“Where are you?” he asked.
“The roof,” she said. “Sorry about the noise. Is that better? I have to find somewhere to play when it’s this late.”
“You’re playing your violin, aren’t you?” Van Raye scooted his foot over until it barely touched the dog’s leg. “I love your music,” he said in a whisper. “I always have. What city are you in?”
“You never said you liked my music.”
“Sure I have. We used to play for hours together. I can see you playing in my mind. You were playing Bach, weren’t you? You are in a long coat. You are wearing a scarf and you are beautiful.”
“I have on a coat because it’s forty degrees in Atlanta. I can imagine you too, and let me guess, you’re in a bathrobe and there’s a woman within fifty feet and an empty bottle.”
“Elizabeth, you and I have a connection. We have a progeny together.”
“This isn’t a sharing arrangement.”
“Jesus, I know that.”
There was the silence of the open line until she said, “Do you still play your horn?”
“My horn?” He crossed his ankles and pulled the robe over his knee. “It’s been a long time. I do need to start again. It’ll be a lot like starting over.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” she said. “It won’t be like learning the first time.”
“I wouldn’t mind a beginning,” he said. “Beginnings are good. I remember it being quite fun to be getting to know the instrument, and you too. I can see you now, on the roof of some hotel, playing under the stars. I would very much like to be there with you.”
“You were right about the Bach,” she said, “the Presto from Sonata No. 1.”
“That was what I was hearing in my mind!” he said. Hadn’t I been humming that? What if things worked like that, an old lover on my mind, her passionately playing Sonata No. 1? He sat up on the bench, startling the dog. “I will come see you.” He tried to think of a way to ask for money.
“Charles, why did you call?”
“Me?” he said, thinking about the phone ringing here in his house. “The strangest thing happened,” he began.
“What?” she said.
He shook his head and rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. “Did you call me?” he said to her.
“What are you talking about?”
“Never mind,” he said. “Somehow we are having this conversation.”
“Charles, may I tell you something?”
“Anything.”
“A lot has gone on. My life is changing. I need to start planning on slowing down. Whatever I’ve been planning. . I have to say that you. .”
“Are you saying you and I?” Charles asked.
“Is that outrageous?” Now the wind blew over the phone and covered one word she was saying. He imagined her looking up at the sky.
“Elizabeth, I have found what I was looking for.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’ve still got important work to do. I need somewhere to do it. Elizabeth. .” he whispered. “Are you crying?”
“No.”
The dog stretched on his front legs. Van Raye could smell its panting breath and he had a flash memory of being a boy with a dog. He pushed its muzzle away.
“I’ve been through a lot!” she said. “I’m fine. I’m babbling. I’m going to retire. Sandeep will have a head start, and he’ll be much happier and healthy without me. He’s completely capable of doing this on his own. His health is related to his happiness. Do you want to come visit?”
“I haven’t felt like this in years,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He glanced down the wide hallway to his shut bedroom door. He tapped his knuckle on the wall as if trying to locate a stud, trying to figure out a way to ask her for money. Instead he said, “Did you hear that I have a new book out too?”
“Yes,” she said. “Why don’t you call him?”
Someone with money? he thought. “Who?” he said.
“Sandeep.”
“I absolutely will,” he said. “Did you say that you read my new book?”
“Yes, Charles, we’ve all read it.”
“Sandeep has?”
“Of course.”
“Elizabeth, are you okay? I won’t hang up this phone until I know you are okay.”
“I am fine. I don’t even know why you ask if I’m okay. We are staying at the Grand Aerodrome. .”
He shut the bedroom door before the dog could come inside.
Ruth smoked a new cigarette staring out the window, flicking ashes directly on his floor and letting them blow inside on the breeze.
“Something has come up,” he started.
“Yes, it has.” She threw her phone to the foot of the bed. “Read that.”
He picked it up. It was in the middle of a Times article, and he went backward to read the headline, CREW DEAD.
“What?” he said. “This isn’t real.”
“There was a fire in the forward bay,” she said. “What’s not real about six dead, no survivors?”
He scrolled down the article where it mentioned that Ruth Christmas had been the seventh crewmember but had made an emergency return to Earth in January because of “acute appendicitis.”
Cold night air flowed through the open French doors.
“Oh my God,” he said. “This is impossible.”
“It’s not impossible. They’re all dead. That’s a fact.” The muscles in her cheeks flexed as if to form a smile, but her mouth pulled straight. “So how would you feel if your dog problem just went away?”
“I don’t have a dog problem,” he mumbled, but then he understood what she was getting at. “The father?” he asked her.
“What about him?”
Van Raye didn’t speak.
She said, “Yes, he’s dead. He didn’t know about. . you know, this.” She pointed to her belly.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Trust me, there are worse things than death.”
“They were all your friends.”
She tilted her head back and blew smoke. “Asphyxiation isn’t a bad way to go. Burning alive would be bad. That place was an accident waiting to happen. Now it’s an orbiting mausoleum, a big charred mausoleum. I’m sure people are going to make a big fucking deal out of that, a perpetually orbiting crypt. Isn’t that a kick?”
“Ruth, do you have someone you should call?”
“Why?” she said.
“I don’t know. They’ll be coming after you. You’ll want to attend services. They’ll want you. . You’ll want to go, right?”
“Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Certainly not, but I just thought. . I don’t know what I can do. I’m not good at these things.”
“What do you have to be good at?” Ruth said, and she put her hand on her belly. “The weird part about this is that when I saw the news, I realized I’d had a premonition about this.”
“There are no premonitions,” he said.
“Shut up. I know that.”
“Let me ask you this, and I don’t mean to be insensitive, but how are we going to get the software for the booster?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Do you know anyone who can, you know, get it?” he asked.
“Sure. And guess what? They’re all dead.”
“We’ll get it, somehow, though, right?” he said. “Is the station’s antenna still tracking on the planet?”
She went and turned the Trans-Oceanic radio on.
Please, please, he thought.