The Really Wild and Exciting Adventures of the Peacenik Vogon, Part Six
Created | Updated Jul 19, 2005
(cue Star Wars theme)
The Story So Far:
The Earth was exploded.
Then it reappeared.
Then it was exploded again.
Then it reappeared again.
Then a spaceship crashed into it.
On board were four aliens, or six if you count heads:
Zaphod Beeblebrox, a two-headed space hippy past his prime
Zig/Zag Beeblebrox, his Siamese twin sons gradually coming into thier own hippydom
Ford Prefect, former researcher for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who gave up his job on the grounds that the Guide has gone to pot under its new management
Pythia the Peacenik Vogon (that's me), Vogsphere's first and last insurgent whose escape pod crashed into the ship
The craft had intended to land rather than crash, for the pilot of the craft wanted to buy two new toupees. Unfortunately, the topographic maps referenced by the navigation system were faulty, so the pilot did not discover until much too late that a lake had suddenly appeared exactly where he wanted to land. Despite Zaphod's best efforts, everyone aboard survived the accident.
The misplaced body of water was located in a mythical region few people seriously believe in- California. Nearby the lake dwelled a legendary creature many people have actually encountered in the wild (though only stalwart warriors have survived such encounters)- a teenage human female. Called Alice Gray, she offered the waterlogged party suitable transportation in exchange for permission to leave the planet with them. They agreed, and all set off in a stolen RV to search for a spaceship repairman in Roswell. Along the way, they picked up two more passengers: an Earthman named Arthur Dent, and a dog who will be named later on. After grieving for the ruined Guide, causing much mayhem, and sleeping off a raging hangover, they found their cupboards mainly inhabited by cobwebs. Therefore, Pythia insisted that they buy supplies prior to the first major stage of their trip (Zaphod protested, but she double-headlocked him and he was thence persuaded to see the light of reason). This is what they are doing now…
(end Star Wars theme)
Shuddering, I squeezed myself into a tiny room of grey walls, humming lights, and protruding metal hooks which jabbed me no matter where I turned. A grainy-sounding tannoy occasionally broadcast cruel, mindless orders. An uncomfortable bench was bolted to the back wall, saturated by the sour smells of perspiration and contrition. Grim-faced Alice, her arms filled with implements of destruction, followed me in and locked the door.
No, Alice and I were not in a torture chamber or a Vogon brig. We were in a Wal-Mart fitting room. The mirror on my left showed I was sweating nonetheless, for Alice had the same kind of evil gleam in her eyes that my barracks inspector got whenever he found me IN my bed instead of MAKING it.
Alice dropped her tools of torture. “Okay, makeover time,” she decreed.
I gulped. Normally Vogons don’t scare too easy, but the very idea was a total affront to my nature, not to mention my dignity. “Al, I understand you’re just trying to help me out here, but isn’t there any way around this?”
She put her hands on her hips. “Do we want a repeat of the Shrek incident?”
I winced at the reminder. Two stops back, an entire busload of grade-school campers had mistaken me for the DreamWorks ogre. Nothing, not even makeovers, scares me more than the sight of little people running towards me at full tilt. My reaction led to an epic rampage, which in turn led to our feverish avoidance of populated areas whenever possible. The department store foray was the first expedition we had dared to undertake since then.
Alice smirked. “I didn’t think so.” She pulled out of the pile an hourglass-shaped contraption and began lacing industrial-strength wire suspension cables into it.
“Couldn’t we just paint my face pink and drape a robe over the rest of me and call it good?” I begged as she wrapped the contraption around my middle.
“Look, Pithy,” she grunted, yanking the cords until my intestines were squishing into my feet. “If I’m going to invest my time and energy in making you look human-” here she gave an especially hard yank and I wanted to bellow but barely managed a pathetic “eeeee” instead- “I’m going to make you a good-looking human while I’m at it.”
She stood back to get a look at her handiwork. “Getting there,” she said, wiping sweat from her brow. “Hand me that foundation, will you?”
“You mean the five-gallon economy size bucket?”
“That’s the one.”
“I would, but I can’t move anymore. I have to concentrate on breathing. On top of that, the circulation in my legs has gone.”
Alice sighed and got it herself. She seemed undecided concerning application techniques for a moment as she surveyed the array of options before her. “Pithy? Which of these would you prefer?”
“The paint roller, please. Either that or the trowel, except I think the roller would be better for an even coating.”
“I was partial to that one myself. Okay, paint roller it is, then.” I followed Al’s directions -chin up, tilt head, glance left, look at the light that’s flickering like a maladjusted firefly- as she worked her magic.
Vogons are famous for many traits- officious callousness, horrible poetic skills, stubborn tenacity –but patience is not among them. Quickly, I tired of sitting on the bench while Alice slathered grease and powder over my slimy face. “Wouldn’t this whole ordeal work out better for both of us if I showered first, Al?”
“Not a chance. You and I know well that if I let you out of my sight for a millisecond, you’ll hightail it out of here so fast and far that I’ll never see your blubbery butt again.” She grinned at me, using the kind of grin that says, “Whoops, that big green woman doesn’t think my joke was funny and now I’m going to die.”
I didn’t kill her, figuring it would be too hard to drag her body out of the store and that I should wait for some moment when we were alone at a nice anonymous KOA somewhere. (Minds travel dangerous paths in Wal-Mart dressing rooms.) “What are you going to do about my hair? It might be difficult, considering I don’t have any,” I reminded her.
“I got you a wig. Generic brown affair, so as not to attract special attention.” She took it from the pile and gave it to me while she went digging for an air brush.
“This thing is definitely going to attract attention, Al,” I told her as the foundation started cementing my lips together. “It looks like we killed the dog and put his pelt on my head.”
“Quiet,” she insisted. “I’m trying to read the instructions on this thing. They’re all in Japanese.”
“Al, I tolerated the corset, I was decent about the makeup, and you are now spraypainting…”
“Airbrushing.”
“…airbrushing my limbs. These measures are perfectly acceptable. But I’m not going to wear this shag rug carpet swatch.”
“You’ll wear it, and you’ll make it work. The money I gave up for that hair could pay off the national deficit,” she griped, shoving my bulky arms into a Size: Barbie Doll coat.
“You just griped,” I observed. “Good grief, this is the first time I’ve heard you gripe since we landed. Maybe I should celebrate. Where’s the pub?”
“Lay down,” she ordered. “Hold your breath, I’ve got to work on your jeans zipper next. And as to my temperament,” she continued, throwing her weight backwards against the pressure of my paunch, “I concede that I have been a bit crabby lately. However, you must admit that losing my dad to a boom box, nearly being exploded, resisting arrest, and an Atomansplitzer on the rocks can do that to a person.” She let me get up.
I couldn’t feel most of my body. I was getting dizzy. I felt like a five-inch layer of cake icing had been dumped onto my face.
Alice smiled. “You’re ready.”
