Maximum Warp
Chapter 2: Eye of the Beholder

A woodpecker woke me up. Presumably it had found a dead tree to pound its head against, but I felt somehow like it was trying out my skull. Damn, my head hurt!

I opened my eyes and wished that I hadn’t. The sun was up and bright enough to stun a bull elephant. I shut my eyes tight and vowed to never, ever forage for mushrooms again. I had fallen asleep in front of my own fire and I’d had the strangest dreams. My rear end hurt, and a tentative examination indicated that something had managed to crawl inside my jeans and bite me in the ass while I was sleeping. My dreams had been so weird I’d even managed to incorporate that sensation into them. Kind of like when you’re dreaming that you desperately need to use the facilities, only to wake up and find that your body was sending your dreaming mind a pointed reminder of reality.

Somehow, I was going to have to get up and find my supplies of Advil and coffee. Also a rock. There was a woodpecker out there somewhere that needed a lesson in manners. Possibly a fatal lesson. But this would require that I open my eyes and move my head, and neither of those things seemed like a really good idea.

Decisions, decisions. But eventually I worked up the nerve to roll over and stumble to where I’d put my backpack. Keeping my eyes open just a slit, I rummaged through the top pocket, found the Advil, and took three, dry. I sat down and put my head between my hands for 15 minutes or so, until the Advil had taken the edge off, then I worked myself up to the next item of the list. Which was coffee, because the bird, having accomplished his task, had gone off to make someone else’s morning bright.

An hour or so later, though, I had gotten both breakfast and coffee, struck the unused tent, and was packed and ready to go. It was a late start, but I was pretty much back to normal, except for the knot in my butt. Whatever had gotten at me had really taken a bite. Hopefully I would be able to simply walk it off.

* * * * *

I made it to Story Spring Shelter in Vermont over the course of a few days, taking longer than I had hoped. The knot in my nether region had, as I had hoped, disappeared as I walked, though it took a good two days before I could sit down without noticing it. It did seem to leave the entire area a bit swollen; the seat of my pants was feeling uncharacteristically tight. Still, I was sure that would go down over time as well.

As I had hoped, I was rapidly walking off the extra weight I had put on over the course of the academic year. Not that I brought a scale with me on the trail or anything, but I had already been able to cinch my belt in a full notch! That usually took longer. For all that, though, my pack was not feeling lighter as I hoisted it up onto my shoulders each morning, and that was disappointing. If anything, it felt heavier.

As usual, I stopped after ten or fifteen minutes to make adjustments. It doesn’t matter how far you’ve gone in a distance hike, you need to tweak things after a bit of walking every morning. A lace is loose, or a strap, or cinch, or whatever. This morning it was my boots, so I tightened up the laces. But they still felt off, no matter how tight the laces got. That was strange; they were well-broken in and had never given me trouble. I had to add a second pair of socks before the fit felt better.

I also noticed that the pants I had bought for the hike were a bit long in the inseam. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed it earlier. They hung better when I rolled up the bottom, so it wasn’t the end of the world. Still, it was annoying.

But, once I had made all of my adjustments, I was enthusiastic about getting back on the trail and enjoying yet another day in paradise. I picked up my walking stick and got started.

Paradise for a distance hiker, of course, is a relative thing. Some days paradise looks better than others. In fact, some days paradise can make one wonder whether alternative options for the afterlife are at least worth a bit of investigation, and this was one of those days. The clouds started piling up in the morning and the skies opened up by 11:00 am. The downpour was so continuous and so hard that my poncho proved unequal to its task. I mean, really? It had one job.

The trail became gelatinous, visibility was poor and I was drenched. I clenched my teeth and soldiered on. But I was on a downhill section of the trail and the rain was turning it into a stream. Between the river of a trail, the visibility, and the fact that all four socks that I was wearing were soaked completely through, I was stumbling, sliding, slipping and cursing my way through what appeared to be the forest primeval.

