“Yes,” he said. “I thought, I am meditating, I am going deeper and deeper into the blue. And then it was too much.”
That was unusually inarticulate, for Teese. He was normally better at expressing himself in English than I was. His skin was clearing and dulling to a muddy gray.
This one I knew well. “You look tired,” I said. “Let’s get you into bed.”
“Yes,” he said. He started to haul himself down the hallway toward the bedroom, not even bothering to stand.
I covered my mouth with my hand. Teese usually stood himself up on four of his six limbs. The velvety undersides of his limbs gripped together along most of their length and the tips acted like feet, scooting him along the floor. It made him about as tall as a person, a head above the average man, and left him two limbs free to act like arms. Of course, I’d known that the posture was for our benefit, that Teese’s people didn’t spend all their time standing like that on their own ship. But he’d always kept it up, even in our apartment, with just the two of us. And now, now he was just hauling himself along the floor, one tired limb at a time.
“I’ll get you some water,” I said, and fled to the kitchen.
When I came into the bedroom, Teese was in bed, head on the pillow, eyes almost closed. I fumbled for a limb-tip, pressed the damp glass into it.
“Thank you,” he said. “Ami, will you stay?”
His skin was still gray with exhaustion. “Yes,” I said. “Teese …”
He opened one eye fully, fixed its heart-shaped pupil on me. “Ami?”
I’d been about to scold him, to tell him I’d had no one to call, no way of knowing whether he was near death and no one to ask. But even in the dimness of our bedroom, I could see the gray mottling his skin. If I’d been a hexie, I would have felt exhausted just looking at him.
“I was worried,” I said instead. I slid into bed with him and curled up against his arm. I think he was asleep before I’d pulled the covers up. But I lay awake a long time, watching the light from car headlights slide across the ceiling, striping it bright and dark.
Teese was my first live-in boyfriend, although that feels strange and wrong to say. Teese was a friend, more than a friend, but there was no way to think of him as a boy or a man. I can’t say that he was my first love. He didn’t move in because I loved him. He moved in because the sex was great and because he couldn’t rent an apartment to save his life. The morning after our first night together, I learned that Teese had been couch-surfing his way up the Atlantic seaboard. Then I went to my shift at the gas station, and when I came home we had fantastic sex, then ordered pizza and ate it together messily on the couch and fell into bed, and the next day was pretty much the same, and slowly it dawned on both of us that Teese was staying.
I couldn’t really afford the rent on the apartment by myself. I needed a roommate, someone willing to pay me to sleep in the living room of my one-bedroom hole-in-the-wall slice of crumbling neo-Gothic pile of crap. Instead I got Teese.
“I can pay you,” Teese said. “I receive high pay and long leaves in exchange for my long watches. The trouble is that local landlords do not want a hexie, and I have not found a hotel who will take my currency.”
From somewhere he produced a thin, shiny rectangle. “Here,” he said. “This is rhodium. I haven’t checked the price for a while, but it should be worth at least a month’s rent.”
I took it gingerly. It was about the size of half a Thin Mint, maybe a little thicker. There were odd markings on it, presumably spelling out “yes this is really rhodium” in Teese’s language.
“Teese,” I said, “I have no idea what to do with this.”
“You could sell it?”
“Who could I sell it to? Do you seriously think I can go to Downtown Crossing with this and find some guy in Jewelers Exchange who’ll say ‘Oh yeah, this is alien rhodium, we get this all the time’ and give me a stack of cash?”
Teese waved a tentacle that was freckling olive-green with exasperation. “Well, at least you believe me. All the hotels I tried just pushed it back at me and said they couldn’t take it.”
“All the hotels … wait, did you try taking it to a bank?”
The olive-green freckles spread. “Of course, I did. They told me they required a jeweler’s assay. The jewelers told me they required payment in advance for the assay. And of course they cannot take payment in this possibly worthless metal.”
