Jonathan Strahan: Eclipse Three

"There's not much chance of anything surviving the descent," he says. I don't reply, and I never tell him, nor anyone else aboard the Yastreb-4, what I saw during my seventeen minutes on Pilgrimage.

And there's no need, Dr. Teasdale, for me to tell you what you already know. Or what your handlers know. Which means, I think, that we've reached the end of this confession. Here's the feather in your cap. May you choke on it.

Outside my hospital window, the rain has stopped. I press the call button, and wait on the nurses with their shiny yellow pills and the white pills flecked with gray, their jet sprays and hollow needles filled with nightmares and, sometimes, when I'm very lucky, dreamless sleep.

Come see my band, he'd say, and they pretty much always did. – Europe, huh? she asked languidly. They were lying in her bed, which was where he liked to be after the show, after they'd seen the band. Good sex, and the comfort of warm skin, and just enough talking to make it real.

– R &B goes over big there. And they love Todd's chops: authentic African-American. They don't need to know he went to Buckley with us and played lacrosse.

– Buckley, huh? She named some friends she said had gone there, and he knew one or two, but not well. A lot of those kids had gone away to boarding school after ninth grade, while he stayed in Manhattan with his family.

– So do you like it there, in Europe?

He stretched. -It's OK.

– So do you, like, spend a lot of time in any one city?

She wanted to know if he had a girlfriend there. Already she was trying to figure out if he was serious material. Oops, time to go. He kissed her, and she tasted very sweet. -Just here, he said, and kissed her again. – New York is home.

New York was home, but in New York the band was no big deal. So they played in a few bars here, and they had dinner with their families, and escorted a friend's sister to a fundraiser for art or literacy or wildlife, depending, and maybe took a niece or a cousin's kid to see "Nutcracker." Then the band went on the road again, the road across the sea, where playing the chords in tight jeans was enough, knowing home was always back here, waiting for him to take his place. His family was here, colorful and stable, in the stone castle with big windows on the Park. A window would always be open for him to fly back through, no matter how big he got, or how long he was away.

He fell asleep as soon as he'd come, and she didn't wake him, which was nice of her. His eyes snapped open at first light. It was an old East Village apartment with leaky venetian blinds. He was pulling on his jeans when he heard her say, Jet lag? and when he turned around she was spread out like a kid on the playground being an airplane, sleepily purring a sort of phlegmy Vroom, vroom, so he fell back onto her and improvised something about, Be my jet plane, baby, ba-dum, ba-dum, Gonna make your engine scream, so together they achieved one of those moments of intimacy that promise either a relationship's worth of in-jokes, or guaranteed embarrassment next time you meet.

He took her phone number, but he doubted he'd be back.

He called her late on Christmas Eve. She was home. She said, Come on up, which was good because he was standing at a payphone two blocks away, his cellphone deliberately run down, and it was raining.

She was wearing sweatpants and a fleece bathrobe with moons on it. The "I don't care if I'm attractive or not" gambit. He called her on it by falling to his knees before her, singing softly, "Oh, holy night, the stars are brightly shiiiiining…" So she took the cue and undid her sash.

In the castle where he grew up, two kings ruled. It was a brown stone fortress at the edge of Central Park; on rainy days their nanny would send his sister and him running up and down the back stairwell, to work off energy. That was their tower, the northeast corner of the big building. A famous musician lived on another floor, and sometimes in his tuxedo on his way to the Philharmonic he would use the back stairs, too, but they knew it was really their tower.

– You're not drunk, she said when she tasted his mouth. She seemed a little surprised. She must really like him.

He made an effort. -I'm sorry, he said. -I was just, you know, kind of wondering if, if you-

Her fingers were on his lips. -Shh. I know. I mean, I don't know, but I kind of do.

She let him fall on her, graceless and helpless. She was so warm, so alive.

He was allowed to think of them as kings. They were both golden, powerful men with strong wills and interesting work. When he was older, he'd made one joke about queens, and only one, and only once.

She wriggled around and took him in her mouth.

– Don't, he said. -Not now.

– Right. She came back up, and smooched his ear. -Full frontal?

He smiled in her hair. -Yeah.

And they were there right now, he thought, or tried not to think. There, in their castle, high above the Park, wondering when he was going to turn up to drink eggnog and light the fire and see the tree. If they were thinking of him at all. If they even had a tree this year.

He kept the last of his weight on his elbows, but he touched as much of her as he could, his front to hers, fitting her curves and pressing them down for the sense that there was something that could bear him, and she could.

They would ask his sister if she'd heard from him. They never pried, but when it came to something they both wanted, they didn't really care about privacy all that much. They didn't care that his phone was dead, or why.

"Kay doesn't let his battery run down."

"Not usually, no."

"Is he coming?"

He was. But not there.

– But we aren't Oy Vey Jews, she was explaining to him. He must have apologized for bothering her on Christmas Eve, and started her on her story: -My grandparents were, like, all Philharmonic subscription, Opera Guild, Metropolitan Museum members, and my mom went to Vassar… You know.

He knew. He hadn't cried, and that was good. He didn't, usually, but tonight he didn't trust himself. He smiled, and remembered to say, -So that's why you're home now? Waiting for stray lonely goyim to come in out of the rain?

She touched his hair. -It is my destiny. My spiritual practice, in return for killing your god. I feel I owe you something. Tomorrow I observe the ritual celebration of a movie and Chinese food, but for tonight… hot sex with a hunky blond. What about you? Your folks out of town?

He waited too long to say No, and she kept going: -Went to Aspen and forgot to book you a ticket? Gone to Vienna for the winter balls and left you to take care of the Shih Tzu?

– Nuh uh. He nuzzled her hair again. Her scalp smelt like herbs, and the ends of her hair a little like popcorn. He wasn't ready to leave, even though they were getting to the talky bit, and he should. Soon.

– It's OK, she went on; -I'm used to spending Christmas Eve with people who are depressed about their families. It's kind of a specialty. In college I had all these divorced friends -I mean, their parents were-and they were all upset, you know, spending Christmas Eve with one parent, and the Day with the other… so I'd make them come over and we'd do stupid kid stuff like painting on clown faces-you don't hate clowns, do you? Some people are really weirded out by them.

– My sister hates clowns. But I don't care. What else did you do?

– Well, we made french fries from scratch. She scrunched up her face. -Boring, huh?

– Not really. Not if the point is to get someone to feel happy and normal. Food is good that way. My dad is, like, the king of comfort food. If you like whole steamed sea bass.

– Is your dad, um, Asian?

(And a second husband? Because he himself was blond? She was so obvious.)