There was no sense stopping for lunch. I would only have succeeded in getting everything in my pack just as drenched as all the rest of me was. But by 2:00 p.m., I could add “hungry” to the list of woes that already included cold, wet, sore and pissed. Alas, I didn’t even get to be pissed in the British sense of the word, I had to be pissed like a Yank. My wet socks were abrading my clammy feet, the upper strap on my pack was chafing my chest, my bedraggled hair was constantly getting in my face and I couldn’t even get a firm grip on my walking stick. The tung oil finish I had rubbed into it was hard and strong; the water just went right off of it. Which was great, but when my hands were slick with water they went right off of it as well.

It was dog shit, in the end, that did me in. Dog shit on already slick granite that I didn’t see because my wet hair was in my eyes and it was farging pouring. My right foot slid across the surface and my left ankle began to twist. I flailed my arm to get my walking stick in a position to be useful, and only succeeded in losing the thing altogether. I was down on my butt and sliding fast.

I stopped sliding after maybe ten feet, when I came fully off of the steep rocks and onto rain saturated earth, which is both a polite and long-winded way of saying “mud.” My jeans were coated. My shirt was coated. My pack. And I found that I had neither the strength nor the will to get up. Or really, to do anything at all other than lie in the mud and contemplate the perversity of life.

After a few minutes of contemplation failed to improve either my situation or my mood, I devoted an inordinate amount of concentration and effort to getting my feet underneath me. I lifted myself back into a standing position, hampered by the fact that my pack, now saturated, felt like it had doubled in weight. Then I had to go searching for my walking stick. I was so distraught, so . . . hurt? Yeah, hurt . . . that I was even momentarily tempted to leave my walking stick to its fate. But I had cut it and finished it myself, probably twenty years before, and we had seen a lot of miles together.

I was dismayed to find that it had gone over the edge and was maybe thirty feet below the trail. Not that big a deal; the slope wasn’t exactly lethal though it was certainly steep. But everything was wet and muddy, I felt shaky and my pack weighed a ton. I debated whether to take it off before going after the stick. There was no dry place to put it down, and I wasn’t all that confident that I’d be able to bring myself to put it back on again once I set it down. I debated this question for a ridiculously long time while the rain carved new estuaries through the fresh mud on my face. Finally I got sufficiently exasperated at myself to just spider crawl down the slope with the pack still on my back. I retrieved the walking stick and started crawling back towards the trail.

My bad luck for the day was not quite complete. A flash of blinding light – people say that, but this truly was blinding – was followed by a tremendous BOOM, as lightning struck some distance about the trail I was aiming for. What distance? I don’t know. Not far enough!

The special effects caused me to lose the stick, my vision and my footing. Again. This slope was steeper than the trail had been, and it was slick and gooey. I started to slide backward and the slide was picking up steam. I hugged the ground and clawed with my hands, but continued to slide as another BOOM sounded above me. I picked up more speed and lots of fresh mud

My slide ended as suddenly as it began. Both sodden boots hit solid ground and my left ankle buckled on impact. I had also caught up with my walking stick. Fortunately, the trail had a switchback in it, and I had slid down to a lower section of the same trail. I suppose I should have been thankful, but I’m not that big-hearted. The universe sucked rocks and I was damned if I’d be thankful that it didn’t suck asteroids too.

Now understand, I’m an experienced hiker, and distance hikes – especially in the Northeast – have days like this. The forecast had been for rain, but nothing like this or I would have just sat it out somewhere. Sometimes, however, the microclimate and the macroclimate don’t really line up. You just have to roll with it and console yourself with the thoughts of the great stories you’ll have someday, when you’re sitting in the faculty lounge and your rotund colleagues are discussing how they spent the summer painting their houses.

But for whatever reason, no amount of mental jujitsu was having the desired effect. I was too damned miserable, and this was my vacation, and Life was Just. Not. Fair!!! I was shocked to discover that I was weeping – bawling, really – and I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t understand it. I think the only time I had wept in the last 40 years had been at my father’s funeral.

