The Night of the Comet

by George Bishop

  “I can’t believe she’s with him,” I said to Peter, sitting beside me.

  “Who?”

  I pointed to the front of the bus. “Mark and Gabriella. What’s she doing with him?”

  Coach DuPleiss was standing in the aisle beside the driver’s seat, holding on to the vertical silver pole, like a captain at the helm of his boat. He leaned over to talk to Mark, who looked up and nodded, his face dumb and earnest beneath a red baseball cap. Gabriella held her hair back in the wind, attending politely to whatever they were saying.

  “It’s like you said, the universal law of attraction and all that.”

  “But they shouldn’t even be together. They don’t have anything in common.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I just know.”

  Peter told me about Mark’s new car, a Camaro Z28. He’d seen it when Mark came to his daddy’s Conoco station the other day to fill it up. It was hot, Peter said: red with black racing stripes, a V8 engine, and a wind spoiler on the back. His father had bought it for him. Mark wasn’t even fifteen yet, but he had his learner’s permit, so he was practicing driving the car around town with his mother.

  “To hell with him and his new car,” I said. “Look at that, he’s practically got his arm wrapped around her.”

  “You really do like her, don’t you?”

  “Everybody likes her.”

  “You should ask her out.”

  “Right.”

  “Why not? You’re neighbors, she came over to your house. You talk to her at school. It’s like you’re friends now. You should just ask her.”

  “But she’s sitting with him.”

  “You need to kick his ass. Show him who’s boss. You’ve got to go up there and say, ‘Step aside, punk. This is my girl.’ ”

  “I suppose that’s what you would do.”

  Peter shrugged. “I’m just saying.”

  Gabriella leaned across Mark Mingis to talk to the coach, looping her hair over her left ear, and I felt a painful squeeze in my chest. I continued to watch her, plotting how I might steal her away from Mark, as our bus rattled through Thibodaux, Supreme, Napoleonville. Islands of solid ground rose up out of the water as farmland replaced marshland. Students fell quiet; some dozed. My father sat at the front of the bus behind the driver’s seat, trading jokes with the science nerds around him.

  We passed farm shacks, and cheap new brick homes set on bare plots of red dirt, and a line of cars waiting at a gas station. We passed a broken-down old truck on the shoulder of the road with a black man in overalls working under its hood.

  “Pete, it’s your dad. It’s Pete’s dad!” someone said.

  “It’s not my dad. Moron,” Peter answered, and bent back to his work. He was drawing something on the back of the seat in front of us. I leaned sideways to see.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Art.”

  The seat back was marked with old graffiti—curse words, sex words, obscure messages to unknown people: “LG + KP = ,” “I love you Debbie Contreau.” On the right-hand side, Peter was sketching a large penis. “Homo erectus,” he announced. He had to scratch the pen back and forth on the aluminum to make any kind of mark, and every time the bus hit a bump, his line went crooked. He laughed. “It’s got an elbow now.”

  “Now for the woman,” he said, and began scratching a new set of lines nearby. “Observe.”

  I stopped him. “Man. Someone’s going to see that.”

  He pulled his hand away. “So?”

  “So—it’s not cool.”

  “This is human anatomy, Junior. It’s perfectly natural. Better get used to it,” he said, and went on drawing. As he worked, he sang to himself, “Get back, honky cat, get back, honky cat, whoo!”

  “But that’s not even right. That doesn’t even look like anything.”

  “I’m not finished.” He drew some more. “She’s like a midget,” he explained. “She’s a midget with extremely long legs.” He stopped and rubbed at the drawing with his fingertips. “Mm-mm, yeah. Ooh, baby. Touch me there.”

  “You pervert.”

  “Ooh, yeah. I love it when you do that.”

  Mark Mingis, his arm still resting along the back of Gabriella’s seat, turned around and grinned smugly to one of his football buddies across the aisle, and I felt the time that I should’ve been spending with her slipping miserably away with each passing mile. When the bus banked into the air and crossed the bridge high over the Mississippi River, students jumped up to look out the windows at the muddy water frothing below, the sprawling refineries, and the capitol tower rising above the city. Peter stuck his head out the window and howled like a dog, and it was then, during the general whooping and hollering as we dropped down into the streets of Baton Rouge, that Gabriella swiveled around in her seat, caught my eye, and smiled. That was all the encouragement I needed.

