The first drink was on the house and he drank it, quickly. Then, he straightened up his sweater, gathered courage by evoking a few distant memories of his childhood, and went ahead towards the roulette. He bet and won, and then lost, and then won three times and lost another four. He was feverish—as usual. Across the table, in front of him, a blonde pretending to look at her chips was discreetly watching his bets. 2, 14, 34.
He wanted to smile at her, but she did not raise her sight, not even for a second. Suddenly, the croupier exclaimed “Rien ne va plus!”, and all the lungs around the table stopped breathing until the ball, finally, fell into place. Five. He had a startle—his number! But he had been so distracted by the blonde that he had forgotten to bet. Damn! A few drops of sweat ran down across his forehead and bumped into his eyebrows. He felt uneasy. Maybe his sweater was too tight. He needed some air. Or, better still, a splash of water on his face.
So he left the table and headed for the restroom. The blonde would not leave, hopefully. As he grasped the door’s knob he glanced at her through the crowd, but she didn’t seem to notice. Then he went in, turned on the tap and put his whole head under the water. Refreshing... He felt better, raised his head and looked in the mirror. A few wrinkles on his forehead seemed to have vanished. He felt younger. And reinvigorated.
The blonde was still on the same spot, looking at her chips. But this time he managed to squeeze himself between her and a fat man with suspenders.
“Would you like a drink?”, he said to her casually, smiling as radiantly as if he had just won a TV contest.
“Er, um, but you’ll miss the next one”
“The next drink?”
“The next bet”
“They might run out of drinks”, he replied. “One never knows”
She finally smiled.
“So we’ll help them to that, won’t we?”
He gulped. Her smile was magical, magnetic, out of this world.
“Okay”, he managed to say. “Just try to keep your thirst at bay, will you?”
He went to the bar and brought back two martinis. She took one of them. Her hand was terse and slender. Elegant, he thought. Some woman, really.
“Faites vos jeux!”, invited the croupier.
She made her bet. He placed his chips in the same square as hers. The ball swished, whirled, stopped. Five again.
“We won!”, she jumped twice, then unexpectedly hugged him. He thought he was dreaming.
“Oh, well, this is... I can’t believe it’s happened”, he said. He wasn’t lying. “Let’s get some fresh air, would you?”
“Hmm. Sounds cool”, she said, and drank up her martini. “Just give me a minute”
She then sneaked her way to the bar, came back with two more martinis, and handed one to him.
“Alright. Now let’s go”
He followed her to the main entrance of the casino. On the sidewalk, a man with a snake around his neck chatted with an obese woman. Right across the road, in the middle of the roundabout, an exuberant fountain changed color under a sizeable replica of the Eiffel Tower. They went over and sat down on a bench.
“The name is Mark”, he said. “Mark Marconi”. And he reached out for her hand. But she didn’t shake his hand. Instead, she looked away for a few seconds, shrugged, and then turned towards him and kissed his lips, very slowly.
“Patricia”, she mumbled, still savoring his lips.
That was so fast... So lightning fast, he thought. He still couldn’t believe his luck. Patricia was a beautiful creature. Out of this world, he said to himself. When their lips parted, Patricia sipped at her martini. Her eyelids were down. A smell of air freshener from the casino whizzed between them.
“Are you lodging at a hotel?”, she asked.
“No. Actually, I arrived today. All the way from San Diego”
“I am. At the Bellagio, just round the corner. You look tired”
Suddenly, a gust of damp wind from the fountain sprayed his face.
“You are so young”, she said. “Listen, my room has an incredible view. And a huge bed. Will you be my guest today?”
Patricia didn’t wait for an answer. She stood up, took his hand and pulled gently. He didn’t remember her being so tall.
“M... my dream”, he stuttered. He meant ‘my pleasure’. His voice sounded strangely adolescent. Patricia, still holding his hand, led the way to the hotel. Ten minutes later, he was lying on a king-size bed, finishing his martini and wondering if he was about to wake up from some heavenly dream. Then the door of the bathroom opened, and Patricia slowly walked towards him. She was naked.
They kissed passionately. Through the ample window, the sunset tinged their bodies with a hue of honey. As the shadows started to set in around them, nature followed its course. Finally, Mark and Patricia, exhausted, lay on the bed for a long while, speechless. In the midst of the silence, his head, resting on her chest, picked the echo of his own heart, beating. His own heart only.