I must have looked like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, except that no-one would ever be terrified at the sight of my mud-encrusted body crumpled at the base of the slope like a used crash dummy. Besides, I don’t remember any horror story where the swamp creature is overcome by a crying jag. What was wrong with me?

This would not do. I decided that I had to get off the trail as quickly as possible, get to civilization and find a place where I could dry off, warm up and get some clothes cleaned. I shouldn’t be far from the main road into Stratton, Vermont. If I could find it, maybe I could flag down a ride. So I picked up my troublesome walking stick and started hobbling down the trail. Hobbling, because on top of everything else, my left ankle was starting to throb. Have I mentioned that life was not fair?

* * * * *

I was starting to feel like the guy who got robbed in the good Samaritan story by the time someone pulled over to give me a ride. Car after car, SUV after SUV whizzed past me. If they changed speed at all, it was to accelerate. Nobody, it seems, is eager to give the Creature from the Black Lagoon a ride. Go figure.

But eventually a beat up old red Chevy pickup drove past, slowed down then came back towards me in reverse. I had a bad moment where I thought the driver might have decided to rid the world of a swamp creature, but he managed to get close without taking me out. He lowered the passenger window about a third, looked out at me and said, “Sorry, but the Misses’l kill me dead if I get her seat all muddy. I can get you into town if that’s what you’re aiming for, but I’m afraid you’ll need to ride in the back.”

I just said, “Thanks!,” deciding that this was no time to check on the gift horse’s orthodonture. Climbing into the back, however, proved surprisingly difficult. I couldn’t get up with my pack on, so I took it off and hoisted it over, but when I tried to grab the sides and pull myself up, I couldn’t do it. I was too tired.

My savior got out, walked to the back and lowered the tailgate. “Can you make it?” he asked, kindly enough. I was mortified, but I had no choice. I hopped up and got my butt on the tailgate, then swung myself over. He closed up, gave me a look and said, “You gonna be alright?” I nodded, hoping I was right.

The final indignity was knowing that he could get in trouble for having a passenger in the bed of the truck, so I would need to stay down. I found myself thinking, “in my day, everyone rode in the back of pickup trucks!” While this was technically true, I had promised myself that I would never say “in my day,” and here I’d gone and done it.

But, it was at least no longer raining, and if that did nothing for the state of my clothes, it did at least mean that I could operate my phone. So I found listings for motels in Stratton and managed to book something online. I hate Siri, but that doesn’t mean I hate the internet. It’s the greatest thing for introverts since solitary confinement.

Stratton is a company town. The municipality consists of just a couple hundred people, and if they don’t all work at the Stratton Mountain Ski resort, those that don’t know plenty that do. So I got dropped off at “Stratton Village,” which is a quaint, picturesque, and wholly-owned subsidiary of the resort. I had a bit of a hike to get to my motel, but nothing was all that far. I thanked my driver profusely, offered to buy him either a beer or a tank of gas, and was politely declined on both counts. “I don’t wanna be late, or the misses’l skin me,” he said. It might even have been true.

The motel should have been an easy ten minute walk from the ersatz “village;” it took me an excruciating 20. I could feel the blisters forming and popping on my heels; the straps of the pack were digging into my shoulders, the chest strap was rubbing me so raw that I unclipped it, and my sodden underwear was chafing my thighs. By the time I got to the motel, I was ready to drop.

I went to the motel office to pick up the key, worried that they’d take one look at me and whistle up some dogs. I shouldn’t have worried quite so much. The guy behind the desk wasn’t the owner and rather obviously wasn’t much concerned with appearances. He removed the cigarette that was dripping ash down his t-shirt just long enough to say, “if we gotta spend extra cleanin’ your room, it’s gonna cost you some.” He looked me over as if attempting to determine whether I was infested with something, before adding, “no pets.”

