“Well, yeah,” Eriksson said. “That’s all. Just wanted to give you a quick call to let you know what was happening.”
“OK,” Keith said.
They exchanged a few more brief words and the call was over. He snapped the phone shut and sat staring into the air-conditioned atmosphere before him. He should be in Houston right now. This was what he told himself. He should be in Houston.
Across the room, Peter was mid-monologue and his voice was loud enough to bury all else under the onslaught of volume: “I think of you when I see this. I know it is hot, it is hot outside, but in here always so cool and quiet. I think of my Audrey.”
In a voice that was, by comparison, the chirping of a tiny bird: “That’s really sweet, Peter. Thank you.”
“And now,” Peter said, half turning toward Keith, “I visit famous astronaut Keith Corcoran.” And with these words Peter turned and crossed the room quickly, his hand already extended. “I want to shake hand of famous astronaut,” he said. He grasped Keith’s hand in his own and shook it vigorously twice before letting it drop again. “I look up pictures of astronauts on Internet until I see you,” he began, his voice trailing off as if looking for the correct word and then finding it: “Magnificent.”
“Oh … thank you,” Keith said.
“You are famous man.”
Keith looked at him but said nothing.
“I have much to ask you but now I must work,” Peter said.
Again Keith did not answer, only looking back at him without words, without expression.
“Peter Kovalenko. From Kiev. Ukraine.”
And now Keith said: “OK.” And then: “Keith Corcoran.”
“Of course this I know,” Peter said. “We’re like old friends already.”
Keith did not say anything in response. He thought perhaps he should dissuade this man of such a notion but could think of no method that would not sound abrupt or cruel so he simply sat there, quietly waiting for Peter Kovalenko to leave.
“Astronaut. And right here,” Peter said at last.
Keith nodded.
“You cannot resist Audrey either,” Peter said. “But she is all mine.” He said the end of the sentence loudly and turned toward the front of the store. Audrey looked up from the box and smiled, that smile turning to something else as Peter turned back around. Pain or confusion, Keith could not tell.
“Now I go,” Peter said. He rubbed his hands together as if he were brushing off flour. “Very nice to meet you,” he said.
“OK,” Keith said. They shook hands a second time and Peter nodded at him and then turned on his heel. Audrey was staring at Keith and when he looked up at her she turned to Peter and said something quietly and Peter’s voice boomed back at him again: “Yes, he is astronaut. Famous astronaut. Look on Internet.”
Audrey looked back at Keith and smiled. “Neat,” she said.
Keith nodded toward her.
“Don’t get any ideas!” Peter said, yelling down the length of the narrow room even though it was small enough to render such volume unnecessary. “Famous astronaut! Magnificent!” He looked at Audrey one last time and then backed through the door and out of the shop.
The door swung closed. Silence. Christ.
Audrey looked at him. “Wow,” she called to him. “That’s true?”
“It’s true,” he said.
“Cool.” She looked again into the white box and then reached inside, pawing through colored tissue paper and finally extracting a large snow globe that was set upon a bright pink base. Within the glass sphere stood a castle tower upon which was mounted a clock. There were figures around the base but Keith could not make them out from where he sat. Perhaps a prince and princess or something similar.
“I guess you have an admirer,” he said.
She looked up at him briefly, an expression of concern or of confusion appearing on her face for an instant. Then she shrugged, as if dismissing his observation entirely. “Peter’s all right,” she said. “He’s been coming here forever.”
He watched her as she shook the globe and then set it on the counter, peering into its watery interior in silence as flakes of white plastic swirled across the clock and across the figures.
Keith returned to the newspaper on the tabletop. Everything was as it was: sitting at the coffeeshop, not really reading, his hands covered in tiny dots of eggshell. Eventually he would rise and move back out to the car and would feel the air conditioner against his face and he would return to the house in the cul-de-sac where there would be no package waiting for him, only a span of days that could not be counted by any system he could devise.
Five
By the time evening came, he had been pacing for the better part of an hour, moving upstairs, walking sometimes halfway down the hall toward her room before returning to the first floor, to the living room, to the kitchen, and then rotating in the direction of the stairwell once again. He was not thinking of that room in any specific way, not even in avoidance. Instead his thoughts centered on that last morning in Houston when he had awakened at his desk after celebrating with the crew to find Mullins standing across from him. Even as he found himself in the upstairs hallways yet again, he knew that he had never felt so foolish as he had in that moment, at least not since he had been a child, in the days when the other children would ridicule him for saying just the wrong thing at just the wrong time. Those days so far behind him now that he never thought of them at all and yet with Mullins standing there it had been much the same sensation, the weird wave of panic and the realization that there was no taking back what had already happened, time ever corkscrewing out into the curvature of space.
He had been thinking he should call, that he should simply call Mullins’s office and ask him directly what his status was, even flipped open his phone once on the way up the stairs, the second beer of the evening clutched in the opposite hand, and then closed the phone as he yet again entered the hallway that led to Quinn’s room, telling himself that he had nothing to say to Mullins whatsoever, and then turning back before he reached that still-open doorway, wandering into his own bedroom where he spent the next hour flipping absently through the television stations. At some point he had removed the phone from his pocket and had been clicking it open and closed without conscious thought. And that was when he finally dialed the number.
It was well past eight o’clock and he had not anticipated an answer, expecting — perhaps even hoping — to make some kind of statement to Mullins’s voice mail, but then there was a click and Mullins was there, saying his own name as a greeting and Keith actually stuttered and then said, “Jim, it’s Keith Corcoran.”
“Hello, Keith,” he said. “How’s the time off?”
“It’s OK. Good, I mean.” He had been sitting on the mattress but he stood now and then leaned back down for the remote and clicked the television off and then began pacing slowly through the room, setting the empty beer can on the dresser as he did so.
“Glad to hear it,” Mullins said.
“I didn’t think you’d answer.”
A pause. “What can I do for you, Captain?” Mullins said. Monotone. Businesslike.
“Uh … look,” he said. He paused again. Then: “So maybe we ended on a bad note last time?”
“No, it’s fine,” Mullins said. “Stressful situation for everyone.”
“OK,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Mullins said but there was no change in his tone of voice. “What can I do for you, Keith?”