Making the Galaxy Great

It was Jason’s weekend with Shelby and when he arrived at his house a little before five, Candice was already there waiting with their daughter.

“I thought you said you were leaving work early,” said Candice.

“I said I was leaving the office early, not leaving work,” Jason replied.“I had to go do a little PR thing at a women and children’s shelter.”

Candice humphed in response, either unable or unwilling to come up with any disparaging comments to make about the fact that a women’s shelter was his excuse for not being at the house at the exact moment she’d desired. As soon as she’d left, Shelby asked Jason to take her shopping for fall clothes because it was already August and she had nothing to wear.

“I’m serious, Dad. Nothing fits, especially my tops. ’Cause my boobs are starting to get—”

Jason held up his hand. “Stop. Stop right there.”

“But it’s true.”

Jason could see for himself that puberty had been working overtime. He preferred not to think about it, and definitely not to discuss it.

“You want me to take you shopping?”

“Yeah, because if mom takes me, she’ll spend the whole time shopping for herself.”

As they left the house, Shelby looked around. “Dad, where did you park?”

When he pointed to his tiny loaner from Area 69, Shelby shrieked. “That is so cute! But what happened to your real car?”

“It needed some maintenance work, so they loaned me this one,” he told her. Amazingly, and perhaps because she was so enthralled with the tiny loaner, Shelby accepted his story.

At the mall, Jason waited patiently at store after store, enduring loud music and video walls that were meant to encourage teens and tweens to spend as much money as possible. He found himself carefully observing everyone they passed in the open areas of the mall, every customer in the stores they entered, every salesperson. Were any of them alien refugees who’d been surgically humanized? Over the course of an hour, several women caught him watching them and looked him over just as suspiciously as he looked at them.

Shelby bought two t-shirts at one store, a pair of leggings at another. It was a grueling process, because — thanks to puberty — all of the items she tried on seemed too short, too tight, too provocative. He came to the unsettling realization that anything that he would like to see on a woman was something he did not want to see on his daughter.

By the time Shelby was satisfied with her shopping haul, Jason was famished. He felt as tired as if he’d run a half-marathon, and deserved something better than the lasagna he’d planned to reheat when they got home. Shelby was hungry, too.

“Are we thinking Indian food?” he asked his daughter hopefully.

Shelby grinned. “Yes we are. You, like, read my mind.”

“I, like, wish you’d stop saying like so much. I like, don’t like it.”

She scowled as if he’d asked her for an impossible favor. “Like, I’ll try.”

The Taj Palace was the bright spot in an otherwise depressing shopping strip midway between the mall and Jason’s house. It was flanked by a dollar store and a plasma bank. Despite its unpromising exterior, the restaurant served surprisingly good and authentic food. But the chief appeal of the place was that Candice hated Indian food, while Jason and Shelby loved it.

“I can almost smell the lamb curry,” Jason told her as they walked past the plasma center. As he was about to open the restaurant door, he noticed Shelby pointing through the window toward an attractive woman seated at a table across from a tall, male companion with a bad goatee. Jason immediately recognized the man with the German accent who’d been shooting a flame thrower in the lab at Area 69. He also recognized the woman.

“Isn’t that the lady that was at your house?” said Shelby. “The one you didn’t sleep with?”

Jason cast a wide-eyed, open-mouthed glare at his daughter. “Watch your mouth, youngster. We can return all of the clothes I just bought you.”

“Well, it is, isn’t it?”

Of course it was her. Of all people, why did Agent McCauley have to be at his favorite restaurant? Jason quickly looked away, but he’d seen plenty: her long black hair pulled up and back, leaving bare her olive-toned neck; and her simple pale yellow sleeveless top, revealing not only her impossibly toned shoulders but also a previously unknown casual side to her personality.

“You’re thirteen,” he muttered to Shelby. “What do you even know about people sleeping with each other?”

“Everything. Except why they call it sleeping together since it has nothing to do with sleeping.”

Jason frowned and sucked in his cheeks. “I’m pulling you out of that crazy private school and sending you to a convent.”

