The Dream Life of Astronauts by Patrick Ryan Read Free Book Online Page B

staircase, “Clark! Frankie’s here!”
    Clark’s voice called from above, “Can you come up here for a second, Pep?”
    “Make yourself at home,” she told Frankie, then bounded up the stairs.
    Frankie stood in the foyer, listening to the muffled sound of their voices. Then he wandered into the living room. There was a long, lipstick-red sofa with round, white pillows at either end. A black, lacquered coffee table on which sat a Sears catalogue, a copy of
House & Garden,
and a glass ashtray. A treadmill in one corner. Nothing about the room indicated that an ex-astronaut lived there—until Frankie reached the bookcase. There were no books, but every shelf was crammed full of framed photos, nearly all of them pictures of Clark in his NASA days: smiling alongside a trio of crew-cutted men in the launch room; dressed in an orange jumpsuit and waving on a tarmac; sitting inside some sort of simulator and staring at a panel of gauges with a stern look of concentration on his face. In one photo, he was shaking John Glenn’s hand. “For Clark,” the inscription read, “—with high hopes!” and underneath it, Glenn’s signature.
    Relieved, almost giddy, Frankie moved on to the kitchen. There were dirty dishes in the sink, Evans Realty magnets on the refrigerator. Over the toaster, a large picture frame holding patches from each of the Apollo missions, and over the coffeemaker, Clark’s framed NASA ID badge.
    In the dining room, Frankie found Clark’s official astronaut portrait. Standing before a backdrop of the moon, Clark wore a spacesuit and was looking not at the camera but slightly above and past it, his helmet under one arm, his eyes filled with glitter and promise. He looked godlike to Frankie, who had an erection.
    Adjusting himself in his jeans, he turned away from the portrait and spotted a bell jar nearly a foot high on the middle of a sideboard. Inside the jar was a pedestal, and on top of the pedestal was a jagged gray rock no bigger than a golf ball.
    “Buddy!”
    Frankie jumped and spun around. Clark and Pepper were standing at the entrance to the dining room, smiling at him. “Hi,” he said, folding his hands in front of his crotch.
    “You and I are becoming a habit. And good news: Pepper approves.”
    Pepper squeezed Clark’s elbow and ruffled a hand through his hair.
    Clark pointed toward the bell jar. “You know what that is?”
    “A moon rock?”
    Clark seemed disappointed that Frankie already knew. “A
bona fide
moon rock. Buzz Aldrin gave that to me.”
    “He won’t even let me touch it,” Pepper said.
    “I let you hold it once,” Clark reminded her. “How about you, buddy? Want to hold it?”
    “Yeah,” Frankie said. “I’d like to.”
    Clark stepped around the table, lifted the bell jar, and set it aside. Delicately, he picked up the rock and placed it on Frankie’s palm. Frankie imagined it humming against his skin, charged with some sort of space energy that would give him special powers here on Earth. His palm twitched and the rock rolled to the side.
    “Careful!” Clark said. His reflexes were quick; in the same instant that it moved, he grabbed it back.
    “Thanks for letting me hold it.”
    “I’d say ‘any time,’ but it probably won’t happen again,” Clark said, returning the rock to its pedestal and covering it.
    “He loves that rock more than he loves me,” Pepper said.
    “Not true. I love
food
more than I love you.” Clark rubbed his palms together. “Who’s hungry?”
    Pounders was one town over, in Rockledge. Just inside the door, a hostess stood next to a large scale that had a digital readout. Her T-shirt had a cartoon pig on it, its mouth smeared with barbeque sauce. She welcomed them and invited Pepper to weigh in first. Pepper stepped onto the scale.
    “One-eighteen and twenty-four ounces,” the hostess said. She asked Pepper’s name, then wrote it and her weight on a card with a red Sharpie.
    “One-seventy-one and six ounces,” she