“Where does that buzz come from?”, he asked.
“Huh? Oh, I don’t know. The air conditioning, maybe”
Mark pressed his ear against her chest, trying to discern a beat. She combed his hair with her fingers.
“You must be so tired... Shall I fill the bathtub for you?”, she said.
“Oh, never mind. I shall manage”, said Mark. Then, with a yawn, he sluggishly sit up.
The bath was hot and relaxing. When he pulled the plug and the water started to drain out, the bathtub seemed much larger than when he had stepped in. With difficulty, he managed to get out and reached for the towel, which was now huge. Everything around him was out of proportion, but he didn’t want to think about it. No doubt it was some kind of vivid nightmare that would just vanish in the morning. He returned to the bed, climbed up to it and sighed. By his side, Patricia slept peacefully.
“Are you hungry?”
The voice was Patricia’s. It sounded as if she was leaning over him, but he still didn’t dare to open his eyes. He was half-awake now.
“Sort of”, he mumbled, and waited. Patricia took up the phone, dialed a number and ordered two breakfasts.
“Come on”, she said in a cheerful tone. “You may look now”
Slowly, Mark opened his eyes. Patricia was sitting by his side, smiling, still naked. But this time her skin was completely green. He blinked.
“Yes, you are fully awake now. And yes, I am green. Do you still like me?”
“Well, I...”
“Oh, and you have the body of a child. A nine-year-old, I’d say. As it happens, since I chose you in the casino yesterday, your body has been getting younger, by steps. No, darling, don’t say anything just yet”
The advice was unnecessary. Mark was still struggling to assimilate the fact that he wasn’t living in a nightmare.
“You may not believe it, but little green men—and women—do exist”, she went on. “Well, not so little, as you can see. Do you still like me?”
“You, you... I...”
“It’s water that makes you younger. Tap water, fountain water, bathtub water, any kind. It’s all part of a harmless experiment. Yes, there is an antidote, if that’s what you’re wondering. We just want to find out how humans react in all sorts of situations. Unexpected situations”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“You wouldn’t care. We are from a faraway galaxy. Really far, far away. And, be reassured, we are peaceful. Only a tad too curious about primitive civilizations. It’s taken us a lot of time to get here, after all”
“And that... that experiment... Is it over?”. His voice sounded really child-like now.
“I know, I know. You want to regain your adulthood. Well, that’s part of the experiment, as well. Don’t worry, it won’t last longer than a few weeks. We are also compassionate... Come on, don’t be so serious”
She tickled his armpit. Mark writhed and burst out laughing.
“That’s much better”, she nodded. “Now, about the antidote. To regain your full manhood—which, by the way, I’m most eager about—you’ll have to eat a number of, say, funny foods”
“Funny?”
“Well, funny from our perspective. Anyway, I’ll cut to the chase: water will make you younger, but anything containing saturated fats, sugar, cholesterol, artificial additives, oxidants, caffeine, or salt will revert that condition. Basically, what you humans call ‘junk food’. Smoking and drinking, of course, would also help a lot. The silver lining is that, well, I’m sure you’ll love it”
“But how did you...”
“Oh, you were irradiated with delta radiation. From above”
“¿Delta radiation?”
“Yeah. It’s produced by funnelling neutrinos through a vortex of dark matter. But you don’t want to know such technicalities. Your planet is still in a pretty rudimentary stage of civilization”
A knock at the door interrupted her. She wrapped herself in a towel, opened the door, and took a tray from the hands of a hotel maid.
“Your breakfast is here!”, she half sang, laying the tray at his side on the bed. A giant pizza full of lard, cheese, eggs and coconut oil appeared under his eyes, flanked by two large martinis, a black coffee, a glass of cognac and a packet of cigarrettes.
“Don’t be afraid. It will do you good”, she encouraged him.
Actually, Mark was hungry, so he didn’t hesitate. He ate, drank and smoked as much as he could while Patricia, elegantly sipping her martini, looked at him approvingly. As he finished the cognac, he started to feel much stronger. And bigger. He was now almost Patricia’s size. A lascivious thought then crossed his mind.
