The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut, #1)(60)
He closed the magazine and rose to meet me. “Are you—?”
I glanced around the waiting room, which had people in half the chairs. Mothers with infants, women great with child, and men as nervous as Nathaniel. Clearing my throat, I took his arm. “Not. As I told you.”
He rested one hand on top of mine and his brows were drawn together, as if he were trying to solve an engineering problem. “I’m not sure if I should be reassured or disappointed.”
I tilted my head. “I’m sorry.”
Kissing my forehead, he released my hand to pull the clinic room door open for me. Cool air rushed in from outside and carried with it the hubbub of downtown Kansas City. “I want you to be happy.”
“I am.” I didn’t tell him about the doctor’s actual diagnosis, because that was just going to lead to arguments, and this was close enough to the truth. I leaned against him, feeling the wool of his coat beneath my cheek. “I’m sorry I worried you.”
“I’ve been thinking about taking a vacation.”
I laughed. “You? The man who dreams in rocket engines? Please.”
“Not long, but you know—careful.” Nathaniel steered me clear of a woman running down the sidewalk, clutching a shopping bag. He scowled after her before continuing. “We’re going out to California for your nephew’s bar mitzvah, so why not make it into a proper vacation? We could stop by JPL while we’re out there.”
As if stopping at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was a vacation. “I see how you are…” Another woman ran past, carrying a bag of flour. “Your idea of vacation involves looking at rockets.”
“Just trying to be efficient.”
“Mm-hm … ‘Efficiency’ is not usually a word I link to vacation.” The street got emptier as we walked, and yet the noise of Kansas City seemed to become louder and angrier.
“Ha! You’re the one who calculates our fuel consumption even when we’re driv—what in the…”
I’d already tightened my grip on Nathaniel’s arm before we rounded the corner for our streetcar stop. A gang of reporters filled the street. A runaway rocket ignited in my chest and I twitched back. Cameras, microphones, and … none of them were pointing toward us.
A police line stretched across the sidewalk, and on the other side of it, a crowd surged. The gang of reporters stood just this side of the line, holding their cameras over their heads. Occasionally, the police line would part and let a civilian through.
Every time, the reporters mobbed around them.
I tugged on Nathaniel’s arm. “Let’s go back.”
“Hang on. I want to see—” He glanced down at me and stopped with his mouth open. I don’t know what he saw, but he nodded. “Yeah. Sorry. Right.”
Goddamn it. I wasn’t that fragile. I relaxed my grip on his arm and nodded toward the police line. “Do you want to find out what’s going on?”
He shook his head. “Nah. Let them do their job. We can read about it in the paper tomorrow.”
TWENTY
U.S. CAPITAL ROCKED BY FOOD RIOTS
By GLADWIN HILL
Special to The National Times.
KANSAS CITY, KS, Sept. 22, 1956—The area around the capitol was cordoned off after rioters, headed by housewives, attacked butcher shops and grocery stores today protesting high prices. They broke into stores and tossed goods onto the streets. At least fifty persons were injured and twenty-five arrested as the result.
One of the luxuries of our apartment building was that it had laundry facilities in the basement. That was fortunate, as I’m not entirely certain that Nathaniel would have let me go out to a laundromat alone after the food riots we’d seen the day before. Not that there would be laundry riots anytime soon, but still. My husband was a worrier sometimes.
Even so, schlepping the laundry bag up four flights of stairs left me huffing by the time I got back to our floor. It was tempting to drop the bag and just drag it down the hall, but I kept it hugged against my body, then propped it on my knee between myself and the wall as I unlocked our door.
Pushing it open with my shoulder, I grabbed the bag and carried it into our studio. Nathaniel was sitting on the couch with his feet up on the coffee table, talking on the phone.
“Uh-huh. Oh, hang on. She just came in.” He set the phone down on the table and jumped up. “Let me get that for you.”
I relinquished the bag with a sigh. “Who’s that?”
“Hershel.” He carried the bag over to the dresser and set it down.
“Anything wrong?” It wasn’t our usual day for a phone call.
He shook his head, busy with the knot on the laundry bag. “Just wanted to talk to you, I guess.”
I sat down on the sofa and picked up the phone. “Well, hello. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
My brother laughed in my ear. “I need a favor.”
“I’m not doing your math homework.”
“It’s more dire than that.” His voice took on the overly serious tones of a radio star. “It’s the most dire thing a man could face and hope to survive.”
“Dancing?”
He laughed out loud at that, and I could picture his eyes crinkling until they almost closed. “Worse. Doris’s entire family is coming for Tommy’s bar mitzvah.”