Nan laughed out loud at the truth she read in her sister’s eyes. “It’s true,” she said. “Men are like parking spaces. The good ones are taken and you can bet that the available ones are all handicapped. Maybe you don’t know that, but I sure as hell do.”
The two sisters shared a laugh over that, Jillian shaking her head ruefully as she expertly diced a zucchini. “There’s a man out there for you, Nan. Give it time.”
“How much time is time,” Nan shot back. “Wait a minute, Jilly-o… I know… Maybe, just maybe, I’m gay. Maybe that’s it. I could be gay, you know.”
“Oh, Nan, you? You are not the type.”
“Maybe I could get to like it,” Nan countered. “You know, gay is pretty damn cool these days… or is that over already.” She considered that for a moment. “No, I think it’s still pretty cool.”
“Nan, stop it!”
But Nan wouldn’t stop it. She knew that anything that took her sister’s mind off of the space mission was good for her. “What? You don’t think I could be gay? I could be gay. I know if l really tried…” Nan stood up straight squaring her shoulders against some formidable challenge. “Okay, Jillian, that’s it. It’s official. You have a gay sister, From now on I want you to—” Then she yelped in alarm. “Jesus Christ, Jillian! Be careful.”
Nan was gaping at her sister’s slim hands. The silver blade of the chef’s knife had sliced deep into her left index finger. Blood was spilling out among the green and yellow of the vegetables.
But Jillian did not appear to have noticed. “What?” Nan yelped. “Jill, what?” Jill did not respond. Rather, she was staring at the mute screen of the television set. Nan followed the line of her gaze and saw still pictures of two men, two men identified by the television network as Commander Spencer Armacost and Captain Alex Streck. At the top of the screen were the words: Special News Report.
For a moment time seemed arrested. There was no sound. There was no movement. It was as if for that split second both women had become as still and as inert as statues, their bones and joints frozen. The spell on Jill broke first.
“Oh my God…” Jillian gasped. Then she pushed past Nan to raise the volume on the television set. But she was a second too late. They had missed the story.
”…his has been a special report,” said the deep-voiced announcer. “We now return you to the program already in progress.” h a matter of seconds a midday talk show blared from the screen.
“Jill! What’s going on?” Nan yelled.
Jillian did not answer. She twisted the knob on the set, running madly through the channels, but there was nothing more about her husband, just regular programming—the game shows, the cooking shows, the soap operas seeming all the more inane when contrasted against the dread that had suddenly filled her body.
“Jill? Jilly?” said Nan. Jillian did not appear to have heard. She was still desperately turning the channels when the doorbell chimed. Both Jillian and Nan froze.
Jillian knew exactly what was happening. “Oh God,” she whispered. “It’s them.”
“It’s who?” demanded Nan.
“NASA…they probably have a trauma team or an honor guard or something. This is it.”
“Jill, you don’t know—”
But Jill had raced to the front door and thrown it open. Standing on the step was a middle-aged man m a well-cut gray suit—the NASA uniform— and with a particularly sheepish look on his face. He seemed to have trouble looking Jillian square in the eye and he shuffled his feet nervously.
Jill had met most of the Victory team at one time or another, but she had never seen this man before. In her fear and anxiety she felt a deep, irrational loathing for this anonymous man, a warm body on whom she could vent her wrath.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“I’m Sherman Reese, Mrs. Armacost,” he said softly. “I’m from NASA. It’s about your husband.”
Jillian’s anger had flared up for a moment and now had burned itself out. She slumped against the door frame, her pretty face pale and drawn as if the last few minutes of her life had exhausted her, had drained her of her entire reserves of energy and strength. Blood was dripping from her finger like a leaky faucet.
“What has happened?” she asked. Her throat was tight, her voice harsh and dry.
“We’d like you to come down to the—” Reese started, but was interrupted.
From inside the house Nan shouted, “Jill— there’s something on TV about Spencer!”
“We have a car waiting,” said Sherman Reese softly. He took her arm gently, as if to guide her toward it.
“Jill?” Nan called from inside the house. “Jilly, I think you better come and see—”
As if suddenly afraid of Reese, Jill backed away, as if by not seeing him she could turn back the clock by those few minutes needed to set the world right again. There would be no NASA man at her door, no sinister NASA car in her driveway.
“Please, Mrs. Armacost,” said Reese quietly. “Captain Streck’s wife is already over there. Any questions you have will be answered down at the—
Jillian turned and ran back into the house, Reese following in her footsteps.
“Mrs. Armacost, please don’t make this more difficult than it is already.” Jillian vanished into the kitchen. It was here that Reese found her, gazing at the television set while Nan wrapped Jillian’s sliced opened finger.
“Mrs. Armacost,” said Reese, “the Director wants…”
“Shush,” said Jillian. She did not even so much as glance in his direction.
There was a reporter on the television set, microphone in hand, standing in front of the chain-link gate at the security checkpoint at the entrance to the Cape. It was odd that the reporter would be doing his standup from outside the complex; there was an elaborate press room inside the space administration building. It could only mean that there had been a complete press lockdown on the story.
The television correspondent more or less confirmed the suspicion. “All we know for sure— and we don’t know much—is that both men were outside the orbiter, performing repairs on a communication satellite. The condition of Armacost and Streck, as well as the well-being of the rest of the shuttle crew, is unknown at this time…
While the reporter signed off and threw the story back to the network, Jillian turned to Reese and looked him square in the eye. Her voice was eerily calm.
“Is my husband dead?” she asked.
Reese shook his head apologetically. “Ma’am, I’m afraid I don’t know anything about the condition of your husband. I have been sent here by the Director to—”
“Is my husband dead?” July asked again, her voice edged with a tinge of hysteria, as if the false calm was melting away and she was just barely holding on to her feelings.
Reese shrugged. “To be honest, ma’am, I just don’t know. Details are very sketchy.”
“If you don’t know,” Jillian said coldly, “take me to someone who does. Now.”
She looked at the man’s starched shirt, as stiff and as spotless an officer’s whites, his crisp perfectly cut suit, that smooth shave, and the shine on his shoes and felt contempt for him. He was down here whole and healthy while her husband was deep in space, far beyond rescue, dead in the silence of space.
Reese shrugged. “That’s what I’m here to do, Mrs. Armacost. Captain Streck’s wife is already there.”
Nan grabbed her sister roughly by the sleeve and tugged her toward the door. “Come on, July, let’s get over and there and find out what the hell is going on.”
Sherman Reese stepped between then. “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding as if he were genuinely sorry. “I only have security clearance for Mrs. Armacost.”