****************************(cue “Brick House”)
I left –no, escaped- the dressing room and made a beeline for the Taco Bell Express, where the others were having lunch. Of course, I was too restricted in my new wardrobe for running, but I went at something approaching a canter.
The weirdness rapidly commenced. Every male I happened to pass on my way stopped what he was doing to stare at me. I checked my fly. It was closed, tight as a tick. –Earth guys are freaks,- I told myself.
I reached the restaurant, and a dozen conversations fell silent. Then I spotted Zaphod (how can you miss a two-headed alien?) and the rest of the guys stuffing thier faces with nachos. Immediately afterward, I noticed something twice as important at their table- an unattended Gordita lying in the middle of a plastic tray!
Diving into the waxed paper wrapper with squeals of ecstacy, I failed to notice the six slack jaws yawning open at me.
Alice finally reappeared, the remnants of her artistry neatly packaged under her arm. She had seen every stunned reaction the “new me” had provoked, and knew that Earth guys had more on their minds than mere weirdness. “Comments?” she prompted.
Arthur, being an Earthman, naturally spoke first. “How did you do that?”
“Simple,” Alice said smugly, seating herself. “It’s just a matter of squashing the fat into the right places.”
Zig/Zag raised an eyebrow at me. “Yes, it looks like you squeezed it into ALL the right places-” They stopped to yelp when Alice kicked them in their left shin.
Some dude at the table behind Ford was letting his food drop out of his mouth as his lower jaw dangled in midair. He was staring at me as I ate. On Vogsphere, this behavior was once considered exceptionally rude, not so much because of the eater’s discomfort, but because those who watch a Vogon eating usually vomit as a result.
“What’re you lookin’ at?” Alice barked at the same time I did. Unlike me, however, her mouth was empty and therefore she did not spray flatbread crumbs all over Ford. I liked my version better.
“Nothing,” the dude said with the biggest, sappiest grin I have yet had the disgust of witnessing. “I can appreciate a woman who enjoys her nourishment.”
So shocking was his answer that I came quite close to choking on my food. I yawed slightly, trying to decide whether I should throw my tray at this desperate loser or get up to crush him straight-out.
Ford, struggling to suppress his mirth, fished around in his satchel. “Pithy, did you get a good look at yourself before you left the dressing room?”
“I thought about it, but I got the heebie-jeebies at the last minute and just walked out. Besides, as if you couldn’t tell, I was hungry,” I told him, bunching the spent Gordita wrapper into a ball.
He handed me a pair of scratched shades with mirror lenses. I took them from him. The glasses showed me a person I had never met. But she looked like somebody any breathing male would like to know, the centerfold brunette bombshell of every man’s dreams and woman’s nightmares.
It hit me like a ton of bricks. She was me.
“BLOODY ****!” I screamed before fainting dead away.
My consciousness approached my body with a great deal of indecision. It was still unconvinced that it had found the right person. Eventually, it grew tired of hanging around without so much as a body to its name, and finally returned to its recently remodeled home.
As my consciousness snuggled back into place, I heard faint voices form panic-tinged words. Over the general babble, Arthur’s stammering dialogue somehow piped above the others. “Now, now… you know what they say…inside every fat lady is a thin woman just waiting to come out…”
I came to abruptly and grabbed him by the neck. “So how do I send Skinny Girl back where she came from?” I howled.
Alice wavered and staggered in the background from some invisible shock.
Arthur wanted to answer but I figured he could be patient until I was done strangling him. “I don’t think you understand, Earthman. I’m a fox!” He frantically gestured in a manner that meant he either didn’t know why that was a bad thing or severely felt the impending danger of asphyxiation. “That simply goes against the natural order of the Universe! Vogons are not, never have been, and never wanted to be attractive!”
“STOP IT!!!” Al screeched in an access of fury I had never seen from her before. She pried my fingers loose from Arthur’s neck. “Pithy, I did for you in twenty minutes what most women can’t do for themselves in twenty years!” A shocked Ford opened his mouth to offer an opinion, but Alice steamrolled right over him. “Do you have any idea how tough it is to get a Vogon into corsetry?! It should be an extreme sport!” Back to me came the deluge. Alice’s hair cracked like a whip as she snapped her head around to glare at me. “From this moment on, you are going to be a babe if it kills you! And as for HIM-” She pointed a finger at Arthur as if preparing to make a Point, but then she wavered again and collapsed into a chair, panting. Wheezing pitifully, Arthur dragged himself into a chair opposite Alice and squinted at her to see if any more action was forthcoming. But the fire was out, and Alice looked nonplussed as any of us.
The lunch crowd slowly settled down, reluctantly accepting the knowledge that they weren’t going to see this drama resolved properly. The only one present who seemed incapable of dealing with this cliffhanger was a seeing eye dog, straining to break his owner’s hold and get a good whiff of Zaphod’s shirt. Zaphod swatted ineffectually at the creature.
I settled back and posed what I thought was a fairly obvious and easy question. “When’s the rest of my food coming?”
No one at the table seemed capable of an answer, or perhaps they were suddenly seized by temporary muteness. I gave them another shot. “Do you mean to tell me that all I get for lunch is one measly Gordita?” They didn’t want to encourage me and so neglected to break the silence, but Vogons with hunger on the brain need little encouragement. “According to your perspective in the time-space continuum, that Gordita was the only noteworthy thing I’ve eaten for about ten MILLION years!” I tented my fingers. “I mean, consider an immortal ant who, for lack of anything better to do, walks around and around the equator of a solid steel soccer ball. Over ten million years, the friction of its feet could wear the ball in half!”
That should have been a crowd-stopper, but my mind-boggling dose of perspective had no outward effect on its intended audience. I appealed to Alice. “Do I need to draw a bloody diagram for you? Okay, look.” I got a couple napkins and spoke with minimum words needed to get my point across, for fear that non-essentials would distract her. “Napkin Pythia. Other napkin Alice. You follow? Good.” I waved one napkin at the other. “Pythia talk Alice. Pythia say want mucho moolah. Still understand?” I tore a liberal portion from the Alice napkin and gave it to the Pythia napkin. “Now, Alice give Pythia moolah.” I walked the Pythia napkin over to a pile of salsa blisters and replaced the pile with the moolah napkin. “Pythia go kitchen and buy everything in it.”
Alice exchanged a look with Arthur, though his end of the look was not a comprehending one. “Pithy, I think it’s time I introduced you to a concept firmly engrained within the minds of Earthlings all over the globe,” she began gravely. “It is called, ‘We Can’t Afford It’.”
“We can’t afford it?” I parroted, trying to make the phrase find its place in my mind.
“Should I maybe spell it out for you?” Al asked sweetly.
I gave her a scowl that means, “Whoops, that big green woman didn’t think your joke was funny and now you’re going to die.”
