Orbit

Chapter 25

“I have neither the time nor the patience to deal with this right now,” Diana is saying with fury into her cell phone. “I’m not overdue, my bill is paid, this is the worst possible moment, and I swear if you bother me again, I’ll find a lawyer and sue your ass. Good-bye!”

She snaps the phone closed and rolls her eyes before motioning to the startled young woman standing in the office doorway and holding a pair of shopping bags.

“Is this a bad time?” Deirdre asks.

“Come on in. You get dunning calls from New Delhi much?”

“India?”

“No, Iowa. Of course, India. Where all our call centers and jobs seem to be going. Half the time I can’t understand what they’re saying, and they never have anyone in charge to complain to.”

Deirdre walks into the room tentatively with one eye on the door, as if she’ll need to run back out.

“What am I, dangerous? Bring that here, please. Did you get everything?”

“I think so. All your hair stuff and dryer, curling iron, the clothes you wanted, and a change of lingerie… and those Atkins breakfast bars, which, in my humble opinion, you’re about the last person to need.”

“I like them. They like me.”

“I worry about you.”

“What else?”

“Everything on your list. And Mr. DiFazio’s bathroom and shower are yours when you’re ready.”

“Thanks. I feel like I’ve been camping for a week in the same clothes.”

“Diana, has something new happened? It’s been a shock per hour around here.”

Diana sighs. “Richard and the team in Mission Control are fielding requests now from the Russians, NASA, the Chinese, and the Japanese about how to enter Intrepid and get our poor passenger out without killing him. We don’t have a compatible docking system, so it’s a big problem.”

“Wait, four of them? Which one is actually going up?”

“Would you believe all four say they are?”

“That’s nuts!”

“The Russians won’t back down, nor will the White House.”

“Well, that’s good, right?”

“Maybe. As long as we get someone up there to get him, yes. But at this rate they’re going to need to send a space-suited traffic cop as well.”

“I’ll get back out on the phones. You won’t believe it, but they’re even feeding Kip Dawson’s transmission over that moving sign at the bank.”

“No!”

“It’s everywhere, Diana. Every radio station has someone reading it. I’ve never experienced anything like this.”

“None of us has. And the media are shifting now to Kip’s background, intimate details we can’t answer. I’d tell you I’ve lost control of this story, but I never for a moment had it.”

The intercom feature is ringing again with a relayed call, and she answers, shaking her head.

“Tell Oprah’s producer thank you, but I cannot fly to Chicago at this… Oprah herself? Well… sure. Put her on.”

The cereal bars are beginning to get tiresome, and Kip wonders if there isn’t at least one freeze-dried version of a real meal for his last.

Even condemned serial killers get something better than cereal bars!

It’s one of the few thoughts he hasn’t entered in the computer. So little time, so much to say.

I had no idea I was so… so verbose.

The pause to munch another bar and drain more water has brought him back to the present. He has to live here for a few more days, but the hours he’s just spent wandering through his past have been therapeutic. He’s been back there reliving his teen years and jumping around from good memory to better, whole hours spent ignoring the inevitability of CO₂ scrubber saturation. But for the time it’s taken him to eat something and use the relief tube again, reality has claimed him, and he feels the almost desperate need to start typing again.

Kip looks up, taking note of another brilliant sunset, the price for which is realizing how few are left. Better to tackle his adult life. Not just the good parts… he’s been doing that. But he needs to track how he got to age forty-four with such feelings of worthlessness.

No, not worthlessness, he corrects himself. Hopelessness. Disinterest. Terminal apathy.

He takes one more squirt of water, stows the bottle, and resumes the keyboard.

I didn’t have to get married at twenty-two, but I was told it was the right thing to do. Lucy was an orphan who’d raised herself, and I came from a straight-laced family. And it just seemed that she was the logical one to marry. We agreed on that. We discussed it, like my father would have done. We agreed we were probably sexually compatible. We enjoyed each other’s company in a passive sort of way, plus we both wanted two-point-three children and two cars in the garage and the great Middle-American lifestyle. In other words we agreed to marry our middle-aged selves at age twenty-two and twenty-three. How pathetic it seems now, not that I didn’t love her and grow to love her more, because I did. But that we did the practical thing and decided that waiting to fall in love with someone was a silly waste of time, because, undoubtedly, you’d eventually fall out of love, and then what do you have? So, we just bypassed the passion and fast forwarded to rocking on the front porch.

And life? It took one look, rolled its eyes, and moved on, leaving us there.

Jerrod and Julie would hate to “hear” me say this about their mother, but the truth does sometimes hurt. She was a wonderful mom (despite battling the depression she tried valiantly to hide). But neither of my kids grew up witnessing parents with the kind of passion for life I see all around me now at forty-four… guys and gals who, despite being married or just together, love being spontaneous and can still hold decent jobs and professions. Lucy and I were incapable of just doing something on the spur of the moment. And yet, isn’t that where life gets fun? When it’s not so meticulously planned? Why didn’t someone tell me? Where did I get the wrong instruction manual?

And of course the answer is: I was reading my dad’s book. That doesn’t mean it’s his fault. I just followed the wrong plan, and I’m responsible. Boy, am I responsible!