“I guess what you’re thinking”, she winked at him. “I’l make things easier for you”
She took a small box from the nightstand, opened it, and swallowed a red pill that was inside it. In seconds, her skin turned white again. By then, her hand was playfully tiptoeing along his arm, then across his chest, then...
But whatever followed lays outside of this chronicle. The verified facts let us know that, for a few weeks since that day, Mark was the passive subject of a weird experiment for the sake of science in some remote galaxy. Time and again, he alternated showers and hand washing with the ingestion of pork and seafood and salt peanuts, and a long list of deletereous foods, his only compensation being the enjoyment of Patricia, which of course was mutual. So much so that, as soon as the experiment was over, she proposed to him.
“But it was me who was supposed to propose”, Mark complained.
“Never mind. I’m from another galaxy. And I mean it”
Grudgingly, he said yes. Then they kissed and, soon afterwards, married. They were happy for a while until one night, when he was about to fall asleep, Patricia whispered in his ear:
“You know one thing? I’m pregnant”
“What?”, Mark exclaimed. “Really?”
“Yes, love. You’re going to be a father. Do you think you’ll be a good father?”
“You bet!”, he replied.
It had been ages since he hadn’t pronounced that word. ‘Bet’. From the depths of his memory, the old days of feverish betting in the casino resurfaced and, week by week, weaved a dense web of longings and obsessions. He couldn’t sleep anymore. His marriage was as happy as it could be asked for, but he began to realize that it lacked one ingredient. One main ingredient. Namely, risk.
So there he was again, holding his chips between his hands and waiting for the thrilling announcements that the croupier was about to pronounce. Messieurs, Mesdames, faites vos jeux... Rien ne va plus!, only to lose one, two, three, twelve times in a row. Sweat started to form on his forehead. The old feeling. He took all the chips he had left and went to the bar.
Then, when he was just finishing his gin tonic, he heard a distant buzz. A familiar one. He glanced around, but the room was too crowded. Then he stood up and started to wander aimlessly among the crowd, trying to locate the source. No way. The buzz seemed to be everywhere, and yet he knew that it came from somewhere, one single somewhere.
Suddenly, the throng dispersed a little in front of him and he could get to see the roulette in the distance. By its table, Patricia kept looking at her chips while a young man squeezed his way between her and a fat man with suspenders.
It was himself.
He wanted to smile at her, but she did not raise her sight, not even for a second. Suddenly, the croupier exclaimed “Rien ne va plus!”, and all the lungs around the table stopped breathing until the ball, finally, fell into place. Five. He had a startle—his number! But he had been so distracted by the blonde that he had forgotten to bet. Damn! A few drops of sweat ran down across his forehead and bumped into his eyebrows. He felt uneasy. Maybe his sweater was too tight. He needed some air. Or, better still, a splash of water on his face.
So he left the table and headed for the restroom. The blonde would not leave, hopefully. As he grasped the door’s knob he glanced at her through the crowd, but she didn’t seem to notice. Then he went in, turned on the tap and put his whole head under the water. Refreshing... He felt better, raised his head and looked in the mirror. A few wrinkles on his forehead seemed to have vanished. He felt younger. And reinvigorated.
The blonde was still on the same spot, looking at her chips. But this time he managed to squeeze himself between her and a fat man with suspenders.
“Would you like a drink?”, he said to her casually, smiling as radiantly as if he had just won a TV contest.
“Er, um, but you’ll miss the next one”
“The next drink?”
“The next bet”
“They might run out of drinks”, he replied. “One never knows”
She finally smiled.
“So we’ll help them to that, won’t we?”
He gulped. Her smile was magical, magnetic, out of this world.
“Okay”, he managed to say. “Just try to keep your thirst at bay, will you?”
He went to the bar and brought back two martinis. She took one of them. Her hand was terse and slender. Elegant, he thought. Some woman, really.
“Faites vos jeux!”, invited the croupier.
She made her bet. He placed his chips in the same square as hers. The ball swished, whirled, stopped. Five again.
“We won!”, she jumped twice, then unexpectedly hugged him. He thought he was dreaming.
“Oh, well, this is... I can’t believe it’s happened”, he said. He wasn’t lying. “Let’s get some fresh air, would you?”
