The Angel and the Ape, Part 2

"Hey," the greeter stepped in front of the pair. "No shirt, no shoes, no service," he said pointing down at Pascal.

"But--" Fr. Shaheen protested.

"--Nah, Just kidding, go on in. I've been wanting to say that ever since you little guys landed."

The two entered the store proper. "It'll just be a minute, My cigs are right over there--" Fr. Shaheen gestured toward one of the checkout lanes. A line of shoppers, at least 20 deep, snaked around the surrounding displays.

He swore in Arabic under his breath. "OK, it'll be longer than a few minutes."

"Short-staffed tonight," said the shopper at the end of the line. "Let me guess, Cigarettes? That's what everyone else is here for."

He glanced down at Pascal. "First time at Wally World?"

Pascal bobbed his head up and down in an exaggerated nod.

"He needs to see the other side of humanity," said Fr. Shaheen. "Those ivory tower folks at the college are showing them Olympic athletes and firefighters and renaissance masterpieces, and I want to give them the whole picture."

"Hoo boy you're in for something alright," the shopper chuckled. "Hey between you and me, if you wanna blow up the Earth after this I won't even blame you."

As they talked, a large woman in a scooter rolled up to the end of the line. "Aww!" she cooed between breaths of exertion. "So cute." She reached down and scratched Pascal behind the ears. "Whosagoodboyyesyouare!"

«I'm a person and I have personal space!» Pascal barked, ducking out of her reach.

The shopper glared at the woman. "Seriously, lady? You been living under a rock the last two months? What makes you think that's OK?"

"He's got fur, ain't he? And four legs and a wet nose. If God didn't want us to pet 'em then why'd He make 'em fuzzy?"

"You must be from Austin," said the shopper. "I thought we chased all you weirdos away weeks ago."

The pair's argument gradually increased in volume. The woman rose from her scooter and began gesticulating. Fr. Shaheen stepped between them. "Let's be charitable--"

"Cram it, fish eater!" the woman snapped.

Pascal slipped down an aisle and out of sight, anxious to avoid the melee that was surely brewing.

He stared up at the shelves and scented the air as he walked. Away from his human host everything seemed intimidatingly tall. Suddenly he felt something wet under his right front paw. He looked down at the yellow puddle underfoot and sniffed, the unmistakable odor of human excreta.

An elderly human was waddling around the corner, more of the same odor wafting off of him. "Better clean that up, sonny," he said to a passing employee.

"Clean what up?" A adolescent male voice approached from the other direction. The lad came into view and looked down at the puddle. His face flashed with frustration and then to embarrassment when he noticed Pascal's paw marinading in the mess.

"I heard over the walkie that one of you guys was here." he sighed, pulling a wad of sanitizer wipes from a cleaning cart behind him. "So, ready to nuke us from orbit yet?" he handed the wipes to Pascal. "It's the only way to be sure."

Pascal shook his head as he wrung the towelettes between his forepaws, wiping under his claws and between the pads on his palms.

"No?" The boy said as he mopped up the puddle. "You will be when you get out of here.

"I'll take those," he put the spent wipes in a trash bin on the cart. "All good?"

Pascal jerked his foreleg forward and gave an unpracticed thumbs-up along with an awkward affirmative bob of the head.

"Cool," the lad said. "Name's Jeff, by the way."

"Pascal," he synthesized, patting himself on the belly in greeting.

"Pleased to meet you," Jeff said, copying the gesture. "I'm gonna say sorry on behalf of my entire species for all this." He waved an arm vaguely indicating their surroundings. "Walmart's one heck of an anthropology lesson."

Pascal flicked an ear in goodbye and turned to walk back to the front of the store. He heard more Arabic oaths in the direction of the tills, and judging by the clamor more nicotine-deprived humans had joined the fracas. He did a 180 and trotted past Jeff finishing up his cleaning.

"Wise choice," Jeff said as Pascal turned the corner and headed deeper into the bowels of the store.

He continued walking, nose to the ground making sure not to step in any more surprises, until he heard two more humans approaching.

"Honey, why did you grab so many cans of beans?"

"It's those damn monkey foxes, Dave. I'm tellin' you they're fixin' to invade. And when they do, we'll be prepared."

