Christian Kiefer - The Infinite Tides

Again, the children giggled. One of them yelled something back to him in Ukrainian that sounded like “please,” but with such a thick accent that Keith was not sure if the boy was asking for something or answering his question.

A moment later, Peter came bursting from the inside of the house. “Astronaut Keith Corcoran, my friend,” he bellowed.

“Peter.” Again he mustered a smile.

“You are good friend to me, Astronaut Keith Corcoran.” Peter reached through the open window and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Well, thanks.”

“You got me interview with NASA.”

“Oh yeah. I should have asked you how that went.” He glanced over his shoulder at the house now, did so without thinking. It looked just as it always had. He wondered how long it would take before the tent obliterated it from view, and then how strange it would look to have that monstrous tent in the cul-de-sac. As if some evil circus had come to town.

“You could have asked but I did not know how well this goes until today. Just this morning. Today they call me and say they want second interview to meet director of research center. This is good news, I think.”

Keith sat blinking, cool air roaring against his face. He reached out and turned the knob down and looked back at Peter. “Are you serious?” he said.

“I am so very serious. I am so very serious.”

“My god, that’s great news,” he said and despite the darkness of his mood he found himself smiling broadly.

“This is true. Great, great news.”

“Peter, they only do that when they’re going to offer you the job.”

“Yes, this is same Mr. Tom Chen tells me on telephone. He calls this formality.”

Peter was leaning in the window of the car and after a moment Keith said, “Let me get out,” and Peter stepped back and Keith opened the door and stood and extended his hand and Peter’s smile was great and luminous and there were tears in his eyes. They shook hands and Peter drew Keith into a one-armed embrace and into Keith’s ear he whispered, “Thank you. Thank you, my friend.”

“Damn good news.” He clapped Peter on the back and Peter followed suit and then the embrace ended and they both stood on the sidewalk between the two cars, the children standing off to one side watching them. The sound of high, rhythmic beeping came from the cul-de-sac. A truck backing into position.

“That’s fantastic,” Keith said.

“Yes, to hell with Target and its boxes.”

“To hell with Target,” Keith said. “When’s the second interview?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I gather the first interview went really well.”

“They ask me technical questions. Many technical questions. But I know this even though I have not been working big telescope for some years. The same questions I would answer in Golosiiv. Nice to be asked about this again.”

“Haven’t lost your mind working for Target?”

“No, I still have my mind,” Peter said, laughing.

“That must be a relief.”

“Yes.” There was a pause. “Today we go to beach to celebrate.”

“Day off?”

“Yes. Never work on Thursday.”

“How far away is that?”

“You have not been to beach?”

Keith shook his head.

“Not so far,” Peter said. “Two hours maybe. A long day and we are slow to leave. So much stuff Luda takes with us. Like we go to live there forever.”

“Yeah, it can be like that.”

“You see our field?” Peter motioned toward the cul-de-sac. “Already looks totally different.”

“I keep thinking we should hot-wire one of the tractors and push my house down.”

“My nephew can probably do this. The one I tell you about.”

“Maybe I’ll have you call him.”

“Maybe not.”

“You’re probably right.” Keith said. “It’s in bad shape though. They’re putting a tent around it to fumigate for the next three days. Termite infestation.”

“Shit,” Peter said. “You will be out of house for three days then. Where to go?”

“Hotel. And maybe for longer than that. Once the fumigation is done they’ll do the repairs.”

“What then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Back to NASA maybe?”

“Maybe.”

“Complicated still?”

“Yeah.”

Peter stood looking at him. Then he glanced at the children. They had grown tired of watching the adults talk and were now chasing each other around Peter’s car, bounding through the two open doors and across the backseat. Peter said nothing to stop them and after a brief moment he said, “Just one moment, please,” as if he was talking on the phone and had put Keith on hold. Then he walked toward the house and disappeared inside.

Keith stood there and watched the children in their game, wondering if he should sit in the car where it was cool. Then Peter reappeared from inside, Luda just behind him. “Astronaut Keith Corcoran,” Peter said as he approached, “we would like you to come with us to beach today.”

Keith moved his eyes from Peter to Luda and back again. Both of them smiled at him. The children stopped their running and stood just behind their parents now, staring. “Oh,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“We insist,” Peter said. “Unless you are busy with some astronaut work. Then we do not insist. But this would be an honor for us including you in our family. You have three days to be out of house. You spend first day with our family, if this is good for you.”

Luda said nothing but continued to smile and nod. She looked beautiful there, shining with a kind of radiance that he had not seen in her before. All the sadness that had been in her eyes when he had first seen her was gone, replaced now by a deep and expansive joy. It felt to Keith as if that first meeting, when he had appeared at her door with Peter passed out drunk in his car, had been years ago. How long had it been? Two months?

“Is there room for me?” Keith said.

“You sit up front with Peter and I will sit in back with children,” Luda said.

“There you are,” Peter said. “There is room.”

Keith stood on the sidewalk by the rental car in silence. Again he felt as if he should look at his own house again, one final time, another final time, but instead he said, simply: “OK.”

Peter clapped his hands. “Excellent! You will do this,” he said. “I am very pleased.”

Luda moved forward and touched Keith’s arm and then leaned over and said nothing but kissed him on the cheek and Keith felt heat rise to his face and he wondered if he was blushing.

Peter laughed. “She is very happy for you.”

“Yes,” Luda said. Then again: “Very much, yes.”

They were only able to exchange a few furtive words about the earth-bound comet as they embarked, Peter asking him what he knew in a whisper, perhaps expecting some inside NASA information that, of course, Keith did not have. “This is one-in-a-million chance,” Peter said to him, still whispering, “but still good to know.”

“Sure,” Keith said. “I was surprised it made the front page.”

Peter put a finger to his lips and then pointed to the backseat. It was unclear if he meant to indicate the children or Luda or all of them. “Not much news, I think,” Peter whispered. “Otherwise maybe not so important for front page.”

“I hope so,” Keith said.

“It is good to pray,” Peter said.

“It is always good to pray,” Luda said from the backseat.

Peter was quiet. Then he said, still in a whisper, “Maybe we talk about these things later.”

“OK,” Keith said.

“They put in gate,” Luda said from the backseat.

He nearly asked her what she meant but then he saw them: a crew of construction workers at the entrance to the development, finally installing the promised gate that would separate the Estates from the rest of the earth. Sealing it off. That was what he imagined. As if an airlock was being closed.