Sex on the Moon

by Ben Mezrich

  He turned and gaped after her—or more accurately, at the place where she had last been. He could hear the other college kids whispering, awestruck, behind him, but their words barely registered. Staring at the swirl of air and granite dust where she had just gone over, Thad knew that something significant had just taken place. Because in that moment—watching this beautiful young thing throw herself with pure and reckless abandon over the edge—he knew he had found something much more powerful than a simple motivation.

  Thad Roberts had just found his catalyst.

  In his head—a countdown had begun.

  And just like that, without another word to the college kids behind him, Thad threw himself over the precipice after her.

  23

  Thad’s fingers trembled as he dialed the phone number for the third time, determined, this time, to make it all the way to the final digit. He hadn’t been this nervous making a phone call since his interview with Bob Musgrove, and though this time he didn’t have a picture of the person whom he was calling affixed to the wall above the small desk in his Clear Lake apartment, he could have sketched every inch of her porcelain face, just by closing his eyes.

  As he worked his way through the numbers, he thought back to the first moment he had really looked into her eyes: only moments after he had followed her over the precipice’s edge, he had burst up through the glassy surface of the reservoir, gasping for air, wildly scanning back and forth to look for her—and there she was. Almost right on top of him, grinning and laughing and splashing water at him like the fifty-foot drop they had both just endured had been little more than a single step. As one by one the other adventurous co-ops followed them over the cliff, Thad spent the time with her in the water, doing his best to make a connection she would remember.

  Despite the bond he had felt the minute he had watched her leap over the edge, he found himself slipping back toward his shy old self. That, alone, terrified him; he couldn’t let her see past the facade he had created at NASA, the personality he had fought hard to become. But just moments into his first conversation with her, he could tell that he didn’t have to worry. She was as swept up in his reputation as everyone else at the JSC. The reason she had jumped, she told him—her cheeks still flushed from the experience—was that she wanted to be more like him. She had heard that he was a person who was good at everything, and this was incredibly compelling to her, even though she couldn’t explain to him why.

  Somewhere before they crawled out of the reservoir and made their way toward the campfires to dry off, she had given him her number. It had been like rocket fuel in his bathing-suit pocket all the way home to the JSC.

  Still, actually calling her had been much more difficult than following her over the cliff. It had been a different phone call that had pushed him into finally taking that next step.

  He hadn’t talked to Sandra at all while he was home in Utah—but now that he was back at NASA, he had been in almost constant communication with the freckled, mousy girl he’d gone skinny-dipping with, via phone and e-mail, and they quickly became good friends. Though she was still back at school, Sandra had become his confidante, now that he was into his third tour. Mostly, they talked about his problems with Sonya, his growing realization that his relationship with his wife was reaching an end. He certainly hadn’t opened up to Sandra about the other thoughts rolling around in his head—he didn’t want to get her involved, even with something as innocuous as a mental game. But meeting Rebecca had fallen under the rubric of a confidante’s job description.

  Thad had expected Sandra to talk him out of doing anything that would put the final nails in the coffin of his relationship with Sonya, but to his surprise, she had been all for it. Maybe because she only knew the Sonya that he’d described to her—the model who spent her time in nightclubs and at the beauty salon, not the outdoorsy soul mate who had rescued him from his troubled childhood. In any event, Sandra had thought Rebecca sounded exactly like the sort of adventure Thad needed.

  As Thad reached the final digit, his nerves almost got the better of him, but then he thought back to that moment when Rebecca disappeared over the precipice—and he knew he was making the right decision. He held his breath through three rings, and then Rebecca’s voice filled his ears.

  Right from the start, she was talking so fast that her words ran into each other. He never even officially got the chance to ask her out, because she’d already assumed that’s why he had called.

  “I’m shopping right now,” she said, over the sound of traffic. “But I should be home at six. You can come over then and hang out with me.”

  This was going pretty well from the start. Thad hadn’t intended to ask her out in the middle of the week—he’d been thinking more along the lines of the weekend—but hell, this was even better. It was a Tuesday, so he had his volunteer firefighting, which meant he wouldn’t normally be free before eight or nine—but tonight he was going to make an exception.

  At exactly six that evening, he was standing outside the front door to her apartment, just a few blocks from his own place in Clear Lake. She opened the door before he had a chance to knock, another good sign, because she’d probably been watching him the whole time as he’d paced back and forth, working up the nerve to approach the door. She looked fantastic, her white tank top and jeans shorts somehow almost as revealing as the black string bikini from the cliff dive. A portable phone was resting in the crook of her neck, and she cupped her hand over the receiver as she waved him in.

  “My mother,” she mouthed. “She’s giving me advice about guys.”

  Thad grinned, then leaned forward and gave her a kiss on the cheek. It was something he had picked up during a paleontological dig, which had been run by a team of Canadians. Rebecca flushed at the contact, and he got another wonderful whiff of her floral perfume.

  “Tell her I agree; most of us are bad news. But there are a few exceptions.”

