"What do you think the possibility of alien life means for human existence," his professor dropped this on the class a month later as Roy tried desperately to stay awake. He had thought that taking an "Introduction to Religion" course would be a boring but easy way to fulfill a requirement for his Associate in Science degree. Instead he found that not only was the class was mind-numbing dull, but the teacher was a crystal-hugging fruitcake. Most of the class stared blankly at him.
One girl, Janey was the one annoying type you found typically in every class raising her hand to say something, whether it was intelligent or not. She nearly bounced from her seat this time. The professor, named Steven Jenkins, or "Steve" as he liked to be called by the students, nodded beaming at her.
"Well, I mean with this ship crash landing, it means that we aren't alone in the world, are we?"
"Universe," someone in the back hissed. The class giggled, as Janey blushed to the roots of her pale, blonde hair.
"Now, now," Steve chided, but nodded at Janey, who seemed mollified with this gesture. Roy wondered briefly whether Janey and Steve had something on the side going on the rest of the class didn't know about. He doubted it; Steve struck him as the type who wasn't that into girls.
"God, they just can't shut up," grumbled a girl next to him. Her name was Miranda, and she had the look of a properly cynical person he could respect. Her black hair was highlighted with pink, she wore metal studded belts, and t-shirts with insulting phrases on the front. And above all else, she was no Janey. Rather, Miranda was a girl his mother would hate, and whom Roy found amazingly attractive in that slightly, "I'm a bad-ass" sort of way.
"I think she needs to talk to fill the vacuum in her head," Roy snorted softly, causing Miranda to chuckle.
"You'd think an alien space-ship landing didn't happen everyday," she winked at Roy. He felt a tingle somewhere in his middle. This was usually how it started, some girl would wink at him, he'd respond, and they'd end up in a broom closet, the back of his truck, in his airplane, wherever he could get five minutes alone with them. Roy's reputation as a 'ladies man' had gotten him in more than a few scrapes back home in high school. But this was college, albeit community college. No one here knew his name, right?
Yet after his lunch period, before his basic engineering class, Miranda seemed to get to know his name very well. She murmured it over and over when they met up together at her beat up Chevy Cavalier. When everything was said and done, she grinned at him in the sticky humidity of the car.
"I think I was right about you," she purred as she adjusted the pink bra strap on her shoulder. The camouflage t-shirt she had been wearing moments before was somewhere in the back seat along with schoolbooks and old food wrappers. She was sitting on top of him, his tall frame twisted in the passenger's seat of her beat up car. Roy blinked at her in confusion.
"What's that supposed to mean," he asked quizzically, pushing his damp hair out of his eyes.
"That you'd be the sort who'd do girls in cars," she flashed an ironic smile at him. Roy, still flush from their activities, gazed stupidly at her.
"That I'd…what," he found his voice sounded querulous despite the relative laxity in his limbs.
"Face it, Roy, its not like people don't know," Miranda shrugged nonchalantly, reaching across to the back seat for her shirt. "I mean I ask around about guys I'm interested in before I try anything, you can't be too careful in this day and age. And lots of people know you."
"Know me for what," Roy found his stomach sort of plummeting somewhere below where she sat on top of him.
"Well, that you are a 'playa'," Miranda pulled the t-shirt over her pink highlights, and adjusted her many silver hoops in her ears where they had caught on the fabric. "I figured it shouldn't be too hard then getting into your pants. You know I've been eyeing you since school started."
"You mean…" Roy felt slightly sick, and a bit used. He wondered, in a vague sort of way, if this was how many of the girls back in high school he'd taken home had felt when everything was said and done. He'd like to think he was much less cavalier than this girl, much more romantic.
"Yeah, well face it Roy, you're hot," Miranda winked at him again, but this time he found the gesture crude and disgusting.
