Christian Kiefer - The Infinite Tides

“You had an affair. You filed for divorce. That’s what happened.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does.”

She began to yell now and he held the phone away from his face and looked at it. Her voice a shrill, tiny chirping through the miles of line. Like an insect. Then he simply closed the phone and set it on the counter where it almost immediately began to vibrate again — four, five times — and when it stopped he flipped it open quickly and pressed the power button until it cycled into darkness.

The room suddenly seemed very quiet. Before him rested his laptop and the newspaper. He knew he had been dreading the guilt but he did not feel guilty now, in fact felt nothing at all, just a sense of quiet and calm that relieved him. At some point he would likely need to turn his phone back on but then again why should he? Who would need to call him? His work? His ex-wife? Who else? His parents long since dead and his daughter gone into the ground and what friends he had were work friends and hence not people he saw or associated much with outside of the office and now that he was in a kind of exile they were even less likely to call. Jennifer did not have his phone number, not that she would have called. She had not so much as looked at him since she had kicked him out of her home three days ago, her postcoital eviction still a source of irritating confusion. He had waved to her the previous morning as he came in from his morning run and Nicole had waved back but Jennifer simply stepped into her car and closed the door. Things end as soon as they begin.

Who else would call him? The real estate agent. There were people he might have wanted to talk to from NASA — Eriksson, Mort Stevens, Petra Gutierrez — but only Eriksson had ever called him. A short list consisting of a null set, then. Simple math, indeed.

There was a stack of unpaid bills on the kitchen counter — an unwanted surprise when he finally had decided to check the mailbox — and he flipped through them until he found the phone bill and he turned on his mobile again and dialed, paying them with his credit card and then requesting his mobile number be changed. The task was complete in ten minutes. Then he closed the phone and powered it down and returned to the silence of the house. He knew Barb would get his new number eventually but at least there would be some respite.

The local newspaper had begun arriving on his doorstep a week before, apparently part of some kind of subscription promotion, and he had gathered the five or six editions that had appeared next to the rental car. Now he searched for today’s paper and when he located it amidst the others on the counter he unrolled it and rested his hands on the newsprint. The headlines always the same. The entire country falling into some kind of economic disaster he did not even understand or care about and yet which was in evidence all around him every day. Even the news a kind of algorithmic loop. He tried to focus on the lead story but the conversation with Barb had rattled him more than he would admit and the words drifted across the page so that he eventually found himself staring not at the newsprint but at the leather sofa that rested between himself and the empty corner of the room like some aquatic beast that had wriggled huge and needy from the ocean and then had expired at long last in the center of the living room. The goddamn sofa. Maybe he could sell it. Or maybe he should push it out to the curved end of the cul-de-sac and light the whole thing on fire. This idea had the most appeal. The fire department would likely come and perhaps the police would fine him but at least the sofa would be gone.

After a time he rose and walked outside without any clear idea of his intent, although he hoped to see Peter standing with the telescope in the field. The sun had long since dropped below the horizon and the night was cool and already there were the first tentative sounds of crickets. What time was it? He did not even know, his entire day a periodic and ever-repeating motion between sofa and chair. Two points and the line that connected them.

He walked to the edge of the cul-de-sac and stepped off into the dirt and into the field, following the path a bit awkwardly at first, the thistle brushing against his thighs and producing thin, scraping sounds as he moved. When he reached the cleared area he stopped. The crickets directly around him had ceased their chirping but far away, across the field, a tiny army of them emitted their overlapping collection of sounds like a long, grainy single note that would continue until morning. The thistle glowed softly and there, far above, the stripe of the Milky Way and stars arrayed in all directions.

He did not know how long he stood there. Perhaps a long while. Perhaps only a moment. At the edges of the lot he could still hear the wide band of yellow sound that was the endless night’s call of the crickets. Beyond that, on a slight rise, a series of identical glowing cubes that he knew were windows from the next subdivision. From the field he could see a faint glow from the upstairs windows of Jennifer’s house, as if lit from some interior room deep within. The rest of the house remained a black shape.

Farther down the street, a short, squat figure appeared from Riverside and moved into the cul-de-sac with an outsize bundle strung up over his shoulder. It could only be Peter with his telescope and Keith found himself wondering if he wanted to be caught there in the field as if waiting for him. Indeed it might have been that he was waiting, not for any reason other than the desire to have a simple conversation with someone, itself a surprising idea since even before the emptiness of the house he had long enjoyed the silence of being alone.

Peter crossed under the last streetlamp and stepped over the chain. Keith could hear the crunch of dry thistle. “Peter,” he said.

Peter froze. “Who is it?” he said.

“Keith Corcoran.”

“Ah!” Peter said. “Astronaut Keith Corcoran. You surprise me.” He stepped forward again and Keith waited as the crunching footsteps continued and then they were shaking hands in the darkness. “You are outside enjoying night air, yes?”

“I am,” Keith said.

“Not with pretty neighbor?”

“No.”

“These things happen.”

“Seems so.”

“Good then.” They were silent and then Peter dropped the telescope from his shoulder. “You hold this and I set up tripod,” he said, and he handed Keith the telescope itself, a metal cylinder that was cold and smooth in his hands. “You have maybe something else to do?”

“Well,” Keith began, paused, and then stopped altogether. “No,” he said at last. “Not really.”

“Good,” Peter said.

Keith stood holding the telescope dumbly as Peter flipped levers and turned knobs and the tripod unreeled itself from its more compact form and then Peter took the telescope from him and set it upon the tripod, the whole of it like an insect perched there in the darkness.

Peter unfolded a sheet of paper from his pocket and then produced a small flashlight that cast a red glow upon the sheet. He stood smoothing and looking at it for a long moment.

Keith stood in the silence, trying not to watch him but wondering what else to look at. The stars. The luminous night. His eyes had adjusted and now he could see shapes in the faint moonglow. Beyond the edge of the cul-de-sac, four streetlights traced where the court formed a T against Riverside. That short distance seemed to mark another world entirely.

“I have this list,” Peter said at last. “It is nothing. A list that someone made. Things to see.”

“OK,” Keith said. It was silent again and then he said, “Things like what?”

“Not stars. Well, yes, some stars also. Mostly odd things. Things that they did not really know about then. When list was made.”