The Terranauts

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

  Rumor has it that I’m unsure of myself, shy, introverted, the sort of person who needs a couple of drinks to loosen the strings, but that’s not true. Or maybe it was at some point, but not anymore. Still, it’s never easy being a single woman walking into a strange bar or even a familiar one, no matter how confident you are, but I’ve had a lot of practice lately, not only at Alfano’s but some of the places in Tucson too, and when I pull open the door there’s no hesitation at all.

  It’s cool inside, frigid actually, and blissfully dark. Twin TVs tuned to different baseball games, a pool table, maybe a dozen or more dedicated drinkers lined up at the bar, men mostly, mostly in their thirties and forties, mostly dressed in jeans and boots and sporting earrings, and every one of them looks up when I come in the door and stride right to the bar and order a margarita, rocks, salt, and though I have no intention of getting picked up by anybody, I can’t help feeling a little spike of excitement: I am having an adventure, I tell myself. And how long has it been since I stepped out from under the wing of Mission Control and the SEE and my Mission Three crewmates? Forever, that’s how long.

  Anything can happen, but of course, nothing does. At least half the men wind up approaching me at one point or another, taking their shot, asking serially if I’m from out of town or from China or the Philippines or maybe Vietnam, dusting off their repertoire of small talk but too chintzy, to a man, to offer to pick up my tab or even buy me a drink. That’s all right. The margaritas are cheap. And cold. And I’m enjoying myself, watching the way they hover over my tits trying to express their needs and desires in a way so backhanded and meandering you’d think they’re translating from another language, and after a while, after they’ve all given up and the other three women in the place (including the bartender, who features tattoo sleeves and a rooster haircut) stop glaring at me, I get down to the business at hand—getting pleasantly, airily looped while Dawn and Ramsay and Tricia and all the rest recede into some dim cavern in the deepest unworked mine shaft of my brain.

  In the morning, I wake up feeling more or less normal (but for the weirdness of the plastic room with the cobwebs in the corners and dust bunnies under the dresser, not to mention the neon-orange oil painting of three Mexicans in orange sombreros asleep on their orange burros just to the left of the TV. Which is hung crookedly, so it’s not only an outrage of taste but proportion too). I’m not hungover, which is kind of scary, actually, because I had six margaritas before I lost count and unless I’m already as hard-core as my Aunt Lacey I should be feeling like warmed-over shit. But no. I get right up—albeit at half-past noon—and find my way to a Denny’s for a Cobb salad, no dressing, and half a gallon of iced tea (and there it is, the thirst that’s the consequence of all that alcohol leaching the water out of your system). Then—and I’m still tentative about this and tentative about my high school Spanish too—I make my way for the border. On foot.

  Right away, I don’t like what I see. Which is a scrum of white-haired white people with swollen jaws from the cut-rate dental clinics that promise nothing but cut rates and then all the discount farmacias where you can get any drug known to man for mere pennies on the dollar. And then—I’m only a block in at this point—the stench and the poverty and the trembling distempered dogs and begging children and legless begging adults fill in the scene and I know I’m in alien territory. I’m not a germaphobe, or not particularly, and I don’t really see myself as looking down on people or being any more uptight than anybody else, but maybe I’m just oversensitive. I suppose that would be a good way to describe it. Anyway, I’m wandering around aimlessly, little kids tugging at my sleeve, teenage punks leering, barkers trying to interest me in strip shows or live sex or prostitutes or whatever else they’ve got for sale, and I just feel uncomfortable—in a major way.

  Is it too early for a drink? No. But whatever glass you might sip your margarita out of would have been washed in shitwater—and the ice in it would be nothing more than frozen shitwater. Do I really want to go there? For a long minute I find myself contemplating a touristy-looking bar that’s open to the street so you can see how non-threatening and ostensibly clean it is, and finally, though I’d rather be back at the Oasis, I make my way in past a bunch of knife-faced guys in loud shirts and plunk myself down on a stool between two supersized gringo couples sunk in their his-and-her fat. The barman gives me an expectant look and I give him the line I’ve been practicing in my head since I stepped through the door: “Yo quisiera tener una margarita sin hielo y con sal. Por favor.”

