The Man Who Fell to Earth

He sat down, painfully, in the armchair, and set his cane on the floor beside him. She sat on the couch and then lay back on her side, facing him. He was looking at her but he hardly seemed to see her. When he looked that way it made her feel creepy. “I’m wearing new clothes.” she said.

“So you are.”

“Yeah. So I am.” She laughed self-consciously. “The pants was sixty-five and the blouse was fifty, and I bought gold undies and earrings.” She raised a leg to show off the bright-red pants and then scratched her knee through the cloth. “With the money you been giving me I could dress like a movie star if I wanted to. I could get my face fixed, you know, and take off weight and all.” She felt her earrings for a minute, thoughtfully, tugging at them and running her thumbnail across the soft, metallic gold, enjoying the little hints of pain on her earlobes. “But I don’t know. I been sloppy for a long time. Ever since me and Barney went on welfare and Medicare and all I let myself go and, hell, you get so you like it that way.”

He said nothing for a while and they sat in silence while she finished her drink. Finally he said, “Will you come with me to the new house?”

She stretched and yawned, beginning to feel tired. “You sure you really need me?”

For a moment he blinked at her and his face looked a way she had never seen it look before, as if he were pleading with her. “Yes, I do need you,” he said. “I know very few people….”

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll come.” She gestured tiredly. “I’d be a damn fool not to, anyway, since I imagine you’ll pay me twice as much as I’m worth.”

“Good.” His face relaxed a little and he settled back in his chair and picked up a book.

Before he could get started in it she recalled her plans, already cool by now, and after a moment of reluctant doubt she made a final try. But she was sleepy and her heart wasn’t in it. “Are you married, Tommy?” she asked. It should have been a pretty obvious question.

If he had any idea of what she was driving at he didn’t show it. “Yes, I’m married,” he said, politely putting his book in his lap and looking over at her.

Embarrassed, she said, “I just wanted to know.” And then, “What does she look like? Your wife?”

“Oh, she resembles me, I imagine. Tall and thin.”

Somehow her embarrassment was turning into irritation. She finished off her drink and said, “I used to be thin,” almost with defiance. Then, tired of it, she stood up and walked over to her bedroom door. The whole thing had been silly anyway. And maybe he was queer — being married didn’t prove anything that way. Anyway he was peculiar. A nice, rich man, but weird as green milk. Still irritated she said, “Good night,” and went into her room and began peeling off her expensive clothes. Then she sat on the edge of the bed a moment, in her nightgown, thinking. She was much more comfortable with the tight clothes off, and when she finally lay down, her mind now blank, she had no difficulty in falling into a deep sleep, pleasantly filled with undisturbing dreams.

9

They flew over the mountains, but the little plane was so stable, the pilot so expert, that there was no pitching, almost no sensation of movement. They flew over Harlan, Kentucky, a drab city sprawled loosely in the foothills, and then over vast, barren fields and down into a valley. Bryce, a glass of whiskey in his hand, saw the distant gleam of a lake, its static surface shining like a new and rich coin; and then they dipped lower, losing sight of the lake, and landed on a broad, new strip of concrete that sat at the flat bottom of the valley, amid broom straw and upturned red clay, like a wild Euclidian diagram drawn there with gray chalk by some geometrically minded god.

Bryce stepped from the plane into the thumping din of earthmoving machinery, the confusion of khaki-shirted men, red-faced in the summer heat, shouting hoarsely at one another, in the process of building unidentifiable buildings. There were machinery sheds, some kind of huge concrete platform, a row of barracks. For a moment, having left the quiet and coolness of the smooth, air-conditioned plane — Thomas Jerome Newton’s personal plane, sent to Louisville for him — he was bewildered, made dizzy by heat and noise, by all this feverish and unexplained activity.

A young man, rugged looking as a cigarette advertisement, stepped up to him. The man wore a pith helmet; his rolled-up sleeves displayed an abundance of tanned, youthful muscle; he looked exactly like a hero of one of those half-forgotten boys’ novels that had, at a dimly remembered time of aspiring adolescence, made him, Bryce, dedicated to becoming an engineer — a chemical engineer, a man of science and of action. He did not smile at the young man, thinking of his own paunch, his graying hair, and the taste of whiskey in his mouth; but he nodded his head in recognition.

The man held out a hand. “You’re Professor Bryce?”