"You love me, don’t you?" Nora bumped her pelvis up against mine.

"Yes!" Despite everything, I started humping. The floor was cold, hard linoleum. My knees hurt from pressing and jamming with Nora.

Shaman thickened among us. "Stop this," he said.

Gone Joe said, "Stop this!" too. He was out up to his knees. He was wearing his blue mechanics’ overalls with the embroidered tag on the breast pocket. In the middle the tag said, "JOE," and around the perimeter, "SMILING AND SERVING!" There was a Niagara Falls souvenir pen behind it. It had an illusionary moving picture of the Horseshoe Falls on the barrel.

Shaman wasn’t ruffled a bit. He sounded like someone trying to talk a suicide down from the ledge: deliberate, calm. I heard him with my skin, between pulses of blood, between breaths, between thrusts and red thoughts as I mortar-and-pestled Nora: "Now, Gypsy, now, Nora, you must stop. You know this. The Earther’s one of my Space People now. He’s a part of me. Don’t fuck with me, Sanduleans, or there’ll be hell to pay."

Nora was fondling something besides my buttocks. She was stroking something inside my mind, a part of my mind invisible to me, as the nose is to the eyes. She stroked as you might stroke a dog to make it let go a ball. Of what ball did she want me to lose hold?

Shaman said, "Does the Earther know what you are to him, Nora? This isn’t Sanduleak, you know. Some things are frowned upon in this galaxy."

Gypsy emitted a blast of red vapor. His skin ballooned outward like a swollen calf’s belly, and exploded. The wet shards settled. Some stuck to the ceiling and walls, where they slid and dripped. He was the snake, or a gigantic yellow neuron, more like, bulbous at the bottom, grey dendrites like Medusa’s hair tangling on top.

"Run!" Gone Joe rasped. He was out.

And I was out. I couldn’t stay inside Nora any more. Soul and body were shriveling to a bead. I couldn’t act. Nora groaned disappointment and withdrew from my mind, leaving the ball in whatever jaws held it there. Gone Joe took one look at Gypsy and beat it into the kitchen.

"Did you get it?" Gypsy asked Nora. He used his whole reptilian body for a tongue.

"No," she said.

"You see," Shaman gloated, "the boy’s not like you Sanduleans, Gypsy. You’ll come in anyone, won’t you, even your mother? In fact, especially your mother, ey, Gypsy?"

"Damn! How did you get here, Shaman?" Gypsy yelled. "I know you can’t epoche worth spit."

"Didn’t have to," he cooed?from the kitchen, sounded like. And there, at the swinging door, where Gone Joe had been a moment before, stood Shaman, his features melting from Gone Joe’s into the ones I had seen in the New Mexico tent, by candle light, like a dry, crushed sponge duck springing out in water. "I came along in him, Gyp. A little reconnaissance. I figured someone like you would try to spoil my party. You’re trumped, Sandulean. Thanks for the ride, Mel."

"Are you my father?" I said.

"I’m you." Incomprehensible.

Many years later, on Sanduleak, collapsed by then to a neutron star, a pulsar, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, I happened to hear the following song by Johnny Abilene and the Haymakers. Folks live on bebop there, always have, always will, but on the station I was tuned to they liked to interrupt the Top Million every now and then for a little down home Country Western, especially tunes that have to do with me, since I am a sort of galactic hero there, or mascot, more like.

The Sanduleans are funny that way, like Bible thumpers on Earth who like to pepper every exchange, however secular or banal, with references to the Gospel:

"Can you believe it, Ethel? They charged me three-fifty for one pair of athletic socks at the Spend-and-Save. I felt like turning over their table."

"Render unto Caesar, Georgette."

"Praise the Lord!"

On Sanduleak they say things like this: "as tight as Gone Joe in Izzy’s bung." Or when they just almost get something they want, but fail at the very last moment, they often say, "It was like Mel and Nora in Texas."

The number was announced as "You Are My Sweet Burrito (Please Be True)," I think. Things go by very fast on a neutron star, and the news came on right after:

(The phrase "space hat" in the eighth line refers to the pleated headdress popularized by Abu al-Hawl, the Great Sphinx at Giza, a sort of interstellar thinking cap he used for performing epoches. It became quite fashionable among Earthers of the Egyptian Fifth Dynasty [circa 2500 b.c.] who lived in the vicinity of his landing site. On Sanduleak, it’s still la look.)

By the way, what Shaman said is quite true. On Sandy, when a singer calls his loved one "pretty mama," he generally means just that.

"Let’s be human, shall we?" Shaman proposed. Diplomats settling on a lingua franca. "You have a spare somewhere, don’t you, Gypsy?"

The big nerve undulated to the cash register and punched "NO SALE" with one of his dendrites. He pulled up the tray inside the cash drawer, where the big bills are usually kept, and produced a squeaking mass of rubbery material that looked like a deflated beach ball. He started to pull it on like a pair of pants. When he was done, he was the rotund, superannuated hippie I’d met down on the highway, and fully clothed.

Nora squeezed my hand, then headed for the little girls’ room to tidy up. "You’re okay, Mel," she said. "We’ll get through this together." Then to Shaman: "The toilet?"

"Go ahead," Shaman said.

"I’ll be a minute. We’ll sit down together when I get back. You’ll let him be till then?"

"Of course, Nora. What do you take me for?" He was wearing Gone Joe’s overalls. It still said "JOE" on his pocket, and "SMILING AND SERVING."

"Oh, stop it!" Gypsy said. "Just because she’s an Earther doesn’t mean she’s stupid. She was thoroughly briefed when we recruited her, Shaman. She knows all about you, old Tut. She knows all about everything."

Gypsy offered me his "hand." He helped me up off the floor, then sat down at the table with me. Shaman joined us.

Nora was in the bathroom. She had been in the bathroom when I first entered the cafe, when I saw Gypsy, when the juke box played Johnny Abilene and Izzy? "Take a bite of this." What did she do in there? Maybe she slipped in and out of fake bodies the way Gypsy did. I still ached for her, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I was a small, brown nothing. Shaman was tall and muscular, with strong, chiseled features, a square jaw, clear blue eyes, thick black hair neatly trimmed. He wore a white caftan and loose white linen pants; one leg was still soiled by errant thoughts?e v a p o r a t i n g?from my mind. Shaman could have Nora whenever he wanted to, and finish the job, I thought. My mind was a barber pole, thought-blood, endlessly supplied, spiraling endlessly down.