"With beans?" her husband sighed. "There's only six of them. They don't mean any harm. One of them's even been coming to the radio club meetings. He's been trying to teach some of us a word or two of their language."

"It's all an act, Dave." The couple emerged from around the corner.

"There's one now!" the woman shrieked. Startled, Pascal jumped backward, knocking a few items off the shelf behind him with his tail. After gathering himself, he looked up at the woman, gawking at her spray-on tan and bottle blonde hair.

«I didn't know humans could be orange,» he muttered.

"What was that? Speak up, space coyote!"

Pascal reached into his wallet and pulled out his keyer, but the woman snatched it out of his paw.

"Ha! You're not brain-washing anyone tonight!" She hurled the keyer to the ground. Pascal dove after it just as the woman brought her foot down, intending to smash the keyer but catching Pascal's paw instead.

Pain shot up his foreleg. He stifled a bark and looked up at the male human as he massaged his paw, determined for this inter-species interaction to end peacefully. "You friend smell familiar. From radio club?"

"You got me," Dave smiled.

"Don't talk to the enemy!" his wife said, moving between him and Pascal.

Dave began tugging at her arm. "I'm so sorry," he said with a frown. "She's on some new meds; we're working on the dosage."

"ARE YOU CALLING ME CRAZY?!" the woman yelled, her eyes darting around wildly. "I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO'S NOT CRAZY AROUND HERE!"

"I'm so sorry," Dave repeated, steering her down the aisle and out of sight.

Pascal cocked an ear toward the tills again. The din had only gotten louder. He limped around for a few minutes until he caught the unmistakable smell of sugars and lipids on the air.

"Ma'am, this is a bakery, but not a BAKERY bakery." Another young human, female this time, was being accosted by an older woman. "If you want a premade sheet cake, we got premade sheet cakes. You want me to put 'Happy Birthday' on it? I'd be more than happy to, but we can't bake a cake in the shape of a Stanley cup."

"The Customer is always right!" snapped the woman.

"in matters of taste," the girl muttered under her breath.

"What was that?!"

"I said 'Is there anything else I can help you with?'"

"No! You've just lost yourself a customer."

"oh no..." the girl whispered sarcastically.

The woman spun around, nearly tripping over Pascal's tail, stabbing it with a stiletto in the process.

He yelped in pain but the woman stormed off without looking back. His cry caught the attention of the girl behind the counter. She leaned over to peer down at Pascal. "You OK?"

«Honestly I've been better,» he grunted, probing with a padded finger at the maroon stain spreading over the white pelage of his tail.

"This tail fine," he said via the keyer. "Not much this blood. Hurt worse before."

He stood there for a moment, nursing his tail in silence as the girl looked on.

At last he curled his tail tight against his back and put his paws up on the sneeze guard. "You friend sell what?"

"Cakes and cookies," she said.

"Those C A K E S and those C O O K I E S what?" He drew out the unfamiliar words.

"They're food, you eat them. You want to try a sample?"

"Not want," he wagged his head from side to side. "Might kill me yinrih. maybe that human food this yinrih poison."

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that," she said.

Pascal peeked over the counter. "No chair? What way you friend sit? All day that boss make stand you friend?"

"Yeah," she sighed. "They say it makes us look lazy if we sit. Such is the life of a wage slave. But I guess that's not a thing where you guys are from, huh?"

"We yinrih have," said Pascal. "some place we yinrih go buy this thing or that thing. Some place eat some food. When pup at that place me yinrih work, bring those food, take away those dirty bowl."

"You were a waiter!" The girl said.

"Me W A I T E R," Pascal nodded. He had set his HUD specs on his muzzle and was hastily skimming a poorly organized English lexicon for words he couldn't recall, occasionally jotting down new ones as the conversation unfolded.

"Where we come from, this place call--" he grunted the word in Outlander before finding the correct English translation. "Litter of moons. It call because planet big made of gas, have many moons, they follow planet like pups follow dam."

"That's sweet," said the girl.

"anyway," Pascal continued, "at moonlitter, it part of E D U C A T I O N of pups, they make pup work at store or at R E S T A U R A N T. They say it make pup E M P A T H I Z E with those worker in C U S T O M E R S E R V I C E when grow up."

"Ah, so it's part of your schooling, then? They make you hold down a job?"

