God is an Astronaut (5 page)

>>Trevor’s kid? He was one of the wunderboys who signed w/

>>Spaceco last Apr. The last time I saw him, he was a gangly kid

>>doing backflips off the trampoline. None of us could have

>>predicted that he would go on to a brief & brilliant career of

>>blowing up spaceships.

>>

>>Can’t wait to see you. Don’t forget to tell the Reverend Donne

>>that you’ve got other plans this weekend. I don’t care if it

>>makes him jealous. I hope it does.

>>

>>xoxoxo (and then some),

>>Mark

>>> ----- Original Message ------

>>>From: Mark Veizaga

>>>Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 11:47 pm

>>>To: Daniel Smallwood

>>>Cc: Meenakshi Argawal , Christine

>>>Liddel , Russ Krauss

>>>[email protected]>, Ramona Gomez <
[email protected]>
,

>>>Adam Foulds

>>>Bcc:

>>>Subject: Re: Fw: Have you seen this?!

>>>Dan,

>>>

>>>Yup. Supposed to be class of ’09, but Spaceco lured them away

>>>early with a signing bonus. An *undisclosed* amount. I don’t

>>>know any more than that.

>>>

>>>The wheels of the gossip mill out there must be pretty

>>>gummed up if you’re slumming around on Wikipedia. Next

>>>thing I know you’ll be asking me for dirt on the SA deal. I

>>>don’t know anything about that either, so better luck next

>>>time, pal.

>>>

>>>Tell Carol I say hey.

>>>

>>>mv

>>>>> ----- Original Mess

>>>>>From: Daniel Smallwood

>>>>>edu>

>>>>>Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 11:31 pm

>>>>>To: Jennifer Scriber , Mark

>>>>>Veizaga , Meenakshi

>>>>>Argawal , Christine Liddel

>>>>>, Russ Krauss

>>>>>[email protected]>, Harry Ingram

>>>>>com>, Ramona Gomez , Adam

>>>>>Foulds

>>>>>Cc:

>>>>>Bcc:

>>>>>Subject: Fw: Have you seen this?!

>>>>>Think some of these spaceco guys are/were affiliated with

>>>>>U of M, but haven’t been able to

>>>>>confirm yet. The Wikipedia spaceco page keeps >crashing.

>>>>>Mark—have you heard >>>yay or nay?

>>>>>What a f@*#ing horror show. If I were in Ann Arbor, I’d be

>>>>>buying a new suit and prepping for my Senate hearing,

>>>>>because that’s where this is headed if the FAA is getting

>>>>>involved. Maybe they’ll >>>televise it. Good tv—a refreshing

>>>>>change of pace!

>>>>>

>>>>>www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF42MelkZyKw

From: Jessica Frobisher

Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 9:16 pm

To: Arthur Danielson

Cc:

Bcc:

Subject: Re: some things, say the wise ones

Sure. If you give me the address, I’ll send it. Hell, I’ll even splurge and send it first class. Media mail will take weeks. And I think it’s safe to say that by that time, anything could have happened. Anything at all.

Jess

From: Jessica Frobisher

Sent: Saturday, April 5, 2014 1:32 am

To: Arthur Danielson

Cc:

Bcc:

Subject: Re: unnamed threats

Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so melodramatic. After Jack and Corinne went to bed last night, I couldn’t sleep, so I went downstairs, steeled myself, and turned on the TV. I’ve been avoiding it for the last three weeks—not even the mindless enticement of
Dancing with the Stars
could tempt me to turn it on—and since I’ve been playing the role of
Mommy tyrannis
, no one else has been allowed to turn it on either. I know Paula’s been sneaking it on when I’m not here, probably trying to assess the exact extent of the damage, maybe getting an idea of how well the TV cameras can see us from their vantage point down on the street. I know because I was standing next to the TV after I came home last Thursday, taking off my coat, and it shocked me on the elbow. Hard. When I put my hand on the screen, I could feel hot and prickly emanations.

“Who had the TV on?” I demanded. Corinne and Jack exchanged one eloquent, sidelong glance. Their telepathic exchange only took about a second, and then Corinne said, “No comment.” I’d been totally outmaneuvered.

A correction here: I
thought
I had steeled myself. The shock hasn’t even begun to wear off yet. When I was flipping past MSNBC and heard Lawrence O’Donnell saying the name of my husband’s company, I felt a sickening thrill that made me jam my thumb down on the remote and go back. By that time one of the guests had interjected, a middle-aged guy sporting blue-rimmed glasses who looked frighteningly apoplectic, even by pundit standards, which should tell you something. He was practically yelling at O’Donnell and a silvery-haired woman with a severe expression who might have been Elizabeth Warren, but probably wasn’t, and he was saying something along the lines of this:

“There are a million examples, but this whole Spaceco debacle is a perfect one. I’m not saying that people don’t have the right to spend their money as they please. But doesn’t part of you just want to say, ‘Come on’? Do you really not have enough things here on Planet Earth to keep you entertained? Are you really that hard up for things to spend your money on? And it’s not enough that they’re doing this for kicks, they’re putting innocent people at risk while they’re doing it. That piece of wreckage fell within—what—fifty yards of I-8? Can you imagine if the wind had been blowing five to ten miles an hour harder? Maybe these people were fine with gambling their lives away, but that poor woman who was driving her kids home from day care after her shift at the Walmart, maybe she’d rather not be blown to smithereens by falling spaceship shrapnel—”

“Look,” said the Elizabeth Warren doppelganger. “I get it. We are all seriously concerned about this. I have personally been in touch with the FAA, and an investigation is under way—”

There was more, but I was too nauseous to hear it. Instead I lay down on the floor and stared up at the ceiling. There were cracks up there I had never noticed before. They had an interesting pattern. They looked like rhizomes, Arthur, one shooting off into another.