  Nothing happens. He just keeps looking at me. So I repeat myself—and still nothing happens. Finally, the woman on the stool to my left turns to me and says, “You don’t have to speak Spanish here, honey. What do you want, a margarita? Double shot, fifty cents more?” And she turns to the bartender, says, “Hey, Eddie, give this lady a two-fer margarita, will you?”

  So that’s it. I drink the margarita out of the glass washed in shitwater with the shitwater ice slushing around in it while a wave of conversation crests over me, both in Spanish and English, and a blurry TV shows an army of men in shorts running around after a soccer ball (fútbol) and I tell myself how much fun I’m having. Nothing happens. Nobody steals my purse, none of the rabid dogs darts in to bite my bare shins, none of the professional hustlers tries to hustle me. Still, I am not happy and I can’t really say why. Awkwardly, I pay my bill. And awkwardly, walking the three blocks back to the border in a volcano of heat, I poke through a couple racks of embroidered blouses and consider one glazed pot or another (though I don’t have a single houseplant) and actually go into a shop displaying silver earrings in a hundred different designs, but ultimately feel so intimidated by the idea of negotiating in any language that I just turn around and leave without even lifting a single pair from the display rack.

  Finally, half a block from the border, I shove through the door of a liquor store and without saying a word either of Spanish or English purchase three bottles of Pedro Domecq brandy, one for Gavin, one for Judy (to ingratiate myself) and one to keep in the apartment for those special occasions when Gavin (or whoever) comes over and we’re sitting around making pre-sex chitchat. On impulse I buy a sombrero too. Which is right there at the checkout, one of a whole stack of them, and maybe I’m a bit too frazzled to try it on for more than ten seconds—and maybe I pick a size too big so that it rests on the bridge of my glasses instead of my forehead—but there you have it. Total Mexican purchases: one margarita (double), three bottles of brandy, one too-large sombrero.

  By the time I get back to the motel it’s late in the afternoon, my hair’s kinked out like a toilet brush and I’m sweated through to the skin. It’s Sunday. I’ve got tonight and all day tomorrow, and as I’m showering and then combing out my hair and putting on my makeup, that period of time begins to seem more elastic than fixed, and even before the gas pains start up in my abdomen (so this is what Dawn must feel like), I begin to understand that there is absolutely no reason in the world to be here a minute longer. I fight it. Of course I do: this is my vacation. But the gas pains are only getting worse and though a part of me wants to go back to the Oasis and let the earringed men gather round and whisper hopeful things in my ear, I just throw my clothes in the suitcase, climb back into the sweatbox of the car and head back where I belong.

  Funny how these things work out. In my absence—all of what, twenty-six hours?—everything in E2’s been turned on its head and I’m the last one to know about it. It’s dusk when I get back, after a trip interrupted by mounting waves of cramps, three pit stops to use the bathroom at fast-food places and the purchase of a bottle of Imodium, which I wind up swigging like a beer all the way home. As I pull into the parking lot, tires squealing, and hustle up the walk with my suitcase in one hand, the tote bag in the other and the sombrero boxing my glasses, the last thing on my mind is seeing anybody because all my focus is on getting to the bathroom ASAP, so when Gavin comes running after me shouting out my name all I can do is wave him of
f, slam through the door, drop my bags and lock myself in the bathroom. I’m feeling light-headed, feverish, all of Mexico pouring out of me in a foul-smelling fecal rush, and Gavin’s in my apartment now, footsteps thumping across the floor. “Linda,” he’s calling, “where’ve you been? We’ve been looking all over for you—Linda?” Knocking at the bathroom door. “Linda, you in there?”

  Me, weakly: “Just a minute.” I flush, then flush again. Of course, there’s no air freshener, just an empty container with a rusted cap the team member before me left on the shelf above the towel rack, so I squirt half a bottle of Jojoba shampoo into the toilet and uncap my only bottle of French perfume and anoint the walls with it before dabbing a splash on my wrists and behind my ears, all the while frantically trying to brush out my hair and apply some lipstick and eye shadow.

  “Linda?”

  “Just a sec—”

  “I’ve got to talk to you—it can’t wait.”

