Elise

He loves me!

His words were a gigantic swell of light and happiness that rose up within me, suffusing me with warmth and strength.  I was adrift in an ocean of pleasant feelings, and I never wanted this moment to end. 

Rarely in life can one recognize a moment of true happiness for what it really is, and relish it as it occurs.  Sadly, winter’s chill demanded we move along.  

As we continued down the path, I desperately tried to savor the moment instead of dreading its inevitable end.  Each step through that dream sequence made it more difficult.

Eventually, the path drew away from the water, taking us off campus through a small downtown district. 

“Mind if we grab a quick bite to eat before getting to the party, love?” I asked.

Slapping his palm to his forehead, Alex blurted, “Duh!  I’m sorry El.  I’ve been thoughtless.  I didn’t even think about dinner.  This day has been distracting, to say the least.”

“There are only a handful of places that are within walking distance, so it’s pretty much fast food or a deli” he explained.

“Either one works for me”

I was just hungry.  A year ago I would have worried about my figure when selecting, but the virus seemed to keep my body in peak physical condition.  Something about altering the infected’s metabolism to suit consumption, I thought I had read.

We stopped at a deli and ordered sub sandwiches.  His was a foot-long cold cut.  I had two.

As we left the deli, I got nervous about the party again.  So many uncertainties threatened me.  Would they make fun of my height?  Would there be other infected women there?  And if so, did I have to worry about them trying to take Alex from me?

Alex was pretty perceptive, but all guys were completely dense when it came to decoding attention from girls.  He mentioned that his buddy’s girlfriend was infected, would she be a problem like Ash?

Ten minutes later we arrived.  I had to walk somewhat slowly to avoid making Alex jog, but it was worth it to hold his hand.  He was always so warm.

The place was on the third floor of a small apartment complex.  We heard the music spilling through the closed door as we waited for our host.  Finally, a figure opened the door holding a red Solo cup. 

He was cute, in a grungy sort of way.  A little thin for my taste, he was a few inches shorter than Alex.  Pale, with brown movie star hair, he sported a patchy beard.  He wore a band t-shirt over top of a long sleeve t-shirt and a heavily worn pair of jeans.  Again I was reminded of the injustice of expected dress code between the sexes.  Guys wore just any old thing, and girls had to dress to impress.  Not fair at all. 

“Hey man! You finally made it!  We were expecting you around 9:30.  You’re almost an hour late!  I could have used a decent partner for beer pong.” He spoke too quickly, clearly having started the night early.

He turned to the remaining crowd and taunted, “Cause none of these bastards can sink a damned cup!” 

A chorus of curses followed from behind him. 

I rolled my eyes as he and Alex bro-fisted.

“Uh, you know how it is.  We got…caught up.” Alex was clearly trying to avoid questions with his thinly veiled innuendo.

Alex got a punch to the shoulder.

“Ha! You dog!”

Finally he noticed – or chose to notice – my towering form.  If he was surprised by my height, he didn’t show it, looking me in the eyes, not at my boobs. 

“Oh, hey! I’m standing here like a complete tool.  You must be Elise!  Alex talks about you constantly.”

I smiled. “Does he now?..”

He brought his voice up an octave, parroting what was no doubt intended to be Alex, “’This homework is impossible, I bet Elise would know how to do it; I should call her.’  ‘Elise has a sweater like that one, but it’s blue, not green; it looks incredible on her.’  ‘When summer break comes, I’m going to take Elise for a surprise trip to –‘

“OOF” he was cut off abruptly by a sharp elbow to the ribs from Alex.

I giggled, looking at Alex, who was now blushing.  He’s so cute, I could just eat him up! Hmm, what was that bit about taking me somewhere? 

“I’m Elise, yes” I extended my hand, which he shook in a moderate grip.  “And you must be Jason.  My boyfriend isn’t so good with introductions.”  I nudged Alex for the slight.

He nodded, and beckoned, “Come on in, you guys are probably cold.”

We walked in and looked around.  There were about 8-10 people seated on sectional couches in the family room surrounding two coffee tables slid together.  Several people were playing or watching a beer pong game.  I noticed a sliding door leading to a balcony where a smoker was indulging their habit. 