She got three more napkins. “Napkin Pithy. Other napkin Al. Al has wallet. Wallet has money. Money in wallet must get Pithy AND Alice AND Arthur AND Ford AND Zaphod AND Zig/Zag AND dog halfway across the country.” She plunked down all three napkins dead center in the middle of the table. She then got my moolah napkin. “Wallet not have this much money.” She tore the napkin in half. “Wallet have this much money.” She tore off a third of it. “After store, Wallet will have this much money. And after rising petrol prices, Wallet will have this much money.” She stuck the remaining scrap of napkin in her mouth and ate it. “Al goes now to bathroom.” She rose from her seat and sternly brandished the Alice napkin at various persons around the table, including Zaphod, who was still fighting desperately against the increasingly persistent guide dog. “She returns later. She kills anyone who lets Pithy buy so much as a corn tortilla. Everybody get?” She sauntered out of the restaurant, stage right.
Ford waited for Alice to get out of sight and tapped Arthur on the shoulder. “There’s something fundamentally wrong with that girl, you know.”
Arthur wrinkled his eyebrows. “Aside from the unwarranted outbursts and penchant for oldies rock, what leads you to that conclusion?”
Ford took a deep breath. He had been waiting for this question and had a rather lengthy answer ready. “Arthur, you can understand what I say…”
“Though not often,” Zaphod wisecracked, fending off a redoubled attack from the incorrigible canine.
Ford ignored Zaphod and addressed Arthur without missing a beat. “This is perfectly fine and natural, because you have a Babel fish in your ear. You understand what Alice says. This is perfectly fine and natural, because she speaks plain, simple English. She understands Zaphod-”
“And this is perfectly fine and natural because…?” Arthur said expectantly.
“It isn’t,” Ford replied. This response gave Arthur an expression not unlike that of a math student who just solved the difference of two squares and felt pleased with his own cleverness until his teacher told him the answer was wrong because the numbers provided didn’t have a minus sign between them.
“It isn’t? Why not?” Arthur queried.
“Because I assume she isn’t a liar.” Ford knew he hadn’t explained anything but acted as if he’d explained everything.
General sentiments around the table can be summarized in one four-letter word: “????”
Ford casually toyed with some stray pieces of shredded lettuce. “If Alice has been telling us the truth, she is an average Earthling, and on the whole Earthlings have a minimal to nil working knowledge of alien tongues. Yet, she readily grasps not just Praxibetel but also Vogese, and she doesn’t even have a Babel fish in her ear-”
“But she does!” Arthur interrupted.
Now it was Ford’s turn to check his figures. “Zarquon!” he whistled. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. I saw her take it out last night and put it in a denture jar before she went to sleep,” Arthur confirmed.
“Don’t you think that tidbit might have been newsworthy before this instant?” Zaphod demanded crossly, having long since given the dog leave to sniff as he pleased.
Arthur shrugged meekly. “It seemed odd to me, but being very very drunk at the time, I didn’t think much of it.”
Ford pondered this but not for long. “Then the real question is, if she’s really an Earthling, how did she get her hands on one? They don’t quite turn up in every other fishing hole-”
Zig and Zag were struggling with the hinge flap of the litter recepticle. Evidently, they had no experience with such primitive forms of waste disposal and could not figure out why it wouldn’t open when they told it to. Zag kept smacking the hinge and cursing at it. Zig milled about, numb with boredom as his brother spent his wrath, until his eyes jogged in response to an alarming peripheral motion. “Abort, abort!” he trumpeted, dropping the trayful of meal remnants and scattering them to unreachable areas. “Bogey at eleven ‘o clock!”
Blank stares greeted his theatrics. Zag translated. “Cheese it, Alice is coming.”
A split second of panic was followed by effected nonchalance. Bouncy and refreshed, Alice returned to the table, almost her old bouyant self again. “Which cart is ours?” she asked cheerily.
“We haven’t got one yet,” Ford unwisely answered.
“WHAT?!” She lunged forward and grabbed him by his coat lapels. “I spent nearly half an hour in the fitting room, reinventing Miss Sow’s Ear 2004-”
“Excuse me?” I snarled, but she was again completely out of her head and nothing I could do was capable of attracting her focus.
“And meantime you people just lounged around in here?” she yelped. Our table was providing endless entertainment for Taco Bell’s paying clientele today.
“Not exactly,” Ford admitted, displaying a box of TicTacs. “I got these on the way in.” Alice almost pummeled him, and she should have. “Just kidding!” he cried, hardly in time to stop her. “I had these in my bag with me.” He handed it to her.
She let him go and read the expiration date. “Best if used by May 29, 1987.” She wrinkled her nose.
Ford took the breath mints back. “Earth Survival Rule Number 27: Never believe the expiration date on a box of TicTacs,” he explained, popping one into his mouth.
“Never mind that,” she huffed. “What’s that smell?” She turned to Zaphod.
In the last chapter, I put something nasty down Zaphod’s shirt. Unconscious as he was, it may or may not come as a surprise that he didn’t notice straight away. The time at which he will discover the thing’s presence will be about four seconds from right now.
Alice inhaled the air around Zaphod deeply, shoving the dog to the side. She stared intently at him. “There’s something real nasty in your shirt, Zaphod.”
He paled and pulled his arms into his shirt, like a cotton-shelled turtle.
“Not here! Go to the men’s room first!” she urged.
The frantic manner in which his three arms went digging around in his shirt reminded me of ferrets having a blanket party. Finally, one of his hands contacted something, and both his faces went slack.
I roared with laughter.
He pulled the nasty thing from his shirt. He gaped at it in disbelief, and so did the guide dog, and so did the restaurant manager. Suffice it to say that we were never invited back to that Taco Bell. In fact, we were kicked out immediately.
I rarely give Zaphod credit for brains, but just once he scraped enough collective intelligence from both his heads to guess who had planted the nasty thing on him.
“It’s not like it was real,” I argued. “Besides, you were practically asking for it.”
“I would never ask for fake dog poop, even in the case of a bizarre emergency,” he countered. “What I wonder is where you found it.” He poked Zig/Zag.
“It was the only thing we had time to rescue when the ship sank,” they shrugged.
“Your ship was sinking irretrievably into the murk, and your first consideration was of faux doggie doo,” Arthur muttered. “You’re your father’s sons, all right.”
“It’s our most valuable posession. We saved for weeks to order it from the joke catalog,” Zig/Zag defended.
Alice sighed. “Can we just get this over with BEFORE the crack of doom?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I take it you guys don’t have much experience with department stores?”
A collective “No”.
“Small wonder. I’ve always suspected Earth was the only planet insane enough to have never outlawed department stores as a mental health hazard. We’ve got lost time to make up, so everyone stick with me and move fast unless you want to get lost between here and the door,” she instructed.
I was getting tired of taking orders from the girl who put “addle” in “adolescent”. But there was not time to tell her so; soon as Alice nabbed an empty cart, she was off like a shot. Dodging and weaving through the aisles, following a path that only made sense to her mysterious Earthling logic, she maneuvered the basket along a labyrinthine route. Hauling my bulk from point A to point B had always been a chore which required much oxygen, but trying to maintain track star speeds in my post-makeover form was a Herculean task beyond even the will of a Vogon. The world began to spin around me like a teacup ride.