"Anyway, I'm off to a math class next, if you want to meet up later," she leaned over to kiss his stunned face lightly, and then wiggled off top of him, re-adjusting her black denim skirt and metal studded belt as she went. "See ya," she waved as she climbed out of the driver's side door. "Don't forget to lock up."
Roy sat in the sticky warmth of Miranda's car, his pants at a rather indecent level by any standards, staring up at the top of the gray interior. He'd been used, and he knew it.
He could only blame himself really, after all he'd made a reputation as being the 'love 'em and leave 'em' type, fond of wooing and bedding girls, then forgetting their names the next day. His mother had yelled at him for it, asked him what sort of example he was putting up for Rick. Rick, Roy thought, hadn't even noticed girls yet, but now he had to wonder. He thought of his 'little brother' in this situation with some girl someday…or even worse. And he thought of all the girls who he'd been with since he was fourteen, and realized how completely vile he could be.
As he pulled his jeans up, he murmured ruefully to himself, "What would your Dad say, Roy," and he couldn't imagine. Uncle Joe imparted some war stories involving Vietnamese hookers that he made Roy swear on his life never to tell his mother. "Jimmy loved your mom as the day is long, Roy, you telling tales will only upset her needlessly at a man whose dead and gone and can't defend himself." Somehow he didn't think that Jim Fokker would be too proud of his son's escapades, however. Nor, to be honest, was Roy proud of himself. He climbed out of Miranda's car, grabbing his engineering books, his leather flight jacket, and began meandering aimlessly to campus, letting the breeze dry out his sweat-drenched hair.
What did he want? He remembered his conversation with Rick only a couple of months ago, the day the spaceship had landed. He had been thinking of it then. Young and youthful Rick had wanted to fly a plane that was all. Roy couldn't argue with that, he too loved to fly, he was amazing at it. But there had to be more to life than just chasing women and flying planes. College wasn't doing it for him, he knew that now. He didn't mind it, but the idea of spending his life holed up in this dusty, two-bit part of the world gnawed at him endlessly. There were greater and better things out there, right?
"Hey there, man, nice jacket," a voice called from behind him, and Roy turned. A military type, most likely Navy from his tan uniform, stood smoking a cigarette quietly by the Student Union building, leaning against a retaining wall quietly. He had the look of the military recruiters who appeared on campus, and looked to be in his early 40's. The right age when active duty began wearing on you, but you were too young to call it quits, Roy thought. He shrugged as he looked down at his jacket.
"It was my dad's," he proudly fingered the patches on the side that indicated the squadron his father had served in.
"He was in Nam then?" the man asked, and Roy nodded.
"Yeah, I was myself for a bit. Names McCullough," he held out a hand to Roy, who took it confidently. "You fly yourself?"
"Yeah, for an air circus not far from here, my dad flew for them till…he died."
"Sorry to hear that, son, accident?"
"Yeah," after all these years, why was it hard to admit that to this stranger, Roy wondered in confusion.
"Well it happens to the best of pilots," McCullough shrugged. "One of my good buddies died two years back, he'd been in the Air Force for twenty years, went to pilot a Cessna out of Lubbock, and crashed it in high winds. It happens."
McCullough took a last drag on the cigarette before stabbing it out in a sand filled ashtray beside him. "You plan to join then?"
Roy was so shocked from that statement, he nearly laughed. "What?" His eyes stared in wonderment at the fellow with his close-cropped brown hair and his bulldog build. He looked the type to bully a man into joining more than convincing him.
"Well you said you could fly," McCullough said reasonably. "You plan on flying in a circus forever?"
"No," and to be honest, Roy's previous train of thought had confirmed that for him. As much as he loved Pop, Uncle Joe, and Rick, he had no plans on staying. And he didn't think till now he even realized it.
"You want me to get the pamphlets for you," McCullough's voice was playfully sarcastic.
"No," Roy murmured, as he fingered the patches on his father's coat. "How about I get you a coffee though," Roy offered.
"I won't turn down anything free," the man grinned back.