  Rebecca pointed him down the short entryway, which opened up into a small, rectangular living room. The room was completely devoid of furniture, just hardwood floors and bare white walls. Thad raised his eyebrows, and Rebecca gestured toward a spot near one of the windows. He saw a bottle of wine and a pair of long-stemmed glasses.

  Rebecca stepped through an adjacent doorway, continuing her phone call, so Thad made his way across the bare living room on his own. He assumed the wine bottle and glasses were obvious enough; he didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out where he was supposed to go. He lowered himself to the hardwood floor, sitting cross-legged, his back against the wall. He had a nice view through the window of a small fenced-in yard. Someone had planted flowers along the edges of the grass, and he imagined that it was Rebecca who had been out there on her knees in the dirt, lovingly digging holes for the seeds.

  Thad didn’t help himself to the wine. He had recovered enough from his childhood not to believe that a glass of wine was a straight ticket to hell, but he still had never been able to shake the feeling that alcohol was some sort of big deal. He liked the fact that for Rebecca, it was something casual and nonchalant and unimportant enough to just be left out in the corner of her living room. For her, having a drink wasn’t something she did because it would impress people or because it was rebellious or because it said something about her character. It was just a bottle of wine.

  She finally came out of the other room, placing the phone back on its base, and then sat down next to Thad on the floor.

  “As you can see, my furniture hasn’t arrived yet. So close your eyes and picture a couch, a love seat, and a coffee table.”

  “I’m not sure I approve of your color scheme. But I dig all that leather.”

  Rebecca laughed. She grabbed the bottle of wine, popped the cork, and filled both glasses.

  “I don’t really drink,” Thad said, before he could stop himself. He felt like an idiot, telling a hot girl not to serve alcohol. But there was something about Rebecca that made it difficult for him to censor his thou
ghts. That was particularly scary, considering how much of himself he liked to hide from the people he knew.

  “Well, you can take just a sip,” she responded. “I’ll take care of what you leave behind. Or I can save the rest for later.”

  Yes, this was going very well, indeed.

  …

  “Kingdom—Animalia. Phylum—Chordata. Family—Balistidae. And of course the species—R. aculeatus.”

  Thad leaned back in his chair, one hand absently picking at his conch fritters, as he watched Rebecca. She was halfway out of her seat, leaning so close to the thick glass that ran across the entire wall behind their corner table that Thad could make out her reflection quite clearly, even from a few feet away. In front of her, on the other side of the glass, the colorful, triangular-shaped fish seemed as transfixed as Thad; the pretty little creature was frozen in the water, its fins buzzing like the wings of a hummingbird.

  “Shoot,” Thad said, still focused on her reflection, “and I thought it was just a fish.”

  “That’s what it wants you to think. Look at its oblong little nose, its sad old eyes. It’s not a fish you even think twice about. And then you see its body, the pretty colors and the stripes and even a few errant polka dots, and you start to say okay, maybe it’s pretty, but it’s just this little fish. And so you swim right up next to it—”

  Suddenly she wheeled toward him, leaning all the way over the table between them—and grabbed one of the conch fritters off his plate.

  “And then it’s suddenly all over you, little fangs tearing out chunks of your skin. The triggerfish is one of the most territorial marine monsters out there. Dive near one when it’s protecting its eggs—and look out!”

  She took a vicious bite out of the conch fritter, grinning as she chewed. Her energy was so amazing, almost on par with Thad’s. There hadn’t been a single quiet moment during the drive over to the wharf, and dinner had been one story after another. She shared many of his interests—diving, languages, a love for science—but she was much more than a dilettante, incredibly smart and fast for a girl her age. Walking through the aquarium-walled restaurant—fittingly called Aquarius—was like getting a tour of a marine biology exhibit. She knew the name, phylum, and character of every bit of life behind the glass, and she was not shy about showing off her knowledge. Thad found her incredibly refreshing.

  To some degree, she was putting on a show for him. A number of times during the evening, she told Thad that the new co-ops talked about him—about his reputation of being this sort of James Bond type of character. They said he was good at everything, a natural leader.

  “Is it true that you snuck onto the space shuttle?” she asked at one point, lowering her voice.

  Thad laughed at the idea. He considered spinning it the way his mind often spun things—but with her, he had a very hard time being less than open.

  “Close, I snuck into the simulator. But it sure as hell felt like the real thing.”

  “I can only imagine. Getting that close to actually being in space. I don’t think I’d sleep for a week after that.”

  There it was, that incredible enthusiasm. She felt as strongly about becoming an astronaut as he did. If the aquarium was any indication, Thad believed that she would no doubt impress her way into a position at the JSC by the time she’d finished her three tours. The manner in which she could ring off not only the marine creatures’ names and characteristics—but also where they were from, and even how they interacted with each other—she had to have a near-photographic memory, like Thad himself. She was the kind of girl you could only meet in a place like NASA.

  Thad waited until they were done with dinner—had left the aquarium restaurant for a stroll down the wharf, toward the huge Ferris wheel that dominated one end of the kitschy boardwalk—to finally bring up what he considered to be the elephant on the pier. His marriage, and the strife that he was going through in his relationship. But Rebecca quickly let him know that she didn’t really care about the things that weren’t in the here and now. In the here and now, they were two young astronaut trainees, walking along the wharf, talking about space shuttles and triggerfish.

