THE SUN WENT ON through the sky and down. Bubber went to sleep. But Sunny turned on every light in the house. She went to her wig room and stood in the doorway, her breath coming to her in rags. She had the same falling feeling of someone who has decided belligerently to climb a slate roof, and who has fallen off that roof, and is headed for the ground. She went to the wig that was closest to the door and slipped it off its resting place. This particular one was her go-to girl for all occasions, a masterpiece of blond waves and tresses, long and unstyled. She picked it up in her hands and quickly settled it on her head, felt its weight on her, felt it squeezing her head back into its regular, proper shape. She put her hands out and turned to the right, turned to the left. She walked slowly back out into the bedroom, into the hallway, and all through the house.
As she moved through the rooms like boxes all stacked over the foundation, she pressed the walls out into their usual shape, lifted the ceilings above her, nailed down the floor with every step. This beautiful house, this sacred temple of her life, built on everything that was normal and expected, and purely good. A sanctuary for their lives, to guard against the intrusion of the weird, the lapping waves of the past. This was her old life, this was the way it was before, everything in its place. The house a manor, a statement, an edifice, instead of just another elaborate cap for another sewage pipe, like every other sewage-pipe cap down the street.
Under the chandelier in the foyer, she paused. Her shoulders were paralyzed under the weight of trying to put it all back together. She could barely move to answer the door, but there was something there. Someone stood out on the step. It was Rache.
“Hello, Rache,” said Sunny, swinging the door open. Her voice was intended to sound like it always sounded, saying those words. Rache was holding Sunny’s bowl, which she had left at the party. The bowl that held the braided honey loaf, constructed in such a stupid fit of optimism. Rache’s face twisted when she saw the wig.
“Sunny? What are you doing?” Rache swept into the house, slammed the bowl down on the kitchen counter, and whirled around to face Sunny. “Why is that wig back on your head?”
“I … you heard?” Sunny began.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” said Rache. “You’re not putting on a wig, okay? That’s not happening.”
There was nothing to say. Rache looked like she might come at Sunny across the room, rip the wig off her head, give Sunny a slap on the mouth. But the wig sat on her head, doing its job, keeping the roof up, keeping the stars up, keeping the planets aligned.
“Do you think we give two shits about your bald head?” Rache asked. “We don’t. We—we don’t care. There’s not one of us hasn’t—”
Rache put her hand against her mouth. Sunny felt her throat closing up.
“We don’t care. We don’t want you to wear it.”
“I know,” Sunny said. “It’s fine. It’s not you. It’s not for you, it’s just for me, and for, my life.”
“Putting that thing on your head is not going to put the rocket back on course. It’s not going to unkill anyone. And it’s not going to even work: we all know.”
Rache paused. She reached out and put her slender fingers around Sunny’s wrist.
“Sunny, you have to understand that you are not so special. I know it’s been rough, but you are not the only person in this world. You’re not even the only bald person.”
“You’re not bald,” said Sunny.
Rache pulled at her own blond hair. “Who do you think is under here, Sunny? What is here? Under this hair? Did you—do you know that I fucked her husband? I fucked him, I fucked Jenny’s husband.” Rache was talking in a whisper now, her mouth pulled down at the corners, her voice rasping over her tongue. “Jenny’s husband, and she’s so nice, she might as well be a basket of kittens. Are we in love? No. But I fucked him anyway.”
Rache took a handful of her hair in each fist. “Bald,” she said. “And the rest of them. Bald. Trust me.”
“But they never killed anyone,” said Sunny. She coughed and choked. “You never—”
“Neither did you, Sunny,” said Rache. “You didn’t kill her. You didn’t.”
Sunny pulled off the wig. She put it in Rache’s hand. She’d earned it. It was nice of her to make a gesture of friendliness. Nice of her to return the bowl. And talk about her own terrible head.
20
Up in the rocket, Maxon heard his own breathing inside the helmet. He heard the voices of the pilots talking to each other, quieter now, less frantic. He felt the rocket shifting effortlessly through space. It all felt okay, it felt normal. His pulse was elevated, but his bones were not broken. He had not been smashed to pulp. He had not exploded into fragments.
He tried his voice. “Phillips, what’s the status?”
“Uh, Genius, we’re going to need you to sit tight,” came the voice.
“What happened? Was it an explosion?”
“Think we got hit, brother,” said Fred Phillips. He was miles away by radio wave in the headset, but he was right next to Maxon, so close he could have reached over and patted the man’s gloved hand.
Conrad’s arms were moving frantically, his fingers tapping at a keyboard. Maxon wondered if he should help.
“It is, ah, a bad outcome here? Did the meteor damage us?”
“Yeah, Genius, any meteor that hits you is a bad outcome, okay?” Phillips’s voice was raised higher than normal, which Maxon knew from his notebook indicated tension and lack of patience. Maxon frowned.
“We are going to restore communications first,” Gompers put in. “Then we can assess the damage and take action.”
“Are we on course?” Maxon asked. “Are we going to rendezvous with the cargo piece as scheduled?”
“Maxon, we’re kinda working on making sure we have airlock and oxygen right now,” said Phillips. “There’s a process to these things, a process we have to follow fucking meticulously, or we are all fucked to hell, okay?”
“Relax, Phillips,” barked Gompers.
“But are we on course? What is the status of our course? Have we deviated?”
“Listen, brother, if we don’t establish communication with Houston soon, and with our satellites soon, and with the entire fucking world of electronics outside this rocket real soon, we’re not going to be able to work out shit for a course, okay?”
“Phillips!” barked Gompers. “You will control yourself. Another outburst like that and you’re in quarters.”
A blue ink pen floated past Maxon’s face. He clicked the release to let his arms free from the chair, reached up, and unclipped his face mask, letting the shield up. He took a deep breath.
“We have oxygen,” Maxon said. “Now how the fuck about our course? We were looking for orbital insertion, Phillips, do we have it or do we not? Do we have engines? Do we have power to the engines? We need to fire rocket two at sixty throttle for eight seconds. That was the last order. Did you execute?”
Phillips slammed his hand down on the keyboard inside its white glove but also unclipped his helmet and took in a deep breath. His face was moist, and Maxon knew that meant he was nervous. He turned his head, now six inches away from the end of Maxon’s nose, as they were shoulder-to-shoulder in their seats in the rocket. His words came out with a little spray of spit from his tongue, clipped and bitter.
“I appreciate your interest in our progress. I appreciate you are on a mission here too. But until I tell you otherwise, you are only allowed to sit there. Do not take off your suit. Do not shit your pants. Do not ask me again about the fucking container.”
“Can I say ‘Fix it! Fix it! Fix it!’ until you fix it?” Maxon asked, unblinking. Gompers began to laugh.
“You are a jackass,” said Phillips. “A true jackass.”
He turned his face back to the controls in front of him, and Maxon sighed. He did not like waiting for information. He did not like standing aside while others did the thinking and the work. He did not like to delegate, ever. He felt if he could switch places with Phillips and sit at the green and black screen, he would be able to perceive all of Phillips’s errors, communication could be reestablished, and they could rendezvous with the container as planned.