I was unaware that I had collapsed from dizziness until Arthur tripped over me. For the second time in one day, my inert form was attracting an uncomfortable degree of attention. I murmured incoherently, which didn’t help matters. “Lack of oxygen…lungs compromised…too many displays, colors clashing… sensory overload…my brain couldn’t take it…”
“Easy,” Alice cautioned. “You’re suffering Advanced Case Wal-Mart Overload Syndrome.”
“Hrm?” I muttered blearily as a pair of skinny, undernourished stock boys loaded me into the cart.
“Everybody experiences the Overload on some level or another after prolonged exposure,” Alice added. “Little children tend to get fussy or hyperactive. Teenagers usually become listless, angst-ridden, dizzy, or sick to their stomachs. These reactions can be provoked by embarrassing parental behavior. Adults develop a sort of zombie-like state to block out the superfluous external stimuli, or else they eventually suffer psychotic episodes.”
“Yeah, last Christmas season there was this soccer mom who went berserk trying to get the last copy of Finding Nemo. It was mass carnage,” the first stock boy reported somberly.
“Huh,” I grunted in agreement. I had suffered the wrath of a soccer mom during a brawl in a Carl’s Jr, and knew too well what they are capable of.
“I’ve never personally encountered anyone who actually checked out in a Wal-Mart store, but it’s not unheard of,” remarked his colleage. “I heard of a store in Oregon where a little old lady went browsing through the posters and…”
We left the young men to their macabre anecdotes. Our procession was severely hamapered from that point onward, for although my mass had been arranged in a more asthetically pleasing fashion, its weight remained the same. Alice would run ahead of us and pick up the next item on the list, while the guys took turns pushing me. At one point they all tried to push at the same time, but that only slowed us down even more, as Zig/Zag’s over-eagerness and Arthur’s trademark confusion resulted in a tight arc that swung the cart directly into a fragile array of sunglasses.
Several times during our vain effort to reassemble the broken shades, Alice noticed people staring at Zaphod and Zig/Zag. I just lay there in my shopping cart, watching the fun. Finally, she smiled warmly and said in a stage whisper for all to hear, “It’s okay. They’re from Chernobyl.”
That seemed an acceptable explaination for the crowd, so they backed off peaceably and went on about their business.
“Say, Al,” Zaphod initiated as she returned to the shattered Ray-Ban imitations. “Where’d you find Pithy’s wig at?”
“Doesn’t matter. It was the last one they had.”
Zaphod looked crestfallen.
“Even if there had been any more, we couldn’t have afforded one,” she continued. Zaphod was starting to look sick. “What’s the matter?”
“That’s why we came here- against my better judgement, I might add- in the first place,” Ford grumbled. “Zaphod couldn’t show his face in the intergalactic circles without two full heads of hair.”
Arthur blinked. “Let me get this straight. You mean to tell me you traveled millions of light-years to buy TOUPEES?”
Zaphod spluttered.
Alice stared at them both, positively wowed. “I take it there isn’t much emphasis on hair care in most of the Galaxy, then.”
Zaphod steamed.
“Note to self: stock up on shampoo before leaving the planet.”
Zaphod shouted. “You said this store would have anything an Earthling could possibly ever want!”
“True, but we aren’t Earthlings,” Ford pointed out.
“Plus,” Alice said, “I neglected to relate the Murphy’s Law of Wal-Mart: It has everything you could ever want, but never when you want it. Some people try to get around this by shopping right after the store is scheduled to get a new shipment, but it doesn’t work. The rules of how or why department stores are stocked don’t follow any discernable pattern. If you see something you like in a Wal-Mart, buy it, because there’s no guarantee that it will be available on your next trip.”
Zaphod gritted his teeth. “Next time we see roadkill, pull over so I can scrape it off the road to wear on my head.”
Some hours later, our bizarre caravan arrived at the check out. The guy behind the register ogled me, among the piles of canned vegetables and dog food. “Sorry, but that display isn’t for sale,” he snickered.
I glared with the force of every inch between me and Vogsphere. “Return to your roots and go stick your head in pig,” I suggested.
He ran our items through the scanner at hyperspeed.
Alice opened the wallet with a wince, which was repeated at every bill she handed over. When she’d got most of the bill paid, the clerk was wincing with her. By the time she’d finished paying, he was nearly throwing epileptic fits. He counted out the change and relinquished his post, in search of a good drink and a girl who wouldn’t use corporate jingles to insult him.
Slowly recovering from our zombie-like stupor, we returned to the RV, which we’d left in the parking lot. This had been as insanely risky move, considering that we’d stolen the vehicle, but no practical alternative had presented itself.
Ford flattened himself behind a station wagon and took Zaphod with him. Prior to that act, I had labeled him as just plain “weird”, but afterward I upgraded his status to “totally mad”.
“Ford, have you gone totally mad?” Zaphod demanded.
“Stop reading my mind, deuce of dunce,” I snapped.
“Cops!” Ford hissed.
“What did you call me, Prefect?” I rumbled.
“Police!” he insisted, pointing.
I shut up and craned my neck to look around the front left corner of the RV. Indeed, there stood Da Fuzz, writing on a pad of paper, just barely in the wrong position to discover us discovering him.
“Whadda we do?” Zig/Zag whispered.
“Get in the RV and run him over?” Zaphod proposed.
Arthur turned green.
“Pants him?” Zig/Zag volunteered.
Arthur turned red.
“Blow up the Blockbuster!” I cheered.
Arthur turned white.
“Interesting special effects, Earthman,” I told him, “but I don’t see you coming up with any brilliant ideas.”
“Er, we could just stay here and wait for him to go away,” he shrugged.
I could have laughed at him, I really could have, except for what happened next.
The policeman stuck a piece of paper under the windshield wiper and went away.
We goggled.
Arthur pretended to be cool about it. “See? What do I know?”
“Not a lot,” Zaphod answered, retrieving the paper and perusing it. “It’s a parking ticket for leaving our vehicle in a fire lane. Fine: one hundred dollars.” He crumpled it up and stuffed it in his jeans pocket. “We Can’t Afford It,” he sang merrily.
At least the dog was happy to see us. We’d left some newspapers out for him, but apparently he didn’t like the Times. Zig/Zag walked him on the end of a rope while everyone else put the groceries away.
“We made it,” Arthur said wearily, putting a can of green beans in the pantry. “We’re alive!”
“Yes, by the never-ending grace of God,” Alice nodded over the skim milk.
Zaphod glanced at her. “Does that mean you’re a…”
Alice gave him a thin smile. “I try.”
“Funny, I never pictured you as a church-going type.”
She shoved a pack of toilet paper into a cabinet. “You should have seen me before I started going to church.”
Ford watched her with a queer attitude. “Alice? Don’t take this the wrong way, but… why do you believe in God?” He stared hard at her.
She matched his stare. “Why DON'T you believe in God?”
The entire RV froze, feeling the very present danger of a deep discussion concerning Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Wisely, neither answered the other’s question.