  At the planetarium, Coach DuPleiss herded everyone into groups outside the bus and began moving us toward the entrance of the building with outstretched arms, like a traffic cop. “Is it a good show?” a boy asked him. “Oh yeah, it’s a great show,” he deadpanned. “Spectacular. You wouldn’t want to miss it.” As Gabriella strolled with Mark to the lobby doors, I pulled Peter aside and asked for his help.

  “He’ll kill me,” Peter protested.

  “No, he won’t. You’re faster than he is.”

  “Only because you’re my friend,” Peter said. “I’ll do it. I’ll risk my life for you.”

  “Just go. Hurry,” I said, pushing him along.

  Peter hesitated, taking a bead on Mark. Then he ran around a clump of students, snuck up behind Mark, and tipped the baseball cap off his head. Mark spun around. Peter snatched his cap up from the asphalt, put it on his own head, and began dodging back and forth.

  Mark went red in the face. He cursed and followed Peter, chest up, trying to keep his cool. “You little shit!” He lunged, but Peter screeched and slipped away. Students laughed. Encouraged, Peter bounced up and down on his knees and swung his arms, hooting like an excited ape: “Hoo hoo! Hoo hoo!”

  I had my opening. I edged up beside Gabriella as she paused at the doors of the building.

  “Comet Boy! What’s up?”

  I held the door for her. “Are you going in?” She glanced uncertainly at Mark, still chasing his hat in the parking lot. “Right this way, ma’am. Watch your step,” I said, urging her inside.

  The lobby was spacious and cool, with the echoing sound of a museum. We followed the other students around to the doors of the planetarium.

  “You’ve been here before?” Gabriella asked.

  “Lots of times. My father knows the guy who runs it.”

  “Oh, so you’re the expert.”

  “I’m the expert.”

  “You’ll give me a tour?”

  “Sure. Here we have the clock. Here’s the Coca-Cola machine. On your right, the water fountain …”

  She laughed and, holding back her hair, bent in for a drink. I waited until she’d finished and then showed her into the planetarium. I steered us to a row near the back, explaining how if you sat too close, your neck got sore. We were just settling into our seats when Mark appeared in the doorway, his cap in his fist. He scanned the rows. Gabriella raised a hand to flag him; I pulled it back down.

  “No!” I whispered.

  “What?”

  She raised her hand again. I pulled it down again. We wrestled briefly over her hand until someone sat on the other side of her. Mark frowned and took a seat at the front with his buddies.

  “Why don’t you want him to sit here?”

  “I don’t even know him.”

  “He’s nice.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  She pulled her head back and looked at me. “You don’t like him, do you? You don’t like him because he’s a football player and you’re not.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  At the center of the planetarium, my father was trying to get every
one’s attention. “Could I have your … Please … Settle down.”

  “All right, be quiet now! The Professor wants to talk!” the coach shouted, and students hushed.

  “You don’t have to shout. But thank you,” my father said.

  He had dressed for the outing that day in a corduroy sports jacket and a plaid walking hat with a small feather tucked in the band. Over the past month he’d started growing out his sideburns, too, so that with his jacket and hat, he looked like a TV game show host. He took off his hat to speak.

  “We’ve got a really exciting program for you today. A little history, a little astronomy. A little philosophy.”

  “And fun,” the man beside him said.

  “And fun,” my father said. “Let me introduce my friend Ed Elvert. He’s in charge of the planetarium here. What do you call a person who runs a planetarium? Does anybody know?”

  “A planetariumist,” someone said.

  “A dork,” someone else said.

  Coach DuPleiss stood up and turned around. “Shut up!”

  “A person who runs a planetarium is called a— Well, you tell them, Ed.”

  He was a fat man with a brown vest, green trousers, and a neatly trimmed beard. He had wet lips and a fussy, complacent manner. He lifted his chin to enunciate it: “A planetarian.”

