Forty-five minutes into the trip, she asked, “When are we going to stop?”
She wore her standard green unflattering flight suit. When she’d thrown her one duffle into the trunk on top of Van Raye’s three garbage bags of stuff, he’d noticed the bulge of her belly in the jumpsuit.
Now there was starlight overhead and dark forests on both sides of the road, woods thick enough to do what was best, and he had a pregnant ex-wife in the car, a whole country to drive across, had another ex-wife to find, and he told himself that he had to start organizing his writing so he could perfectly tell the story of his discovery and how he sent his own message to the planet before anyone else did.
Van Raye found the right spot to pull off the road. Ruth pretended to stay asleep against the passenger door when he shut the engine off. They’d discussed this, agreed it was best, but he stepped out alone, scared by the silence of the woods. Lightning bugs tricked his eyes. The concrete of the highway sparkled moonlight, and the heat of the Jaguar’s engine smelled good as it ticked and cooled. Van Raye opened the back door. “Come on,” he said to the dog.
Ruth was a dark, unmoving, silent mound in the passenger seat. The dog hopped out and never lost momentum, zigzagging back and forth, nose going over the ground.
Ruth’s door creaked open. She shoved it wider and grabbed the doorframe. “What a son of a bitch you are,” she said calmly. She hauled herself out.
“Don’t. . ” he said.
How, he thought, did I end up with a pregnant ex-wife who was hearing music in her belly, a hundred miles from nowhere, letting a dog go in the woods?
Her flip-flops scraped the pavement as she went to the driver’s side, slid behind the wheel, and started the car.
The dog stopped, turned and looked at them, tongue out. Van Raye got in the passenger side and pulled his silver pipe out as she got the car going. I will sleep it off, he told himself.
It was Ruth who said, “You let him go rather easily.”
“What dog wouldn’t want to be free in the woods?” he said.
Ruth ran the car up to ninety, the hand on the bottom of the wheel, the car swaying, and put another cigarette in her mouth.
“Be careful,” he said.
“What does it matter?” she said. “This is dark. Dark, dark.” She pushed the lighter in. “I’m going to remind you in the daylight what you are capable of, what we are all capable of, and see how you feel then. This isn’t a ‘never talk about it’ moment.”
“You don’t believe in those, do you?” he said.
“I don’t think we can just forget letting a dog go.”
The lighter popped out.
“Don’t mention it if we’re in Texas, please,” he said. “Texas is depressing enough. Wait till we’re through Texas, if you must. Maybe we shouldn’t go into Texas.”
“I’ll save it for Texas. Let’s heap the shit on and see what happens.” One hand on the wheel, the other with the cigarette rubbed her belly in the jumpsuit, and he knew she was hearing the music.
“Who was the father?” he said.
“A cosmonaut,” she said.
“What happened to you up there?” he said. “I’m not talking about that.”
She didn’t answer at first but then said, “I got a glimpse of the big thing that scares everyone.”
“What ‘big thing’?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Like nothing ‘never mind,’ or like nothing nothing?”
“Capital-N Nothing,” she said. “I saw Nothing. I saw it when I was up there. Nothing is horrifyingly bright. That was the scary part — it was bright and nothing.”
“Quit talking like that. I’m not in the mood,” he said.
She made a defeated sigh.
He said, “You need some professional help. You’ve been through a major trauma.”
“I am professional help,” she said.
“Doctor, heal thyself?” he muttered.
In a few minutes, after staring at the road, watching the trees go by, she said, “What does this Elizabeth look like?”
“Don’t be petty. My son is sick, and we are going to visit him for a few days and see what progress we can make on finding an antenna to send my message.”
Smoke filled the car.
On one of the trees she drove past, there was a small white sign, and Ruth had time to read it as they flashed by. It said HELL IS REAL, and Ruth said, “Hell is real. Why not send that?”
“Quit,” he said.
“That is succinct and it’s very helpful.”
He didn’t say anything and then softly, “Poor baby.”
“What did you say?” she said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
When Van Raye fell asleep against his door, he dreamed he was in the woods trying to re-catch the dog. The dog stood still long enough for Van Raye to see a medical porthole in the side of the dog. He looked inside, expecting intestines like in the cow in the pasture, but instead there was clean blackness of space and one bright shiny point of light. It was, Van Raye knew, the star with Chava Norma orbiting around it, a whole other world inside the dog. In his dream, he tried to get closer, but the dog ran away.
PART III
CHAPTER 27
I got the adjoining room to Elizabeth’s suite, room 1212, and didn’t have the energy or the initiative to go out in public. My waking hours were spent texting Ursula and then Dubourg, pressing redial for the only number I had for Van Raye and getting a recording for the university’s bed and breakfast. My companions in my room were the betta fish and flight-attendant Barbie sitting unladylike on the dresser, legs spread, and out my sliding glass doors was the wide-open dome of sky over the Atlanta airport. I ran a search for “World record” + “living in a hotel room,” and got directed to Howard Hughes biographies.
Elizabeth would come and speak through the adjoining door to me, “This is very unhealthy.”
I sometimes gathered myself into one of my new tracksuits and went to dinner. In the revolving restaurant, she updated me on the Grand Aerodrome’s wrap-up. I sat slouched in the chair. She told me that I looked like a gangster. I told her that my wardrobe was comfortable.
“If you ever have to defend what you are wearing with ‘it’s comfortable,’” she said, “you’ve made the wrong choice.”
She explained that I had to get back to work, to write this report myself. My phone sat beside my dinner plate, the last conversation with Randolph clearly visible in green and purple text balloons.
“I’m preparing you to run the firm alone,” she said.
“And what are you going to do?” I touched the screen to make the light come back on and slid it again in her direction. Just look at my phone, see this conversation!
“I will not travel with you,” she said, “if that’s what you are asking. I think you would be healthier without me. You’re completely capable of doing it when you get back to 100 percent.”
“No, I don’t think I can. Are you looking around?” I used my eyes to point to my phone. All she had to do was glance down at the conversation.
“What? What is wrong with you?” She picked up the phone. She tilted her head back. “What am I supposed to be looking at? I don’t have my glasses on.”
“Jesus!” I took it, but the screen was blank white, conversation gone. “Dammit!”
The restaurant revolved, slowly turned on its axis. After dessert, we drank coffee. If she retired, if she never said a word about business, would our whole lives be like it was when we were waiting on a flight — no worries, no business, only the moment? Her eyes kept looking to the west, and Gypsy Sky Cargo inched its way into view. The jets were being unloaded and loaded under the lights, cargo doors wide open, and containers going up on accordion lifts. They had floodlights mounted in clusters on high poles making every worker on the ground have multiple shadows emanating from his or her feet like a Swiss Army knife of selves.