On his way out he glanced through the books on the sale table near the exit doors. There was a thick hardcover volume on astronomy amidst the various titles and he picked it up and paged through it. He had seen similar photographs before, Hubble telescope images of nebulae and star clusters and distant galaxies, but he had never really looked at them with any interest. Now, though, the pages brought to mind the stars he had seen in similar clarity from the end of the robotic arm, of the intensity of feeling that had struck him, that weird mixture of helplessness and awe and wonder and silence. The end of the numbers. Their immediate silence. Or no not their silence but something else. And then he knew that it had not been the numbers that had fallen silent in the moment; it had been himself, the sensation he had experienced at the end of the robotic arm he had designed and built had fallen into some kind of interval, a gap, and no matter what measurement applied—time or light or space or something else—there would be no concrete answer because the experience itself had no solution. There was no language to describe what he had felt. Not even the numbers.
He purchased the book and brought it with him to Starbucks and sat there sipping at his coffee, reading the first paragraph of text and then paging through the volume at random, looking at the photographs and reading an occasional caption as he did so. Hubble Deep Field a black rectangle populated by myriad efflorescent galaxies. Lupus with its scores of multicolored stars. The Tarantula Nebula a blur of blazing orange light. If he had seen these same objects through the lens of Peter’s telescope he did not remember and he knew they certainly would not have appeared in such vivid detail. Perhaps they were invisible to all but the most sophisticated instruments. The Hubble. Golosiiv. Something else.
The phone rang when he was looking at an image labeled “Lagoon Nebula Detail,” a luminescent turquoise field obscured by darkly glowing clouds. On the phone’s tiny screen was a local number he did not recognize. “Keith Corcoran,” he said.
“Captain Corcoran, it’s Tom Chen at Dreyfuss.”
“Tom,” Keith said, surprised. “How are you?”
“I’m well. And you?”
“Good, good.”
“Nice work on the last mission,” Chen said.
“Oh,” Keith said. “Thanks.”
“I know you’re busy so let me get right to the point. I got that e-mail about your friend from Ukraine.”
“Oh, yeah.” He sat up abruptly, knocking the table with his knee, coffee sloshing onto its surface.
“Well, listen, if you think this guy is for real I’d like to see his résumé if you can send it over.”
“Really?”
“We might have something. It’s not much but we have a kind of work overflow here and need someone to just kind of keep things moving. I called the NAS at Golosiiv and spoke with some people there just to find out who we were talking about and the people there think your friend walks on water.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah, he must really be something. Anyway, I don’t know if this position will be too simple for him but it’s a way to get him in here. But I need to see the résumé. Maybe you can give me his phone number and I can talk to him directly about it.”
“I’ll need to get the phone number off the résumé,” Keith said, “but I will. I’ll have him get in touch with you right away.”
“That would be great. This position has been officially open for two weeks and it closes tomorrow. I would have contacted you earlier but things got backed up here. This isn’t usually how we do things.”
“I appreciate it.”
“So I’d need the résumé and contact info today or tomorrow morning at the very latest. Actually today would be best because I’d likely have to do some kind of interview in the next day or so just to make sure we’re on the official schedule. Anyway, I thought maybe I’d poke around about the guy a bit first before calling you. Just to make sure. I know you’re busy.”
“Yeah, well, that’s good.”
“I’m assuming you think he’d fit here.”
“I think so. He’s really dedicated to the kinds of things you’re doing there. The astronomy side of it. That’s where his head is.”
“That’s great. That’s totally what we’re looking for. And we’re trying to avoid just getting someone right out of school. A couple of years on the job is better than the degree, at least for this. Cheaper too.”
“Sure.”
“Hey, listen, since I have you on the phone I wanted to say that I’m real sorry about your daughter.”
“Thank you.”
“Anyway, let us know if there’s anything we can do. Of course, you know that.”
“Sure,” Keith said. “Will do.”
They exchanged a few pleasantries and the conversation ended. Keith sat at the back of the coffeeshop smiling broadly. He finished his coffee and then returned the astronomy book to his bag and tossed the newspaper onto a nearby table. Audrey was at the counter and she waved to him as he passed. He was still smiling. “You look happy today,” she said.
“I guess I am,” he said, and he was.
When he passed Peter’s house on his way home he stopped and walked to the door and knocked but there was no answer. He had been looking forward to telling Peter the news but now that he was unable to do so it occurred to him that he might just as well get Chen the résumé on his own.
He returned home with this in mind, retrieving the pages from the kitchen island and reading through them with careful attention. Perhaps he had underestimated Petruso Kovalenko’s talents; were he a personnel officer at a research center, Peter’s résumé might have appeared impressive indeed and while there was too much detail in the résumé—it seemed to list every job Peter had ever held—the relevant material, especially the work he had done at Golosiiv, was interesting.
He continued to ruminate on this as he once again entered his car and drove to an office supply store and asked them to scan and e-mail the document directly to Tom Chen. As he waited, his phone began to buzz, but it was Jim Mullins and he did not feel the need to speak to him now. The voice mail he left was curt: “Keith, please call me at your earliest convenience.” He left the phone number, as if Keith might not have it. It was a call he would need to respond to at some point but it could wait.