"Yes," he nodded. "Teach F I N A N C I A L L I T E R A C Y too."

"I wonder what alien Karens are like," the girl said half to herself.

"K A R E N?" Pascal queried.

"That--" she pointed at the wound on Pascal's tail. "--that woman who stepped on your tail, that was a classic Karen."

"Yes yes," he bobbed his head. "Those we have."

"We call them..." here he paused while digging through the lexicon. "...It hard to say. "My language Outlander have thing English not have. English say 'you' for everyone, but Outlander have different 'you' for different people."

He uttered a few melodic grunts and whines. "That mean, 'you' but only for you sire or dam or litter mate. It called--" he rummaged for an obtuse grammatical term. "--it called F A M I L I A L form."

More growling, "and that mean 'you' but for friend only, That is A M I C A B L E form."

A chuff and some whining, "and that mean 'you' for everyone else. And that called T R A N S A C T I O N A L form."

Recognition dawned on the girl's face. "Ah! English doesn't do that but Spanish does. You say 'Tú' for friends and family but 'Usted' for everyone else."

Pascal flicked an ear in acknowledgement. "yes yes. Like that. When you talk to customer or when customer talk to you, It proper use transactional form. When you worker talk other worker use transactional too, maybe amicable if good good friend. But you never never use familial form at work. It considered V U L G A R."

"That bad?"

"Yes yes." Pascal geckered in amusement. "When foreigner learn Outlander they make this mistake much. Sunshine does this all the time. You see her, yes yes? Other missionary, no fur and big ears, she is from other part of Focus, planet called Hearthside. When Hearthsider learn Outlander, they think familial form mean 'I like you, you like my family, so I call you by that'. But that not right. Well, that not only meaning. Yes it mean 'I think you like family' but it also mean 'I expect you TREAT ME like family. So obey like pup obey sire or dam, or give special treatment like between litter mates. When customer use that form, it make them sound E N T I T L E D. Like you owe them respect, like they are one of your sires or your dams.

"Anyway, These Karens, they like to use familial 'you' to workers, So we have a word, it means 'one who uses familial pronoun'. Long in English but much shorter in Outlander. So I put 'Karen' in our lexicon."

The girl smiled.

"You show your teeth. That is good, yes?"

"Oh yeah, sorry," she said. "Humans show our teeth when we're happy."

"Like this?" Pascal slid his lips back, flashing his fangs.

The girl laughed. "Yeah. You know, I didn't realize how much like us you guys were. We have all these stories about aliens, some want to kill us, some want to loot our planet, sometimes we kill them. Sometimes they're so different from us that we can't even communicate. But it rarely ends well when we meet. But here we are, two veterans of the customer service trenches trading war stories. It makes the universe feel a little less lonely."

Pascal cocked an ear toward the front of the store. "The argument has stopped. I go back."

"Nice meeting you I'm Lupe, And your name?"

"Pascal," He said, rearing up on his hind feet and patting his belly.

"Bye, Pascal, Oh, and your English is great, I think you got better just while we were talking."

"Thank you. I talk more, I get better." He started off toward the front of the store.

"Got my cigs!" Fr. Shaheen, sporting a black eye and fat lip, held the carton of carcinogens aloft like a video game protagonist after acquiring a new item. A few of the other patrons were being hauled off by cops. "The bishop's gonna have some questions for me in the morning. I'm sure this'll end up in a few YouTube videos at least."

"So," he said as they walked back to the pickup, a lit cigarette already between his lips. "You've seen Man the angel and Man the ape, what do you think about us now?"

Pascal took stock of his injuries, his smashed paw and lacerated tail, then slid back his lips and looked up at the priest.

"You're showing your teeth. Is something wrong?" Fr. Shaheen asked.

«No, not at all. I know you can't smell our pheromones, so I thought imitating you're teeth-bearing gesture would let you know I'm happy.»

«I see now that humans can be violent, greedy, disgusting animals.»

"And that makes you happy?"

«Because yinrih are also violent, greedy, disgusting animals. You think these claws are just for climbing trees? I'm not as naive as you think, and neither are the other missionaries. We didn't set out to find perfect creatures to admire on a pedestal. We want others who can walk down the hard road of life together with us. We want friends, and that's what we found.»