She held out the fries to me. “Fry?”
Instead of leaving, I took one. I said, “Wherever I go, there you are.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s this story. My editor won’t let me get away.”
I reached out and helped myself to another fry without asking. “Do you want to?”
“No.” She picked up a ketchup-laden fry and considered it for a moment. “I like to see things through to the bitter end.”
Instead of leaving, I asked her another question. “Are the endings always bitter?”
She shook her fry, flinging the excess ketchup away into the dirt. I noticed that she turned a little to the side as she did so, to keep the droplets from falling inside the cordoned-off area in front of us. The wind had picked up; everything was blowing a little at a slant. “I never say always,” she said. “If the answer was always, this would be a pretty depressing job.”
The wind was blowing the black dust all over the tops of my feet, starting to turn the pink straps of Corinne’s flip-flops an ugly dusky color. Instead of leaving, I stayed put and watched them darken. “I kind of assumed that was the case.”
“It has its moments.” She had her head tilted and was looking at me with her eyes squinted. “Word on the street is there’s another shuttle launch tomorrow.”
I took another French fry. “Are you guys hanging around to see if there’s going to be another spectacle?” I said.
“If I said no, I would only be 90 percent telling the truth,” she said.
“You could do worse.” The fries were delicious, and they were making me ravenous, but I knew it was only a matter of time before they hit like a ton of bricks, like some sort of gastrointestinal revenge. When I stepped woozily back over the tape, I caught my toe, and she had to grab my shoulder to make sure I didn’t fall.
Instead of shaking her off, I grabbed her hand. Instead of turning around and booking it back toward the fence, I leaned in toward her ear, as though someone were close by, hanging on to our every word. “You know they were lying about that control panel switch, don’t you?” I said. “They knew it was a bad idea. I mean, they didn’t know. They thought it might be risky, but they decided to go for it anyway.”
“I know.” With a gesture so careful it seemed composed of the utmost kindness, Melissa Kramer took my shoulders and steadied me. “Well, my bets were on something like that.” She glanced back over her shoulder toward the shuttle hangar. “I don’t suppose there’s any way I’m going to convince you to go on the record with that, am I?”
I closed my eyes for a second and tried to think. “I bet you already know the answer to that question, don’t you, Melissa?”
“I have to try,” she said. “I can’t help it. Here. Just in case.” With her free hand, she was digging around in the pocket of her jeans. “Let me give you my card. Come on.” She held it out to me. “Just take it. You can always pitch it later. It’s 100 percent recyclable, I promise.”
As I was reaching out to take it, she said, “Who’s your little friend?” She jerked her head to the side, back over toward the fence.
I turned around and looked back. If you’ve been reading all the way through to this point, Arthur, I guess that I don’t have to tell you who was standing there. I still have no idea how he’d managed to escape his Spaceco minders, but there he was. All big mistakes are made up out of a thousand little ones. Is that you I’m quoting, Arthur, or am I misattributing? When Lacroix saw me, he didn’t stop filming, but he lifted his face from behind the camera and stared straight at me. Even from a distance I could read it, its fatal expression of dispassion, and my knees went a little weak. I don’t think it dawned on me until right at that moment that I had just done something I could not take back.
I wasn’t aware of doing anything, of having moved so much as a muscle. But I must have looked stricken, because Melissa Kramer put her hand on my shoulder again. She was talking to me, in her steely rational voice, I remember, saying something about how Lacroix was too far away to have caught anything from our conversation, that the wind was blowing against him. But I was already shaking her off and running across the sand toward the man with the camera, as fast as I could in my dirty pink shoes, oblivious to the rattlesnakes, the endangered beetles, the fundamental fact that I was in a dangerous place where you need to watch every step.
Lacroix had already put down his camera and ducked back through the fence. I could see him through the chain link, swinging his camera a little as he walked, hefting the weight of his compact, powerful equipment with each step. He wasn’t hurrying, or trying to evade me, Arthur. You’d have thought he would have looked pleased—what with having just captured this latest dramatic plot twist on camera. But he just looked like a man who wanted to go home, back to his beautiful wife and his quiet hotel room. I caught up to him just after I got through the fence, and I tried to grab his shoulder. I was moving so fast that I accidentally punched him in the back. But he barely flinched.
“Easy does it, Jessica,” he said.
“Theo,” I said. “Stop. I want to explain.”
With a faint sigh, he turned around. It was the first time I had ever seen him look tired. He was looking up toward the clouds, and then, with some effort or annoyance, he lowered his eyes and looked at me. “The answer is no,” he said.