When he returned home he sat in his car and watched as the big gray sofa was carefully loaded onto the back of a pickup truck by two men in powder blue denim shirts, men clearly on lunch break from their tractor work. The men eyed him with some level of suspicion but as he did nothing to stop them they continued without pause until the sofa was gently secured. The truck was dilapidated, the windows rolled down as the only defense against the summer heat and a moment later it drove away, the sofa longer than the bed of the truck so that it suspended a full foot over the moving asphalt. In the next instant it had rounded the corner and disappeared from view. The other workmen sat in the shadow of one of the tractors, eating their lunches, their conversation impossible to hear.
He was surprised when the doorbell rang a few hours later, the sound so foreign that it took him several moments to determine what it was, but he was even more surprised when he opened the door and Luda threw her arms around him and put her head on his shoulder, weeping. “Thank you. Thank you,” she said between her sobs.
His own arms embraced her as reflex and then relaxed to patting her back softly. “Whoa,” he said. “What’s going on?” He looked past her at Peter, who stood smiling in a button shirt and tie, a wrinkled sport coat stretched over his broad shoulders.
“You are sweet, sweet man,” Luda said. She leaned back from him and took his face in her hands and kissed his cheeks with a loud smacking sound. Her eyes continued to swim with tears.
“OK, OK,” Keith said. He was smiling, more from the absurdity of the situation than anything else. As if Luda’s behavior were not enough, Peter came forward, still smiling, still unspeaking, and grabbed Keith’s face and again planted one wet, smacking kiss on e
ach cheek, stepping back then and saying, “You are good friend to do this for me.”
“OK,” Keith said. “What are we talking about?”
“The NASA called,” Luda said. “The NASA called for Petruso.”
“Your friend, Mr. Chen, asked me for interview. It will be Monday at three and he will ask me about my experiences at Golosiiv.”
“I’m so glad to hear that,” Keith said. He let out a loud and involuntary laugh.
“You come to our home now and you have dinner with us. The children they are at brother’s house so no bother,” Luda said.
Before Keith could so much as nod, Peter said, “Yes, all true. You come. I know you have no plans tonight better than this and sofa is gone so nowhere to sit. You come and we eat holubtsi and you will never before taste holubtsi as my Luda will make for you.”
Keith looked at them, all three of them smiling now. “It sounds like something I shouldn’t pass up,” he said.
He slipped into his shoes and they led him across the cul-de-sac and down the sidewalk and as they walked he thought he could see Jennifer peeking through the upstairs window of her house but he could not be sure and did not know if he even cared. The night air was cool but heat still radiated from the concrete and asphalt and above them the sky glowed with stars bright enough to be visible beyond the halo of the streetlamps and the houses that lined the streets and courts and ways around them, each holding a green square of lawn that sloped slowly and carefully to the sidewalk as they passed, the whole of it universal and orderly and silent, the unfinished lots and empty foreclosed homes presenting dark vacancies amidst the lit houses of the living.
Peter unlocked the door and swung it open grandly. “Enter, my friend,” he said.
Keith nodded and waved Luda in first and then followed her. The smell of cooking food was everywhere. “My god that smells great,” he said.
“Ah yes, you see,” Peter said. “I tell you this is best food you will have ever.”
Luda giggled and moved past them and into the interior of the house.
“I believe it,” Keith said. Perhaps this was the way it worked: one man gets a job and another loses one, as an Olympian passes a baton. Perhaps this was an equation that would be solved by Keith taking Peter’s vacant job at Target.
“Astronaut Keith Corcoran,” Peter said. “This is honor to have you in our home. Please make yourself comfortable. I want to know everything about this Mr. Chen. I must know all. About research center too. I look up on Internet but you have inside story I think and this is not on Internet.”
“Sure,” Keith said.
“Petruso,” Luda called from deeper inside the house.
“Yes, come, come,” Peter said. “I apologize for excitement. I ask you here to enjoy yourself, not to get your information.”
“I’m glad to help,” Keith said.
Peter walked further into the house and Keith followed. He had seen it once before, when he had stumbled into this room to sling Peter’s unconscious body onto the sofa, but he had paid little attention to it then. It was similar to Keith’s house but not quite the same, the floor plan differing in ways that were subtle but noticeable. There was no kitchen island here; in its place was a broad, dark wood table with long benches on either side. The walls were decorated here and there with needlepoint tapestries that looked very old, each encased in an ornate wooden frame. A stag with a series of Cyrillic letters underneath. Another a series of small houses with curling smoke before them with a few sentences below the houses as if the letters sprouted out of the earth.
“Very beautiful,” he said.
“Ah yes, from my great-grandmother, that one,” Peter said. “And that one there from great aunt on father’s side. They come from Ukraine. My family is from village and make these things for selling. Later cities come and life changes.”
Keith nodded and stood looking at the hanging pieces.
“Many artists in family. My uncle carves whole scenes out of horns of oxen. So beautiful and detailed. Those are in Ukraine still. Too hard bringing here.”