  As they approached the Ferris wheel, Thad couldn’t help himself; he awkwardly reached for her hand. The minute he did so, he became very nervous—and even worse, she made a weird motion—but then he realized she wasn’t pulling away. She took his hand and put it around her waist.

  From that moment on, his nervousness was gone. Thad was entirely into her, into her intellect and her personality, and feeling that passionate way that he had first felt when he saw her racing toward the precipice, clad only in that tiny string bikini.

  After three rides on the Ferris wheel, rising up together high into the sky over the wharf, so high they could point at the stars and joke about how they would one day be racing between them—her attending to her space plants while he walked around the outside of the spaceship in an EMU—they finally made their way back to her apartment.

  Rebecca was only the second girl Thad had ever kissed, and the moment was everything he could have imagined it would be. A little awkward, a little clumsy, his hands not quite knowing where they were supposed to be, the hardwood floor digging into his knees as he leaned forward into her, her back pressed against the wall beneath the window, where she could look out on her little foolish flower garden—the garden that Thad would now protect like a triggerfish hovering over its eggs.

  And then the kiss became much more, Thad’s hands sliding beneath the tight tank top, his fingers moving up her warm flesh, feeling the ridges of her rib cage and the small swell of her perfect, perky breasts. Her own hands seem to linger just as long on his body, her nails so incredibly delicate against his muscular legs and arms. The heat was rising fast between them, and somewhere along the way Thad thought about telling her to wait, slowing things down so they could talk more and think more, but then she turned to the side, showing off the naked curves of her back. Halfway down her left thigh, Thad saw that she had a tattoo, a little Chinese character. He had been studying Chinese over the course of his three tours, but he didn’t quite recognize the character. Rebecca noticed his attention, and smiled at him, cupping her breasts as she twisted to show off the tattoo a little better.

  “It means freedom.”

  Thad felt a tremble move through his body. He knew then and there that if he waited another moment, he was going to open up to her about the one thing he hadn’t yet told her about. The secret that he still kept from everyone. Freedom—to tell her anything. To tell her everything. But he knew that if he started to tell her, if he described the e-mails and what he was thinking—the mental game he had been playing for so long now—there would be no going back.

  So instead, he leaned deeper into her, pressing his mouth against the small of her back and down her thighs, letting his tongue dance against the Chinese character.

  As his fingers moved around to the front, slipping beneath the frilly material of her underwear, he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to keep the secret from her for very long. Sooner or later, the truth would be as clear as the tattoo on her thigh. And then he would know for sure, if she was really the catalyst he believed she might be, or if she was just another component in another mental game—a fantasy that felt so real he never wanted it to end.

  Catalyst or fantasy, he knew for certain: this girl was going to change his life.

  * * *

  People tell me that it wasn’t real—that the quiet moments are to be avoided, not enjoyed. But if I can’t enjoy the song you once played for me, then I am not defined. It was a harmony that makes me look to the heavens and wonder. It inspires me to seek and explore and to hope for laughter … and the rapture of love. Within my collection of permanent echoes the song I remember still plays.

  * * *

  24

  The real fun wasn’t in the power of the thing—the strength of those massive jet engines, the sheer force of that mechanical monster, built for one purpose only,
to lift, to rise, to tear itself free of gravity and physics and sometimes, it seemed, common sense; the real fun came in that moment of sheer helplessness, strapped to a chair, leaning back at a forty-five-degree angle as the beast climbed and climbed and climbed.

  And suddenly it wasn’t climbing anymore, the great mammoth engines reduced in a whine of reverse thrusters, the nose tipping downward—and then it was falling. The straps came loose and you were out of your seat, just floating in that bizarre way, moving through the padded cabin, bouncing off the walls, the ceiling, the equipment you brought up there to test. Still helpless, but now because the physical laws you’ve lived with all your life were suddenly gone, replaced by a feeling that was new and unique and wonderful.

  Weightlessness. Zero g.

  And then the alarm went off, telling you that it was time to strap back in. The craft was now facing downward at a thirty-degree angle, diving at an incredibly high speed back toward Earth, caught again in the grips of gravity and physics. A moment later, the entire sequence began again: the upward climb, the unstrapped moment of bliss, the descent. Again, and again, and again.

  NASA had a name for it. They called it the Weightless Wonder, a KC-135 stratotanker known as NASA 931, an airplane that had been specially outfitted for the maneuver. Flying a perfect parabolic route above the Earth, it treated its passengers to as much as twenty-five seconds of weightlessness for every sixty-five seconds of flight. Which didn’t sound like much—until you were up there, spinning through the center of the white, cushioned cabin, trying to figure out how to use a screwdriver or plant a tree or maybe even operate a toilet. The ride up was exhilarating enough, but those brief moments when gravity disappeared were another universe altogether. For some people—a full third of those who went up in the thing—it was too much to handle. NASA called it the Weightless Wonder, but everybody else called it the Vomit Comet.