“Lily pads in a pond that frogs use to cross over to the other side.”
“Anything else?” I ask.
“I prefer not to give spoilers. I need to save them for my creations,” she says. “Next question: How far away is Mars?”
“Depends on where it is in its orbit around the sun. They have elliptical paths, so their minimum distance is never the same,” I say. “And gravitational pull affects their orbit. And other planets, like Jupiter, influence the orbit, too.”
“I should’ve known better than to have expected a simple answer,” she says, starting to move in her own orbit around the equipment.
I climb the ladder next to the spacecraft to check out the machinery. I clip myself to the hardware and evaluate the work that’s beencompleted today to determine if there are more tests to run this week.
It seems that Rooney and I share a similar process. Below me, she crouches to look at the hardware from a different angle. For a moment, I see the equipment in front of me through Rooney’s eyes. I follow the sharp angles of it until Rooney is back in my view. Her knees have become a makeshift table for her sketchbook as she holds her pen an inch above the paper. She doesn’t make a mark and instead stares at the empty page.
“Do you want to see this up close?” I call to her. “The inside is more interesting than what’s underneath.”
Rooney looks up and nods quickly. “I want to see how the space sausage gets made.”
She holds the base of the ladder still as I slowly step down. We switch places at the bottom. Move clockwise, our covered feet in sync. The dances of the sterile chamber.
I grip my hand over the side of the ladder. She hands me her sketchbook before climbing. Her leg sweeps my arm, our bunny suits rubbing gently against each other. The spark of an electric shock runs through me, my grounding strap not protecting me from the charge.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” Rooney peers into the body of the craft when she reaches the top. “Scalpel,” she says, holding out her hand.
I laugh and shake my head. Her sketchbook flips open. While she’s busy looking at my work, I can’t help but glance at hers.
“No, don’t look!” she calls out.
I’m mid-flip when she says this and have already looked at a few pages. But there’s nothing there.
“Jack!”
“Sorry! I didn’t see anything. See?” I turn the sketchbook toward her. “It’s blank.”
“Exactly,” she says with a dramatic huff. She unclips herself from the machine and climbs down the ladder. “That’s what I didn’t want you to see.”
“I sincerely apologize. I had something in my possession that gave me direct access to your brain. It drew me in.” In her eyes, I can see that she’s sort of smiling. “What did you not want me to see?”
“That I have,” she starts, looking around and lowering her voice to a whisper, “artist’s block.”
I close the sketchbook. “This is all so new. That would be pretty unusual to have ideas for intricate installations on your first suit-up,” I say, trying to reassure her.
She keeps her eyes trained on the large piece of reflective metal in front of her. “I appreciate you saying that, but even still. This place is artistically ripe for something incredible, yet the information just passes through me. Nothing is sticking. There’s no significance. Without deeper meaning behind my installations, it’s just… string. I’ve really fooled everyone, huh?” she asks, her arms wrapped around herself. “This opportunity is the biggest heist of my career.”
I arch an eyebrow. “How do you figure? You were chosen to do this. You were picked because of your work.”
“Jack, I haven’t had a new idea for an installation in six months. Inspiration? Motivation? Who are they? I don’t know them anymore.” Rooney fiddles with the cap of her pen as she laughs humorlessly to herself. “My liaison is the last person I should be admitting this to.”
“Anytime you feel unsure, you can talk to me,” I say. “That’s why I’m here. You can tell me things you don’t want NASA knowing.” This block must be why there aren’t any other photos of work on her website, justEntangledand sketches ofGravity.
Rooney’s eyes glisten under the bright lights. “I just don’t want to let anyone down. This is too important. I need this to work and get exposure. I need the money. The auction is only…”
She squeezes her eyes shut.
“Hey, it’s okay. What auction?”
“Jack, I’m going to come clean to you. And be warned that this is not proper clean room talk.” There she is.
“Okay. Yeah. Welcome to Clean Room Confessions,” I say, suddenly realizing how hard I’m trying to make her feel better.
