AMARILLO, TEXAS, 1986
He watched the Challenger explosion naked, the motel towel loose around his hips where he sat on the edge of the bed. Fourteen years since and just the sight of the bleachers, the way people held their cameras up, was enough to frighten him. At least it was the daytime, at least the colors of the Kennedy center were slightly different, given that. For thirty minutes he only got up to get an ashtray, only moved a finger to find the channel playing the footage again. He had twenty hours until he’d see Vincent Kahn, too few for anything to change about his life, to make it one he might explain easily across the table at a chain restaurant. At first the way the smoke branched looked fallopian, tunnels driven from a meaningful center.
In the American movie theaters where they spent their lives alone, they had been taught to love a blast, and so, at the sound of the explosion, seven people becoming sky, the audience in Florida had clapped.
Captions pointed out the silver-haired parents of a certain astronaut, a woman, a schoolteacher. The mother wore white wool and a white fur collar, the father’s insignia of the mission sewn onto his jacket. In the moments after the boom, the grin he’d put on at the outset stayed—warping a little, the last to get the news—while the rest of his face collapsed. The smoke in the sky thinned and streamed down in feeble cords.
His hair fat at the tips with water, Wright watched the stands empty the way they must have the night of the launch, some of the Americans lingering in the chance the show would redeem itself, looking over their shoulders as they went. He pressed mute and saw he’d smoked five cigarettes and mentally cataloged his life. He owned three shirts and he had rotated two throughout the drive from California, leaving one for the day of, not considering the question of laundry once he arrived. He had kept it, navy and heavy flannel, separate from all else in his duffel, in a brown paper lunch sack with a little sachet of lavender, a habit of his mother’s that had found its way back to him. She had worked to make their lives recognizable to them even once their days had deteriorated into strange cars and bacterial infections and potato chip dinners, she had believed in the permanence of scent. Cones of piñon she bought in bulk and burned wherever they went, the backs of dark vans, in houses where there was no heat. She had insisted, whenever possible, on fork and knife, on correct posture.
On another channel, the president. We’ve never had a tragedy like this.
He picked up the phone and punched in the number he knew.
“I knew you would fucking call,” Braden said.
“Are you watching this and crying?”
“I’m on the damn floor. Jean is on his way. The dad.”
“I know, the dad.”
“Meet yours yet? Calling from a new life? Camping? Conversion therapy? Fun combination of the two?”
“Some motel. Amarillo, Texas. Listening to the president?”
“Yes, yes. And it’s bad, but you know, I thought, maybe what we dying faggots really need to get Reagan to pay attention to us—”
“Is a spaceship. If we could just add some more explosions to the fatal epidemic.”
“AIDS: where are the explosions? This whole time we thought they were bigots, but it turned out they were just bored. Nuance is not for everybody, you know.”
“AIDS: coming soon in 3-D. Coming right to middle America, sooner than you’d think.”
“We are going to throw beautiful parties in hell, girl, don’t you think?”
“Extremes in temperature are equalizing,” Wright said. “Nobody ever made an interesting mistake in full air-conditioning. Guest list?”
“Mussolini can’t come but his team can design the gazebo.”
“Fascist gazebo!”
“Obviously Marilyn, who I guess is there, if hell is real and follows the rules, so long as it was a suicide, which we agree it was.”
Wright stretched the cord as far as it could go, almost to the dresser, and pulled out with one hand the pants he’d placed there two hours before. It was a habit he’d developed as a child, no matter how short the stay. He had used the soaps and the hand towels, read the laminate brochures propped up on the nightstand, even consulted the cheap Bible. The dyed blue carnations, set out at continental breakfasts, he’d turned into boutonnieres. Shower caps he collected in case of rain. He had wanted his suitcase to be heavier, he told her, when she found it full of parking lot gravel.
“Ansel Adams.”
“Why is he in hell?”
“How egregious to think you could make a mountain more beautiful than it already is, how boring. Only a straight man.”
“I miss you already, Braden.”
“Vincent Kahn.”
Wright was silent now, leaning against the foot of the bed with feet touching the bureau, feeling where the imitation wood would snap if he pressed hard enough.
“Why’s that.” The fun was gone from his voice, the laugh all absorbed by fear.
“For the cold bath he gave you, babe. I read that letter. How much do you think you deserve? Is the answer nothing? Is the answer whatever anyone else can afford, no matter what it costs you?”
“Okay, okay, Braden. What exactly is it you want me to do?”
“Are you listening carefully?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to gather up your shit, your little lavender satchels and whatnots, and I want you to return your key and pay your bill. And then I want you to come home.”
“I promise to call soon,” he said, and hung up. His things on the dresser were small and useless, and he cleared them with one swipe of his hand.