You could have heard our sigh of relief twenty miles distant.
To Be Continued…
The Story So Far:
The Earth was exploded.
Then it reappeared.
Then it was exploded again.
Then it reappeared again.
Then a spaceship crashed into it.
On board were four aliens, or six if you count heads:
Zaphod Beeblebrox, a two-headed space hippy past his prime
Zig/Zag Beeblebrox, his Siamese twin sons gradually coming into thier own hippydom
Ford Prefect, former researcher for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who gave up his job on the grounds that the Guide has gone to pot under its new management
Pythia the Peacenik Vogon (that's me), Vogsphere's first and last insurgent whose escape pod crashed into the ship
The craft had intended to land rather than crash, for the pilot of the craft wanted to buy two new toupees. Unfortunately, the topographic maps referenced by the navigation system were faulty, so the pilot did not discover until much too late that a lake had suddenly appeared exactly where he wanted to land. Despite Zaphod's best efforts, everyone aboard survived the accident.
The misplaced body of water was located in a mythical region few people seriously believe in- California. Nearby the lake dwelled a legendary creature many people have actually encountered in the wild (though only stalwart warriors have survived such encounters)- a teenage human female. Called Alice Gray, she offered the waterlogged party suitable transportation in exchange for permission to leave the planet with them. They agreed, and all set off in a stolen RV to search for a spaceship repairman in Roswell. Along the way, they picked up two more passengers: an Earthman named Arthur Dent, and a dog who will be named later on. After grieving for the ruined Guide, causing much mayhem, and sleeping off a raging hangover, they found their cupboards mainly inhabited by cobwebs. Therefore, Pythia insisted that they buy supplies prior to the first major stage of their trip (Zaphod protested, but she double-headlocked him and he was thence persuaded to see the light of reason). This is what they are doing now…
(end Star Wars theme)
Shuddering, I squeezed myself into a tiny room of grey walls, humming lights, and protruding metal hooks which jabbed me no matter where I turned. A grainy-sounding tannoy occasionally broadcast cruel, mindless orders. An uncomfortable bench was bolted to the back wall, saturated by the sour smells of perspiration and contrition. Grim-faced Alice, her arms filled with implements of destruction, followed me in and locked the door.
No, Alice and I were not in a torture chamber or a Vogon brig. We were in a Wal-Mart fitting room. The mirror on my left showed I was sweating nonetheless, for Alice had the same kind of evil gleam in her eyes that my barracks inspector got whenever he found me IN my bed instead of MAKING it.
Alice dropped her tools of torture. “Okay, makeover time,” she decreed.
I gulped. Normally Vogons don’t scare too easy, but the very idea was a total affront to my nature, not to mention my dignity. “Al, I understand you’re just trying to help me out here, but isn’t there any way around this?”
She put her hands on her hips. “Do we want a repeat of the Shrek incident?”
I winced at the reminder. Two stops back, an entire busload of grade-school campers had mistaken me for the DreamWorks ogre. Nothing, not even makeovers, scares me more than the sight of little people running towards me at full tilt. My reaction led to an epic rampage, which in turn led to our feverish avoidance of populated areas whenever possible. The department store foray was the first expedition we had dared to undertake since then.
Alice smirked. “I didn’t think so.” She pulled out of the pile an hourglass-shaped contraption and began lacing industrial-strength wire suspension cables into it.
“Couldn’t we just paint my face pink and drape a robe over the rest of me and call it good?” I begged as she wrapped the contraption around my middle.
“Look, Pithy,” she grunted, yanking the cords until my intestines were squishing into my feet. “If I’m going to invest my time and energy in making you look human-” here she gave an especially hard yank and I wanted to bellow but barely managed a pathetic “eeeee” instead- “I’m going to make you a good-looking human while I’m at it.”
She stood back to get a look at her handiwork. “Getting there,” she said, wiping sweat from her brow. “Hand me that foundation, will you?”
“You mean the five-gallon economy size bucket?”
“That’s the one.”
“I would, but I can’t move anymore. I have to concentrate on breathing. On top of that, the circulation in my legs has gone.”
Alice sighed and got it herself. She seemed undecided concerning application techniques for a moment as she surveyed the array of options before her. “Pithy? Which of these would you prefer?”
“The paint roller, please. Either that or the trowel, except I think the roller would be better for an even coating.”
“I was partial to that one myself. Okay, paint roller it is, then.” I followed Al’s directions -chin up, tilt head, glance left, look at the light that’s flickering like a maladjusted firefly- as she worked her magic.
Vogons are famous for many traits- officious callousness, horrible poetic skills, stubborn tenacity –but patience is not among them. Quickly, I tired of sitting on the bench while Alice slathered grease and powder over my slimy face. “Wouldn’t this whole ordeal work out better for both of us if I showered first, Al?”
“Not a chance. You and I know well that if I let you out of my sight for a millisecond, you’ll hightail it out of here so fast and far that I’ll never see your blubbery butt again.” She grinned at me, using the kind of grin that says, “Whoops, that big green woman doesn’t think my joke was funny and now I’m going to die.”
I didn’t kill her, figuring it would be too hard to drag her body out of the store and that I should wait for some moment when we were alone at a nice anonymous KOA somewhere. (Minds travel dangerous paths in Wal-Mart dressing rooms.) “What are you going to do about my hair? It might be difficult, considering I don’t have any,” I reminded her.
“I got you a wig. Generic brown affair, so as not to attract special attention.” She took it from the pile and gave it to me while she went digging for an air brush.
“This thing is definitely going to attract attention, Al,” I told her as the foundation started cementing my lips together. “It looks like we killed the dog and put his pelt on my head.”
“Quiet,” she insisted. “I’m trying to read the instructions on this thing. They’re all in Japanese.”
“Al, I tolerated the corset, I was decent about the makeup, and you are now spraypainting…”
“Airbrushing.”
“…airbrushing my limbs. These measures are perfectly acceptable. But I’m not going to wear this shag rug carpet swatch.”
“You’ll wear it, and you’ll make it work. The money I gave up for that hair could pay off the national deficit,” she griped, shoving my bulky arms into a Size: Barbie Doll coat.
“You just griped,” I observed. “Good grief, this is the first time I’ve heard you gripe since we landed. Maybe I should celebrate. Where’s the pub?”
“Lay down,” she ordered. “Hold your breath, I’ve got to work on your jeans zipper next. And as to my temperament,” she continued, throwing her weight backwards against the pressure of my paunch, “I concede that I have been a bit crabby lately. However, you must admit that losing my dad to a boom box, nearly being exploded, resisting arrest, and an Atomansplitzer on the rocks can do that to a person.” She let me get up.
I couldn’t feel most of my body. I was getting dizzy. I felt like a five-inch layer of cake icing had been dumped onto my face.
Alice smiled. “You’re ready.”
****************************(cue “Brick House”)
I left –no, escaped- the dressing room and made a beeline for the Taco Bell Express, where the others were having lunch. Of course, I was too restricted in my new wardrobe for running, but I went at something approaching a canter.