Jason was clearly accustomed to having guests, since he went into host mode with an efficiency that impressed me. 

“Bathrooms are there, and there” he pointed to one on either side of the family room area. “We’ve got jungle juice on the counter – watch out though, it’s got Everclear in it, so take it easy.

“Jello shooters should be done soon, and there’s a pony keg of Nati Light in the tub on ice” He pointed to the bathroom to indicate where the keg was.

“Some of my roommates are out of town, and I think there’s an open room if you want to crash.  If you have to puke, don’t do it on the carpet.  If you can’t manage that, there’s Resolve under the sink in the kitchen.” He was all business.

As he spoke, I noticed nearly every eye in the room was on me, so I slouched to make myself look small.  It didn’t matter, I was easily the largest thing in the room.  My head was about level with the top of the kitchen cabinets where a huge variety of empty beer bottles had been lined up.  I’d gotten accustomed to seeing immensely dusty and unpainted surfaces that most people never expected to be seen.

I scanned the guests.  Girls and guys were pretty evenly represented, but I didn’t catch another infected-sized woman.  I felt exposed, and tugged on Alex’s arm to draw him to the family room where we could be seated.

Jason took our coats as we headed into the family room.  Several people were playing quarters on the coffee table, and we grabbed the end of one couch with Alex sitting next to a skinny girl with purple hair and lots of eyeliner. 

I looked around with embarrassment when I had to move the coffee table to the side in order to fit my legs in front of me, but the room had forgotten us already as it went back to its revelry. 

Jason brought us drinks.  I got a jungle juice and Alex a beer, as we requested, and he was hovering over us making small talk about my visit. 

A bedroom door opened and a tall girl emerged.  She was thin, with flat shoulder-length flaxen hair.  Cute, but not beautiful. Stretch corduroy leggings showed off her long, graceful legs.  Her waist and hips were both very slender.  She had to duck a bit to get through the door frame, so I guessed she was a bit over 7 feet tall.  She noticed me immediately, her expression flat.  I watched her carefully to see if she was picking up Alex’s pheromones.

“Babe!  There you are” Jason said. “Meet my buddy Alex and his girlfriend Elise.”

Turning to us, he said, “Guys, this is my girlfriend, Vicki”

She looked over to us and gave us each a handshake. 

“Nice to meet you,” she murmured, pulling Jason aside to speak privately. 

I couldn’t hear her words, but they got a little bit heated.  I saw her glance at Alex a couple times as they argued.  Jason started to look a little flushed and excused the two of them.  They left through the front door, Jason tailing his much taller girlfriend.

“What do you think that was all about?” I struggled to whisper over the music.

Alex shrugged, “Who knows?”

“I thought you knew her?”

“Nah, never met her.  Sorry if I gave you that impression.” Alex said.

“What?! But you said she always comes to these parties.  You’ve been to them before, so why haven’t you met her?”

“Shit.  El, I’m sorry.  I did say that, didn’t I?  This is actually only the second one of these I’ve been to, and she had to leave before Jason could introduce us at the last one.  What’s the big deal?”

He didn’t understand what went on in the mind of infected women when we got near him. “Love, I’m just worried about you.  Do I have to remind you about Ash?  What if she tries something with you?”

From his look, it didn’t seem like he was taking my concern seriously.  He grabbed my large hand in both of his and looked up at me, “But I’ve got my big protector here to look after me.  Besides, this is a party.  She’s not going to do anything in front of a group of her friends.  I’m not exactly helpless either; I might even be able to hold my own against an early infected.”

The fact that he was confident in his strength didn’t sit well with me, as I didn’t know what this woman was capable of.  He was right about the group setting though.  I started sipping my drink to relax a bit.  It was new to me; a fruit punch taste with a hint of alcohol.

We chatted with the couple sitting next to us, who were very pleasant company.  We spoke of school and career plans as the party wound on around us.  Unsurprisingly, our conversation eventually turned toward the virus.

Carlos, the boyfriend and a civil engineering student, brought it up, “My dad said new construction is booming.  He’s so busy he had to hire a whole new crew. 

“Have you ever stopped to think about what humankind is going to do with the world we’ve built so far?  And how this will play out for not just the women, but the men too?”

I had, of course, but I didn’t have any answers.

