How High We Go in the Dark(54)

“I know. Come inside with me.” I’d put on a new song, wipe the dirt from his body.

“The Cranberries?”

Did Laird ever dance? Even if he didn’t, we’d do the junior high shuffle. I think about what that would be like.

My phone is blowing up with missed call after missed call. I know I’ll sound too annoyed if I answer. So I text: This is Aubrey’s boss. She’s elbow deep in someone right now. She says she’ll be home soon.

When I arrive home, Tatsu has already eaten. There are Chinese takeout boxes and a broken fortune cookie waiting on the dinner table. He’s watching Shark Week and giving me the silent treatment. I sit at the table and dig into some cold chow mein and orange chicken.

“You didn’t answer my calls,” he says. He turns off the TV and sits across from me.

“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.” I don’t even know how to explain what I’ve been doing in a way that doesn’t make me sound like I’m already checked out of our marriage. Sorry, honey, I’ve been fantasizing about my dead friend who had a crush on me, and our life together really sucks.

“I called your boss. He says everyone else left hours ago.”

“I had things to take care of,” I say.

“Laird?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say. “Laird.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on here,” he says. “I’m jealous of a dead guy. Can you explain this shit to me?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Not yet. But this shit was going on before Laird. This shit has been going on for a long time.”

I get ready for bed, wait for Tatsu to join me. He never does.

In the morning, as I’m leaving for work, I see a note taped to the front door: Meet me at the Extreme Wingz this evening. Let’s really talk.

Dear Laird,

Your body has begun to bloat and blister from the gases building inside you, a rich ecosystem for insects and microbial life. I’ve begun taking samples from your vital organs, which will soon be wide open to the air. Vultures have begun to circle, and soon, when the coyotes come from whatever hole they crawl through under the fence, you will be scattered across the field. Last night, my husband asked me about you. Why I care so much, why I spent last night alone at work, thinking about you. I never realized how important you were to me, even just the little things like listening to music together. We didn’t really know each other, but I’ve begun to wonder like you did, because being with you was easy. And I don’t think it was ever easy with Tatsu. Even when we were happy, we were still like two puzzle pieces that look like they should match but never will no matter how hard you try to smash them together.

When Tatsu calls, I let my phone ring. He texts: Are you there? Are we still on? Come on, Aubrey. He sends an angry emoji. A devil emoji. Shit, I’m the only one trying here. I’m in the parking lot of Extreme Wingz. I can see him through the window. He slams his fists on the table. He wipes his eyes. A waitress approaches. It looks like she’s asking him if he’s okay. We’ll talk soon, a conversation we probably should’ve had years ago. But for now, I return to the lab, put on my headphones, press play on Laird’s playlist before heading out to the field. An album for the last of his entrails, a power ballad for the final bits of flesh, ambient electronica while I preserve the virus inside him, a love song as I place his bones in a drawer and close it shut.





Life around the Event Horizon


We all agreed it was a breakthrough, the singularity. At the press conference, even I had to concede that humanity had reached the precipice of a second chance, despite having accidentally planted the tear in the fabric of space-time inside my own brain—interstellar space travel, a window to an alternate Earth where the plague has been cured, a cosmic waste bin for our pollution, maybe even an answer as to why we’re all here. But my brilliant new physicist bride and former postdoc assistant, Theresa, was surprisingly less excited about the prospect of leaving Earth, even though her minor corrections to my equations had helped create a stable micro black hole.

“This planet is our home,” she’d said over dinner a few nights after the accident. “I’m not leaving just because we can.” Our dining table was covered with data from our tests, blueprints of the starship nearing completion at Area 51. From what little I’ve seen that wasn’t redacted in the documents from the Department of Defense, the ship has been in the works for years, reverse-engineered from extraterrestrial technology recovered from a crash in the forties. Apart from our work, Theresa has spent a lot of her time decorating our townhome, purchasing furniture like this table made of wood salvaged from forest fires, adorning the walls with artwork, including a painting she did herself of a fantasy star system that now hangs over the fireplace. She called the work Possibility, a purple planet surrounded by a halo of light and orbiting three red dwarfs.

“I thought you would want to see what’s out there,” I said, pointing to her painting. “After all, you played a small part in creating the energy source that will make the starship’s engine run.”

“I want humanity to be out there,” she said. “Of course. You have no idea how much I want that, but that doesn’t mean I want to be out there. Things are getting better here.”

“Rising sea levels, California burned to a crisp every year, plague wards filled with patients . . . yeah, it’s a party down here,” I said. “I mean, really. People are training for this mission. The crew has been selected. A public lottery is set to release any day now. The ship is going to leave as soon as we run operational tests, maybe a few practice journeys beyond the Kuiper Belt and back. The government is committed to establishing a colony out there. That way if the shit hits the fan, we’ll have someplace to go. And in case you didn’t get the memo, I think the shit hit the fan and it’s all over the goddamn ceiling.”