I sighed. “Well, maybe you should try again next month. Sooner or later one of your shipmates is going to get a paycheck cashed, and then all the rich people will be buzzing about the dank alien rhodium and scheming to get it out of you as fast as they can.” I pushed the rhodium tablet back into Teese’s tentacle.
He made the tablet disappear again. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “But in the meantime, Ami, how will you pay for the rent? Shall we get a roommate?”
“Um,” I said. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea with you already staying here.”
“It would be crowded,” he said, his skin stippling with agreement.
“Right,” I said. “Crowded. I’ll see if I can pick up any extra shifts at work, and if I can’t, I’ll short my student loan payment this month.” Again.
I had to take two buses and a train to get to the CITGO where I worked. Metro Boston, where none of the workers at the gas stations can actually afford to keep a car. But, unlike driving, the bus gives plenty of time to watch the scenery. A sign in a restaurant window caught my eye. “We serve octopus!!!!” Not calamari, octopus. I didn’t know octopus had a culinary following, I thought. And then, Wait, are they trying to say they’d serve Teese? Hexies can eat there ? But then another sign flashed by. A dish of tiny baby octopus in thick brown gravy, with bold letters shouting “This is how we like ’em!” This was underlined six times. And another: “I like mine chopped and fried.” And another: “Octopus is best deaded and breaded $16.95!!!” I shifted in my seat. I was starting to feel uneasy. Were people really eating octopus to express their resentment at the hexies’ presence? It was stupid, a stupid thing to wonder and an even stupider thing to do; so stupid that I could just about see people doing it.
I shifted in my seat again. How many people on the bus with me felt the same way as the sign-writers? How many were chopping up octopus at home and calling it Hexie Surprise?
And what would they do to me if they knew I was screwing one every night?
Ami,” Teese asked, “what are you feeling?”
I opened my eyes. “Umm,” I said. “Sleepy?”
He shifted in bed beside me, propped himself up on one limb so he could look down at me in the dimness. “Besides that. Are you happy? Are you sad? Are you annoyed? It is difficult for me to tell.”
I shifted too. “Well, now I’m feeling awkward,” I said. “I think everyone has trouble telling how someone else is feeling sometimes, Teese. Especially in the dark, you know?”
“For my people,” Teese said—he never called them “hexies”— “it’s harder to see feelings in the dark, too. But it’s not that dark. You can see my skin, and I can see your body and your face.”
“It’s probably just harder for you than for, you know, other humans,” I said. “Like, I had to learn that when you go a certain kind of pattern of olive-green, you’re getting really annoyed. And it doesn’t hit me in the gut the way it does when I see a person with a mad face. It’s like I have a, a secret decoder ring in my head that I have to check. I turn the dial to ‘olive-green squiggles’ and I see Oh, Teese is feeling frustrated or annoyed. And then I can start to have my own emotions about that.”
“Hit you in the gut,” Teese said thoughtfully. “When you see someone angry, Ami, you feel their anger, too?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “I might feel scared, actually, especially if they’re mad at me, and they’re bigger and stronger.”
Teese l
ay back down. “That is very different,” he said. “In my people, if I see someone who is angry, I feel their anger immediately. And they know I feel it because they see it reflected on my skin.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Do you ever get a surprise that way? Like, you didn’t realize you were angry until you look at the guy next to you and see that he’s mad, too?”
I felt Teese shift to look at me with both eyes. “Why wouldn’t I know I was angry?”
“Or sad, or whatever.”
“But why wouldn’t I know I was sad? Ami, all my life I have seen my feelings on myself and on everyone around me. I would have to be … damaged not to know my own feelings by now.” He paused. “Probably there are people who are damaged like this, children who are born blind and have to be told their feelings and everyone else’s. But you won’t meet them on a starship’s crew.”
Is that how you think of me—damaged? I bit my tongue, held in the words. But I felt my body moving away from Teese slightly.
After a pause, Teese spoke again. “I feel blind with you, Ami,” he said. “I see your face change, and I don’t know what it means. Or your voice, or your body. I am like that blind child who can’t read skins, when I’m with you.”
