“Anyway, let us know if there’s anything we can do. Of course, you know that.”
“Sure,” Keith said. “Will do.”
They exchanged a few pleasantries and the conversation ended. Keith sat at the back of the coffeeshop smiling broadly. He finished his coffee and then returned the astronomy book to his bag and tossed the newspaper onto a nearby table. Audrey was at the counter and she waved to him as he passed. He was still smiling. “You look happy today,” she said.
“I guess I am,” he said, and he was.
When he passed Peter’s house on his way home he stopped and walked to the door and knocked but there was no answer. He had been looking forward to telling Peter the news but now that he was unable to do so it occurred to him that he might just as well get Chen the résumé on his own.
He returned home with this in mind, retrieving the pages from the kitchen island and reading through them with careful attention. Perhaps he had underestimated Petruso Kovalenko’s talents; were he a personnel officer at a research center, Peter’s résumé might have appeared impressive indeed and while there was too much detail in the résumé—it seemed to list every job Peter had ever held — the relevant material, especially the work he had done at Golosiiv, was interesting.
He continued to ruminate on this as he once again entered his car and drove to an office supply store and asked them to scan and e-mail the document directly to Tom Chen. As he waited, his phone began to buzz, but it was Jim Mullins and he did not feel the need to speak to him now. The voice mail he left was curt: “Keith, please call me at your earliest convenience.” He left the phone number, as if Keith might not have it. It was a call he would need to respond to at some point but it could wait.
When he returned home he sat in his car and watched as the big gray sofa was carefully loaded onto the back of a pickup truck by two men in powder blue denim shirts, men clearly on lunch break from their tractor work. The men eyed him with some level of suspicion but as he did nothing to stop them they continued without pause until the sofa was gently secured. The truck was dilapidated, the windows rolled down as the only defense against the summer heat and a moment later it drove away, the sofa longer than the bed of the truck so that it suspended a full foot over the moving asphalt. In the next instant it had rounded the corner and disappeared from view. The other workmen sat in the shadow of one of the tractors, eating their lunches, their conversation impossible to hear.
He was surprised when the doorbell rang a few hours later, the sound so foreign that it took him several moments to determine what it was, but he was even more surprised when he opened the door and Luda threw her arms around him and put her head on his shoulder, weeping. “Thank you. Thank you,” she said between her sobs.
His own arms embraced her as reflex and then relaxed to patting her back softly. “Whoa,” he said. “What’s going on?” He looked past her at Peter, who stood smiling in a button shirt and tie, a wrinkled sport coat stretched over his broad shoulders.
“You are sweet, sweet man,” Luda said. She leaned back from him and took his face in her hands and kissed his cheeks with a loud smacking sound. Her eyes continued to swim with tears.
“OK, OK,” Keith said. He was smiling, more from the absurdity of the situation than anything else. As if Luda’s behavior were not enough, Peter came forward, still smiling, still unspeaking, and grabbed Keith’s face and again planted one wet, smacking kiss on each cheek, stepping back then and saying, “You are good friend to do this for me.”
“OK,” Keith said. “What are we talking about?”
“The NASA called,” Luda said. “The NASA called for Petruso.”
“Your friend, Mr. Chen, asked me for interview. It will be Monday at three and he will ask me about my experiences at Golosiiv.”
“I’m so glad to hear that,” Keith said. He let out a loud and involuntary laugh.
“You come to our home now and you have dinner with us. The children they are at brother’s house so no bother,” Luda said.
Before Keith could so much as nod, Peter said, “Yes, all true. You come. I know you have no plans tonight better than this and sofa is gone so nowhere to sit. You come and we eat holubtsi and you will never before taste holubtsi as my Luda will make for you.”
Keith looked at them, all three of them smiling now. “It sounds like something I shouldn’t pass up,” he said.
He slipped into his shoes and they led him across the cul-de-sac and down the sidewalk and as they walked he thought he could see Jennifer peeking through the upstairs window of her house but he could not be sure and did not know if he even cared. The night air was cool but heat still radiated from the concrete and asphalt and above them the sky glowed with stars bright enough to be visible beyond the halo of the streetlamps and the houses that lined the streets and courts and ways around them, each holding a green square of lawn that sloped slowly and carefully to the sidewalk as they passed, the whole of it universal and orderly and silent, the unfinished lots and empty foreclosed homes presenting dark vacancies amidst the lit houses of the living.
Peter unlocked the door and swung it open grandly. “Enter, my friend,” he said.
Keith nodded and waved Luda in first and then followed her. The smell of cooking food was everywhere. “My god that smells great,” he said.
“Ah yes, you see,” Peter said. “I tell you this is best food you will have ever.”
Luda giggled and moved past them and into the interior of the house.
“I believe it,” Keith said. Perhaps this was the way it worked: one man gets a job and another loses one, as an Olympian passes a baton. Perhaps this was an equation that would be solved by Keith taking Peter’s vacant job at Target.
“Astronaut Keith Corcoran,” Peter said. “This is honor to have you in our home. Please make yourself comfortable. I want to know everything about this Mr. Chen. I must know all. About research center too. I look up on Internet but you have inside story I think and this is not on Internet.”
“Sure,” Keith said.
“Petruso,” Luda called from deeper inside the house.
“Yes, come, come,” Peter said. “I apologize for excitement. I ask you here to enjoy yourself, not to get your information.”
“I’m glad to help,” Keith said.
Peter walked further into the house and Keith followed. He had seen it once before, when he had stumbled into this room to sling Peter’s unconscious body onto the sofa, but he had paid little attention to it then. It was similar to Keith’s house but not quite the same, the floor plan differing in ways that were subtle but noticeable. There was no kitchen island here; in its place was a broad, dark wood table with long benches on either side. The walls were decorated here and there with needlepoint tapestries that looked very old, each encased in an ornate wooden frame. A stag with a series of Cyrillic letters underneath. Another a series of small houses with curling smoke before them with a few sentences below the houses as if the letters sprouted out of the earth.
“Very beautiful,” he said.
“Ah yes, from my great-grandmother, that one,” Peter said. “And that one there from great aunt on father’s side. They come from Ukraine. My family is from village and make these things for selling. Later cities come and life changes.”
Keith nodded and stood looking at the hanging pieces.
“Many artists in family. My uncle carves whole scenes out of horns of oxen. So beautiful and detailed. Those are in Ukraine still. Too hard bringing here.”
Luda moved around the kitchen with a kind of bustling energy that at first glance might have seemed foreign to her being. Keith was struck by how very lovely she was, her dark eyes shining from her pale face, black hair pulled back into a small bun. Her bearing was of class and grace but the fluidity of her motion was incongruous with its setting: like watching a queen bake a cake or hoe a field.