I got to the room, full of good intentions about ensuring that I wouldn’t track mud everywhere. But when I closed the door behind me, I said, “Ah, hell with it.” I dropped my pack and stripped naked, starting with my now detested boots, then hobbled to the bathroom bare-assed naked and went straight into the shower.

I probably didn’t do anything for fifteen minutes other than stand under the showerhead and watch hot water sluice a mountain of grime from my hair and my skin. It felt heavenly. Then I stirred just enough to soap up and take stock. I had a nasty rash on the inside of both thighs, blisters on both heels and more on a few toes, and my nipples were swollen and sore from the chest strap. My left ankle looked a bit puffy as well, though the right foot and ankle both looked small. Probably the effect of having been encased in sopping wet cloth for hours – everything looked shrunken. Hell, the same could be said for my reproductive organ, and for a similar reason. I decided I needed to get under covers once I was out of the bathroom and just sleep for a few hours to recover.

* * * * *

I only intended on a nap, but I slept through dinner and straight through the night. By the time I woke up, sevenish, I was ravenous and desperately needed to pee. While in the bathroom taking care of the latter problem, I looked in the mirror to see whether I needed another shower before going in search of food. Sadly, I had the worst case of bedhead I had ever seen. And, as a college professor, that was a subject in which I had a deep reservoir of observational experience. But I hadn’t really washed it yesterday; I had just rinsed out mud with hot water and then gone to bed with it damp. It was clumped, matted, none-to-clean, and pointed every which way. So I turned on the hot, stepped back into the shower and got to work.

The tangles felt fierce. I don’t wear my hair especially long, so I don’t normally have to struggle with it. Maybe I tugged a bit hard, but my hands came away with two mammoth fistfulls of hair. I shouted my surprise, sounding a bit squeaky. Understandably so: my hair may be iron gray and coarse, but I’ve got a full head of it – a fact of which I was very secretly a bit proud. Even some of my younger, better-looking colleagues couldn’t say as much. I dropped the defecting locks and reached up to make a gingerly exploration of the damage. I could tell without looking that it was extensive.

I tried to untangle the rest with the utmost care, but it was not cooperating. More hair was coming loose. I rinsed off and stepped out of the shower. The mirror was completely fogged, which was a blessing. I grabbed a towel and started drying off my hair, but the method I had used for six decades of life betrayed me utterly. The hair developed a greater attachment to the water from the shower than it had to my scalp. When I took the towel off my head, hair went everywhere. Mostly on me, of course, giving me the appearance of a geriatric ape. I dropped the towel and raised my hands for another exploration. All I could feel was a light stubble. Everywhere!

This could not be happening. I reached down, got the towel, and squeegeed off a section of the mirror. It was as bad as I could have imagined. The only good news, I guess, was that I wasn’t bald. My whole head seemed to be covered with five-o’clock shadow. But that’s all there was. Lots of fine stubble.

There are plenty of men who look good bald, though I doubt I would be one of them. But I doubt anyone looks good with a head of stubble. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, I found myself tearing up. Standing bare-assed naked in the middle of the bathroom in a cheap motel, all of my hair plastering my wet body and my head looking like day two of a horticultural experiment, weeping?

No! I would not have it! I angrily grabbed a fresh towel and dried off the rest of me, getting rid of everything I had shed in the process. The bathroom was now a disaster area, but that would just have to wait. I stomped into the main room and went to see what I might be able to salvage from my pack that I could wear for now. It was impossible to open the thing up without getting myself dirty all over again, and my bad luck wasn’t even done. All the clothes in the pack were too damp to wear, though at least they weren’t muddy. I would need to air dry some things before I could go anywhere.

This was not the sort of motel that provided bathrobes for guests. I had absolutely nothing to wear. I couldn’t even wrap myself in a towel, since I had used up my allotted two. But I was not, not, not going to give in to my strong urge to crawl back under the covers and curl into the fetal position. Not!