The weirdness rapidly commenced. Every male I happened to pass on my way stopped what he was doing to stare at me. I checked my fly. It was closed, tight as a tick. –Earth guys are freaks,- I told myself.
I reached the restaurant, and a dozen conversations fell silent. Then I spotted Zaphod (how can you miss a two-headed alien?) and the rest of the guys stuffing thier faces with nachos. Immediately afterward, I noticed something twice as important at their table- an unattended Gordita lying in the middle of a plastic tray!
Diving into the waxed paper wrapper with squeals of ecstacy, I failed to notice the six slack jaws yawning open at me.
Alice finally reappeared, the remnants of her artistry neatly packaged under her arm. She had seen every stunned reaction the “new me” had provoked, and knew that Earth guys had more on their minds than mere weirdness. “Comments?” she prompted.
Arthur, being an Earthman, naturally spoke first. “How did you do that?”
“Simple,” Alice said smugly, seating herself. “It’s just a matter of squashing the fat into the right places.”
Zig/Zag raised an eyebrow at me. “Yes, it looks like you squeezed it into ALL the right places-” They stopped to yelp when Alice kicked them in their left shin.
Some dude at the table behind Ford was letting his food drop out of his mouth as his lower jaw dangled in midair. He was staring at me as I ate. On Vogsphere, this behavior was once considered exceptionally rude, not so much because of the eater’s discomfort, but because those who watch a Vogon eating usually vomit as a result.
“What’re you lookin’ at?” Alice barked at the same time I did. Unlike me, however, her mouth was empty and therefore she did not spray flatbread crumbs all over Ford. I liked my version better.
“Nothing,” the dude said with the biggest, sappiest grin I have yet had the disgust of witnessing. “I can appreciate a woman who enjoys her nourishment.”
So shocking was his answer that I came quite close to choking on my food. I yawed slightly, trying to decide whether I should throw my tray at this desperate loser or get up to crush him straight-out.
Ford, struggling to suppress his mirth, fished around in his satchel. “Pithy, did you get a good look at yourself before you left the dressing room?”
“I thought about it, but I got the heebie-jeebies at the last minute and just walked out. Besides, as if you couldn’t tell, I was hungry,” I told him, bunching the spent Gordita wrapper into a ball.
He handed me a pair of scratched shades with mirror lenses. I took them from him. The glasses showed me a person I had never met. But she looked like somebody any breathing male would like to know, the centerfold brunette bombshell of every man’s dreams and woman’s nightmares.
It hit me like a ton of bricks. She was me.
“BLOODY ****!” I screamed before fainting dead away.
My consciousness approached my body with a great deal of indecision. It was still unconvinced that it had found the right person. Eventually, it grew tired of hanging around without so much as a body to its name, and finally returned to its recently remodeled home.
As my consciousness snuggled back into place, I heard faint voices form panic-tinged words. Over the general babble, Arthur’s stammering dialogue somehow piped above the others. “Now, now… you know what they say…inside every fat lady is a thin woman just waiting to come out…”
I came to abruptly and grabbed him by the neck. “So how do I send Skinny Girl back where she came from?” I howled.
Alice wavered and staggered in the background from some invisible shock.
Arthur wanted to answer but I figured he could be patient until I was done strangling him. “I don’t think you understand, Earthman. I’m a fox!” He frantically gestured in a manner that meant he either didn’t know why that was a bad thing or severely felt the impending danger of asphyxiation. “That simply goes against the natural order of the Universe! Vogons are not, never have been, and never wanted to be attractive!”
“STOP IT!!!” Al screeched in an access of fury I had never seen from her before. She pried my fingers loose from Arthur’s neck. “Pithy, I did for you in twenty minutes what most women can’t do for themselves in twenty years!” A shocked Ford opened his mouth to offer an opinion, but Alice steamrolled right over him. “Do you have any idea how tough it is to get a Vogon into corsetry?! It should be an extreme sport!” Back to me came the deluge. Alice’s hair cracked like a whip as she snapped her head around to glare at me. “From this moment on, you are going to be a babe if it kills you! And as for HIM-” She pointed a finger at Arthur as if preparing to make a Point, but then she wavered again and collapsed into a chair, panting. Wheezing pitifully, Arthur dragged himself into a chair opposite Alice and squinted at her to see if any more action was forthcoming. But the fire was out, and Alice looked nonplussed as any of us.
The lunch crowd slowly settled down, reluctantly accepting the knowledge that they weren’t going to see this drama resolved properly. The only one present who seemed incapable of dealing with this cliffhanger was a seeing eye dog, straining to break his owner’s hold and get a good whiff of Zaphod’s shirt. Zaphod swatted ineffectually at the creature.
I settled back and posed what I thought was a fairly obvious and easy question. “When’s the rest of my food coming?”
No one at the table seemed capable of an answer, or perhaps they were suddenly seized by temporary muteness. I gave them another shot. “Do you mean to tell me that all I get for lunch is one measly Gordita?” They didn’t want to encourage me and so neglected to break the silence, but Vogons with hunger on the brain need little encouragement. “According to your perspective in the time-space continuum, that Gordita was the only noteworthy thing I’ve eaten for about ten MILLION years!” I tented my fingers. “I mean, consider an immortal ant who, for lack of anything better to do, walks around and around the equator of a solid steel soccer ball. Over ten million years, the friction of its feet could wear the ball in half!”
That should have been a crowd-stopper, but my mind-boggling dose of perspective had no outward effect on its intended audience. I appealed to Alice. “Do I need to draw a bloody diagram for you? Okay, look.” I got a couple napkins and spoke with minimum words needed to get my point across, for fear that non-essentials would distract her. “Napkin Pythia. Other napkin Alice. You follow? Good.” I waved one napkin at the other. “Pythia talk Alice. Pythia say want mucho moolah. Still understand?” I tore a liberal portion from the Alice napkin and gave it to the Pythia napkin. “Now, Alice give Pythia moolah.” I walked the Pythia napkin over to a pile of salsa blisters and replaced the pile with the moolah napkin. “Pythia go kitchen and buy everything in it.”
Alice exchanged a look with Arthur, though his end of the look was not a comprehending one. “Pithy, I think it’s time I introduced you to a concept firmly engrained within the minds of Earthlings all over the globe,” she began gravely. “It is called, ‘We Can’t Afford It’.”
“We can’t afford it?” I parroted, trying to make the phrase find its place in my mind.
“Should I maybe spell it out for you?” Al asked sweetly.
I gave her a scowl that means, “Whoops, that big green woman didn’t think your joke was funny and now you’re going to die.”
