black hole, until a flash arm popped up and a white blast blinded my eyes. I blinked, and when I could see again I was back in the news room, sitting behind a long, manila desk that separated a hoard of journalists from myself, and my fellow astronauts.
...
Helen wasn’t standing in front of us anymore. Instead, Nichols, a scrawny pink man with a shaved head, stood in her place. He was staring into the screen of his DSLR, and muttered something like “good enough” before he got out of our way. I remembered how only minutes before, Nichols had been in a frenzy. His stress had pulled his face apart as he danced between each of us in the dressing room.
“I know you men are professionals, but it’s my job to make sure THEY know you’re professionals.” He said, his eyes wide with adrenaline. “You’re heroes, but you’re also on thin ice. The people out there, they’re animals.” We silently watched him rant. Poor Mr. Nichols looked like he was a breath away from a panic attack. He pointed at the door and continued, slowing his cadence for effect.
“If you slip up now, they will haunt you the rest of your lives, so please for the love of God, take this seriously! Do not stray from this script! Do not go ‘off the cuff’ in there, because if you do, I promise you will regret it.”
“No pressure then, eh Mr. Nicky?” Captain Verner spoke with a calmness in his green eyes. I couldn’t believe anyone could be so cool, not even
him. I think the forlorn glare he gave the door ahead of us gave him away. Nichols just ignored his comment though.
“We haven’t practiced this as much as we should have, but the world is starving for it. Our report will be irreproachable if you just follow the
plan.” Beside me, and last in line to enter the next room, Lucas exhaled roughly. Poor kid.
Nichols, NASA’s senior PR man as we’d been lead to believe, stepped aside and picked up his walky-talky. I looked over, trying to see how Verner and Kellogg were holding up. I never got the opportunity to examine their features before we went in. I had to duck back into attention when Nichols said “show time.” Not much of a warning was all I could think before he walked right up to the heavy steel doors and slammed into it with his shoulder. He held it open for us, and we walked out in formation, into a swarm of clicks and flashes.
I never made it into that conference room. Before I stepped in, I snapped out of my flashback. I could feel myself back inside my own skin, nervous again. My eyes felt numb, but I could feel Dad squeezing me tight.
“Something the matter?” He asked, but I just shrugged him off, saying "the flash burned my eyes." He laughed at that.
People talked at and about me for the next half an hour or so. I won’t bore you with the details, I know it’s starting to bug you. I can tell by the way you’re watching me. People started to leave and insisted they’d return for dinner, which allowed me a moment of peace. Just being alone in their presence again, my parents I mean, was reassuring.
I had flown all around the world, visited forty different countries as a pilot, but all that time they were still in the back of my head. I was worried they felt differently than they let on in their phone calls, like they were desperately lonely. Almost yearly, they would make me take off work over the holidays, Mom even threatened to call the airline herself. Those times were centering for me, and yet I’d always felt some kind of regret haunting them. It eats at me now.
Yearly, during their visits, I would have to blow up a really crappy air mattress for the two of them, so they could sleep in my apartment’s living room. I bought a tree the first time they came up, and we had a good laugh at the puny thing before we watched “The Christmas Story.” But the last time it was up, nearly all the plastic needles had fallen off. Twelve Christmases, them lying next to my coffee table with that balding, miniature fern atop it.
They would always ask why I lived there, instead of buying a house. They knew I could have, but they never understood why I didn’t want one. I told them it was too much of a hassle and I wasn’t ready to settle down, and that was true. But really, I didn’t want to have to live inside it alone.
Back in their living room, they felt at peace. The two of them joked that they were least anxious when I was safe at home, but it was true. Once enough geriatrics had left, I sat between them and looked into my mother’s eyes. They used to be bright blue, but had faded into gray. Her smile was
security though, just like it always was, and warm enough to let me know she remembered me. She might not recall the specifics, but she knew I was
important to her, and she seemed to cling onto that fact.
Dad asked me about space, quietly. He asked how I defecated in an anti-gravity environment, with more humor than serious interest.
“There’s a vacuum hose they hook up.” I joked back, finding it hard to suppress my smirk.
“Oh,” the man said, pretending to understand, “You know, your mother and I have a vacuum. Maybe we could go to space.”
“Isn’t yours a Sanyo though?”
“Well yeah, why? Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters pops,” sarcasm dripping from my lips, “That cheap foreign-made technology will fail halfway through the expedition, and the last thing you want breaking in space is your toilet vacuum.”
