Last Night at the Telegraph Club(51)

—1952


Francis begins working as an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.


Judy is hired as a computer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.


—Feb. 13, 1953

JUDY takes Lily to the Morrison Planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.


Fighting ends in the Korean War.





—1954


The San Francisco Police Department launches a drive against so-called “sex deviates,” raiding gay bars and other known gay gathering places.

The U.S. Senate condemns Joseph McCarthy.





JUDY


Twenty-Two Months Earlier



Judy Fong climbed out of the taxicab and held the door open for her fifteen-year-old niece. Lily looked slightly anxious, but Lily often looked that way; Judy sometimes worried that Lily thought too much. She closed the taxi door and joined Lily on the sidewalk while they waited for Francis, Judy’s husband, to finish paying the driver.

The long driveway in front of the California Academy of Sciences was thronged with cars, their headlights creating a moving sea of light in the early evening darkness. It reminded Judy of another night, years ago in Chungking during the war. She had stepped out of the building that served as her college dormitory to see a seemingly endless convoy of vehicles rolling down the dark streets, their headlights like lanterns floating down a river. They were Chinese army trucks with soldiers packed inside, rifles in their hands. She had stood there on the front step of the dormitory until she grew stiff with cold, silently watching the young men peering out the backs of their trucks, their eyes reflecting the headlights.

Francis bounded up onto the sidewalk beside her and took her arm, slipping it through his. “Ready?”

She emerged from her memory with a start. “Yes,” she said. Sometimes, the past seemed to slide directly over the present, and when she came back to herself, the world she lived in now seemed like a fantasy.

The three of them turned to face the museum. The California Academy of Sciences, with its tall columns lit by white spotlights, was as grand as a Greek temple serenely overlooking Golden Gate Park. Judy couldn’t see the dome of the Morrison Planetarium from their vantage point, but she knew it rose from the roof just beyond the front facade of the building. Everybody had been talking about it since it opened last fall. It was said to be the most up-to-date planetarium in the country, maybe even the world, and tonight it was their destination.

“Let’s go,” Francis said, and led the way up the steps.



* * *



—

The interior of the planetarium was round, with the pale dome arcing high overhead, and all the seats circled the giant mechanical projector in the center of the room. Supported on two massive tripods, it looked like a cross between a robot and a huge, legless insect—or perhaps a robotic insect. There were dozens of lenses on it that resembled eyes facing every direction. Each lens would project a certain star or cluster of stars onto the dome.

Francis was enthusiastically explaining the whole setup to Lily as they made their way to their seats on the far side of the planetarium. “It was all made here at the Academy by American scientists,” Francis said, “so they didn’t have to source anything from German manufacturers behind the Iron Curtain. They learned about optics during the war when they ran an optical repair shop right here in the museum.”

Judy checked to make sure that Lily wasn’t simply feigning interest, but her niece seemed quite engaged.

“What did they repair?” Lily asked.

They arrived at their seats, and Judy entered the row first, checking the numbers against their tickets. They had good seats—far enough away from the center to be able to see almost all of the dome without craning their necks too much.

“I heard they repaired thousands of binoculars,” Francis said. “For the navy.”

“Did you ever use binoculars?” Lily asked.

Francis was in China during the war too, and sometimes Judy wondered if they had ever been in the same place at the same time. She and Francis had discussed it, of course, but it was hard to determine for sure. She asked him, on one of their early dates, if he would have even given her a second look had he seen her in China. Here in America, there weren’t so many Chinese women her age, but in China, the ratio of men to women was normal. He had given her a rather tender look and said, “Of course. I would have noticed you anywhere.” She blushed at his words, and shortly afterward, he kissed her for the first time.

Francis was explaining to Lily that he did remember binoculars in his unit—he had been an engineer in the army—but he didn’t know if any of them were repaired here in San Francisco. “Wouldn’t that be something if they were?” he mused, as if taken by the idea.



* * *



—

The beginning of the show was signaled by the gentle crescendo of violins as recorded music began to play. The lights shifted, and now black cutouts of San Francisco’s skyline became clear all around the periphery of the dome. Everyone leaned back to gaze at the pale glow above, and the projector became a fantastically alien creature silhouetted against a darkening sky.

Stars began to emerge, one by one. Judy shivered as the dome deepened to black, and the stars became so numerous they created a sparkling, depthless universe above. She felt as if she were sinking back into her seat, falling into the gravity well of the earth. And then, as the stars above her moved, depicting their nightly journey across the cosmos, she felt as if she were moving with them. Her stomach lurched and she had to close her eyes for a moment against the motion, but the allure of the vision was too strong, and she opened them again and marveled at the sensation that gripped her. There was no up; there was no down. She was floating, suspended between earth and sky.