“Okay, James,” I said to myself. “You need a plan. Before you can do anything about your other problems, you’ve got to have clothes you can wear.” So I pulled the clean, damp items out of the pack and hung them in the closet.

I spent the next half hour transferring mud from my pack, my poncho, my stuff-bags, and yesterday’s clothes to the walls and basin of the shower enclosure, and fifteen minutes after that coaxing all that mud to find its way into the shower drain. I used a washcloth to collect all of the hair that seemed to be everywhere, and sent it down the drain too. But now I was once again wet, and all I had to dry myself was a small hand towel. I sighed and got to work.

Which is when I discovered that, at some point in my drying and washing and scrubbing and rinsing, my body hair must have joined the hair on my head. I had no hair on my arms, under my arms, on my chest, my legs . . . not even between my legs! Without its wiry jungle for cover, my poor guy was looking small and forlorn.

That was it. I’d gritted my teeth, I’d soldiered on, been as stoic as Pliny the Elder and Junior combined, and what had it gotten me? Indignity! I was frustrated, and mad, and hungry, and scared. I decided that reality could go screw itself. I buried myself under the covers and curled into a ball of pure misery.

Unfortunately I was not sleepy, so my retreat did not provide the solace of oblivion. My mind kept working, after a distressed fashion. The only thing I’d ever heard of that could cause rapid hair loss was radiation poisoning. I couldn’t imagine where that might have happened. I’m no scientist, but even I knew that lightning isn’t radioactive. My spider bite? Now that would be just my luck. Peter Parker and I get bit by radioactive spiders; he gets ripped and I look like I volunteered for a primitive delousing.

I wasn’t in any physical pain – well, nothing but scrapes and rashes and twists and such – so it made no sense to go to any urgent care facility, much less the ER. I needed to go see my own doctor, back home. The guy who was always giving me unwelcome health and diet suggestions. Dammit.

But it clearly made no sense to try to keep marching up the trail when there was something this unusual going on with my body. With luck, I would be able to come back in a few days and pick up my hike where I had left off. I was only about an hour and a half from home by car, but of course I didn’t have a car. I was going to need to arrange something.

Almost three hours later, the clothes that had been in my pack were just barely dry enough to wear. Hanging damp appeared to have stretched everything, so I had to put a cuff in both my pants and my shirt. I had already consumed my entire supply of energy bars, but I was going to need some real food. A laundromat would have been nice, but since I was going to head home briefly I could just dump everything in the pack as is and worry about it later.

I needed my ace bandage for my weak ankle or I would have wrapped it around my abraded chest. The slightly damp shirt was only going to make things worse, so I decided to put regular bandaids over each of my nipples before donning my straight, but still damp, apparel. I picked up my walking stick and headed into “town.”

The first stop was a gas station, where I was able to purchase a baseball cap. My selection was limited to a Harley Davidson cap or blue cap with a creature that looked like a skunk wearing a turtleneck, which said “Go Badgers.” I went with the badger, even if it DID look like a skunk. The young woman behind the counter with the pierced nostril and lavender hair took one look at me and said, “‘Locks for Love,’ amirite? That’s so lit!” My blank look did not penetrate, because she went on to say that she’d never seen anyone go so far as to shave their eyebrows off as well.

“What?” I asked, startled.

“That’s committed,” she said approvingly. Then she told me it was “fire” that I was supporting the Badgers. “Does your daughter go there?,” she asked, ringing up my purchase.

“What?” I said again. She just giggled at me. I was starting to think that a Distinguished Professor of Linguistics ought to be able to come up with something more penetrating, more insightful, or at very least more likely to generate an informative response from others. Not that my use of “what” as an interrogative pronoun was in any way improper, of course. I was just surrounded by idiots.

Based on her prior statement, I had her ring up a pair of sunglasses too. I don’t normally wear sunglasses; it forces you to choose whether you want the world to look blue or orange and I wasn’t wild about either. But it was a small price to pay for fewer comments about my present appearance by well-meaning harbingers of the supposedly bright future my dean was always gushing about. “Fucking future,” I grumbled as I hit the streat.