My old man giggled at that, since it sounded like something he would say. He did end up asking me about the mission failure though, and I told him what I told everyone else at that party, and everyone else in that conference room three months ago: Read the report. And then I paraphrased it for him. Main oxygen tank failure.
...
He frowned at that, but I promised I would tell him the whole story later, as long as he kept it a secret. I believed he would anyways, but the whole story” was and still is a whole lot of boring, classified material. And here I am about to tell you about it. No, I won’t do that actually. I don’t wanna fuck up your whole life.
Back inside the living room, I heard a noisy exhaust pull past our home and park on the street. Confused, I looked to my father for an explanation.
“Well, it could be Jeff and Bart. You know, the Wilson boys? They called and said they’d drive up today.”
Oh no. Of course they did.
Minutes later, on cue, Jeff, Bart, Mikey and Not Mikey barged in, laughing like a bunch of drunk-monkey hicks. A glaze of sweat coated Jeff’s forehead, who wore his hair greasy, long and pulled back. The man strolled in like he was the one who’d been to space and back. Behind him, his accomplice, his second in demand, his wingman, Bart Wilson rolled in like a bowling ball of lard, clad in construction attire.
“You folks will not believe the trouble we’ve been through to get here today!” Jeff bellowed so that all would be impressed at his arrival. I
wasn’t.
“Cops pulled us over on our way down!” Bart blabbed from the doorway, still somewhat stuck between the door frame and Mikey.
“Sure did! And Bart wasn’t even speeding! So that’s why we’re late.” Jeff finished, and finally stopped his sweeping gaze and made eye-contact
with me.
“Bud, I bet you didn’t have to deal with any sheriffs in space, huh?” He joked with a wink in my direction. The glance could have made an onion squirm. “How ya been?”
“No sir, space police were off in another galaxy, and I’ve been fine myself.” The longer I seemed to talk to these people, the more clear my
country twang was.
“Fine? Being back on Earth is just fine? This guy—” he said pointing his dirty, broken-nail, finger at me, “—outwits the Grim Reaper on his
home turf, and says his life is just fine.”
“Haha!” Bart rudely laughed in the then silent room, having triumphantly freed himself from the entrance. Standing in the center of the liv-
ing room, Jeff shook his head at his younger brother, and turned back to me.
“Be honest though, Astronaut money has to be treating you right, eh?”
“I
t’s pretty good, I’ve been saving up most of it, and to be honest, I think I was making more as a pilot.”
“Huh, wouldn’t have guessed.” and without missing a beat he asked, “Wanna come out with the boys and I for a tour around town before dinner? Might do you good to get out of here for awhile.”
Jeff’s offer held little value in my eyes, and I badly wanted to ask him how he was qualified to give me a tour of a town we’d both grown up in. But worse than that, I was curious about Layne. Ever since I’d passed their house earlier, she’d been in the back of my mind, clinging to my subconscious like a leech. So without really thinking, I accepted.
“Sure, sounds like fun, can I leave you here Dad?” What a monster of a lie that was.
“With all these women?” He sighed for effect, “Hurry back, or they’ll try to get me to help them cook.” Old man still had it.
I followed the four of them out into the bluish daylight, and noticed how much more imposing the clouds looked. Like bare-chested body builders, the atmospheric masses flexed and posed above us. The spectacle of it all evoked a response from Not Mikey, who let a sliding whistle escape his lips.
Below the threatening sky, Jeff and Bart’s vehicle sat behind my own. I recognized it straight-away as the rusted, orange Ford from before, the one that had passed me earlier on the highway. Up close, the thing didn’t look any prettier than it did in motion.
“Shotgun!” Bart called out, fast-walking ahead of me to the door.
“Bart, why don’t you let Charlie ride up front? He probably wouldn’t like the bed anyways.” Jeff told him. Bart muttered something under his breath, but I don’t think he really meant any harm.
“Thanks, I appreciate it.” I said, not knowing who to thank. Three, grown-ass men climbed into the truck bed and sat down, while I watched, waiting for Jeff to unlock my door.
“Dang lock!” I heard him whine, the way people do when their equipment makes them look bad. But Mr. Wilson took his performance to the next level when he began to kick at my handle from the inside. As if that would help, no wonder the truck was so mangled. Finally, the man got the door open and tried to play it off coolly.
“Sorry partner, it’ll get stuck every now and then!”
“Happens all the time!” Bart chimed in from behind, and even though his voice was slightly muffled, I could tell he was too simple for his brother's angst.