She got three more napkins. “Napkin Pithy. Other napkin Al. Al has wallet. Wallet has money. Money in wallet must get Pithy AND Alice AND Arthur AND Ford AND Zaphod AND Zig/Zag AND dog halfway across the country.” She plunked down all three napkins dead center in the middle of the table. She then got my moolah napkin. “Wallet not have this much money.” She tore the napkin in half. “Wallet have this much money.” She tore off a third of it. “After store, Wallet will have this much money. And after rising petrol prices, Wallet will have this much money.” She stuck the remaining scrap of napkin in her mouth and ate it. “Al goes now to bathroom.” She rose from her seat and sternly brandished the Alice napkin at various persons around the table, including Zaphod, who was still fighting desperately against the increasingly persistent guide dog. “She returns later. She kills anyone who lets Pithy buy so much as a corn tortilla. Everybody get?” She sauntered out of the restaurant, stage right.
Ford waited for Alice to get out of sight and tapped Arthur on the shoulder. “There’s something fundamentally wrong with that girl, you know.”
Arthur wrinkled his eyebrows. “Aside from the unwarranted outbursts and penchant for oldies rock, what leads you to that conclusion?”
Ford took a deep breath. He had been waiting for this question and had a rather lengthy answer ready. “Arthur, you can understand what I say…”
“Though not often,” Zaphod wisecracked, fending off a redoubled attack from the incorrigible canine.
Ford ignored Zaphod and addressed Arthur without missing a beat. “This is perfectly fine and natural, because you have a Babel fish in your ear. You understand what Alice says. This is perfectly fine and natural, because she speaks plain, simple English. She understands Zaphod-”
“And this is perfectly fine and natural because…?” Arthur said expectantly.
“It isn’t,” Ford replied. This response gave Arthur an expression not unlike that of a math student who just solved the difference of two squares and felt pleased with his own cleverness until his teacher told him the answer was wrong because the numbers provided didn’t have a minus sign between them.
“It isn’t? Why not?” Arthur queried.
“Because I assume she isn’t a liar.” Ford knew he hadn’t explained anything but acted as if he’d explained everything.
General sentiments around the table can be summarized in one four-letter word: “????”
Ford casually toyed with some stray pieces of shredded lettuce. “If Alice has been telling us the truth, she is an average Earthling, and on the whole Earthlings have a minimal to nil working knowledge of alien tongues. Yet, she readily grasps not just Praxibetel but also Vogese, and she doesn’t even have a Babel fish in her ear-”
“But she does!” Arthur interrupted.
Now it was Ford’s turn to check his figures. “Zarquon!” he whistled. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. I saw her take it out last night and put it in a denture jar before she went to sleep,” Arthur confirmed.
“Don’t you think that tidbit might have been newsworthy before this instant?” Zaphod demanded crossly, having long since given the dog leave to sniff as he pleased.
Arthur shrugged meekly. “It seemed odd to me, but being very very drunk at the time, I didn’t think much of it.”
Ford pondered this but not for long. “Then the real question is, if she’s really an Earthling, how did she get her hands on one? They don’t quite turn up in every other fishing hole-”
Zig and Zag were struggling with the hinge flap of the litter recepticle. Evidently, they had no experience with such primitive forms of waste disposal and could not figure out why it wouldn’t open when they told it to. Zag kept smacking the hinge and cursing at it. Zig milled about, numb with boredom as his brother spent his wrath, until his eyes jogged in response to an alarming peripheral motion. “Abort, abort!” he trumpeted, dropping the trayful of meal remnants and scattering them to unreachable areas. “Bogey at eleven ‘o clock!”
Blank stares greeted his theatrics. Zag translated. “Cheese it, Alice is coming.”
A split second of panic was followed by effected nonchalance. Bouncy and refreshed, Alice returned to the table, almost her old bouyant self again. “Which cart is ours?” she asked cheerily.
“We haven’t got one yet,” Ford unwisely answered.
“WHAT?!” She lunged forward and grabbed him by his coat lapels. “I spent nearly half an hour in the fitting room, reinventing Miss Sow’s Ear 2004-”
“Excuse me?” I snarled, but she was again completely out of her head and nothing I could do was capable of attracting her focus.
“And meantime you people just lounged around in here?” she yelped. Our table was providing endless entertainment for Taco Bell’s paying clientele today.
“Not exactly,” Ford admitted, displaying a box of TicTacs. “I got these on the way in.” Alice almost pummeled him, and she should have. “Just kidding!” he cried, hardly in time to stop her. “I had these in my bag with me.” He handed it to her.
She let him go and read the expiration date. “Best if used by May 29, 1987.” She wrinkled her nose.
Ford took the breath mints back. “Earth Survival Rule Number 27: Never believe the expiration date on a box of TicTacs,” he explained, popping one into his mouth.
“Never mind that,” she huffed. “What’s that smell?” She turned to Zaphod.
In the last chapter, I put something nasty down Zaphod’s shirt. Unconscious as he was, it may or may not come as a surprise that he didn’t notice straight away. The time at which he will discover the thing’s presence will be about four seconds from right now.
Alice inhaled the air around Zaphod deeply, shoving the dog to the side. She stared intently at him. “There’s something real nasty in your shirt, Zaphod.”
He paled and pulled his arms into his shirt, like a cotton-shelled turtle.
“Not here! Go to the men’s room first!” she urged.
The frantic manner in which his three arms went digging around in his shirt reminded me of ferrets having a blanket party. Finally, one of his hands contacted something, and both his faces went slack.
I roared with laughter.
He pulled the nasty thing from his shirt. He gaped at it in disbelief, and so did the guide dog, and so did the restaurant manager. Suffice it to say that we were never invited back to that Taco Bell. In fact, we were kicked out immediately.
I rarely give Zaphod credit for brains, but just once he scraped enough collective intelligence from both his heads to guess who had planted the nasty thing on him.
“It’s not like it was real,” I argued. “Besides, you were practically asking for it.”
“I would never ask for fake dog poop, even in the case of a bizarre emergency,” he countered. “What I wonder is where you found it.” He poked Zig/Zag.
“It was the only thing we had time to rescue when the ship sank,” they shrugged.
“Your ship was sinking irretrievably into the murk, and your first consideration was of faux doggie doo,” Arthur muttered. “You’re your father’s sons, all right.”
“It’s our most valuable posession. We saved for weeks to order it from the joke catalog,” Zig/Zag defended.
Alice sighed. “Can we just get this over with BEFORE the crack of doom?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I take it you guys don’t have much experience with department stores?”
A collective “No”.
“Small wonder. I’ve always suspected Earth was the only planet insane enough to have never outlawed department stores as a mental health hazard. We’ve got lost time to make up, so everyone stick with me and move fast unless you want to get lost between here and the door,” she instructed.
I was getting tired of taking orders from the girl who put “addle” in “adolescent”. But there was not time to tell her so; soon as Alice nabbed an empty cart, she was off like a shot. Dodging and weaving through the aisles, following a path that only made sense to her mysterious Earthling logic, she maneuvered the basket along a labyrinthine route. Hauling my bulk from point A to point B had always been a chore which required much oxygen, but trying to maintain track star speeds in my post-makeover form was a Herculean task beyond even the will of a Vogon. The world began to spin around me like a teacup ride.