Stratton in summer is a shadow of its winter glory, and its winter glory ain’t any great shakes. But I was able to find a place that served pub food and ordered myself a burger and fries. Not on my normal diet, you understand, but I was feeling put upon by the universe and decided that some recompense was surely due. I kept my cap and sunglasses on, but my young waiter still felt the need to throw me a goofy grin and say, “Hey, Go Badgers. Good for you!” Maybe, I thought with a mental snarl, people would leave me alone if I wore a hockey mask instead.

Still, I managed to get a real meal. Thus fortified, I returned to my hotel room, all of my aches, pains and indignities vying for my attention. Some internet searching revealed that, while it is relatively easy to get from Stratton to Northampton by car, when it came to public transit, “you can’t get there from here.” I was either going to have to spend half a day going away from where I wanted to go before heading back, pay a cabbie or Uber for an hour-and-a-half trip, or . . . call a friend.

Gulp. Now that was a thought that would sober a lush. Given my current appearance, I didn’t want anyone to see me. But I certainly didn’t want to spend a couple hundred dollars just to get home. I hemmed. I hawed. I hemmed and hawed and hawed and hemmed. Then I told myself to stop being such a baby and called my best friend.

“Woah, baby!” she exclaimed, answering the phone. “Aren’t you supposed to be ‘off the grid forever and ha ha ha to all you suckers?’”

“Hey, Janet,” I said wanly. “What are you up to?”

“Oh, you know,” she said. “Paintin’ the house, as usual. Now come on. You didn’t call to ask how my summer’s goin’. What’s up? You should be in middle Vermont by now.”

I was surprised she had my itinerary committed to memory. “I know, I know,” I said. “And I’m not far off where I’m supposed to be. But . . . something’s come up.”

Janet was suddenly all business. “Are you all right, James?”

“I got caught out in a bad storm yesterday and had to come into Stratton to dry off and warm up,” I said. “But when I got up this morning and tried to wash my hair, it started to fall out.”

“Umm . . . you’re calling me because you’re startin’ to go bald?,” she asked. “You’ve been pretty lucky, keepin’ a full head of hair past your sixtieth birthday, you know.”

“I don’t mean, ‘I lost some hair.’ I mean, all my hair came out. All of it,” I answered. I sounded a bit hysterical, even to myself.

“You’re serious?” she asked. “All of it? I’ve never heard anything like it. Have you talked to a doctor?”

“I figured I’d better see Quibble back home,” I responded, referring to Doctor Quentin Bell, my local quack.

“Huh,” she said. “Well . . . he’s probably better than whoever you’re gonna find pushin’ pills in East Buttfuck, Vermont. Not that that’s saying much. You need a ride back here?”

I was grateful beyond words. “If you can swing it, I’d really appreciate it, Janet,” I said. “I wasn’t sure you’d still be home.”

“Eh, I always leave myself a couple weeks to relax after closing the books on the year before I head out on any adventures, and I’m not relaxed yet. Where should I pick you up?”

I gave her the name of my motel and she said she’d be on the road within a half an hour. I don’t have many friends, but the ones I have are keepers. I spent the time working to make the room less of a wreck. I also put in a call to Quibble’s office and got a machine. Of course. I asked for a call back.

Janet arrived just a bit after 5:00 and wasted no time tossing my sodden pack and gear into the back of her car and getting us on the road. I kept my new hat and dark glasses firmly on, and she gave me only one lengthy appraising look before piling me into the passenger seat of her car.

“All right, James,” she said. “So what happened? You get lost in a missile silo or something?”

“Nothing I can think of,” I said. “I would have said it was a pretty normal start to the hike, up until about five nights ago. I think I did a bad job mushrooming, because something I put in my stew sure knocked me for a loop. I fell asleep in front of the fire and had super weird dreams about space aliens and . . . .” My voice petered out. I had a suddenly vivid recollection that, in my dream, the space aliens had been extremely interested in the sort of stuff you would find in a missile silo – weapons-grade uranium.

