The Infinite Tides

by Christian Kiefer

  “There is path on left,” Peter’s voice came. “Watch out for thistles.”

  He stepped to the left, objects shifting in his view so that it appeared as if everything at his feet was in motion all at once and in all directions. His shoes crunched into what sounded like dead leaves but which felt hard and stiff, like a bundle of small sticks gathered together underfoot.

  “Little further, I think,” Peter said.

  He took a few more hesitant steps in that direction and then could just make out a pale path threading through waist-high thistle.

  Twice he stumbled but at last he arrived at Peter’s side and Keith extended his hand, his eyes still not quite adjusted to the night, and Peter took it and they shook and Peter said, “You did me great service.”

  “Not a problem,” Keith said.

  “I’m embarrassed,” Peter said.

  “No need.”

  “I don’t want to talk more with this. Only with thanks.”

  “OK, then,” Keith said. There was a brief pause and he expected Peter to continue his apology despite his statement to the contrary but he did not do so, instead standing in the dark silence, his shape emerging out of it as Keith’s eyes adjusted to the twilight. The telescope reflected a stripe of radiance, the last of the sunset.

  “Let me show you something,” Peter said.

  “It’s all right,” Keith said. “I’m just on my way out.”

  “Bah,” Peter said. “I’m happy to do this.” He leaned into the eyepiece and then stepped back and motioned Keith toward it. “Hard to see now because we are too early, but still there.”

  Keith leaned in and looked through the telescope, the circle of light shifting as he tried to align his vision with it. There might have been something there, a kind of blur, but all he could really make out was the luminescent blue field of the eyepiece. “I can’t really see anything,” he said at last.

  “Yes, too light up there maybe,” Peter said. “M57. Ring Nebula. Better to see later.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” Keith said.

  “Yes, is famous nebula,” Peter said. “In constellation Lyra. Between stars.”

  Keith took his eye from the telescope and looked into the low eastern sky toward which it pointed, out past where the cul-de-sac emptied onto Riverside, the houses there quiet and still and the streetlights yet dark and above them a scattering of dim stars.

  “You see?” Peter said.

  “I’ve never been good at finding that stuff.”

  “And yet you go up there.”

  “Yes, I do.” He returned his eye to the telescope. It was a static thing: like looking at a slightly blurry photograph in the far corner of an empty room. “I’m not an astronomer,” he said.

  “I know,” Peter said. “I know this.” It was almost an apology, as if he had said something wrong and then had said something wrong again in covering for it.

  Keith took his eye from the eyepiece and again looked up at the sky. The moon a faint arc and the deep blue awash with tiny points of light that hung motionless. The idea of what he had seen from the end of the robotic arm returned to him now, but only as something not to be believed, as if a dream he had recalled briefly only to have it sift again into vacancy. The stars themselves had held within them a brilliance he had not expected or understood, their colors so bright and vibrant that they seemed all at once to clear away all possible methods of describing them.

  He continued to stare up in the direction of whatever constellation Peter had said the nebula was in, the remembrance of the starfield during his mission already gone, the stars before him dimmed by the atmosphere. It was difficult to believe that these were the same stars at all.

  He wanted to walk back to the concrete and asphalt of the cul-de-sac and on to Jennifer’s door but instead of excusing himself and leaving the field he said, “You must have been really hung over.”

  “So much sick I could not walk,” Peter said, “but wife takes care of me.”

  “I wish I could say the same.”

  “Yes, yes, she is thinking she’s like mother to me.” There was a sense of irritation in Peter’s voice and he actually waved his hands in the air as if brushing away a fly.

  Keith did not say anything in response, only standing and looking from Peter to the stars and back to Peter again.

  “Only my wife she does not complain. She is happy here.”

  “Well, that’s important.”

  “Yes, yes, she is happy and I complain.”

  He stared into the sky at the few stars visible above them and then around the ever-increasing darkness of the field. He could make out the slightly luminescent forms of the thistle in the night now, their twisting, ragged feather shapes stretching into invisibility.

  “She is a good person, I think,” Peter said. Then he added, “My wife.”

  “Seems that way to me.”

  “It is true. Her brother and her mother all complain and complain.”

  “Why did you come here?” Keith said. He did not know why he asked it and yet he had, and now he stood and listened as Peter exhaled noisily, something between a breath and a sigh.

  “Luda,” he said. “She wanted to and so we did.”

  “You don’t like it here, though?”

  “It’s not same. I mean I know it’s not same, but I was not this stupid in Ukraine.” He paused and then said, “I mean job. This job I have here is stupid. Not good.”

  “What did you do in Ukraine?”

  “I worked at National Academy of Sciences. At observatory.”

  “Oh,” Keith said. He realized that he had not so much as glanced at Peter’s résumé since the day Luda placed it into his hand. “Sounds like a good job.”

  “Yes, yes. Good for me. I was not astronomer but I knew them all. Some cosmonauts too. I did university but with Luda and the kids then I did not finish. But I have brain. I do have brain. Here in America, I put stock on shelves. Unload trucks. And then I make a fool of myself for pretty girl. Here I am not so smart as I was.”