  “Can you go sit on the couch? For a minute, that’s all. I’m coming, I am.” My voice booms and echoes in the confines of the bathroom till it sounds like somebody else’s voice and I begin to think I’m hallucinating, wondering if it’s dysentery I have—or cholera—and a shiver runs through me, then another, and my hand quavers over the lipstick. If anything, the perfume only manages to intensify the smell, some sort of molecular reaction that sweetens and deepens it at the same time, so that when I do finally slip out and pull the door firmly shut behind me I’m practically gagging.

  Gavin’s right there, bounding up from the couch to cross the room to me before I can even catch my breath. He’s looking boyish, wide-eyed, like one of the cutouts from the boy-band fanzines I used to pin up on my bulletin board when I was an uninformed tween in the Nowheresville of Sacramento. “Have you heard? I mean, have you talked to anybody yet?”

  I’m confused, cramping, sick, and yet suddenly all my senses are on alert. “Heard what?”

  “About Dawn,” he says, and I relax, because what could be worse than what’s already happened to her and no, I don’t want to talk about Dawn because why is everything about her, why can’t I go away for a single day without having her thrown in my face the second I get back? From the look of him you’d think the whole mission revolved around her, not to mention the Residences, the power plant and the desert beyond. Dawn. Why can’t it ever be about Diane or Gretchen or Stevie? Or me? What’s wrong with me? I’ll give him his brandy, I’m thinking, give him his brandy right now and shift the focus here, show him who counts, who’s thinking of him, even if she is sick and cramping and on the verge of passing out, but a little tic of annoyance makes me say, “What about Dawn?”

  “She’s going to have the baby.”

  “What are you talking about?” And here my heart rate starts a slow acceleration, like a car shifting through the gears. “You mean she’s breaking closure?”

  “No, that’s just it”—and he’s excited, practically trembling—“she’s having it inside.”

  “No way. That’s impossible. You know as well as I do Mission Control would never . . . Who told you that?” And what am I seeing here, Dawn and Gavin, best buds at the glass, she’ll tell him anything, thinking aloud, but you can’t take that seriously because that’s only her point of view and it’s just not going to happen. Not with G.C. presiding. And Judy. And Little Jesus.

  He’s standing there looking down at me, so worked up he can’t keep still, toes tapping, fingers jerking at some invisible thread hanging in the air, even his shoulders twitching. And he’s smiling, actually smiling, as if he’s glad of it, as if nothing could be better or truer or more fitting than Dawn Chapman, Eos, fucking up the mission out of sheer stubbornness. “Who told me?” he says, smiling till his teeth glisten under the rinsed-out light from the flickering fluorescents overhead. “Only G.C. himself, that’s who.”

  “Thank god you’re back. I mean, of all times to take off—”

  Judy. On the phone. Waking me from the sleep of the dead after Matt Holst, the Mission Three medical officer, came over and gave me a shot in the butt, a little plastic vial of ciprofloxacin and another of Lomotil. I’m feeling . . . disoriented. What I say is, “Judy?”

  “Listen, can you talk?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I say, looking simultaneously at the clock radio on the nightstand and the filmy half-glass of water beside it. The time, presented in an icy blur of LED hieroglyphs, is 11:22.

  “I mean face-to-face, just between us.”

  Face-to-face? Is she out of her mind? Or, more to the point, am I out of mine? “I can’t, I mean, I just got back and I’m not feeling—”

  “Listen, sorry to call at night but this is important—no, crucial. Ten minutes be okay?”

  I’m lying there on my back trying desperately to orient myself. Whatever Matt Holst injected me with seems to be working, though there’s no sensation in my legs and my stomach feels like it’s made of concrete. Who summoned him? Gavin. The memory comes back to me in a mortifying rush, me flopping down on the couch and unable to get up again, Gavin on the phone, the stench from the bathroom, from me, and then Matt showing up with his black bag and the two of them helping me into the bedroom . . . and then what? The phone. Judy. And whatever possessed me to answer it?

  “Linda? You there?”

  “Uh-huh. I was asleep—”

  “I said, can you be here in ten minutes?”