“Welcome to the human race,” I said.
After he moved the towels back into the closet, Teese asked if he could use my computer while I was at work. I told him I was shocked that he hadn’t been using it already, and showed him how to log in and how to open a web browser and how to Google. He tapped the keyboard delicately with the very tips of two tentacles, like a two-fingered typist, while I got ready for work. When I left, he was browsing Reddit at the kitchen table.
When I got home after work, Teese was still in the kitchen. “I found a way for us to make money,” he called.
I stuffed my coat in the closet and headed into the kitchen. “Really? Whatcha got?”
“Look at this,” he said, pushing my laptop toward me.
“Oh, ewww,” I said. A naked woman rubbed a dead octopus over her genitals. “Are you kidding me?”
“I know, I know, just look,” he said, pulling up another page. A woman was having sex, improbably, with a horse. And then another: a man and a … pile of balloons?
I was getting a nasty feeling about Teese’s idea. “What the hell?” I asked.
“I know! There are all kinds of pictures of people putting their genitals in things and on things. All kinds of things! Animals, people, food, machines! And they get money for this! Is this news to you? It was news to me.”
I made a face. “Teese, I am not going to put an octopus on my twat for money. That’s …” Words failed me.
“No, no, of course not,” he said quickly. “I would not ask you to do that, Ami. But there is one thing I did not see in all my searches. I found all kinds of people having sex with every kind of thing, but never with …” he paused dramatically “… one of my people!”
His big eyes focused on me expectantly. Yes, my boyfriend was suggesting that we camwhore ourselves for rent.
“Oh, Teese,” I said helplessly. “Setting aside the fact that I’d probably be lynched, that’s … that’s …” I sighed. How was I going to explain porn to someone from another world? “Let’s get delivery. That’s a long conversation.”
I got home the next night to find him swiping tentacles broadly across the keyboard and staring at a text editor. “I installed Python,” he said. “I hope that is all right.”
I stood staring at his keyboard technique. “Sure,” I said, “just ask first next time, and … how are you doing that?”
“Doing what?” he asked, covering the keyboard with two arms. Lines of text appeared on the screen as if by magic.
“Typing?” I said. “You are typing, right?” If I looked very closely, I could just see the top of his arms twitch.
“Oh! I found that this is the easiest way to operate your keyboard, Ami. A little focused pressure on each key works just as well as striking. It took a bit of practice, but it’s not too different from the interfaces on our ship.”
“It just looks like you’re hugging the computer, and it’s writing text for you,” I said. “What’re you writing, anyway?” I peered over his shoulder. It looked like free verse in English-laced gibberish.
“Python!” said Teese enthusiastically. “I told you, I installed one of your programming languages. It is not terribly different from your spoken language. I am writing a program in Python. Do you know this language, too?”
“Um,” I said. My nearest approach to programming had been customizing my Facebook settings. “No, can’t say I do.”
Teese lifted his arms off the keyboard and started telling me about his program. I tuned out and watched his skin. Watery gray patterns rippled enchantingly across his arms as he gestured. It wasn’t quite like anything I’d seen before, but it was familiar, reminiscent of his skin when we were having a particularly intense conversation.
“And then—” Teese interrupted himself abruptly. “But you are not interested in this, Ami?” He peered up at me.
“I’m not a programmer, Teese,” I said. “But go on. I can tell you really had fun working on this.”
Teese’s skin pinked and dimpled, his way of smiling. “I did indeed. Here, look at this.”
He hugged the keyboard again. The screen blanked, then broke out in cheesy red hearts. “i love you ami” scrolled over the pulsing hearts.
I burst out laughing. “Is this what you spent the day on, you nutball?” It was awful. I loved it.
Teese’s skin rippled with pinkish-brown giggles. “Anything for you!”
Teese kept up with his programming hobby. After the love note came bouncing hearts that filled the screen, blanked, and repeated. Then it was fractals, lacy whorls that spiraled chromatically across the small screen. Then seascapes where the shifting lines of ocean blended into deep blue sky.