“Hmm. Sounds cool”, she said, and drank up her martini. “Just give me a minute”
She then sneaked her way to the bar, came back with two more martinis, and handed one to him.
“Alright. Now let’s go”
He followed her to the main entrance of the casino. On the sidewalk, a man with a snake around his neck chatted with an obese woman. Right across the road, in the middle of the roundabout, an exuberant fountain changed color under a sizeable replica of the Eiffel Tower. They went over and sat down on a bench.
“The name is Mark”, he said. “Mark Marconi”. And he reached out for her hand. But she didn’t shake his hand. Instead, she looked away for a few seconds, shrugged, and then turned towards him and kissed his lips, very slowly.
“Patricia”, she mumbled, still savoring his lips.
That was so fast... So lightning fast, he thought. He still couldn’t believe his luck. Patricia was a beautiful creature. Out of this world, he said to himself. When their lips parted, Patricia sipped at her martini. Her eyelids were down. A smell of air freshener from the casino whizzed between them.
“Are you lodging at a hotel?”, she asked.
“No. Actually, I arrived today. All the way from San Diego”
“I am. At the Bellagio, just round the corner. You look tired”
Suddenly, a gust of damp wind from the fountain sprayed his face.
“You are so young”, she said. “Listen, my room has an incredible view. And a huge bed. Will you be my guest today?”
Patricia didn’t wait for an answer. She stood up, took his hand and pulled gently. He didn’t remember her being so tall.
“M... my dream”, he stuttered. He meant ‘my pleasure’. His voice sounded strangely adolescent. Patricia, still holding his hand, led the way to the hotel. Ten minutes later, he was lying on a king-size bed, finishing his martini and wondering if he was about to wake up from some heavenly dream. Then the door of the bathroom opened, and Patricia slowly walked towards him. She was naked.
They kissed passionately. Through the ample window, the sunset tinged their bodies with a hue of honey. As the shadows started to set in around them, nature followed its course. Finally, Mark and Patricia, exhausted, lay on the bed for a long while, speechless. In the midst of the silence, his head, resting on her chest, picked the echo of his own heart, beating. His own heart only.
“Where does that buzz come from?”, he asked.
“Huh? Oh, I don’t know. The air conditioning, maybe”
Mark pressed his ear against her chest, trying to discern a beat. She combed his hair with her fingers.
“You must be so tired... Shall I fill the bathtub for you?”, she said.
“Oh, never mind. I shall manage”, said Mark. Then, with a yawn, he sluggishly sit up.
The bath was hot and relaxing. When he pulled the plug and the water started to drain out, the bathtub seemed much larger than when he had stepped in. With difficulty, he managed to get out and reached for the towel, which was now huge. Everything around him was out of proportion, but he didn’t want to think about it. No doubt it was some kind of vivid nightmare that would just vanish in the morning. He returned to the bed, climbed up to it and sighed. By his side, Patricia slept peacefully.
“Are you hungry?”
The voice was Patricia’s. It sounded as if she was leaning over him, but he still didn’t dare to open his eyes. He was half-awake now.
“Sort of”, he mumbled, and waited. Patricia took up the phone, dialed a number and ordered two breakfasts.
“Come on”, she said in a cheerful tone. “You may look now”
Slowly, Mark opened his eyes. Patricia was sitting by his side, smiling, still naked. But this time her skin was completely green. He blinked.
“Yes, you are fully awake now. And yes, I am green. Do you still like me?”
“Well, I...”
“Oh, and you have the body of a child. A nine-year-old, I’d say. As it happens, since I chose you in the casino yesterday, your body has been getting younger, by steps. No, darling, don’t say anything just yet”
The advice was unnecessary. Mark was still struggling to assimilate the fact that he wasn’t living in a nightmare.
“You may not believe it, but little green men—and women—do exist”, she went on. “Well, not so little, as you can see. Do you still like me?”
“You, you... I...”
“It’s water that makes you younger. Tap water, fountain water, bathtub water, any kind. It’s all part of a harmless experiment. Yes, there is an antidote, if that’s what you’re wondering. We just want to find out how humans react in all sorts of situations. Unexpected situations”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“You wouldn’t care. We are from a faraway galaxy. Really far, far away. And, be reassured, we are peaceful. Only a tad too curious about primitive civilizations. It’s taken us a lot of time to get here, after all”
“And that... that experiment... Is it over?”. His voice sounded really child-like now.
