagged and coarse. From a distance, though, humanity is a harmony of colour and sound shaped by centuries of conflict and resolution. Sure there are bombs and guns, but there are also middle-aged accountants dressed as clowns making fools of themselves in cancer wards for the sake of making sick children smile. There are psychopaths, yes, but there are also lovers on awkward first dates, kids in candy stores, dogs peeing on trees; don’t even get me started on all the art. And then there’s dancing – dancing and singing have to be the two most fun things to do in a human suit. If the only fish you’ve observed is a piranha, it would a little presumptuous to assume that every fish has teeth and that ever fish with teeth bites.”

  “Do you really believe you’re an alien?”

  “Do you really believe you’re not? I have a friend,” she continued, taking Isaac in a waltz. “He is quite intelligent and handsome too and comes from quite humble beginnings. His past, though, is a bit of a cliché, you see. His father left when he was older enough to remember little to nothing about him –except say for his musky scent – a mixture of sweat and homemade liquor as rumour had it. So this young boy grows into a young man, directionless, if not for the insatiable curiosity for knowledge and understanding. And it is this thirst that has him scour a thousand books from cover to cover on a quest for meaning, and in that time, he carves an honourable path through the halls of academia, eventually earning his doctorate in humanities. Still, though, science brought him no closer to the questions he had been asking since he was a boy; he found no greater meaning. Like mankind, pointing their telescopes out into the farthest regions of space, this young man sought to find solace in his ancestry.”

  “Did he find him?”

  “He did,” said The Girl, coaxing Isaac into every turn of their bodies – so lightly that to even a keen observer, it would hardly appear that she had taken the lead.

  “And?”

  “What does one expect to find on the frontiers? Cities made of love and its citizens drinking happiness? A world without war, tyranny, and anxiety? A place where people laugh, dance, and make love with no ulterior motive?”

  “What did he expect to find?”

  “What do you expect to find with Voyager or SETI?”

  “Intelligent life,” said Isaac.

  “And so what do they look like, this intelligent life?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You, but improved, right? Stronger, more handsome, telekinetic, am I getting close?”

  Surprisingly, Isaac hadn’t once stepped on her feet.

  “So what did he find?”

  “He found a toothless middle aged man, still drunk and in his underwear, covered in scabs and sores, and sprawled out on the floor of a one-room shack with no power and no running water.”

  “How did he know it was him?”

  “The smell. Even before he got inside he knew. That dank, musky scent.”

  “So you don’t think there’s intelligent life in deep space?”

  “Not as intelligent as you hope it to be – not that far out. A hair changes colour at its root.”

  “So you think humans are the intelligent life?”

  “Oh no. There is much more intelligent life - much, much more,” she said, accentuating far more than she needed to. “No, humans are the toothless man in his underwear. Ancestry.”

  “And if aliens do visit us they feel….”

  “Pity more than anything.”

  “So what did your friend do?”

  “Well, he didn’t set fire to the cabin if that’s what you mean.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant.”

  “No, but it’s what you expect from a first encounter; an alien invasion, doomsday, Armageddon.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He took his pants off and he got drunk with his old man.”

  “Huh,” said Isaac as he was swept around in The Girl’s arms.

  “Sometimes you just have to forget you ever had a question to start with.”

  “Well what about you?” said Isaac.

  “Me? Oh no, I came to destroy the Earth. But only after I’m finished dancing and singing.”

  Then she leaned into his ear and whispered her name.

  “That’s where you’re from?”

  “It’s my name, you goof.”

  “So you’re not an alien?”

  “Of course I am. And so are you. Don’t tell anyone I told you my real name.”

  “I won’t. I’m Isaac by the way.”

  “Nice to meet you Isaac By The Way. So you’re a scientist? What kind of science do you do?”

  “Neuroscience,” he said. “I’m doing research into near-death experiences; trying to recreate them in the lab and explain, at least neurologically, what’s happening.”

  “And what have you found?”

  “Well, nothing yet. So far all our experiments have failed.”

  “Oh, well that doesn’t sound nice. You know what they say about failure?”

  He stood there baited on her every word.

  “It sucks,” she said. “Failing sucks balls.”

  “Well, what do you do?”

  “I’m more intrigued in you,” said The Girl. “Tell me, where or when does your curiosity border on pure skepticism?”

  “You’re asking if I believe in an afterlife?”

  “Seems strange to digging for gold all day if you don’t believe in gold.”