Shelby glared at him. “Do they even have those any more? Anyway, are we going to eat, or not?”

Jason had been stalling, because he had been trying not to look again at Agent McCauley or the German. The surprise and awkwardness of seeing her out to dinner, in the real world, with one of her coworkers had stopped him in his tracks like walking into a glass wall. Despite what she’d led him to believe, she did have a social life — with a possible Nazi who enjoyed shooting fire at non-Aryan people.

“Dad!” Shelby whacked Jason’s arm.

“What?” he asked.

“Are we going in? I’m, like, starving. Low-key, my stomach hurts.”

“Well, low-key, I’m not sure I want Indian food now.”

“Because of her?” Shelby stared at him with her head slightly cocked down and to one side, the same way Candice would look at him when he’d disappointed her — which was often.

Jason shook his head without conviction. “No . . . I just think my stomach is feeling a little upset and spicy food might not be the best thing right now.”

Shelby folded her arms together. “Dad, you’re being a pussy.”

Jason gasped for air. “What did you just say? I’m calling the school right now to tell them—”

Before he could finish his sentence or reach for his phone, Shelby grabbed Jason’s hand and pulled him toward the door. A moment later they were inside, and the delightful aroma almost made Jason forget about the badass government agent sitting at a table a few feet from the door.

Nearly everyone who worked at the Taj Palace was part of one extended family, and one of the younger male members of the family immediately approached them.

“Right this way,” he said, describing a broad sweep with his left arm. With two large menus in his other hand, he led them to a table approximately five and a half feet from where McCauley and the Nazi were seated.

“Fleming? Is that you?” said McCauley. Apparently she had been so engrossed in her conversation with her Teutonic companion that she hadn’t even noticed him standing stupidly outside the restaurant with his daughter.

Jason, who’d made a pathetic effort to walk by her table without looking her way, turned and smiled. “Agent McCauley. I’m glad to see you do get time off from work. You remember my daughter, Shelby.”

“Of course. It’s nice to see you again. And your hair looks different. I like it.” McCauley smiled so warmly at Shelby that Jason’s knees nearly buckled.

“I got it cut two days ago,” said Shelby. She pointed at Jason while still looking at Agent McCauley. “Like, he didn’t even notice.”

“I noticed,” Jason lied. “And please stop saying like.”

“It’s a guy thing. Get used to it.” McCauley leaned toward Shelby, putting her hand over her mouth to whisper something further as if she were sharing one of the ancient mystical secrets of their gender. Shelby giggled while Jason’s head swam.

Who is this person? Did one of the Yrrean refugees have plastic surgery to look like Agent McCauley?

“Well, we won’t bother you and your . . .” Jason muttered.

The German stood up and held out his hand. “Rolf Bruchner,” he said. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Jason smiled weakly. You may be tall and polite, he said to himself, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a Nazi.

When they finally sat down, Shelby told him that Agent McCauley seemed much nicer than the first time she’d met her. “She doesn’t seem so scary.”

Jason had to agree. And when McCauley and Rolf Bruchner left a few minutes later, she waved and grinned at Shelby, which left Jason almost as disoriented as when he’d awakened at Area 69.

On the way home, Shelby asked him why Agent McCauley had come to his house. He gave her a partly true account of what had happened, with a condensed version of the cover story. (Instead of an interstate drug gang, the man who was chasing the girl in the parking lot was just a ‘criminal’.)

“So Agent McCauley, she’s like a cop or something?”

“Yep,” Jason replied. He didn’t want to try to get too specific, because he knew that the more detail he added to the cover story, the more opportunity there was for Shelby to start picking it apart. She was annoyingly persistent.

“I bet she kicks ass,” Shelby said after a moment of consideration. “You can tell just by looking at her.”

“I imagine she does,” Jason agreed.

“So, like, do you think she’s sleeping with that Rolf dude?”

Jason inhaled deeply to indicate fatherly discontent. “I think I’m going to have to ground you for about five years. After I withdraw you from that awful school.”

Shelby responded by taking out her ear buds on and listening to music.