In A Universe Without Stars 1: Skyeater (9 page)

“If
things starts looking bad I’m breaking off to find my wife. I can’t believe
they split us up and put her on another ship,” Lance says.

Julio
looks at him. So some of the chosen do know each other. He could use this.

“Let’s
make a deal then—“

Sunlight
pierces
through a bar enveloped window. It gleams off the eyes
of Lance. He turns on his side toward a sleeping Serena in their full sized
bed. He doesn’t understand how she can sleep so easily in this bed.

The
sunlight shines on her freckled face. Her jet black hair hangs down to her
biceps, her half Chinese and German ancestry shines through her features. His beautiful
wife.

Today
is the day.
The day he’s been waiting for since he came
to this country. The cover slides off his chest as he sits up, he’s covered
with old scars, scars from another time. His locket drifts around his neck. He
rubs his cold hands over scars. They itch from time to time, when he’s nervous.

He
looks toward Serena. They have to go in separately for their interviews but in
at the same time. He might finally become a citizen. After all these years. He
kisses Serena on her neck.  He gets up and puts on some pants and wiggles
his toes on the cold hardwood floor.

The
studio is small, just a typical New York apartment. The only other room they
have is a bathroom and the kitchen, which is only a few meters away. He walks
lightly toward the kitchen to silence the creaks of the hardwood, trying not to
wake Serena.

He
starts to make some coffee, rubbing his scars again. He isn’t nervous about the
interview for his citizenship. He loves Serena with all his heart. His marriage
isn’t a sham. He’s not just with her for a green card.

His
older brother is finally applying for a visa, the only family he has left and
the one he left in the motherland, when he was younger. His mother’s dying wish
was for them to become a family again.

He
gets out some eggs and ham from the fridge. The skillet sizzles as he smacks
them down. His coffee finishes brewing, he grabs a cup and looks out the small
side window. Only a few people are on the streets, the city is just waking.

He
hears wedding bells, the world around him fades away as he remembers back.
Their wedding day, his and Serena’s. It’s on a rooftop in Manhattan, white
chairs, a long white rug down the middle of them, leading to a pedestal where
Lance stands in his crisp black tux next to Serena whose wears a plain white
wedding dress.

A
pastor stands next to them, finishing his sermon. Lance and Serena clutch hands
together, staring into each other’s eyes. Flowers girls release pink petals
into the sky, the wind blows them around the happy couple.

Lance
looks past the gaze of his wife to be, and to her side of the rooftop. Her side
of the seats are filled with her family, friends,
a
couple generation’s worth of ancestry. He glances back to his side, he has his
best man Jordon, but his seats are sparsely filled, only a couple of friends
he’s met over the years; he has no family here. He doesn’t even know why he
agreed to have all those chairs. But Serena was insistent on having a
symmetrical wedding. The only reason they could afford a rooftop wedding is
because a family friend owns the building.

 “I
now pronounce you husband and wife,” the pastor says. Lance looks back at his
wife, tears fills her eyes,
she
beams. He goes in for
the kiss and their warm lips touch. He wants a family like hers, but she
doesn’t want kids. He loves her so much, he hopes she’ll change her mind.

Lance
blinks, he’s back at his home, still staring out the window. He wants his
brother to experience this. The freedom of choice, the lack of fear that his
country is going to kill him.

His
brother was deported when he was younger, he came after Lance did but they
didn’t let him in and ferried him to another country. Lance hasn’t seen him in
years. There was a problem with his brother’s application for a visa and he’s not
going to wait any longer for him, so Lance is going to try and fix it.

“Morning,
Hun,” Serena says as she creeps into the kitchen, she slides her arms around
him.

“Morning,”
he replies. He didn’t hear her wake up, her scent fills his nose.

“What’s
wrong?” she asks, grabbing him harder.

“Nothing”

“No,
really?” she persists. He grabs her hand and kisses it. But she pulls it away
and turns him around.

“Don’t
lie to me.”

“Why
would I lie?”

“You
don’t think I can tell when you lie, Lance?”

“How?”

“Well
you have a few tells,” she says, rubbing his arms.

“Like
what?”

“Well,
you’re staring out the window, which is usually reserved for intellectuals deep
in thought and the brain dead.”

“Is
that it?” Lance asks with a grin.

“And
you always rub your scars when you’re nervous.”  

She
knows all his tells but he feels like stringing her along. Lance continues to
stares out the window. The once empty streets become busier. This city’s sleep
is short. 

“I’m
a little bit more complex than that.”  

“You
are huh! Well…” she pauses and glances back. ”Your food is burning.”

“Crap!”

He
runs to the skillet, Serena laughs as he loses his shit. He turns off the
stove, the pan is ruined.

“You’re
right,” he says defeated.

She
walks up in front of him. “You love me right?”

“Yes.”
 

“And
I’m your wife and significant other right?” she says flashing her ring in his
face.

“Yes.”

“Then
you have no need to lie to me, Lance. I’m not some cheap floozy.”

“You’re
not?”

 “No.
You are my husband and I am your wife now. There is no need for you to keep
anything away from me, unless you just used me for my looks and citizenship.”

She
presses her hands onto his. She’s right, he should be able to tell her
everything and he will.

“You’re
right, it’s just…” He hesitates. “It’s just with my brother, our marriage and
my livelihood at stake, I’m not sure I could take it. If I lost everything I’ve
worked for.”

“Well,
you’re going to do what you always do, you’re going to power on. Fuck whatever
the government says.”

“Language.”

She’s
always had a problem with that, he’s never liked it. She bites her lips.

