One Turk + Aliens + Avon samples = Chaos in the Alpha Sector!

My Turkish friend, Ulak, drove from San Diego to visit me. He drove with the soft marine winds at his back, drove a day, a night, through the Mojave, past the City of Sin, into the sand art plains of Arizona, a hundred million cacti at his heels, until the winds grew dry, pushed him into the drought-ridden prairie grass surrounding my town. He pulled into my drive, pulled close to my car, and grunted as he stared at my license plate, at the yellow rectangle with the official numbers and the state slogan: The Land of Enchantment.

"Humph. What's so enchanting about it?"

I sat on my crumbling cement stoop and waved my arm like a television hostess bestowing a refrigerator, a bedroom set, and six cases of macaroni and cheese to a game show winner.

"What's not enchanting about it, Ulak? Just look at it! Look at it! And welcome, boy! Welcome to my crazy town!"

Ulak sat in his car and stared for a long time. I saw his dark eyes register the graffiti on my neighbor's cement fence, the dust bowl I called a front yard, the twisted catalpa tree that would not bear buds this Spring. He looked at me, at my neighbor's house, and I could hear him calculate the days we must have remained without rain, the brain cells I must have lost to choose a place even Mother Nature forgets.

So different from my old California home, I thought. He must think I'm crazy to move here, to this place of sifted dust and poverty. I gazed at the graffiti, the way the letters lurched along the ochre brick like boxcars on a fractal train, thought about the times my cowboy neighbors tossed lariats in the street. They don't care about the dirt, the noise. They live the enchantment, catch it with rope.Ulak shut the ignition. His car groaned, shuddered to silence.

"Hmmmmph. Every man has his own style of eating yogurt."

My two young boys ran to the car to greet him. They grabbed the door handle and hauled him outside.

"Ulak! Ulak!" My youngest son, 9, pulled a crumpled paper from the pocket of his jeans. "Ulak! We want to go to Roswell! Mom said you'd take us! Please, Ulak! Please!"

I tried to shush my boys but they didn't hear me. They kept their ears focused on the man standing in my driveway, a man with old world morals and overgrown back hair. He raised one bushy black eyebrow and eyed my boys. He took 9's paper, unfolded it carefully, and read the internet story about the alien archive two hours south.

"Hmmmmph. UFO Museum. Roswell." He paused, held the paper a bit further from his face, read the copy out loud in a slow, exaggerated voice. "See the famous Roswell UFO crash site."

My boys stood on their toes. A stray dog wandered past, unaware of the galactic history being made. Ulak cleared his throat.

"Well. There are many things mysterious in the world. We will go in the morning. And I will convince your mother to leave her work at home this time."

I stared, my mouth open in protest and surprise, but Ulak laughed.

"Birdie. You bring those little samples everywhere. This time I am a guest from a faraway land. You must not take them and embarrass us all. Now. Show me your house."

I tried to smile, gave my friend a hug, but the little monster in the back of my mind took control. Like hell, I'll leave my Avon at home, you big hairy Turk!

That night after the boys fell into dreams, Ulak and I labored over a game of Scrabble. I tossed back one shot of tequila, then two. Ulak added three tiles to a fourth on the board. Click, click, click. They slid like square UFOs over a faded, scratched cornfield, a fractal crop circle of archaic words their message, the word "omen."

Omen. Hmmmm. I wonder if Ulak knows I stuffed my purse full of Avon in anticipation of tomorrow, I thought.

"Ulak?"

I looked at the tiles resting on the wooden tray in front of me. J, Q, X, L, L, V, P.

"Yes, Birdie?"

Ulak watched me concentrate, watched me add a J and a L to spell "jail" along the upper right quadrant of the board. I lifted my eyes from the game and stared between Ulak's bushy eyebrows. His prominent nose almost twitched, almost gave away the secrets of the Turkish universe along with the contents of his Scrabble hand.

"Do you believe in UFOs?"

I grabbed two tiles from the pile and smiled. A, O. Good. I had a chance.

"Birdie. Why do you always label and sort things? I haven't seen you in six months, but you haven't changed. UFO means unidentified flying object. There are many such things unidentified. Many military vehicles. Sometimes a big bird can look like a missile. But I think you mean alien. From another planet. In Turkey we accept we are not alone. You Americans need to know things. You need to know where you stand. I tell you this, Birdie. We stand among all those in the heavens."

Ulak hesitated. I thought he meant to add something else, perhaps a lecture on galactic peace or the Bush anti-missile defense initiative. He can be a political and wordy guy. But he slid all his tiles into empty spaces on the board to form the only word that made sense.

"Unexpected."

"Birdie," he said, as he swept his hand over the board. "I win." He downed another shot of tequila, his seventh, as I shook the tiles from the game board into the old cardboard box. Three tiles fell to the floor. I picked them up, held them in my hand. I. F. O.

Identified Flying Object, I thought.

"Hey Ulak! IFO! Ha ha ha ha!" I exploded in laughter, pictured weather balloons, swamp gas, all things NASA sanctioned, all things non-alien. Ulak snorted.

"Birdie. Even alien spacecraft are identified if you know what they are."

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To be continued, tomorrow!

I know I never finished telling you the Don't Shoot adventure, but I'm (gulp) entering the First Chapters novel competition and will be removing all my Avon stories (minus this one) from my Gather site, so read 'em while you can!