I was unaware that I had collapsed from dizziness until Arthur tripped over me. For the second time in one day, my inert form was attracting an uncomfortable degree of attention. I murmured incoherently, which didn’t help matters. “Lack of oxygen…lungs compromised…too many displays, colors clashing… sensory overload…my brain couldn’t take it…”
“Easy,” Alice cautioned. “You’re suffering Advanced Case Wal-Mart Overload Syndrome.”
“Hrm?” I muttered blearily as a pair of skinny, undernourished stock boys loaded me into the cart.
“Everybody experiences the Overload on some level or another after prolonged exposure,” Alice added. “Little children tend to get fussy or hyperactive. Teenagers usually become listless, angst-ridden, dizzy, or sick to their stomachs. These reactions can be provoked by embarrassing parental behavior. Adults develop a sort of zombie-like state to block out the superfluous external stimuli, or else they eventually suffer psychotic episodes.”
“Yeah, last Christmas season there was this soccer mom who went berserk trying to get the last copy of Finding Nemo. It was mass carnage,” the first stock boy reported somberly.
“Huh,” I grunted in agreement. I had suffered the wrath of a soccer mom during a brawl in a Carl’s Jr, and knew too well what they are capable of.
“I’ve never personally encountered anyone who actually checked out in a Wal-Mart store, but it’s not unheard of,” remarked his colleage. “I heard of a store in Oregon where a little old lady went browsing through the posters and…”
We left the young men to their macabre anecdotes. Our procession was severely hamapered from that point onward, for although my mass had been arranged in a more asthetically pleasing fashion, its weight remained the same. Alice would run ahead of us and pick up the next item on the list, while the guys took turns pushing me. At one point they all tried to push at the same time, but that only slowed us down even more, as Zig/Zag’s over-eagerness and Arthur’s trademark confusion resulted in a tight arc that swung the cart directly into a fragile array of sunglasses.
Several times during our vain effort to reassemble the broken shades, Alice noticed people staring at Zaphod and Zig/Zag. I just lay there in my shopping cart, watching the fun. Finally, she smiled warmly and said in a stage whisper for all to hear, “It’s okay. They’re from Chernobyl.”
That seemed an acceptable explaination for the crowd, so they backed off peaceably and went on about their business.
“Say, Al,” Zaphod initiated as she returned to the shattered Ray-Ban imitations. “Where’d you find Pithy’s wig at?”
“Doesn’t matter. It was the last one they had.”
Zaphod looked crestfallen.
“Even if there had been any more, we couldn’t have afforded one,” she continued. Zaphod was starting to look sick. “What’s the matter?”
“That’s why we came here- against my better judgement, I might add- in the first place,” Ford grumbled. “Zaphod couldn’t show his face in the intergalactic circles without two full heads of hair.”
Arthur blinked. “Let me get this straight. You mean to tell me you traveled millions of light-years to buy TOUPEES?”
Zaphod spluttered.
Alice stared at them both, positively wowed. “I take it there isn’t much emphasis on hair care in most of the Galaxy, then.”
Zaphod steamed.
“Note to self: stock up on shampoo before leaving the planet.”
Zaphod shouted. “You said this store would have anything an Earthling could possibly ever want!”
“True, but we aren’t Earthlings,” Ford pointed out.
“Plus,” Alice said, “I neglected to relate the Murphy’s Law of Wal-Mart: It has everything you could ever want, but never when you want it. Some people try to get around this by shopping right after the store is scheduled to get a new shipment, but it doesn’t work. The rules of how or why department stores are stocked don’t follow any discernable pattern. If you see something you like in a Wal-Mart, buy it, because there’s no guarantee that it will be available on your next trip.”
Zaphod gritted his teeth. “Next time we see roadkill, pull over so I can scrape it off the road to wear on my head.”
Some hours later, our bizarre caravan arrived at the check out. The guy behind the register ogled me, among the piles of canned vegetables and dog food. “Sorry, but that display isn’t for sale,” he snickered.
I glared with the force of every inch between me and Vogsphere. “Return to your roots and go stick your head in pig,” I suggested.
He ran our items through the scanner at hyperspeed.
Alice opened the wallet with a wince, which was repeated at every bill she handed over. When she’d got most of the bill paid, the clerk was wincing with her. By the time she’d finished paying, he was nearly throwing epileptic fits. He counted out the change and relinquished his post, in search of a good drink and a girl who wouldn’t use corporate jingles to insult him.
Slowly recovering from our zombie-like stupor, we returned to the RV, which we’d left in the parking lot. This had been as insanely risky move, considering that we’d stolen the vehicle, but no practical alternative had presented itself.
Ford flattened himself behind a station wagon and took Zaphod with him. Prior to that act, I had labeled him as just plain “weird”, but afterward I upgraded his status to “totally mad”.
“Ford, have you gone totally mad?” Zaphod demanded.
“Stop reading my mind, deuce of dunce,” I snapped.
“Cops!” Ford hissed.
“What did you call me, Prefect?” I rumbled.
“Police!” he insisted, pointing.
I shut up and craned my neck to look around the front left corner of the RV. Indeed, there stood Da Fuzz, writing on a pad of paper, just barely in the wrong position to discover us discovering him.
“Whadda we do?” Zig/Zag whispered.
“Get in the RV and run him over?” Zaphod proposed.
Arthur turned green.
“Pants him?” Zig/Zag volunteered.
Arthur turned red.
“Blow up the Blockbuster!” I cheered.
Arthur turned white.
“Interesting special effects, Earthman,” I told him, “but I don’t see you coming up with any brilliant ideas.”
“Er, we could just stay here and wait for him to go away,” he shrugged.
I could have laughed at him, I really could have, except for what happened next.
The policeman stuck a piece of paper under the windshield wiper and went away.
We goggled.
Arthur pretended to be cool about it. “See? What do I know?”
“Not a lot,” Zaphod answered, retrieving the paper and perusing it. “It’s a parking ticket for leaving our vehicle in a fire lane. Fine: one hundred dollars.” He crumpled it up and stuffed it in his jeans pocket. “We Can’t Afford It,” he sang merrily.
At least the dog was happy to see us. We’d left some newspapers out for him, but apparently he didn’t like the Times. Zig/Zag walked him on the end of a rope while everyone else put the groceries away.
“We made it,” Arthur said wearily, putting a can of green beans in the pantry. “We’re alive!”
“Yes, by the never-ending grace of God,” Alice nodded over the skim milk.
Zaphod glanced at her. “Does that mean you’re a…”
Alice gave him a thin smile. “I try.”
“Funny, I never pictured you as a church-going type.”
She shoved a pack of toilet paper into a cabinet. “You should have seen me before I started going to church.”
Ford watched her with a queer attitude. “Alice? Don’t take this the wrong way, but… why do you believe in God?” He stared hard at her.
She matched his stare. “Why DON'T you believe in God?”
The entire RV froze, feeling the very present danger of a deep discussion concerning Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Wisely, neither answered the other’s question.
You could have heard our sigh of relief twenty miles distant.
To Be Continued…