I thought Teese was programming to kill time. I had no idea he had a goal in mind. Day after day, I came home to find that he’d built another seeming frivolity. His electronic compositions were getting bluer, though, tending toward the same pale teal he’d painted the closet.
I suppose that should’ve been the third warning sign; or maybe it was the fourth. I’ve lost count.
But I ignored it, like I’d ignored all the others, because every night when we made love Teese looked deep into my eyes and told me he couldn’t imagine life without me.
When I got home the next night, Teese was back at the kitchen table. “I found another way to make money!” he called to me.
I couldn’t help grimacing. “I think I liked it better when you met me at the door with sex,” I said.
“This is better, I promise,” said Teese. “I’m going to surprise you with it. Some of my crewmates have figured out the banking system, and they are the ones who will pay me.”
“In rhodium?”
His skin rippled with brown giggles. “No, Ami, no more rhodium! Cash! Wire transfers!”
I came to stand next to him. The screen really was filled with gibberish, as though someone had transliterated a foreign language into English and sprinkled it liberally with varicolored emoticons, often midword.
“This isn’t a program, right?” I asked. “Just checking.”
“Chat room,” Teese said happily. “It is a nonsanctioned communication between members of my ship. There is a metals exchange in California where my crewmates have been able to exchange their pay at a reasonable rate. I have known about this, but I have no desire to go to California, actually”—he peeked up at me almost shyly—“I would much rather stay in Boston.”
“I’d kinda rather you stay here, too,” I said. “So are they going to exchange some of your rhodium for you? Like, you have a ship bank you can transfer it to them with, and then they transfer you back the US currency?”
; He waved a tentacle. “Actually, shipboard regulations would make that complicated,” he said. “Private crew currency exchanges are not very encouraged. Otherwise I could already have done that. But now I have something to sell.”
“You do?” I said. “What is it?”
Teese pinked with pride. “I have created a program that my crewmates desire!”
“Really? What does it do?” I was really curious. I couldn’t imagine what Teese had cooked up on my old laptop that sophisticated space-faring hexies would pay cash for.
Teese stroked the keyboard. The screen went black, then slowly faded into a shifting, pale aquamarine. It was a seascape, an abstract, a fractal, all of these and none of these at once. Barely visible lines radiated from the center, branched, shifted, dissolved. Dozens of fractal forms shimmered and danced in the background, shifting and changing. It reminded me of waves rippling the ocean, of sand grains roiled by wind, of the patterns on hexie skin.
It was mesmerizing. It was beautiful, it was somehow alien, and something about it was hauntingly, naggingly familiar.
After a few minutes, the screen blanked. “It has a timeout,” Teese said quietly. “So that I do not become … lost.”
I sat back. “It’s gorgeous, Teese,” I said quietly. “Are you an artist? Back home, I mean.”
“No, no,” he said. “I never had any interest in this. But now I have inspiration, Ami.”
“I can see why your people would pay for this, especially if they’re all as into blue-green as you are,” I said. “But wait, didn’t you tell me that your people would find so much blue tacky? Like that all-purple painting I had once?”
Thoughtful orange fractals rippled Teese’s skin. “Actually, it is kind of tacky,” he said. “But it is more than that. Ami, you can have no idea how interesting, how appealing and stimulating this is for one of us. When I look at this, I feel … things I cannot feel without it. That’s why I put in the timeout,” he added pragmatically.
Art has always prompted strong feelings in people, so I assumed that’s what Teese was talking about. I thought it was a little weird for Teese to talk about his own art like that. But Teese clearly hadn’t been exaggerating, because the money started rolling in. He’d never managed to get a US bank account, so the money went into my account. Suddenly, rent was no problem. I paid the rent, made up all the student loan payments I’d shorted, and still we had more money coming in each week than I made in a month at the CITGO. I thought about quitting my job, but didn’t.