“Think about it.  It’s all a giant system, right?  So you change one thing and everything else has to change too.  Take an example: bigger people means bigger cars, which means bigger factories to produce them, which means new robots, tooling and people in the factories, which means new mining operations to produce all the new raw materials needed, and so on and so on.  Each aspect of our society is affected this way.  It’s just incredible when you sit down to think about how deep it goes.    

“But that’s not the bad part.  My worry is that the most reasonable solution the government will come up with will involve separating men and women until everything can be worked out.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.  Why would they separate people?  That made no sense.  Alex looked confused too.

“Well, think about the cost of building a whole new infrastructure for society that’s twice the size as the current one.  It’s huge.  Beyond huge, actually, it’s cripplingly enormous.  As in, it probably can’t be done within any kind of reasonable timeframe.  It’s going to take tens of years, not years.  And that’s with a lot of sacrifices in other areas.

“So let’s say you’re the government, and you’re undertaking this unconscionably large project of building entire towns and cities all at once.  When this is happening, who is working to maintain the GDP that fuels this construction?  Men, for one, of course, as they’re not changing, but what about the women?  Sure, they can get along with interim solutions, like the seats being installed in normal cars, but when the majority of women are not 9 feet or 10 feet, but 12 feet?  That’s game changing.  How does a 12 foot woman go to the office to work in a building with 9 or 10 foot ceilings? 

“So what do we do about it?  Well, if you keep the men and women together, then they can’t both produce.  Men in the newly created women’s areas are going to be inefficient, and that’s assuming the additional size provisions could be afforded while we’re footing the bill for the women’s needs.  We’ve already established that keeping women in men’s areas just won’t work, so what do you have left?  Two distinct societies operating in parallel until the new society can include men.”

I wasn’t too sure his logic was completely sound.  It seemed to me there might be joint living arrangements, if not working, but I chose to stay silent.  His girlfriend looked like she was ready to cry, the fear of infection plain on her face.

Alex pulled on the thread Carlos had started, however, “Scary stuff, but you’re forgetting a critical piece.”

“What’s that?” he asked. 

“It’s the birth rate.  It’s down…like, way down.  Last month it was just 60% of what it was during the same period two years ago.  It’ll continue to fall as the epidemic spreads.  You talk about impact to society…that could mean the end of human life.  I’ve read that zero-infected zones have been set up in several areas around the country.

“They’re super serious about the quarantine in those areas.  Nothing in or out except electrons.  Not even food.  They grow or raise it all there.  We had a guy from the medical research community as a guest speaker in one of my lectures the other day, and he told us that a substantial amount of research is being diverted to infected fertility.”

The sobering thoughts had us all a little depressed, so I decided to change the subject.  I was feeling quite buzzed at this point.  I’d never heard of jungle juice, but I only had 4 of them, and I’m a big girl.  Whatever was in them seemed to pack quite a punch. 

“Who wants to go out on the balcony?” I offered cheerily.  “We can play a little ‘Never have I ever’” My devious look directed at Alex seemed to perk him right up.  He had a few beers, but didn’t seem overly drunk.

On the balcony we found Jason and Vicki, still arguing.  They quieted immediately when we came out. 

“We were just about to play some Never Have I Ever, you guys in?” I asked, liquid courage in my bloodstream. 

They agreed, and the six of us filled the plastic chairs around an electric heater.

Vicki asked, “So Elise, how long have you been seeing Alex?”  Jason shot her a look that she ignored.

“Winter break.  That’s when we started dating, at any rate.” I said, scooting my chair nearer Alex’s and grabbing his hand.  “We’ve been best friends for most of our lives” 

“Aww, that’s so sweet” she faked. 

“Can we get started now?” Jason implored.  “Everyone have a drink?”

“No, I need one.  Please get me one honey.” Vicki said, her commanding tone belying her pleasant words.

Her eyes were glued to Alex as Jason left to get her another.  I stared right back, clearing my throat to shift her attention to me. 

Vicki finally looked my way and asked, “I bet you get pretty drunk playing this game, huh Elise?”

 “What’s that supposed to mean?” my tone dipped dangerously.

“I’m just saying that you probably have…experience.”  She looked at Alex then, who was looking decidedly uncomfortable.