Christian Kiefer - The Infinite Tides

“And then bottom of cup of Dipper points up to handle of Little Dipper. That handle is Polaris.”

“OK.”

“It is star that never moves and it is north.”

“The North Star.”

“Yes. You already know this.”

“Not really.”

“You can see it?”

“Yes.”

“Then you can always find north.”

“I guess that’s good.”

“It is always good to know where you are.”

“Is it?”

“Yes,” Peter said.

He said nothing in response. Is it? Really? Another swallow of beer. He wished suddenly that he had something stronger, that he had a bottle of vodka or whiskey or something he could drink that would obliterate him, send him crawling home through a world spinning without control. But there was nothing like that in his house. Only beer. And he was already beyond driving.

To their left, the cul-de-sac glowed yellow and quiet in the night like a movie set. Walter Jensen’s black sedan was gone. Jennifer’s car likely inside the garage. His own rental car across the street: an increasingly filthy sedan. Perhaps it was finally time to open his garage and start the process of sorting through whatever boxes of personal effects Barb had deposited there. The sofa like a boat on slowly moving waves, a quiet rolling beneath him.

“I had a migraine a few days ago,” he said suddenly.

“You keep having these migraine headaches?”

“Yes.”

“You should come and ask me and I will give you some of this and you will feel better,” Peter said. He tapped at the pipe.

“You’re probably right,” Keith said. “They drug-test, though. I mean, not regularly but they could and that would be the end of that.”

Peter made a sound, something like “Ach!” and waved his hands around in the air in front of him. “Fools, I think,” he said.

“Maybe,” Keith said. “Shit. Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“You have angry tongue tonight.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Not at me, I hope.”

“No, not at you.”

Silent for a moment. Then Peter: “Who then? The pretty lady across street maybe?”

“I don’t know.”

“Things not going so well with her?”

“It’s not that,” he said. Peter was silent, perhaps waiting for him to continue, but he could find no words for the simple desperation that had settled into him. After the migraine he had come to feel like he was at the end somehow, that he had come to the end of some equation the answer of which he already knew he would never find for indeed there was no answer possible and yet he had continued to move through it as if there would be a solution, that the numbers would do what they had always done for him: they would provide a way forward. He had known that this idea was a fiction or a fantasy and yet somehow it had remained with him for those weeks since returning to Earth but now even that fiction had departed him. He could not fathom what was left. Perhaps nothing at all.

They said nothing and after a time Peter set the pipe down and stood and began making adjustments to the telescope’s position. Night sounds around them. Occasionally the crunching or shuffling of an animal somewhere amidst the thistle. The crickets in their chirping. The more distant sounds of freeways and parking lots.

“What are you looking for?” Keith said.

“I do not know,” Peter said. “I was looking for Messier objects. But that is work for students. I do not know what to look for now.”

“Can you find that comet yet?”

“Not in this hemisphere.”

“I saw it in the paper again this week.”

“Bah,” Peter said. “Comet is not hitting Earth I think.”

“Too bad,” Keith said.

Peter stopped now, looked back at him. Keith could see only his silhouette. “Do not say this,” Peter said.

“I’m kidding.”

“It is not something to make jokes for.”

“You keep saying it’s not going to hit Earth.”

“How do I know that?”

“I figure you know these things.”

“Why? Because I have cheap telescope? I do not know anything. I work at Target. It’s not something to make jokes for.”

“Christ, OK.”

Peter said nothing, returning to the telescope, adjusting it, shifting the whole tripod slightly and then readjusting the base, leveling it. After a moment, he said, “I am sorry to speak to you like this. I apologize.”

“Don’t apologize. Shit.”

“I respect you too much to talk to you like this.”

Keith shrugged. His eyes were increasingly bleary as he finished his fourth beer in quick succession and opened another, leaning back on the sofa, watching Peter move and manipulate the telescope and then drifting back to the stars again.

Peter’s voice casting over those pinpoints of starlight: “Maybe I would have known something before, if I was still in Kiev at Golosiiv. I could not see this probably, but they would know about this. Not here.”

“Who would?” Keith said, his voice moving out into those same stars. At drift. Drifting.

“The astronomers at Golosiiv observatory. They would know.”

“Are you still in touch with them?”

“No.” There was a pause and then he added, “Not so much anymore. When I first was here in America, yes, but then not anymore.”

“Lost touch?”

“No reason to bother them. I was not help to anyone by calling. They are busy people. And I have nothing to add here.”

“The telescope you worked with in Kiev was a big one?”

“You do not know Golosiiv?” Peter said, a hint of incredulity in his voice.

“No,” he said. “Should I?”

“I do not know.” He paused, then said, “Maybe not. It is famous for me, but I forget you are no astronomer but engineer.”

“True,” Keith said.

“Astronomy is important to me,” Peter said. “It’s most important thing that I can do. More important than stacking boxes at Target.”

“Most things are.”

“This is right, Astronaut Keith Corcoran.” Peter paused for a long time now, then looked through the eyepiece, then stepped back and looked up at the stars. “I went to university in Ukraine. I mean I have education.”

“I figured as much.”

“Education but not degree. Luda came along and then Marko and then Nadia later. Hard then to keep going when there is feeding family.”

“I’m sure,” Keith said. He sipped at his beer. The crickets chirped somewhere in the field. Everywhere.

“There is famous observatory south of Kiev in Golosiiv Forest. Famous in Ukraine. Very beautiful forest with paths and trees. Most beautiful when night is coming and shadows are in trees. Everything so green and beautiful. And in winter when snow comes. Everything quiet then. Like bird comes and is over everything. Like white bird. Like whole forest is nest for white bird.”

Keith was smiling in the darkness, his head back on the sofa, eyes straight up and staring into the stars, Peter continuing to talk somewhere as if the voice was being narrated by someone who was no longer there, as if on the soundtrack of a film about this moment with two men in the darkness staring up into space, each in their own world and that world the same.

“And there is Main Astronomical Observatory there. Right there in forest.” Peter paused, lifted his pipe again and Keith could see his face lit by the orange glow of his lighter and could hear him breathe in the smoke and hold it as the glow disappeared, once again a silhouette as if made of some darker matter than that of the universe around him, around them both. “I wish you could see this as I did. It is magnificent. Not like this little thing but beautiful thing with forest all around. You see what I am saying?” He paused and once again the orange glow of the lighter, the inhaling of smoke and holding, then the exhale. “A place you could dream about if you are like me and you spend your nights looking at books about stars and you read about stars and planets and you go to university to study. And then they give you job as assistant. And it barely pays but maybe you are not caring because you love.”