  “That’s right. Ed’s a planetarian. He’s been operating the planetarium here in Baton Rouge for almost as long as I’ve been a teacher. He did his apprenticeship at the world-famous Carl Zeiss Planetarium in Stuttgart, Germany.” My father turned to him, his face bright with admiration. “Wow. That must’ve been amazing.”

  Mr. Elvert nodded. “It certainly was.”

  “Ed’s the president of our local chapter of the American Astronomical Society, and a well-regarded astronomer in his own right. And, I happen to know, he owns one of the finest telescopes around these parts, a Questar three point five. Kind of the Rolls-Royce of telescopes. Wouldn’t you say, Ed? So if you’re real nice to him, maybe he’ll invite you over sometime to see his telescope. How about that?”

  Mr. Elvert took the center of the room. “I don’t think I can invite everyone. But thank you, Alan. I always look forward to having you here. Kind of a celebrity now, aren’t you? Mr. Groovy Science.” The two shared a chuckle. “But seriously, Alan has done a wonderful job of promoting science in the community, and for that we should all be thankful.”

  He quizzed us on Kohoutek and complimented my father on educating us so thoroughly. They’d been getting lots of phone calls about the comet, he said, so next week they were introducing a special weekly comet night there at the planetarium. They’d have a lecture, followed by a new light show, some music, wine and cheese for the parents, soft drinks for the kids. Something for the whole family. “Maybe we could get the Professor to come and speak for us, too. What do you say, Alan?”

  My father twitched and smiled and said he’d be delighted.

  “Fine. We’ll try to arrange that.” Mr. Elvert moved to a console and pushed a button. “It’ll take several minutes for your eyes to dark-adapt, so in the meantime, I’ll tell you a little about our planetarium. How many of you have ever been to a planetarium before?”

  As the lights faded he introduced the projector, the large barbell-shaped machine looming up the dark behind him, “a Universal Projection Planetarium Type Twenty-Three Six, made in Germany by Volkseigener Betrieb Zeiss …”

  Someone in a middle row made a snoring sound. Coach DuPleiss turned and glared at him. Mr. Elvert pushed some more buttons, and the theme music from 2001: A Space Odyssey swelled from hidden speakers. A simulated sun rose over our heads, followed by a boom of timpani and a brilliant flash of light.

  “The universe,” Mr. Elvert intoned into a microphone. “Where did it come from? What does it look like? How will it end?”

  Through all of this, I was acutely aware of Gabriella sitting beside me. This was the closest we’d ever been to each other, and in the cool dark of the planetarium, I imagined waves of energy emanating from her body—like radio waves, or X-rays, or maybe waves of beauty, radiating across the small space between us and warming the side of my face.

  The show began with the birth of the universe in the Big Bang and then toured through distant stars and galaxies before arriving at the Milky Way. Mr. Elvert reviewed the major constellations and the stories behind them.

  “Orion the Hunter,” he said, as an outline of stars appeared on the right side of the ceiling. “See his belt, his shoulders, his sword. Luckless Orion, the handsomest of men, but he never got the girl. Every winter you can still see him chasing the seven daughters of Atlas, the beautiful Pleiades, across the sky. There they go. The Pleiades. Forever, always just out of his grasp.”

  I leaned sideways. “Look, it’s you. The constellation Gabriella,” I whispered.

  “The constellation Junior,” she whispered back. “I can see it.”

  As stars came and went overhead, I carefully slumped down until my shoulder brushed against her shoulder. First it was just cloth to cloth, my jacket touching her sweater, but I leaned in closer until I felt the press of skin and muscle beneath her clothes. I imagined a liquid warmth passing back and forth between us where our shoulders met. I raised my arm from my lap, inching it up along the side of my seat, and gently laid it next to hers on the wooden armrest we shared. The liquid warmth spread from our shoulders, down our arms, and to our elbows. I paused, excited by our arms touching like this. More stars came and went; eons passed. Gabriella sat still, not leaning closer but not pulling away, either. I searched for signals in the pressure of her muscles and bones against mine. Did she feel what I felt? Did she even know that we were touching? When she didn’t withdraw her arm, I carefully shifted again until my forearm and then my wrist touched hers, so that, finally, our two arms were pressed together from shoulder to wrist—like lovers’ bodies lying side by side. Her body swelled and shrank in time to her breath, and I paced my own inhalations and exhalations until my breathing matched hers.