Janet did not wait for me to work my way back from that particular mental culdesac. “Okay,” she said, “you dreamed about space aliens. Then what?”

“Well,” I said, sounding a bit shaky, “I woke up, and it was daytime, and I’d never gotten back to my tent. Something had bit me in the rear end and it was sore, and my head hurt. But I took some Advil and was able to keep going. The bite hurt for a couple days, but it got better. Then I had the brush with the storm yesterday, and I got up this morning and this happened.” I pointed to my head.

“You suddenly had an uncontrollable urge to show your support for the largest girl’s high school in Vermont?” she asked.

“What?” I said. “No! I suddenly lost all my hair!”

“Sorry, James,” she said, “I couldn’t resist. But . . . Nothing else unusual happened?” I shook my head. We talked a bit more, but our conversation kind of petered out. I was tired, grumpy and puzzled; Janet’s mind was clearly worrying at the puzzle that my strange experience presented.

When we were getting close to Northampton, she pressed a button on her steering column and said, “Call Osaka.” I looked an inquiry at her and she said, “James, you need food and we need to give some thought to what’s happened. I think there’s more here than some bad mushrooms. Let’s get some take-out and we can eat it at my place. I’m not actually painting, just at the moment.”

Before I could respond, her car phone connected to the Osaka Japanese Restaurant and she ordered some sushi and sashimi to go. We swung by the restaurant. I didn’t really want to be seen at the moment, especially where anyone from the college might be present, so Janet went in and picked up the order. We drove back to her place.

I had been over to Janet’s house before. I don’t know; maybe half a dozen times over the many years we worked together. We were very firmly “just friends,” and we didn’t need the kind of gossip that so easily starts in small campuses. I had enormous respect for her, but it would never in a thousand years have occurred to me to presume upon our long friendship with any sort of romantic entanglement. I am a scholar first, a teacher second, a colleague third. Anything else is so far behind that it didn’t count.

It was still light when we got to her place, a modest Cape Cod style home on the edge of town. Inside, she set the bag of sushi on the dining room table and went to get plates, utensils and wine while I went to make myself (marginally) more presentable. When I got out of the restroom, she said, “Okay, let me see how bad bad really is.” I didn’t really want to, but it would be ridiculous to sit at her table and share a meal while I was wearing a baseball cap and shades. With a sigh, I took them off.

Surprisingly, she didn’t just look and giggle, or sound surprised. Instead, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully and she asked me to come closer to the light. She got up very close and gave my stubble a narrow inspection, putting her readers on for a better look. Finally she nodded her head and said, “Okay, that’s interesting. Let’s have a bite and we can talk about it.”

Her behavior was pretty mystifying to me, but I was again extremely hungry and I’m a big sushi fan. I snapped my chopsticks in two, mixed some wasabi and soy sauce in one of the small bowls Janet had set out, and grabbed a piece of raw tuna. I washed that down with a swallow of a perky Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and felt better than I had in a week.

Janet had not yet moved to grab a piece of sushi for herself, however. She just sat looking at me thoughtfully, which was pretty worrisome. Finally I said, “Okay, I know. It looks weird. What’s to talk about?”

“I’m thinkin’,” she said. “‘Weird’ doesn’t begin to cover it. You may be too close to this to have noticed. But . . . you are very definitely shorter than you were two weeks ago. And the stubble on your head isn’t gray. It's not even black, like it used to be. It’s gold.”

I gaped at her and said, understandably enough, “What?!”

She speared a piece of sushi, dunked it in my dipping sauce, and said, “Mushrooms don’t do that, James. Spiders don’t do that. So . . . .” She popped the sushi in her mouth before asking, “s’pose you tell me about those crazy space aliens of yours?”

. . . . To be continued. I reckon