Tim Horvath - Understories

“You haven’t changed a bit,” he said with disgust. I sensed that he wanted me to defend myself against this charge, but I didn’t say anything. He went on, “Okay. How about I don’t admit to something. How about I don’t admit I can see that you’re the same fucking competitive bastard you were in high school?” I tried not to blink. “No? Okay, or that in less than a half hour I can see that your wife is only some what happy. No? Okay, let’s say neither of us admits that if your wife goes on one of my tours, it’s a good bet she never looks back?”

I held his stare.

At once he released me. The same hand that had applied a viselike grip to my shoulder now wrapped around and squeezed the other one, almost affectionately, you might have said. I half-expected to see Lena poke through the underbrush and point a camera at us, call out, “Smile!”—immortalizing us, buddies against the backdrop of sky. I looked at his face to see if he had registered the tremor shuddering through me. He’d already moved on, though, chuckling, shaking his head. “You really shoulda been there,” he was saying.

I was still trembling a bit later that night when we’d settled down at last at our campsite, in our family tent. The others were fast asleep. Scully was long gone. I didn’t know if he’d ever get mentioned again. I doubted it, even though we’d eventually gotten a tourist to take a snapshot of us with him in front of the Visitor Center, before we shook hands amicably and parted ways.

The strange thing was, I had been there, in the planetarium. The very first night, along with the other nine people, except that there weren’t nine others, there were ten others, eleven total, and I had been among them. Maybe somehow I’d been quieter, or less obtrusive, so that in his memory Scully had edited me right out of the planetarium, right out of existence. And the ultimate irony was that I was the one who’d been responsible for one of the most memorable moments of that night, a moment that no one who was there should have forgotten. I mean, if you were looking back at what deserved to stick from that night and what deserved to fade into oblivion, my contribution should have certainly gone into the “preserve” pile.

You see, I’d actually taken astronomy with Millert, and we’d actually gone to the planetarium on several occasions, and each time I’d watched carefully and curiously while he set up the equipment before he dimmed the lights, and when my eyes had adjusted to the dark, I’d watched him operate the console as much as I’d concentrated on the starry sky it projected. While everyone else was enthralled by simply seeing the stars, I, who was going to be an engineer, knew I was supposed to be interested in things like how exactly the equipment worked, how it functioned. And when we were lying there in the dark after we slipped in that first night, the sky at first looked okay, but it had to be said that there weren’t a whole lot of stars. Not that most of the people there would have known the difference. But I knew, because I’d watched Millert run the show. I knew how it was supposed to look. So while others were laughing and calling out things like “Hey, that’s my hand!” I’d spent about ten minutes or so adjusting the computer and switching the modes, just like I’d watched Millert do. I was surprised by how hard it was to actually control it, even though I knew it by sight, and I was getting frustrated, especially since no one really knew what they were missing. I almost gave up. But then I toggled a certain switch. Instantly where there’d been maybe a hundred stars, there now were thousands upon thousands. It looked like scarves whipping through a snowstorm, and you could see that the sky wasn’t dark at all, nothing like the dim shroud we had all assumed it to be. I could forgive Scully for forgetting about this, though — it had been just an instant, and while there’d been a collective “Ahhhwwooh!” a few hoots and scattered applause, soon enough everyone had gotten acclimated to this new look and gone back to their business. Meanwhile, I had found a spot on the floor and lain back along with everyone else in the dark.

You might be wondering why I didn’t just fill in this gaping hole, though, to Scully. I could understand how he’d overlooked me. It had, after all, been dark that night, and confusing, and even though our voices kept rising, mostly we’d tried to keep them to a whisper so as not to disturb the custodians, who even then were moving through the hallways like distant comets. And to be truthful, I’d never gone back, never really been part of the “Club.” But all those factors aside, I’d been there that first night.

The real reason I hadn’t divulged this earlier today was that for me, the significance of the evening had been bound up in the fact that there’d been a girl there. I didn’t really want to think about her, and I hadn’t much at all. And the truth of the matter was that I had never told my wife about her. Never. Though I hadn’t consciously avoided telling her all these many years, I’ll admit that I’d missed opportunities to tell her. And in fact, there was one moment from that night that came back with particular acuteness to me. We’d all had something to drink and something to smoke — Sammy Rusa, in addition to supplying the keys, had flipped open a flask of Jack Daniel’s. We kissed, this girl and I, started to do some other things, and then one of us pulled back. I figured there’d be plenty of time; this was only the beginning. As that night in the school turned into morning, I found myself escorting the object of my affection downstairs toward the parking lot. We decided we’d go home for a few hours, or maybe go to a twenty-four-hour diner, revive over some coffee. At the top of the stairs that still looked like a possibility, even though by the time we’d made it to the first landing several minutes later, we’d both recognize that what she really needed was to empty her stomach of its contents and to be taken home, where she could slip stealthily into her own bed. For the moment, I had my arm around her and she felt good, though limp as a weed. She staggered and swayed on the steps, one arm on the rail and the other clinging to my shoulder. As we went down, she blurted, “These stairs are really a pain in the ass. Edgerton should get rid of these stairs and replace them with stars .”

Edgerton was the principal. At the time, I thought that that was easily the most charming and witty and poetic thing I’d ever heard anyone say who wasn’t dead and British. My belief in the sheer genius of the statement had carried over to the next day, as it would for years to come. I felt that it held tantalizing mysteries that I would peel away slowly. The next day, I approached her before homeroom, giddy with lack of sleep. But not only did she not recall saying the words that I had celebrated even while I half-slept, not only did she flat-out deny having said them at all, but she refused to talk to me at all, then or ever again.

And that’s what I was thinking about as snores issuing from somewhere nearby faded. I could sense Lena, a patch of warmth there beside me, and then just beyond, in the vestibule, the kids, lying silent, their warmth more tightly circumscribed. I sat up, unzipped the tent, and, quietly as I could, ventured out. At a picnic table, I gazed back over the silent campground. As my eyes began to adjust, the scattered domes appeared strange to me, like some sort of village had sprung up here, tucked into the wilderness. And then I had the idea that within this village, each of the houses could have been a miniature planetarium. Even as I thought it, I recognized this for what it was: a fanciful notion. Yet I must admit it stirred in me a momentary satisfaction. Not the kind I get when I’m the one who’s able to solve a particularly thorny design problem, one that’s stumped the room; no, this was something else entirely. I sat there and shivered and watched the tents gradually resolve themselves, becoming mere tents again, hunkered down under the vastness of the sky. Then a pummeling wind came at once from all directions, and all I could hear was the thrash of canvas, flapping, rippling, and, almost inexplicably, holding fast.