Chapter 6: You’re Not Serious, Stardust!

“Hey, Ziggy!” Weird called across the club, as Ziggy and I wandered in, hand in tentacle. “Starting up, grab your guitars, cat.”

“I’m going to sit here and listen until you’re done, Ziggy,” I said, because I could tell he wasn’t sure. “And then you’re going to walk my home.” I smiled, and gave his tentacle a squeeze. “Okay?”

“Okay, Stardust,” Ziggy said, and I could read the happy patterns now as they played across his skin. He flowed up onto the little stage, picking up his guitars, and just the way he did that, picked them up, I knew he loved music the way I did, and there was that warmth inside, because, well, Ziggy and me.

“Here we go, cats,” Gilly said, his voice low. “Tonight, we’re going to start out with something just a little different, and it’s another old twenty first century hit from a hundred years ago. An oldie but a goodie, and let’s see who recognizes it...”

Kilgore Trout, Weird, and Ziggy all cut right in, real smooth, and Gilly reached out one hand towards me. “And for this one, Stardust’s gonna join us again, cats...”

“But...” I said, but by then I was up on the stage, because Ziggy’s tentacles flickered out, caught me gently, and lifted me, put me there.

“Sing, Stardust,” he said, and I looked at Gilly, and Gilly grinned, and he started singing, soft and gentle...

We were both young when I first saw you

I close my eyes, and the flashback starts

On a balcony in summer air

I looked at him, and he smiled, and Ziggy played guitar, and now I looked back at Ziggy, and I sang, and I knew the words, I knew the song, I knew the music in my heart...

See the lights, see the party, the ball gowns

See you make your way through the crowd

Begging you, “Please don’t go,” and I said

And then Gilly and I, we were both singing, and I was singing for Ziggy, and he was playing for me...

Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone

I’ll be waiting, all there’s left to do is run

It’s a love story baby just say “Yes”

And it was, I knew it was. A love story, except I didn’t know how it would end, or if it would end, or what the next chapter was, or anything, if it even was a love story, because the story had only just started...

“Did you enjoy our date, Ziggy?” I asked, late that evening, and by then we’d left Bowies, and Ziggy had played all evening, and then we’d left and walked slowly up the ramps, hand in tentacle, and the more I learnt about Ziggy, the more I liked him, and outside my parents hatch, he took me in his tentacles and held me close, and I clung to him, breathing in that lovely sea-salt and ozone smell, held in the cool coiled muscles of his embrace, and one of his tentacle tips brushed my lips, and we kissed.

“Can we date next weekend, Stardust?” his vocoder said, and those color patterns rippled hope and fear, and I almost cried, because I knew he was scared I would refuse.

“Of course we’re going to date next weekend, Ziggy,” I said, and now it was my lips that sought his tentacle tip. “But you’re going to kiss me for a lot longer now, Ziggy, before you go.”

I did, and I smiled, and my lips slipped down over his tentacle tip, and he really was rather sensitive, and my eyes looked into his as I sucked hard, and those colors that said “pleasure and excitement” rippled across his skin, and then faded as my lips slipped off him.

I smiled again, and now I licked that tentacle tip. “And you’re not leaving until you ejaculate again, Ziggy.”

He didn’t, and he did, and it tasted delicious, and I knew he was excited by the way his tentacles coiled and vined and slid over and around me, and then he vibrated as he finished, and his tentacle tip throbbed, and I thought I recognized the color patterns, and I reached down and found another one, because he had seven and I wanted to make sure that all of them were happy because, you know, distributed nervous system and I didn’t want any of him feeling jealous.

“Mom, Dad,” I said, real shyly, a couple of weeks later, because bringing a guy back to meet my parents was, like, a total first for me. I’d always wanted to hide them from my parents before, or, just, they were never anyone I was actually seriously interested in, so why bother. “This is my friend, Ziggy Yai!lith. He’s, like, a Tentacle Leader in the Heptapod Space Marines.”

I glanced at my Dad. “That’s like, a First Lieutenant, Dad,” I added.

“I know Heptapod military ranks, Stardust,” my Dad said, rather drily.

“Pleased to meet you, Stardust-Egg-Father Wong, Stardust-Egg-Mother Wong,” Ziggy said, extending one tentacle to take Dad’s hand and shake it, the way I’d been teaching him.

Except he took Mom’s hand with another tentacle and shook that at the same time, and there was a third one holding my hand, and he was holding, like, flowers in a fourth, and it was a bit disorientating with so many tentacles floating around, but I managed to snare the flowers, and I guess Dad was used to meeting aliens, because he did deal with Americans and Europeans, and even Japanese, all the time, so he didn’t even blink.

“Welcome to our tunnel, Tentacle Leader Yai!lith,” Dad said, and he even managed that click himself, rather than letting the vocoder figure it out and deal with it, and after that things went kind of well.

“How did you two meet?” my Mom asked, after we’d figured out the seating, and that actually went well, because Ziggy did know how to sit in human seats too, which he’d told me he thought was really exciting once he’d figured it out, so things were just swimming along.

“Stardust and I met in Music Club,” Ziggy said.

I’d told him not to say it was Bowies, coz Bowies did have, like, a bad rep, and, uh, twelfth level. Ganymede. I liked it, but then, a lot of those guys who gave it a bad rep were guys I knew, and I’d dated a few of them, and they all knew me and they knew who my Dad was, and that I had a get out of jail free card which I did use to help out every now and then, so I was, like, a bit blasé about going there with them, and I was always, like, totally welcome, even if I did make sure I never went there by myself, but now, when I went, it was always with Ziggy. “I am learning to play human guitar. Stardust sings with me at Club.”