“Sorry.
‘Screw’ the government,” she says making air quotations with her hands. “Now
let’s get dressed, we’re going to be late.” She pats his butt. She looks at his
charred ham and eggs. “We’ll get something on the way.”

…

Lance
and Serena stand in front of the immigration office, a giant gray uninspired
concrete wall, up tall steep stairs.  Two small doors lead inside, opening
and closing as hundreds of people come in and out.
This is it
. Lance
doesn’t know what he’ll do if he’s denied citizenship.

Serena
rubs his shoulder. They’re both well dressed, Lance in a sharp suit, and Serena
in a dark blouse and skirt. Lance grabs her hand and walks up the stairs.

Inside,
it’s a chaotic mess, there are hundreds of people and only two lines on a wide
open white floor. The drabness of the outside follows in, gray and white walls,
intense lighting from the ceiling, dull and tasteless, it sucks the life out of
Lance.

Two
small signs hang from the ceiling: Appointments to the left, and
non-appointments to the right. Both lines are at least a hundred people deep.

“At
least we came early,” Serena says with a weak smile.

Hours
later, there are only a few more people in front of them, and hundred people
behind them.

He
and Serena are the best dressed people there, everybody else is in their
working class clothes, people who came here straight from their hard working
jobs, just so they can go back to their back breaking job.

He
hopes it doesn’t come to that for himself: him pleading to stay. The people in
front of them leave. Lance and Serena walk up to the window, glass separates
them from the clerk on the other side.

“Name
and appointment number,” the woman asks.

“Lance
and Serena Freeman and 817,” Lance says.

“Freeman
huh, couldn’t think of anything less generic?”

Lance
ignores her snide reply as her fingers click on the keyboard.

“You’re
late.” 

“We’ve
been here for hours, look at this line!” Serena says with an agitated look. She
points to the line behind her. The clerk gives an annoying little sigh.

“Fill
out the paperwork, and wait in the room to the left. If we get to you we get to
you.” The clerk pushes out a pound of paper through a small slot in the glass.
“Next!”

Serena
mutters something under her breath.

Lance
and Serena walk to the waiting room and take a seat. It’s a somewhat small room
with only fifty or so chairs. Lance and Serena take the last two.

Time
flies by as they sit, hundreds of people coming in and out, in and out,
hundreds of immigrants looking for visas, citizenship, trying not to get
deported, faces of happiness, sadness, and general weariness as they come and
go.

Time
and the world pass by them in a blur as they wait for a dreadful amount of
time. Hours pass until the world stops as the door finally creaks open one last
time. A woman in a suit dress peeks in. There are only five people left in the
room besides the Freemans.

At
this point Lance doesn’t care if he gets his citizenship or not, he just wants
to go home and do anything else instead of sit in this damned room. The woman
looks at her papers again, taking her sweet time.

“Lance
and Serena Freeman,” She yells a little too loudly.

They
jumps up, “That’s us!” Lance says. She gestures for them to follow her, they
walk with her out of the door.

“Mrs.
Freeman this way,” The woman says pulling Serena to the right. Serena looks
back at Lance and mouths
good luck
.

“This
way Mr. Freeman.” An older well-dressed man walks up.

Lance
sits in a chair in a small interrogation like room, it’s empty except for the
table he sits at and the well-dressed man sitting opposite of him. And of
course the documents on the table that’s about his case.

“Nice
suit,” The man casually remarks.

“Thanks.”

He
pulls out a pair of glasses and puts them on.

His
name is Jack Smith, Lance’s case worker. He spoke with him over the phone for
this meeting. A fitting name for someone who has the power to let someone in
the country. Maybe that’s not even his real name. Maybe it’s
an
government issued
name.

Smith
squints in his small framed glasses, looking through the piles of papers on the
table. There’s an awkward silence in the room. Lance feels small in his chair.

“You’re
four hours late, Mr. Freeman.”

“Well,
I…we…I came on time but the line was…” Lance stumbles through his words.
Get
it together man.

Smith
continues to look through his papers. Lance waits for him to do something, say
anything.

“On
February 5
^th
, 1990, your brother, Nikolay
Goncharov
was deported back to his country. Is this the right date?” Smith asks.

“Yes,
he came a year later than I did but was deported because the US stopped
accepting refugees.”

Smith
just nods, he marks something down. Maybe Lance said too much, it was a simple
question and he just fucked it up. The door opens and the woman who led Serena
off walks in, she nods to Smith and hands him a small stack of papers and
leaves.

“That’s
all we needed, you won’t believe what state our archives are in. We lose things
all the time, hell, half of the immigrants here are recorded under the wrong
name,” Smith says as he stands and puts out his hand. “Congratulations, Mr.
Freeman, you are now a US citizen.”

Lance
sits there shocked, mouth ajar. He doesn’t shake his hand.

“That’s
it?”

“We
just need to prove one of the statements of your brother’s application and get
a few simple statements from your wife. We are not the bad guys, Mr. Freeman.”

Lance
jumps up from his seat.

“Thank
you so much, Mr. Smith. And Happy New Year’s.” He shakes his hand.

A
champagne bottle pops, the cork slams into a picture frame on the wall in
Lance’s place. It shatters on the ground. Lance and Serena stand in the middle
of their small apartment.

“Oh
crap!” Lance says as he holds the bottle. He turns to run to the frame, but
Serena grabs and stops him. She spins him around and kisses him.

“Don’t
worry about that, tonight we celebrate,” she says. It’s 10:13 pm. The
immigration office took far longer than expected.