“I know, I know. You want to regain your adulthood. Well, that’s part of the experiment, as well. Don’t worry, it won’t last longer than a few weeks. We are also compassionate... Come on, don’t be so serious”
She tickled his armpit. Mark writhed and burst out laughing.
“That’s much better”, she nodded. “Now, about the antidote. To regain your full manhood—which, by the way, I’m most eager about—you’ll have to eat a number of, say, funny foods”
“Funny?”
“Well, funny from our perspective. Anyway, I’ll cut to the chase: water will make you younger, but anything containing saturated fats, sugar, cholesterol, artificial additives, oxidants, caffeine, or salt will revert that condition. Basically, what you humans call ‘junk food’. Smoking and drinking, of course, would also help a lot. The silver lining is that, well, I’m sure you’ll love it”
“But how did you...”
“Oh, you were irradiated with delta radiation. From above”
“¿Delta radiation?”
“Yeah. It’s produced by funnelling neutrinos through a vortex of dark matter. But you don’t want to know such technicalities. Your planet is still in a pretty rudimentary stage of civilization”
A knock at the door interrupted her. She wrapped herself in a towel, opened the door, and took a tray from the hands of a hotel maid.
“Your breakfast is here!”, she half sang, laying the tray at his side on the bed. A giant pizza full of lard, cheese, eggs and coconut oil appeared under his eyes, flanked by two large martinis, a black coffee, a glass of cognac and a packet of cigarrettes.
“Don’t be afraid. It will do you good”, she encouraged him.
Actually, Mark was hungry, so he didn’t hesitate. He ate, drank and smoked as much as he could while Patricia, elegantly sipping her martini, looked at him approvingly. As he finished the cognac, he started to feel much stronger. And bigger. He was now almost Patricia’s size. A lascivious thought then crossed his mind.
“I guess what you’re thinking”, she winked at him. “I’l make things easier for you”
She took a small box from the nightstand, opened it, and swallowed a red pill that was inside it. In seconds, her skin turned white again. By then, her hand was playfully tiptoeing along his arm, then across his chest, then...
But whatever followed lays outside of this chronicle. The verified facts let us know that, for a few weeks since that day, Mark was the passive subject of a weird experiment for the sake of science in some remote galaxy. Time and again, he alternated showers and hand washing with the ingestion of pork and seafood and salt peanuts, and a long list of deletereous foods, his only compensation being the enjoyment of Patricia, which of course was mutual. So much so that, as soon as the experiment was over, she proposed to him.
“But it was me who was supposed to propose”, Mark complained.
“Never mind. I’m from another galaxy. And I mean it”
Grudgingly, he said yes. Then they kissed and, soon afterwards, married. They were happy for a while until one night, when he was about to fall asleep, Patricia whispered in his ear:
“You know one thing? I’m pregnant”
“What?”, Mark exclaimed. “Really?”
“Yes, love. You’re going to be a father. Do you think you’ll be a good father?”
“You bet!”, he replied.
It had been ages since he hadn’t pronounced that word. ‘Bet’. From the depths of his memory, the old days of feverish betting in the casino resurfaced and, week by week, weaved a dense web of longings and obsessions. He couldn’t sleep anymore. His marriage was as happy as it could be asked for, but he began to realize that it lacked one ingredient. One main ingredient. Namely, risk.
So there he was again, holding his chips between his hands and waiting for the thrilling announcements that the croupier was about to pronounce. Messieurs, Mesdames, faites vos jeux... Rien ne va plus!, only to lose one, two, three, twelve times in a row. Sweat started to form on his forehead. The old feeling. He took all the chips he had left and went to the bar.
Then, when he was just finishing his gin tonic, he heard a distant buzz. A familiar one. He glanced around, but the room was too crowded. Then he stood up and started to wander aimlessly among the crowd, trying to locate the source. No way. The buzz seemed to be everywhere, and yet he knew that it came from somewhere, one single somewhere.
Suddenly, the throng dispersed a little in front of him and he could get to see the roulette in the distance. By its table, Patricia kept looking at her chips while a young man squeezed his way between her and a fat man with suspenders.
It was himself.
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