  “You mean the girl at Starbucks.”

  “Audrey. I do not know why. Too young for me, maybe. I don’t even know. It is embarrassing.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”

  “I have Luda,” Peter said.

  “Yes,” Keith said. “Lesson learned, then.”

  “I think you are right. But I’m thinking about her still. That has not stopped.”

  “She’s pretty young.”

  “I know that. She is … American. Beautiful like flower. Like yellow flower. And nice too. A nice girl.”

  Keith said nothing, once again staring up into the night sky.

  “Ah,” Peter said suddenly. It was an exclamation, a sound of disgust. “This place has made me stupid.” Then he paused as if considering his choice of words. “No, not stupid. Foolish.”

  Again, silence.

  “I make you uncomfortable with this talk,” Peter said.

  Keith looked at him, his own expression of surprise probably concealed by the lack of light. “I guess so,” he said.

  “Yes,” Peter said, “and I have already delayed you from plans. I apologize again.”

  “No need,” Keith said. He did not know what else to say and so he said nothing. He wondered then if this was what his wife had been talking about, his reluctance to discuss the emotional quality of human life, to share his feelings, but what was he supposed to say?

  “You are successful man,” Peter said. “Famous astronaut. This is not something they can take away from you. If you moved to Ukraine right now people would know and you would still be you. Here I move to America and I am nothing all over again. It is like I was again born like new baby and have to start over with job any teenager could get.” He paused and then added: “I don’t think you will understand.”

  “It’s a problem,” Keith said. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I don’t know this,” Peter said.

  Keith said n
othing for a moment. Then: “Look, all problems are the same. You figure out what the problem is, then you quantify it, then you work on solving it.”

  “It is maybe not same,” Peter said.

  “Everything’s the same,” Keith said. “You have a wife and children. You have a house. These are not problems. The problem is that you have a job you don’t like and you got drunk and made a mistake. Figure it out.” He was surprised at his own tumble of words. It was as if he had been waiting for the right words to come and when they did at last he could not stop them or even temper their tone or direction.

  Peter’s response was to say nothing for a long time. The stars in their ever-increasing luminosity above them. The moon a sliver at the edge of a dark bowl lined with the squared outlines of silhouetted houses.

  “I think you are right, Astronaut Keith Corcoran,” Peter said at last.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do. You are astronaut.”

  “That doesn’t much matter right now.”

  “This always matters.”

  “I wish that was true,” Keith said.

  Another pause and then Peter said, “You mean because your wife is not here?”

  Keith was surprised, surprised by the question and surprised that Peter knew anything about his marriage at all. “I don’t know if that has anything to do with it,” he said. It was silent again and he knew that Peter was waiting for him to volunteer more information but what more could he have said? That his wife had had an affair? That his daughter was dead? That he was fucking the woman across the street to fill the time? That he did not know if he would ever get a clean bill of health even though he had not had a real migraine since he was back in Houston? That the biggest thing he could accomplish on any given day was making a phone call and changing a bank account?

  “Maybe things are better for you now when she is gone,” Peter said, slowly.

  “Not really,” Keith said. He paused and then, for reasons he did not even understand, said, “She took all the furniture.”

  “All?”

  “All except the bed and the couch.”

  “She took television too?” There was real concern in his voice.

  “She left the little one but then I dropped it walking down the stairs. That’s the one you saw me set on the curb.”

  “Shit,” Peter said.

  Keith actually laughed now. “Yeah, that was a shit kind of day,” he said.

  “I believe you,” Peter said. Then he added: “Bad, bad, bad, bad.” His breath whistled slightly through his teeth.

  “Yeah,” Keith said. “Bad is what it is.”

  “But you are free to do whatever,” Peter said.

  “Yeah, I’m free to do whatever. But I don’t do anything.”

  “You’re going to do something now, yes?”

  “Yeah, I’m going to visit the lady across the street.”

  “Oh, you have date with pretty lady. That’s something.”

  Keith laughed. “Funny,” he said.

  “Why funny?”

  Keith shook his head. “It doesn’t feel like much.”

  “It is something, though, that I cannot do. You can go into space. You can date pretty lady. I stock shelves. I have wife. There are things I will never do.”

  Keith was smiling in the darkness but he knew it was unlikely that Peter could see him there. “I’m not the guy to admire,” he said.

  “If we could trade lives maybe everything different,” Peter said.

  “Yeah,” Keith said. A pause. Then he said, “I have to get going.”

  “Thank you for your time,” Peter said.

  “Not necessary.”

  They shook hands in the darkness. “You are welcome to be here,” Peter said.

  It was an awkward statement and it took Keith a moment to understand what he meant but when he did he said, “Thank you.”

  “I look at Messier objects mostly,” Peter said abruptly.

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Does not matter. Is just something to look at. Like Ring Nebula.”

  “OK then.”

  “Next time I show you more of them.”

  “Sure, next time,” Keith said.