“Really?” my Dad said, and now he was interested, because he played the guitar too. It was his way of relaxing, just playing on his guitar. Although he wasn’t that good at it, but to him that didn’t matter, and he didn’t play the guitar at somewhere likes Bowies. Not like Ziggy did, coz Ziggy, he played with the band there every chance he got, jamming with Weird and Gilly, and now he played lead guitar when he was there, and those guys, they were cool cats, and Ziggy was the hepcat.

“I didn’t know you sang, Stardust,” my Mom said.

I looked at her, and I was, like, Mom! Where have you been all my life? But I didn’t say that.

I’d been taking music at school since I was four. Including singing lessons. I played the piano, the clarinet and the guitar and I sang. My grades? I was top in every music class, and I had been since I was, like, four, and we’re not going to talk about art classes. I always got embarrassed by those straight one hundred percent’s every time. I might be, like, analytically challenged, but there were some things I was really good at. Mom never noticed stuff like that though. All she noticed was that I wasn’t good at math, or science, or the stuff she thought was important.

“Why don’t you show my Dad, Ziggy,” I said. “Can he use a couple of your guitars, Dad? He’s really good, he won’t damage them.” Because my Dad, he collected guitars, not really expensive ones, but he had a couple of real collectors’ items that we’d had shipped up as essential items with us, and they were up on the wall.

“Sure,” Dad said, and he stood and kind of looked at them and he handed Ziggy an old Gibson. “A couple?” he said, looking at me, puzzled.

“Yeah,” I said. “Ziggy plays bass and lead at the same time.”

“This I have to see,” my Dad said, and he handed Ziggy an old Fender bass, and Ziggy took that real carefully, with two more tentacles.

First the bass, and Ziggy kind of tuned that, and then his other two tentacles started on Dad’s Gibson, and he tuned that, with the bass running background, real low key, and then he just started riffing, and Ziggy, even when he was riffing he was better than good, he was magic, and then he started playing, and my heart just pittered and pattered, because it was our song he was playing, that song from that night we first met in Bowies, and I didn’t even think, I just curled up next to him on the couch with one of his tentacles around me, while four more played, and I sang...

I fell in love with you watching Casablanca

Back row of the drive-in show in the flickering light

Making love on a long hot summer’s night...

And I smiled at Ziggy, and his eyes looked at me, and the colors said he was so happy.

... I thought you fell in love with me watching Casablanca

Holding hands ‘neath the paddle fans

Making magic at the movies in your old Chevrolet...

And I did. I realized just like that, in that moment, that I really did love Ziggy, and the way he played, the music, the notes flowing from those guitars, I just knew Ziggy loved me too, however it was that heptapods loved, coz his music said that, and we looked into each other eyes, and I just melted, coz I knew. A girl knows, and I knew. Ziggy was the one..., and Ziggy’s tentacles on those guitars and the colors patterns washing across his skin, they said I was the one for him right back at me...

Oh a kiss is still a kiss in Casablanca

But a kiss is not a kiss without your sigh

Please come back to me in Casablanca

I love you more and more each day as time goes by...

And I did. I realized just like that, in that moment, that I really did love Ziggy, and the way he played, the music, the notes flowing from those guitars, I just knew Ziggy loved me too, however it was that heptapods loved, coz his music said that, and we looked into each other eyes, and I just melted, coz I knew. A girl knows, and I knew. Ziggy was the one..., and Ziggy’s tentacles on those guitars and the colors patterns washing across his skin, they said I was the one for him right back at me...

I guess there’re many broken hearts in Casablanca

You know I’ve never really been there so I don’t know

Please come back to me in Casablanca...

Ziggy, he was an elite Space Marine, a heptapod Spider-Killer, like we had our Space Dragons, I knew that, and he’d probably left a trail of broken heptapod hearts across half the spiral arm, or, at least, our bit of it, and I knew what he was here for. He was here to train with our elite guys, the Space Dragon guys, because he was one of their elite, he was a Spider-Killer.

I shouldn’t have known that, but I did, and I was going to have to watch him go off and do what Space Marines did, which was to fight the Spiders on some suicide mission, and it was gonna hurt so bad when he went, and I’d never know if he was coming back or not, and my heart was totally in that song, and I could see those color patterns rippling across his skin as he played, and I sort of half-recognized them, and I knew he did. He loved me too.

I love you more and more each day as time goes by

Oh a kiss is still a kiss in Casablanca

I love you more and more each day, as time goes by...

“That was wonderful, Stardust, Ziggy,” my Mom said, as my voice faded away, and those last notes faded from Ziggy’s guitars, and I still had no idea how he could play bass and lead at the same time, and do it so perfectly, but his guitar playing was as perfect as the rest of him.

Me, I just gazed into those big round black saucer-sized eyes and sighed, humming the tune, and remembering that first, well, you couldn’t exactly call it a kiss, but it’d happened on the way home from Bowie’s that night, which was just so romantic, and I sighed, and those colors rippled across Ziggy’s skin, and I knew those were the happy colors, although I hadn’t quite figured out the exact pattern yet. There were too many nuances to that, but I’d get there, I knew that too, because I understood Ziggy more and more with every day.

“Ziggy seems like a really nice ... alien...” my Mom said, a lot later, and a little doubtfully, after he’d flowed out the door, and it was kind of cool that he’d worked on his walking, so he could kind of stretch out those tentacles and walk on five of them, and wave two around like they were actual arms or something, and when he did that, he was, like, taller than me. A lot taller, if he wanted to be, coz he could adjust his height.