“Theo,” I said. “I am begging you.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I hand everything off to them when I leave the premises. You know the arrangement.” He looked down at his camera and sighed a little. “I’ll see you at dinner.”
Arthur, the storms have been clearing off, and I just got a call a few minutes ago that the launch might actually be happening after all. My presence is being requested at the launch site. It looks like we may be space bound today after all. Li’s going to be here in a minute to pick me up, so I have to go.
Onward and (maybe) upward,
Jess
From: Jessica Frobisher
Sent: Saturday, August 16, 2014 4:01 pm
To: Arthur Danielson
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: blasting off
Hey Arthur,
Storms have moved out, and Central Command has given us the go-ahead, so we’re launching in an hour. I have to go get geared up and give the kiddos a quick call.
If you can get out of the trees and go someplace where you have a clear shot of the sky, you should look up. I’ll give you a wave when we fly past.
See you on the other side.
Jess
Sent from my iPhone
From: Jessica Frobisher
Sent: Saturday, August 16, 2014 10:38 pm
To: Arthur Danielson
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: Touched down
safely at dusk. A landing time of 20:29. Exactly as scheduled.
Yes, I have an answer to that question, but I need to think on it.
So more later. I think.
Love,
Jess
Sent from my iPhone
From: Jessica Frobisher
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2014 2:24 pm
To: Arthur Danielson
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: Re: well?
Hey Arthur,
I don’t know what you read, but it wasn’t as bad as they made it sound. Lacroix is fine. The man was once chomped on by a (doubtlessly provoked) hippopotamus, for Christ’s sake. He’s going to outlive us all. Last time I saw him he was at the hospital in Sierra Vista, involved in a heated argument with the nurses about his right, or lack thereof, to film on hospital property. There was one of him versus three of them, and he was giving back as good as he got. When he saw me, he took a time-out to ask me if I would agree to a postspace interview. Of course I said no. But he has my e-mail address, and he’s going to har
ass me until I cave in or ask the university to change it.
Lacroix wasn’t the only casualty. There were other things that were damaged . . . and unlike our obnoxious filmmaker, I think it’s safe to say that they’re beyond fixing.
But I don’t want to talk about them right now. The truth is, I’m a little distracted by all the epiphanies I’m having. They’re keeping me up at night. I’m told that these symptoms—mania, sleeplessness—are common aftereffects for people who go up. I’m told they don’t last.
As for your question . . . you know as well as I do that it’s a sore subject. Maybe we should just leave it lie?
Your prudent, sleepless
Jess
From: Jessica Frobisher
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2014 3:18 pm
To: Arthur Danielson
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: Re: seriously now
Danielson, I seriously don’t have to tell you anything. If you’re dying to know how it all went down, then maybe you’ll just have to bite the bullet and shell out $10 to go see the movie in a theater when it comes out. What with everything that’s happened, Lacroix’s gotten such good publicity that the film may make a run in the mainstream theaters, not just the artsy-fartsy ones like State Street. But I sure as hell hope not.
Besides, I signed so many nondisclosure agreements that I’m no longer sure who I’m allowed to tell what. I don’t need a lawyer to tell me that all these missives I have been sending you are a huge liability. Actually, I knew that all along. E-mail isn’t secure, as my newly estranged husband used to remind me. Who knows who could be reading this?
How about if I told you the expurgated version I told Jack and Corinne? It went like this: My trip out into space was an exciting adventure. Our planet is a lot smaller than you would think. And more staggeringly beautiful than you can possibly imagine, but in a terrible sort of way.
There’s the longer, trickier unabridged version that I’ll need to tell them eventually, of course. I’ve spent a few of my sleepless nights trying to think about what I’ll say, someday in the future, when they have sins and failures of their own, and they have a better grip on the terminology, and a better chance of understanding.
But I have some time, I guess, to practice.
Re the northern lights: heartbreaking in a good way or just heartbreaking?
Jess
From: Jessica Frobisher
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2014 3:20 pm
To: Arthur Danielson
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: p.s.
It looks like I’m getting your 265 section, so thanks a lot.
From: Jessica Frobisher
Sent: Sunday, August 31, 2014 11:43 pm
To: Arthur Danielson
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: practice run
Yes, you read that right.
I wasn’t being coy. We haven’t even figured out what we’re telling Jack and Corinne about the separation.
As for my trip . . . it’s just hard to describe. That’s all. My first day back on campus, I ran into Moira on the steps of the Hatcher. I was coming back from your office with an armful of your indefinitely checked-out library books. Your days of abusing your faculty borrowing privileges are over, I’m afraid. And Krasinski’s taking your office. The decision was made the day before I got back, so I couldn’t call dibs even if I wanted to. If I weren’t trying to cut back on my daily dose of paranoia, I would say that this was a strategic move—to spare everyone the unseemliness of my name being brought up so close to yours. But perhaps not.
