I was jamming to The Sopranos theme song when a Maserati hit me midway through the crosswalk. The EMT that kept me from reaching the pearly gates was so attractive that I shortened his title to ET, because he must’ve been an alien.
My own title became Approximately 35-Year-Old Female.
“You should work in Hollywood,” I said as he held my torso together or something.
“I don’t have the stomach for it,” ET replied. I could see the hair on his knuckles through his blood-soaked gloves. How manly, I swooned.
Lying on La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles felt like Shangri-La. The traffic lights above blinked baby blue and the road sparkled. The commuters that exited their cars and gathered around had hearts in their eyes. Their applause purred like a cat, making my limbs tingle with warmth.
“I have everything I’ve ever wanted,” I told ET. His invisible antennas bent forward like a puppy’s ears.
“But there isn’t a ring on your finger.” ET made some kind of foreign sound.
“Sure there is,” I said. I lifted my right middle finger, flashing the gold moon perched there, a gift from my job animating a TV show set in space. A show that changed lives, so I hear.
“But there’s not one there,” ET said. “On a specific finger. On a certain hand.”
I don’t understand medical talk, so I closed my eyes and imagined I was one of the ducks floating in Tony Soprano’s pool. Watching over me in his robe, the mob boss was in love.
Some hours later, I woke up in a bed at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. The next month, ET and I finished our first round of Negronis. A year later, we waltzed to the courthouse. Four years after that, I woke up in the passenger seat on the way to Disneyland with our alien twins in tow.
We beelined to the food stands like it was an emergency: corndogs, fried ice cream, chili nachos, slushies. It was a tradition to fuel up before the bumpiest rides to see if we could hold the contents of our stomachs.
After throwing up over the side of the Mad Hatter’s teacup, I told my husband and spawn that I needed to be subbed out for an hour. The runt of the litter warned me: “Don’t you dare float away.”
I told her that there was nowhere for me to go. ET kissed me on the nose and said they’d wait for me by the fireworks fountain. They’d be there with lollipop flowers and foam fingers.
On the bench reserved for hunched over parents, a person in a Vegas slot machine costume reached out its arm. I pulled it in hopes of winning the jackpot.
“Come with me,” they said.
Inside the secret lounge done up like a fun house, I asked the slot machine, “What character are you?” They replied:
“What character are you?”
I sucked on my fingernail like my daughter does, then shuffled my feet: my son’s nervous tick. I threw back the shot glass shaped like a syringe and frowned. “I have everything I’ve ever wanted,” I told the slot machine.
The person in the costume burped a cloud of Fritos smoke “I’m sure you do,” they said.