Expressing my envy of a family who received a surprise visitor two Augusts ago.
I own a fifteen-acre spread outside of Fresno. I raise radishes and zucchini; with a few experimental grape vines and a small patch of well-concealed refer on the side. I also do the taxes for a number of my neighbors.
I had spent that hot August day trying to fix some irrigation machinery, and was pretty wolfed. That evening I spoke to Karin, my current partner who has her own house some ways away. As was the case with the irrigation machinery, I was not able to resolve the problems I am having with her. I decided to retire early, and get a good start on the morrow. The air was warm and there was a half moon out over the valley.
I was awakened shortly after midnight by a sharp report on the side door. Someone was knocking, knocking repeatedly and loudly. I confess, I was frightened, and how. Careful not to make a sound, I looked out my window toward the driveway, thinking that a hostile local found out about my refer and I would see a police car or two outside. Nothing! Just my own Sidekick.
I don’t like owning that shotgun, but off the beaten track as I am it means security. In my haste to see who was downstairs, I forewent a fumbling search for shells. Instead I just hoped, whoever it was, would be deterred by the sight of it.
Putting a thin robe around me (I hadn’t worn anything to bed) I proceeded downstairs, a quick thought passing through my head that this was like a some horror movie. When I was able to see the figure silhouetted in the door window, however, I saw that it was not someone who looked like a malevolent midnight raider, but a woman with short hair, and not a particularly big woman at that.
My fear was starting to turn to irritation. Whatever she wants, would she please lay off the incessant knocking? Cradling my gun in the crook of my arm, I advanced toward the door and turned the outside light on, seeing that the woman was a blonde with a slightly pinched face. She was wearing a pink top. She had this look in her eyes that said she was not quite right in the head.
I turned on the kitchen light, opened the door and took two steps back, still holding on to that empty shotgun.
“WHY IS THIS PLACE CLOSED FOR THE NIGHT?” the woman demanded. “God, how am I to get home if the launchpads aren’t open?”
It was obvious the woman was completely out of it. She seemed to have walked a long way -- her white pants were dusty and her hair disselveled. But the mental hospital was quite a ways away. Seeing that she was smaller than me and probably represented no threat, I allowed her to come in, thinking that I would call the police after I got her settled down.
I spoke in a firm voice. “Ma’am, calm down, just calm down and sit there.” She followed my command, even though she did not seem to even note the shotgun. All the time she kept up a babble and gestured frantically.
“you think that Father would have left better instructions on how to get to the spaceship. I told him I would be home before midnight but the last launchpad the After all, I’ve been walking for six hours, the flight takes three and it’s cold out here....Do you have any coffee?
At last interpreting an on the level comment, I offered to make some, if, again, she would please
calm down
. I enjoy my silences and to have a woman yak incessantly around me unnerves me.
I asked her who her name was. “Celestia,” she replied. “Well, Celeste,” I replied, missing the one syllable, “ I’m Randal and I’m going to go over there and get some coffee for you. I’m going to ask you to settle down and then you can tell me how you got here.”
She continued talking while I spooned the stuff into the percolator. “I was to take the spaceship out of the valley, return home to get my things and then fly up to Father. I’ve got a long trip ahead, and here it is already dark.” It was while my back was to her that there seemed to be something familiar in her voice, I had heard it somewhere...
Once I got the coffee going, I turned around and studied her face more carefully. Sure enough, it was the woman who I saw in “Return to Paradise” and “Wag the Dog”. And several months ago, Karin and I rented this movie called “The Wild Side” in which she played a businesswoman and sometime call girl who falls hard for Joan Chen. Their love scene together was the only good thing about the flick. Karin made a joke about how Chen paved the way for the actress’s famous affair with Ellen DeGeneres, but it must have gotten her going as well, for we had great sex that night.
“Celestia?” I inquired in the break in her conversation. “You aren’t Anne Heche?”
Her eyes rolled skyward like someone who had heard the same question many times before. “Yes, no, I’m Celestia, except when I’m Annie. I told Ellen that time and time again. When Father wants me to be Celestia, I can’t be Annie so don’t call me that.”
Well, this was not something that happens every day. I have a movie star in my home. “Why do you need to get home to Father?”
“In Father’s place I feel safe, he puts me up there among the stars. I’ve been there for a long time. You should see the view, but most people can’t go there until they die. Do you want to go there, too?
I had to be honest and tell her I was a religious nonbeliever. I’ve always felt that Heaven, as appealing as it might sound on the surface, would wind up boring the socks off anyone with any intelligence, and I told her so.
“But in Father’s Heaven it isn’t so. There is no poverty, no war, no hatred. And people love each other. All the time. It’s hard for everyone to keep their clothes on,” she said with a giggle. My original annoyance at her chattiness was now replaced by curiosity.
“Well, yours certainly sounds more appealing than the Catholic one I was raised with. There Heaven seems like it’s always one long Sunday service in the suburban church in Dayton where I was raised. Lots of repressed white people are there and no one else. Not much sex,” I added with a little laugh.
“You’re from Ohio too? We’re both far from home. I know about those services, I had to go to them too. That’s probably why you don’t believe. I had a father in Ohio but he wasn’t very nice. Not at all like Father in Heaven. Whether it’s Steve or Ellen or Dave, He doesn’t care who I fuck, so long as they love me and I’m happy. He’ll tell me if they don’t love me, and then I won’t see them anymore.”
The coffee was ready. Anne took one sip, and suddenly announced, “Can I use your shower?”
I would have never assented with a stranger normally, but this was no ordinary stranger. “Sure, go ahead.”
“I’m very dirty, and I want to get washed before visiting Father. He’s rather upset if your not clean when you come to see him.” She pulled off her boots as she said this. “Jesus visited last week, and he was all dirty and bloody, and Father made him wash up. I like it when Jesus gets into trouble,” she said with a giggle. I watched, enrapt. Off came her socks, followed by her pants, without a moment’s self-consciousness. She laid them on the chair. “Jesus and I fight a lot, can you guess? Brother-sister thing. I don’t like him. I don’t like Mohammed, he’s Jesus’s friend and always coming by and criticizing me.” Her t-shirt was whipped off, revealing a pale green bra over her moderate breasts. “Buddha is nice. He lives down the street. Sometime I’ll let you meet him.” She walked toward the shower unhooking her bra from the back. “I’m going to shower now, don’t come in,” she said, sounding like a college girl daring her boyfriend in the dorm.
I took the opportunity to sneak a look into her wallet as the water started running. Sure enough, there was a California driver’s license, that said “Heche, Anne” and gave an address near Hollywood.
I dialed Karin. She was not pleased to hear from me at this hour but I had to tell someone.
“Karin, Anne Heche is in my house.”
“A what is in your house? A hache?”
