Joseph McElroy - Women and Men

But I did see you, I said, in the telephone room at the Press Center back in town.

The man seemed frank — and if contempt was here it was not for Mayn, to whom the man had attended quite warmly. But he was looking away now. He did not speak of the man Mayn knew with whom Mayn had seen him in conversation, an ageless little villain (well, not so little) named Spence. Ever meet him? he gives information a bad name. The Chilean answered me that he was not a journalist, he said he knew nothing of space but he had heard there were particular pathways in it finding which we might save time. He had humor to spare.

That’s quite a lot, the girl murmurs, and an elbow lands on Mayn’s breast, and charges into him so the skin and bones couldn’t stop it.

Mayn’s more awake and there is a strip of horror over his heart, he wouldn’t know why, he hasn’t been asleep, he knows that. Hey, did you tell me the gravitational hills and valleys of space give us libration points but not the transfer of persons two to one?

Two people one, yeah, the girl murmurs, half asleep and more than half, Libration, vuhbration, she says the v like another language.

But did you?

For just a moment she’s awake like a woman he once married who when she woke up cocked one eye at the light and kept the other shut (but which eye suddenly seems important, but it’s lost): Yeah, well libration points I know but… I don’t really recall. . saying anything about them, and. . transfer of persons from two to one, I know I didn’t say gravity… her voice closes. . didn’t. . and she’s out again. Or in.

Where did he get gravity valleys, gravity hills, geology of space, libration points, where’s he coming from? he’s no scientist, far from it. It’s like a mountain is coming to him.

We are not there any more, he continues. "No, we’re at Sky lab, May, ‘73," he imagines her sharply saying out of one wire-thin cleft of sleep; but he hears, "Mmhmm" and says, "Please" (meaning stay awake and hear me) and she says, "No" (meaning perhaps some opposite) and breathes; and then she breathes words he’s heard before—"resting my eyes" — heard from a wife — again between his lips feels the softness of her lower lip and her eyes looking out the back of his head. His fingers catch the ghost of the word Spence.

We’ve been bused back to the Press Site now, and it’s getting late. The place is packed, the grass infield stretching from the grandstand toward the Banana River. We don’t know for a few minutes yet that we have four hours to wait. The delay doesn’t dull me. Against the blinding giant disk of searchlight the contour of bald head and loose robe of an Indian holy man stood for a long moment. A delay is coming. A computer hold. And the computer is far away in Alabama, same Moon though. But my man, you see, appears twice more to me and then a third time. Under the grandstand at the hot-chocolate machine. Hands at his sides, calm, indifferent you’d say if you didn’t pick up this weird independence. But he’s not doing anything there, and you can’t see the launch pad, and he’s not there to study the structure of the grandstand or blow it up, although I might ask again about that one. He’s got to be waiting for someone, and I felt stupidly it was me. He looks away through me with a steady power I didn’t see before, so he’s above me and I’m only half there, and I have to make some conversation, the bastard; but then abruptly he acknowledges me: Where are they? he asks, and he answers, Elsewhere, elsewhere. The Governor of Alabama and the one-hundred-thirty-year-old slave must be seen, and he smiles and moves away.

I look at a girl’s name tag as she tips a paper cup to her mouth and eyes me and I look away to the body in general of a girl next to her who doesn’t have a name tag and this girl does not notice, and moves away from the other girl, they’re not together, why am I going into this? while someone behind me reports that Press Site buses will visit the VIP stands, and I can hear a student returning to her friends camped on the infield grass down near the dark glimmer of the water say, "I saw him — he looked dead," and a boy called out, "What about the slave, Suzie?" while somewhere a woman says, "Zsa Zsa Gabor," and the syllable hangs on and holds as if the whole statement opens toward verbless nothing, but we know what is meant even if the future should think it not worth the struggle. The third time that night I see my man the South American — I’m jumping from first to third—

Mmhmm, I ‘member.

No, this is December when I was down for Apollo. We’re near launch, near the big sneeze, I recall my grandmother telling me the Earth sneezed once to launch a giant bird westward, we’re on the infield watching the great electronic scoreboard record the countdown and there is the rocket and a flat gleam of bay that’s part of the Banana River at the edge of the grass, and here’s the son of a bitch I’ve already seen him with once back in Cocoa Beach in the correspondents’ telephone room, but now they’ve got their backs to me and I remember my man wears no press badge, and they’re side to side facing the sea. My man in his dark suit has his hands clenched behind him; the other man, Spence, seems smiling when he turns to him — I’ve seen that smile when he listened to me — and I keep hearing him say to my man, "No," but also in combinations like "You know" — plus whatever; and when the countdown hits ten minutes I’m closer, but a woman with a tripod asks them to move and they step apart, glance behind without seeing, then walk away mingling singly, and after the launch they’re nowhere.

The launch?

But the second time — the second time that night mattered most.

Ah, says the girl, you had a lot of reasons to look this man up, I really believe that.

My back to the bay I stood halfway up the infield grass toward the grandstand.

Mmhmm.

Mmhmm. Contact. Here is a holy man in a baseball cap.

Mmhmm. I ‘member.

No, this wasn’t this trip. This was December. This was on my left while next to it on the right were commentators in the three network trailers — trailers, were they? — and I was looking away from the rocket, the bright launch complex.

Mmhmm.

Mmhmm— look away, look away, CBS, ABC. And NBC. Trailers had their picture windows at the right angle. People inside had their legs crossed. But outside in front were some small tables — card tables, weren’t they?

Mmhmm, I ‘member.

Glad to have you aboard — corroboration and so forth.

Mmhmm.

Moral support, and standing by one of them was my man, and the man sitting down at a mike was a Voice of America man I once met in Washington at a Softball game — turned out he was the South American voice, and later he seemed not to know who I meant by the tall, bald man, but here now he assumed I and the man knew each other. He and the man — he was Chilean I learned later — were talking as I walked up. The Voice man started to introduce us, but the Chilean bowed to me and said we’d met.

I don’t know any Chilean, the girl murmurs.

It is very beautiful, the Chilean said — a squint of gaiety pinched the points of his eyes. He would look out toward the rocket, then at me; I only at him, with my back to the rocket though I saw behind him the picture windows of the networks: men on camera recrossing their legs and lighting up, while they thought of something to say while the hold went on.

It’s money, I said.

Money? He had a slight stammer but you didn’t pick it up, he used it to hold back what he was going to say. They risk their necks for a few rocks, he said; and I said, It’s not money they’re being paid off with, staring at him. He dropped his eyes to my shirt pocket where I’d neglected to unpin my press badge.