Luda moved around the kitchen with a kind of bustling energy that at first glance might have seemed foreign to her being. Keith was struck by how very lovely she was, her dark eyes shining from her pale face, black hair pulled back into a small bun. Her bearing was of class and grace but the fluidity of her motion was incongruous with its setting: like watching a queen bake a cake or hoe a field.
Peter was excited and did most of the talking and Keith did his best to educate him on the research center, explaining its structure and the kind of work that was developed there, all the while reminding him that even entry-level jobs like the one Peter would be applying for were highly competitive. Peter continued as if such information was irrelevant but Luda interjected from the kitchen.
“Please,” she said. “Is this real interview?”
“Real? Yes,” Keith said.
“They are serious about him?”
“Yes, they’re serious. It’s a real interview.”
Luda had paused in the midst of her work preparing dinner and appeared to Keith now as if the center of a painting, the counter sloping toward her on one side and on the other the sink with leafy sprigs of wet vegetables fringing its polished steel surfaces, and then in the midst of that warmth stood Luda herself, not an image of a woman but rather an image of a human being in a location of weight or meaning, as if the locus of some physical space that he had forgotten about entirely but which was somehow present here, in this house, and the sight of which rendered him unable to speak.
They sat at the table, Luda and Peter on one side, Keith alone on the other, and Luda dished out a series of pillowlike cabbage leaves from a casserole dish, each stuffed with ground pork and beef and dripping with some kind of thin red sauce and topped with sour cream. The smell that emanated from it was wonderful indeed and upon the first bite the flavor of it flooded through him all at once. He simply could not remember the last time he had tasted anything so good and he said as much and Luda blushed.
“This is Ukrainian food?” Keith asked.
“The best Ukrainian food,” Peter said.
“The only food I know from that part of the world is that beet soup.”
“Borscht,” Luda said.
“Bah,” Peter said. “Beets are like terrible dirt. I hate them. Old grandmas make for children to eat for cruelty.”
“Shush, Petruso,” Luda said. “He might like borscht maybe.”
“No one likes borscht except grandmas with no teeth. He has teeth,” Peter said.
“I haven’t eaten like this for so long I can’t even remember,” Keith said.
“Thank you.”
“She is best cook,” Peter said.
“I agree,” Keith said. “And I don’t think I’ve ever had borscht.”
“I will cook you borscht then next time,” Luda said.
“Not even you can make borscht good,” Peter said.
Luda smiled and then said to Keith, “I am happy you have made my husband your friend.”
“Luda, do not—,” Peter began but Luda placed her hand on his and he quieted immediately.
“Petruso does not want me to say maybe but it is true. You are someone to look up to, I think. For Petruso and this family.”
Keith searched for something to say in response. “I don’t know,” he said at last.
“Yes,” she said simply.
Again the pause as he thought. Then he said, simply: “Thank you.”
“He knows this,” Peter said.
“Maybe true,” Luda said, “but good to say.”
Was he someone to look up to? Even now? He might have believed this to be possible once but that was so long ago now. “I’m glad to be here,” he said.
The food warmed him to the core. He had been given a glass of fruit juice of some kind—peach, he thought—and a glass of wine and Peter kept both glasses full so that Keith had no idea how much wine he had drunk, knowing that giv
en his medication only a few glasses were enough to bring on drunkenness, a state acceptable when sitting outside with Peter but less so when sitting in Peter’s home as a guest. And yet he did not feel like a guest but rather was warm and comfortable and full as if he had become a member of the Kovalenko family somehow. It had been so long since he had felt such a sense of belonging. Not for many years with Barb. With Quinn, though, even during those last months when they were often at odds there had been brief moments of contact between them, silences in which they had simply been together, father and daughter.
And then he could feel her memory turning inside him and he looked up from his dinner plate. Her face floated in the room somewhere, watching him with vacant eyes.
“You are OK?” Luda said and he looked up at her abruptly.
“Oh,” he said, “yeah.” He looked from her to Peter. Both of them were staring back at him.
“You look maybe not well,” Peter said.
“No, no, I’m fine.” He paused and then said, “Maybe too much wine.”
They both continued to stare at him and he took a quick drink of water and then looked back at Luda and said, “You know,” and then paused again, cleared his throat. His heart thumped wildly in his chest. “I know a bit about Peter’s life but I don’t know anything about yours.”
“This is nothing to talk about,” Luda said.
“Please,” Keith said. Just that. Quinn hovering against his chest. Then: “You grew up in Ukraine?”
“Yes,” Luda said. Her eyes were downcast, not as if ashamed but as if embarrassed by Keith’s attention.
“Not like me, though,” Peter said. “In Pechersk. Very nice in Pechersk.”
“Yes, it is nice there,” Luda said.
“Very nice,” Peter said.
“You were wealthy?” Keith said.
“It is long time ago,” Luda said.
“Not so long,” Peter said.
“My grandfather and father worked in Russian government. Many government workers lived in Pechersk. By river. It is very nice there.”
The Infinite Tides Page 31