The first thing Moira said to me was, “You survived.” She laughed after she said it to make it a joke, although I swear she sounded a little disappointed.
The second thing she said was, “How was it?”
I smiled and gave her the most unsatisfying reply I possibly could. “It was fine,” I said. There was nothing else to do after that except for us each to go our separate ways. Her to the lab. Me to drop off your books, to divest my life of the last few traces of you.
Are you ready, Arthur? The real answer goes something like this:
Everything was a little crazy when we arrived at the launch site. Even though Spaceco was doing their damnedest to keep the launch “low-profile,” it was clear that someone had “accidentally” leaked the time of the launch, and the entire dirt track was covered with TV vans and cars, which meant Jed didn’t have a chance to show off his action-hero driving skills again. All he could do was creep along like everyone else, one hand on the horn. Every now and then he had to veer off the road, and we all had to reach out and put our hands on the windows to brace ourselves. Elle was sitting in the front seat, filming the general chaos, while Lacroix sat in the back, zooming in and out on Liam and me. He was hoping to capture, I imagined, some final bit of earthly domestic drama, maybe the moment where I broke down and sobbed, and owned up at last.
If that’s what he was hoping for, he was in for a disappointment. But the tension in the car was cranked up so high that it was almost as audible as the hum of the air conditioner. Liam had taken my hand and was kneading my fingers a little, a camera-perfect gesture that looked like comfort. But it wasn’t, Arthur. I think he was goading me on, warning me not to back down.
But most importantly there was the matter of Liam’s phone. It had started ringing not long after we left the hotel. Every five minutes, like clockwork, the Imperial Death March would start up (thank you, Jack), and every five minutes, after a beat or two, Liam would glance down at it and turn it off. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. “Li,” I said. “Will you please answer that thing?”
“It’s Chris,” he said, “from Legal. I told him that I would call him right after the launch. I can’t imagine what his problem is. He’s always like this. Everything is a crisis. Crisis-a-minute Chris is what Tristan calls him.” He turned to look at Lacroix. “That’s off the record, by the way.”
“Of course,” Lacroix said. Whether he had turned the camera on me or not, I don’t know, Arthur. Everything had slowed down, suddenly jumped into exquisitely sharp relief. Through the van window, I could see the flies lifting up and touching down in their drugged, intricate loops. “Everything hangs in such a delicate balance,” you said in that PBS interview. Can I be a know-it-all and say this, Arthur? You have no fucking idea.
“Are you cold?” Liam asked. It was like his voice was coming from far away. “Hey, Kent, can we turn down the AC?”
“We’re almost there,” said Kent.
But it wasn’t the AC. I proceeded to shiver while I got geared up in my long underwear and space suit. I proceeded to shiver while I paced around the shuttle hangar, watching Elle and Lacroix run back and forth across the launch pad, holding up tiny little meters to the sky, doing last-minute checks on lighting.
I shivered while I called Jack and Corinne. Jack refused to take the phone when Paula tried to hand it to him. Corinne, true to form, wouldn’t shut up. Both of the hermit crabs had died the night before, in one final skirmish that was years in the coming. There were legs everywhere, Corinne reported, and— She paused for a minute, distracted from her gory blow-by-blow.
“Are you in space right now?” she asked. I think it was the guttering reception, Arthur, that made her think I was even farther away than I actually was.
“No, sweetheart,” I said. “I’m still in Arizona.”
“Oh,” she said. “You sound like you’re in space. Like you’re a thousand miles away. No, a million.” And then she went right back to talking, saving me the trouble of saying anything more. Which was a good thing, Arthur, because I was starting to cry a little. I had to hold the phone away from my mouth. On the other side of the launch pad, a man was waving impatiently at me. Time to go, go, go. It seemed like everyone was manhandling
me. Someone was practically pulling the phone out of my hands. The rule is that you can take phones with you, but they have to be turned off and secured in one of the million pockets of your space suit until you reach your low-orbit cruising altitude of about 120 miles up. Someone else was jerking on my watchband, making sure it was secure.
“OK, bye,” she said nonchalantly. “Have fun in space.”
And then, in spite of all the urgency, there were a few more minutes of milling around. Liam had been swallowed up by the crowd, but suddenly he reappeared. “Everything’s going to be fine,” he said. “We just ran through the last test sequence. It went perfectly.”
God is an Astronaut Page 24