“Hey,” said Paula from the doorway, startling me. “Don’t you have pay-per-view or something?” I’m not the only one who has problems sleeping. Insomnia runs in the family, or
insomno-mania
, as Liam likes to call it. When I can’t fall asleep, I repot plants. When Paula can’t fall asleep, she cooks. She’d been in the kitchen blasting the tops of half a dozen perfect miniature crèmes brûlée with a tiny torch of Liam’s that she’d found in the garage.

“We need to paint in here desperately. How come you didn’t say anything to me?” I said. “I know you noticed it. Blue or yellow? You tell me. You’re the one with the good taste.” I had to take a deep breath in order to cut off my own rambling and get to the point. Paula has zero tolerance when it comes to aimless yakking, a quality that’s a little surprising in someone who spent five years working as a shrink. “Oh, and by the way. They’re talking about a federal investigation.”

“She’s a politician, Jess.” Paula flopped down on the couch and flung out her legs. She had pilfered a pair of my blue jeans to wear while she and Corinne were papier-mâché-ing, and they were rolled up and spattered in a way that looked charming instead of like a disaster. My sister has lovely ankles, and whatever the elusive gene for that is, I did not inherit it. “Demanding investigations is part of the job description. Haven’t you noticed that? It keeps them busy, so they don’t have to actually
do
anything. If there’s nothing to find, then they’re not going to find it.” Her feet turned around and started heading back through the doorway. “Burgundy.”

“What?” I said.

“I said, paint it burgundy. Now get off the floor and get it together.”

Sound advice, Arthur, and I’m doing my best to take it.

Your

insomniac Jess

From: Jessica Frobisher

Sent: Monday, April 7, 2014 6:12 am

To: Arthur Danielson

Cc:

Bcc:

Subject: Re: cold turkey

So no more news just like that, huh? I find it hard to believe—you were such a junkie. Aren’t your hands shaking? Don’t you wake up in a cold sweat in your DNR cabin in the middle of the night, jonesing for a hit of Politico or the Huffington Post? I guess you weren’t kidding. You really have turned over a new leaf. Congratulations. I think.

I suppose going cold turkey is easier when you’re on the fringes of civilization. Despite my efforts at TV abstinence, we’re still somehow absorbing the story, walking through an invisible cloud of it every day, like pollen, taking microscopic particles of anecdotes in through our pores.

Even Jack isn’t immune. Earlier tonight while we were eating dinner, he looked up abruptly from his plateful of peas and said, “Did Dad know Oliver and Sam?”

Since you’re going cold turkey, you probably won’t know, but Oliver Keller and Samuel Allen were the two crew members aboard the
Titan
shuttle when it exploded. What took me aback wasn’t that Jack had nailed down the names. It was the way he said them, “Oliver and Sam,” like he knew them.

“I’m pretty sure he didn’t, sweetie,” I said. Which wasn’t exactly true. Oliver was one of the guys who took Liam up into space last year. They were acquainted enough that Liam knew that Oliver had a golden retriever named Arnold. That, Arthur, was the only thing he said to me the night of the accident. We had both crawled back into bed, sometime around two a.m., and we were lying there staring at the ceiling. And out of nowhere, Liam said, “You know Oliver had a golden retriever named Arnold?”
And neither of us said anything else. We just went back to staring at the clock.

Spaceco tried to hold on to the names of the victims as long as possible. They claimed it was because they wanted to make next-of-kin notifications. But it took about two hours before the press got hold of the names. Kelly Kahn, media mogul. Joseph Connelly, trust fund playboy. Daniel Goldstein, retired investment banker. And Uri Katamatov. Out of all of them Katamatov has been getting the most press. He was a twenty-eight-year-old tech genius who had been developing
these Internet glasses
—basically some sort of smartphone you wear that allows you to beam Yelp reviews and Wikipedia entries straight into the air in front of you. Omniscience at the touch of a button, like something out of one of Jack’s beloved sci-fi books.

Goldstein’s posthumous attention has been less glowing, thanks to an unfortunately-timed article that came out in the
Atlantic
the day after the accident, detailing his work in credit default swaps and their connection to the 2008 financial crisis.

So now you’re up on all the details. More or less.

Until later,

Jess

From: Jessica Frobisher

Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2014 5:45 am

To: Arthur Danielson

Cc:

Bcc:

Subject: rude awakenings

Mary Oliver’s winging her way to you as we speak, along with a (very small) bottle of Jack. When the lady at the post office asked me about liquid and perishable substances, I looked her straight in the eye and lied, thereby committing a federal offense. She said the package should be in Manitoba w/in a week. Look for it in your box.