  A simulated meteor shower streamed overhead. Mr. Elvert spoke about how such meteor showers were the remnants of disintegrated comets, and how as the Earth crossed their paths, it was as though we were sailing through the dust of time itself, through glittering flashes of the past.

  Gabriella bent her head to mine, brushing my cheek with her hair. “It reminds me of that night in your yard,” she whispered, and then sat back up. As she did this, though, she slid her arm off the armrest and dropped it in her lap, leaving my arm lying by itself. So, she doesn’t love me after all, I thought, and almost felt like crying.

  Mr. Elvert was speaking now about the possibility of other forms of life outside of our solar system, and the solitude of human beings, and their long search for companionship in the universe. An image appeared on the ceiling, a reproduction of a plaque fastened to the side of the Pioneer 10 spacecraft. In black lines etched on gold, it showed the location of the Earth in the solar system, and beside that, the figure of a naked man and woman, the man with his right hand raised, the woman leaning slightly toward her partner.

  “A man. A woman. A modern-day Adam and Eve, his hand raised in a simple gesture of greeting,” said Mr. Elvert, and Coach DuPleiss glared around from his seat in the front row daring anyone to laugh. In December, Mr. Elvert told us, Pioneer 10 would pass Jupiter, from where it would continue on its trajectory into the outer reaches of space, bearing its message of peace and goodwill to whoever might find it—“a message in a bottle tossed into the sea of space.”

  When Mr. Elvert began to speak about the death of the Sun, I knew that the show was almost over. He said how billions of years from now, the nearby star known to us as our Sun would swell to become a red giant that would boil away the oceans and burn up all life on our planet in a fiery cataclysm of destruction.

  On cue, the ceiling exploded in a wash of hot red and yellow lights. Cymbals crashed and music boomed from the speakers. Gabriella, startled, grabbed my wrist.
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  What was this? Her hand was surprisingly small and delicate but with a sure grip—like a bird perched on the back of my wrist. I didn’t dare move for fear of frightening her away.

  The planetarium faded to the dark blue of space again, and at once we were sailing back through the planets, past the Milky Way, past distant stars and galaxies. The drawing of the naked man and woman slid past over our heads and disappeared, “the relic of a once-proud race, gone and forgotten,” said Mr. Elvert. The stars spread and dimmed. And still Gabriella held my wrist. I felt her skin warming mine; I felt the beat of her pulse against my own.

  “Scientists now believe that the universe is a one-time event, never to reoccur. Since its origins billions of years ago in a mysterious Big Bang, our universe has been slowly expanding, growing bigger and bigger, thinning out, until, many billions of years from now, one by one the stars will all die, and all that will remain will be an unimaginably dark … vast … empty … nothingness.”

  The last star clicked off and the planetarium fell into darkness. Mr. Elvert was silent. Time passed. A few students sniggered and rustled, but the room stayed dark. Silhouettes of heads and shoulders materialized in the gloom as the exit signs spread a green glow through the air. I turned to look at Gabriella. Her face was inclined to the darkened ceiling, her hair hanging down around her neck. Her mouth had fallen open in an expression of sadness and disbelief, and in the glow of the exit lights, I was surprised to see tears glistening in her eyes.

  I rolled my hand over so that my palm touched hers. I curled my fingers between her fingers. She returned the hold. I squeezed, and she squeezed. I closed my eyes, time slowed to a standstill, and there was nothing in the world but her hand in mine and the warmth of our touch filling the dark space around us.

  How long did this last? A minute? Half a minute? Seconds? The lights faded up. She slipped her hand from mine, and I closed my fingers around empty air. Students began to shift and talk; the room, the walls, the ceiling and chairs all reappeared. Gabriella sniffed and wiped her eyes. She turned and saw me staring at her.