  Still in a fog, all the connections slowed down, my voice rattling like a coin disappearing into the gummy slot of a pay phone: “Where?”

  “Mission Control, where do you think?”

  So I climb out of my sickbed, feeling better, but shaky still, pull on my shorts, a sweatshirt and flip-flops, avoid the mirror, forget about my hair and go out into the night. For Judy. And Dawn. And myself too, because Judy’s scheming something and she’s picking me to scheme along with her.

  The nights here, incidentally, are a small miracle, the air cool and dry-scented with verbena, cow parsnip, chia and sage, the stars so vivid you don’t even need a flashlight. Except for the rattlesnakes, that is. They roam at night, using their heat sensors to home in on rodents, and they tend to use the same paths we do, so I always carry a flashlight after dark. Which I do now, making my way through the silence to Mission Control and on up the quiet stairs to where Judy’s waiting for me in her office.

  “Oh, you’re here,” she says, not bothering to get up from behind her desk but just nodding to the chair set in front of it. “Thanks for coming. You see anybody on the way over?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Okay, good. And I just sent Jeff out on his coffee break—he’s on the monitors tonight, but you already know that, don’t you?” And here comes the briefest tic of a smile, nothing genuine, just a pre-programmed response from her bank of facial gestures. She’s about to say something more, the D for Dawn stuck right there behind her front teeth, but she stops herself. “I thought you weren’t supposed to be back till Tuesday?”

  “I got sick.”

  “Really? So where did you go?”

  “Nogales.”

  She gives a little laugh, into the moment now, enjoying herself. “I could’ve told you that—Montezuma’s Revenge, huh? Stick to E2, Linda, stick to us and you don’t have to worry—I just hope you get rid of it before you go inside. Did you see Matt?”

  “I did.” I want to say more, tell her how quickly it hit me and how hard, if only to arouse a little sympathy and demonstrate what a trouper I am to be sitting here at her desk when four hours ago I thought I was headed for the morgue, but the phrase Before you go inside changes everything.

  “Good,” she says. “We can’t have you—” and she cuts herself off again, impatient with the small talk. “You heard about Dawn? About the unbelievable stupidity of what she talked Jeremiah into?”

  “No,” I say. “Or yes. A little.”

  “I mean, it comes out of nowhere. Outrageous enough she gets knocked-up, and then it’s like pulling teeth to get Richard to
play along and he’s a team player, let me tell you—but to be so selfish, so stubborn, I mean, it’s just hard to believe.” She’s got something in her hand, a brass letter opener, a little sword, and she’s stabbing the air with it to underscore the vehemence of her emotions. “It’s Ramsay, of course. He schemed all this up. And got to Jeremiah without my even knowing about it because I happened to be at a fund-raiser last night and they went behind my back as if I’m not the one from the very beginning who put every ounce of my being into this thing, up nights, unable to sleep even—”

  She seems on the verge of tears, Judy, Judas, the ice queen, the manipulator, and I hate to say it but I don’t feel a thing for her. In fact, what I’m feeling is, Let her cry, let her see how it feels to be stepped on for a change. But what I say is, “I can’t believe G.C.—I mean, Jeremiah—would go along with it. That’s crazy.”

  “It’s Ramsay,” she repeats, her voice tightening. “Mr. PR. Spin it this way, he says, first child born off earth in the history of mankind, E2 the New Eden, make it biblical, and Jeremiah buys it—without consulting me. And it’s beyond stupid, you know it is—the press’ll tear us apart. And the nuts, the hate groups, the Christians—as soon as it’s announced there’s no going back. And they want to announce day after tomorrow.”

  There’s more, a whole lot more, Judy crouching over every sore point in her life, time ticking by, my throat parched, the concrete set so hard now in my stomach you could take a hammer and chisel to it, Jeff back at the monitors and the night holding fast, before she comes to the point. She’s going on about Jeremiah, how he has no common sense, not a whit, how she had to fight him over the blueprints every inch of the way, how he wouldn’t know a scientist from a used car salesman if it wasn’t for her, but suddenly stops herself in the middle of a sentence, as if she’s just remembered I’m there. “Linda,” she breathes, “I’m counting on you—you realize that, don’t you?”