  The sky had darkened and his eyes had adjusted to the shadows, the path a silver line snaking through the spindly, skeletal arms of thistle. Beyond them, the cul-de-sac absurdly bright, the edges of the field silhouetted against it: tiny black knives arrayed as a kind of barricade against an unseen foe. Neighbors and suburbanites. The whole world out there lit like a film set: all the actors retired to their homes, the neighborhood scene frozen in stasis. A photograph. A still life. A museum piece.

  Nicole was still awake and so he sat on the sofa downstairs and waited for Jennifer to return and when she did so they sat at the dining room table and ate cheese and crackers and drank a bottle of wine. When the wine was gone she asked him if he would like to follow her upstairs. Of course they made love. Of course they did: on the bed at first and then again in the shower. He may have enjoyed it even more than he had the first time, as now there was a sense of familiarity and possession that he did not have before. He knew he would have her and he did and that sense of ownership was something that both startled him and heightened his sense of pleasure, her body a thing that he craved like food. It seemed the same for her. She had pulled off his clothes as if some emergency necessitated the act, clawing at his shirt and his pants and taking him first in her mouth as if the need was too great to wait for her own nakedness to reveal itself.

  The second time it had begun in the shower and ended with them both returning to the bed and when it was done he lay back, his legs extended over the edge of the mattress, her body poised over his, her breasts still touching his chest. She kissed him on the neck and breathed out, long and beautiful, a kind of sigh mingled with a moan of release. “You just keep on coming by, neighbor,” she said.

  She was beautiful there, perched above him, his body still penetrating hers even as he softened. There were tiny freckles on her shoulder and he stared at them, so close to his face. “That sounds like something I’d like to do,” he said.

  “I’ll bet you would.” She lifted herself up, sliding him more deeply into her for a moment and he tightened under her and sucked in his breath and then she lifted herself off. “I think I was showering before I was so rudely interrupted,” she said, smiling.

  “Rudely?”

  “You coming?”

  “Yes.” He propped himself up on his elbows and looked at her as she stood there, the curves of her body, the hardness of muscle.

  She turned and walked to the far side of the bedroom and he heard the shower start up again and the click of the door and she stepped out of sight.

  His own body looked pathetic, his penis a weird pale worm that had wriggled up from some dark underground. Yes, he was free to date the pretty woman across the street, as Peter had said, and indeed here he was and Peter was probably still out there in the field with his telescope looking up at some nebula or another. Here he was, reclining on her bed, a fine slick of sweat cooling under the overhead fan, his member shriveling.

  He rose and stumbled forward to the shower and she stood there under the spray, a bar of soap in her hand. “Don’t get any ideas,” she said.

  He opened the glass door. A blast of hot steam. “Hmm,” he said. “You take a lot of showers.”

  “Twice a day at least,” she said. “Sometimes more if there’s time.”

  “Really clean,” he said. The water was the temperature of fire. “Damn,” he said.

  “Too hot?”

  “No,” he said. “Christ, yes.”

  She reached out and turned the knob, just barely. He could not perceive a change in the temperature. “Sissy,” she said.

  She finished with the soap and handed it to him and again it was too small a space for the two of them and their soapy bodies were slick against each other and when he tried to kiss her again she hel
d him off with a gentle hand to his chest and said softly, “I think we’re done for tonight,” and he looked at her and she said, “Don’t be disappointed. It was fun.”

  “I’m not,” he said, but he was.

  She stepped out of the shower and into the closet and put on her white robe again and he showered quickly, turning the water temperature down until it was no longer scalding. When he was finished she handed him a towel and he dried himself and she moved past him back into the bedroom as he dressed. A moment later he heard the voices of the television in the room: a talk show with its occasional wave of laughter and applause.

  She was seated on the bed against the headboard and glanced over at him as he entered the bedroom again.

  “What are you watching?” he said.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Letterman.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed. “Who’s the guest?” he said.

  “I don’t know.” She paused and then she said, “I’m just going to go to bed now, Keith.”

  He did not understand what the statement meant at first and then he spluttered, “Oh, OK, yeah,” and stopped again and looked around the room, at the television, then back at her.

  “Right,” he said. He stood. “I’ll see you later, then.”

  “All right,” she said. She rose from the bed and embraced him briefly and then separated from him again. “See you later in the week, I’m sure.”

  “Maybe next time you can enjoy my lack of furniture,” he said.

  She smiled as if patronizing a small child. “Maybe,” she said. “You can let yourself out, right?” She turned, climbed back onto the bed, settling once again into her TV-watching position but continuing to look at him.

  “Yeah, OK.” He was quiet for a moment and then said, “Bye then.”

  “Turn the lock on the doorknob, would you?” she said. She smiled at him once more.

  He looked at her but her attention had already returned to the television. He turned and paused and then turned the rest of the way and walked out of the room. Behind him the applause rose up momentarily as if in response to his departure and then muffled back into the voice of the host. Words he could not make out.

  At the end of the hall, Nicole stood in the open doorway of her bedroom in her nightgown, rubbing one of her eyes absently. “Where’s my mom?” she said.