Christian Kiefer - The Infinite Tides

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.

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?”

“Well, so I was just checking in on something,” he began. He cleared his throat. “I spoke to Eriksson today. Anyway, I was looking for that box of files I asked the office to send.”

“Yeah,” Mullins said. “Hang on.” There was a pause and Keith could hear muffled movement and the sound of a door closing. Then Mullins returned to the line. “I can’t send anything like that out of the building. It’s in the regulations. National Security. You understand.”

“But we all work from home sometimes.”

“Even when that happens no official materials are supposed to leave the building.”

“But they do.”

“That’s not official policy,” Mullins said.

“So where does that leave me?”

“I’m sorry, Keith. I just can’t send you anything. I wish I could. Believe me.” A lull and then Mullins added, “So is there anything else?”

Keith said nothing for a long moment. Then, simply: “I guess not.”

“How’s your time off?”

“It’s fine,” Keith said. “You know I have clearance.”

“It’s not the clearance. There’s just no way I can do it.”

“Maybe I could sign something.”

“You’re not hearing me on this.”

“I’m hearing you but you don’t understand.”

“I do understand,” Mullins said. “It’s policy though so my hands are tied.”

Keith had walked down the stairs during the conversation and had retrieved another beer from the refrigerator and was returning to the second floor now. He cracked open the can and paused on the landing and took a long drink.

“So you’re doing OK?” Mullins said.

“Fine.”

“Mind if I ask what you’ve been up to?”

“Do I mind? I don’t know. I guess not.” He was irritated but his tone was flat and even and Mullins did not respond. “I’ve been trying to get my house ready to sell. That’s what I’ve been doing.”

“That’s working for you?”

“It’s working fine.” Keith said. “So how long am I out?”

“What do you mean?”

“On vacation. Or leave. Or whatever it is.”

“I guess that’s something you should decide.”

“So I can come back to the office anytime?”

“I wouldn’t say that exactly.”

“What would you say then?”

Mullins exhaled. “You need to take a little time and take care of yourself,” he said.

“I’ve taken a week.”

“Look, Corcoran, I’m just not sure you’re ready to come back yet. The thing that happened … I just …” He trailed off, then added: “Look, a week doesn’t seem like very long.”

“Why not?”

“We’ve been through this already, haven’t we?”

“I don’t think so,” Keith said.

“Well,” Mullins said, “I don’t know what you want me to say here.” He sighed audibly. “I checked the logs, Keith. You did eighty-four hours the last week you were here. Seventy-nine the week before. Almost ninety the week before that. Do you want me to go on here?”

“Yes, I want you to go on.”

Keith could hear Mullins’s breath through the phone. The rhythm of it was like a circle.

“Look,” Mullins said at last, “when one of my astronauts is working himself to death that’s a problem I need to deal with.”