He throws more wood on the fire, then heads back into the kitchen to finish cleaning, and I shut my eyes for a bit.
My belly is full—ish—I’m warm in front of the fire, the pills are creating a nice swimmyness in my head, and while the throb of my leg hasn’t gone away, at least now I don’t care about it. I smile, and for the first time in a very long time I’m thankful to be alive. Thankful I’m not alone.
I open my eyes as Jamie comes in. There’s still the goofy smile on my face.
“You good?” he asks. He’s smiling, too.
“I’m good.” I nod.
He looks like he’s trying not to laugh as he sits down across from me in the chair. It’s his chair. All the chairs in this house are his chair, but that one ishischair. I have my couch and he has his chair.
Oh my God, change the subject.
“What the hell were you doing every day before I showed up?” I ask him, imagining him sitting inhischair, alone.
He thinks for a moment. “Um, hunting? I spent a lot of time looking over my mom’s notebook.”
“Always be prepared. Such a Boy Scout.” Are my words slurring?
“And that’s about it.”
“That can’t be it. You described, like... an hour of stuff. Nine a.m., wake up, shoot Bambi, gut Bambi, freeze Bambi, take a dump, knit a sweater, read notebook; ten a.m., twiddle thumbs.”
His smile widens, showing off his teeth. They’re nice and straightand I want to ask if he had braces as a kid. I imagine he did. Dark blue ones, to match his eyes.
He smacks his forehead and says, “I forgot about my nine forty-five knitting time.”
“Seriously. You’ve been hanging out here, all alone, doing nothing but hunting deer? What about in the winter when it was too cold to go outside?”
He pauses, pursing his lips. “Exactly how stoned are you?”
“I’m floating in orbit with the International Space Station, don’t change the subject.” I pause,changing the subjectand letting my eyes go wide. “Do you think they’re still up there? Alone in space and they can’t get back here? No idea what happened to their families?”
Their families. My mind always comes back to the families spread out across the world, not knowing who is still alive and who died. Or how they died. All the warmth and comfort I was feeling is gone because I’m focused on my leg again. The only thing keeping me from moving on from this place and letting another family know who died.
And how.
Jamie’s thick eyebrows go up. “I hadn’t even thought about them before this moment, honestly. But yeah, I guess they are.”
“Shit.”
“They have to know at least a little of what’s going on. Maybe they got them back before NASA’s people called in sick.”
“Maybe.” I can’t stop thinking about it now. What about the people in subs underwater that don’t come up for months at a time? What about the people in an Antarctic research facility? I remember reading about a protected island off the coast of India that was home tothe most isolated community in the world. What about them? Do any of them even know what happened?
“Wait, here’s something I would do.” Jamie stands and walks over to a console under the window looking out to the front porch. I sit up on my elbows and watch him as he opens the center cabinets and lifts the plastic top of a record player. I notice for the first time the speakers on the top of the console.
“Vinyl, very Brooklyn hipster of you. Wait, what’s the Brooklyn of Philly?”
His shoulders go up and he spins, his nostrils flaring. “How dare you!”
I laugh because even Jamie’s attempts at being offended come off as playful. He smiles and returns to thumbing through records. “Do you have a preference?”
“What’s your favorite?”
He takes out a record. Without showing me, he puts it on the turntable, starts it up, and places the needle onto the spinning vinyl. His large, delicate hands move slowly and with great care. Like he’s disarming a bomb that could explode at any moment.
He places the record sleeve on top of the console, then goes back to his chair. The silence before the music sounds messy, crackling and popping. Like it’s been played often. The deep voice of a woman arrives first, then the sound of a bass, piano, and harmonica kick in.
