Pete Cawdron: Feedback

“I arrived this morning,” Lily said, still shivering a little. Her words were stilted. She was a FOB: Fresh Off the Boat, as Jason’s Korean-American friends would say, but he’d never say that to her. Although her English was good, her words were heavily accented, with a distinctly Korean feel to the consonants.

Jason stood up. He looked past Lily at the intersection. The street was empty.

“Listen,” he said, opening a drawer and pulling out some clothes. “Why don’t you go and have a shower? You’ll feel better if you warm up a bit.”

He handed her a shirt and a pair of shorts, adding, “I’ll keep watching for Lee.”

In reality, he had no idea who he was watching for and would have felt pretty stupid calling out to a stranger down on the street, but he resolved to do it nonetheless. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d made a fool out of himself over a girl.

Lily bowed slightly, thanking him as she took the clothes. She left her purse hanging on the back of the chair and disappeared into the bathroom.

Within seconds, the sound of the shower competed with the rain. Steam wisped out around the gaps in the door jamb. The landlord was supposed to have reframed the door a month ago, but he’d forgotten and Jason kept forgetting to hound him about it.

Jason didn’t know what to do with himself. No one was coming down the road, that much was obvious. If Lee had failed to show after eight hours, the likelihood of him showing in the next few minutes was negligible.

He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, wondering what he should do next. Staring at her purse, curiosity got the better of him. She had to have a passport or a driver’s license. Perhaps if he knew her last name he could track down her father. Jason felt guilty, but he told himself a quick peek was justified. He was trying to help her. He opened her purse and was surprised to find it empty. There was no money, no credit cards, none of the normal junk that accumulates in a bag, not even scraps of lint. The purse looked brand new.

The shower had stopped but he hadn’t noticed. He was too busy looking to see if there were any compartments inside the purse he might have missed. He felt the lining, looking for a zipper, wondering if there were any hidden sections. Even with his limited knowledge of woman’s fashion accessories, the purse seemed basic, no pockets or dividers, just a simple bag.

Jason heard the door handle turn behind him and his heart sank. He scrambled to put Lily’s purse back, turning rapidly and looking as guilty as sin when Lily stepped back into the apartment.

Lily looked stunning. With her hair carefully combed and slicked back, a smile on her face and bright, intelligent eyes, she looked like she’d stepped from the covers of a glamor magazine. The t-shirt he’d given her was baggy on her small frame, but she’d rolled up the sleeves so they rested on her shoulders. Standing in front of him, she tied a knot in the front of the shirt, pulling it tight and exposing her hips, accentuating her figure. Even the shorts looked good on her. Lily’s long, smooth, thin legs looked as though they had been sculpted from rose colored marble. Jason could have stood there staring at her all night. He wasn’t sure what he expected when she came out of the shower, but he hadn’t expected her to look so beautiful in his clothes.

“Are you hungry?” he said, more to distract himself than to offer her something to eat. There wasn’t much in the fridge, and only some breakfast cereal and ramen noodles in the cupboard — they were hardly a meal at the best of times.

“No. I’m fine,” Lily replied, and he wasn’t sure if she was just being polite.

“Coffee?” he asked.

“Sure.”

Jason turned his back on her and put the kettle on. All he had was instant coffee—a shot in the arm for a student in desperate need of a quick fix. He liked fancy coffee as much as the next person, but as foul as instant coffee was, it worked miracles when pulling an all-nighter studying. At times like that, quantity took precedence over quality. He opened a packet of plain crackers, silently berating himself for being such a tight ass and not splurging on Oreos.

“Milk and sugar?” he asked as the kettle came to a boil.

“Just black,” Lily replied.

As he poured the coffee into two cups he noticed her staring at the posters again.

“Tell me about them,” she asked.

And that was all he needed. Jason turned on the lava lamp sitting on his desk as he handed her a cup of coffee. He grabbed his cup and turned off the main light. His apartment was a poor substitute for an astronomical observatory, but he could dream. The red light from the lava lamp set the mood, allowing his imagination to carry him across the universe as he gazed at each picture. To him, it was as though he was recalling a summer vacation from photographs.

Lily stood. A distant street light behind her cast a faint shadow on the wall, making her thin, lanky body look even more extended. As he looked at her shadow, Jason realized that Mitchell would have pointed out that the shadow she cast was a close match to the grays, mythical aliens that had supposedly been visiting the Earth since the Roswell Incident. Jason shook any such notion from his mind, scolding himself for even thinking anything remotely similar to Mitchell and his wacky conspiracy theories.

The way Lily stood there silently looking at his tatty posters was reminiscent of someone in an art gallery staring at one of the great masterpieces, being mesmerized by Gauguin or Monet.

His mind raced with the possibilities. Was she really that interested in his geeky posters? Or was she just being polite? Where should he start?

Lily gazed around the room, apparently waiting for him to say something to break the silence. She seemed particularly interested in a large poster of Earth set against the pitch black void of space.

“Oh, I love this one,” he said, getting up and walking over to the poster. “Most astronomers spend their time looking at other planets, stars, nebulae and galaxies, but I never get tired of seeing the Earth from space. This is–“

“A blue marble,” Lily said, walking over and reaching out to touch the poster-size print. Her fingers hovered above the image, running over the outline of the Sinai, Africa and Madagascar.

“Yes,” Jason replied. “This photograph was taken by Apollo 17 on their outbound journey as they headed to the Moon. For me, it’s an image full of wonder and sadness.”

Lily turned to him, her head tilted slightly in surprise. He could see she wanted him to clarify his comment.

“This was the last manned lunar mission in the Apollo program. NASA called this image The Blue Marble because Earth appeared to sit against the backdrop of space like a marble glistening in the sunlight, but Earth would have appeared much larger to the astronauts. Perhaps the Blue Basketball or the Blue Beach Ball would have been more accurate, but not quite as poetic. I often wonder what it must have felt like to stare out through that cold glass, looking at a planet you could hold in your hands.”

“It’s upside down,” Lilly said.

“Ah, no,” Jason replied tentatively. “That swirling mass of white at the bottom is the cloud cover over Antarctica. You can see Africa stretching out to the north, with that distinct green band of jungle giving way to the sands of the Sahara.”

Lily turned her head to one side, leaning over and looking at the image sideways as she spoke softly, saying, “I remember it differently.”

Jason laughed.

“Only a handful of astronauts have ever seen Earth quite like–“ He stopped mid sentence, changing tack. “You know, I do remember reading that the command module was inverted relative to Earth when the crew took this photo.”