Ballooners

My mother died January 28th, 1986, while the space shuttle Challenger turned into a double-headed snake of fire and clouds. She was still breathing when I sat next to her on our sagging couch. By then, she was a fetal husk. Sometimes she woke from her drug daze sobbing, “Help me. Help me,” but she was silent as the crew, including the teacher Christa McAuliffe, waved to the cameras a final time before entering the shuttle. McAuliffe was the reason the whole nation was transfixed by this launch. For the first time, a regular person was heading into space. From the TV came, “Challenger go at throttle up.” There was a feeling of vicarious joy, then a minute and thirty seconds later, the muted sizzle of the explosion.

Mom died while I wasn’t looking.  

Flatlined feelings were Mom’s first symptom of Posterior Cortical Atrophy. (PCA, as the doctors at University Hospital called it with the jaunty tone they reserved for diseases they could medicate but not treat.) Her facial expression grew cold and lizard-like even before the letters started to scramble for her in the Sunday paper.  I left high school halfway into my senior year when the aphasia began. She’d call cucumbers Volvos and call plates picnic baskets. Reaganomics made sure there was no help with taking care of Mom — short of abandoning her to a state hospital. I couldn’t do that at the beginning, and by the time it got to screams in the night and endless tantrums anytime the drug fog cleared, I was too entrenched. I couldn’t leave her.

Her death was both a relief and a ruthless shove back into a world I didn’t know how to revolve around. I’d always read a lot, and the characters in fiction had ruined me for the daily grind of real people. In books, people acted out of desire rather than self-interest. They did great things rather than cling to numbness and security. Books are what’s left of the best part of us, the corner of our souls that we haven’t managed to sell.

But by the end of the summer, selling my soul was on my mind. I had been circling want ads for weeks, watching my bank balance dwindle, but not making any calls. Since my mother’s death, I’d already proven I was the worst waitress in the world, and I didn’t have what it takes to deal with other people’s children. I’d been terminated from my last job — office work — for reading instead of filing.

Before the Bubble, the only job I’d had that I didn’t hate was roller rink DJ, when I was still in high school. I called the Hokey Pokey and the Couples Skate, switched music tracks, and used the big security flashlight to discourage middle-schoolers from getting too serious in the make-out corner. I kept a novel in my booth and used the flashlight as a reading lamp. The manager left me alone. I told her I was doing homework. I didn’t tell her when I dropped out. When she discovered it, she fired me before I could corrupt the kids.

Mom had had just enough money that, living simply, we didn’t worry. However, when she died a dozen years later, the money went a lot of places I hadn’t anticipated. The road from emotionally devastated to financially desperate was short. I was already eating Ronald Regan’s commodity cheese, farina, and oily peanut butter when the landlord gave me a 30 days’ notice. The neighborhood was changing, and he was adding new carpet, fresh paint, and a fourth digit to the rent.

The Bubble job solved all my problems.

The ad had been simple. Campsite operator. Rustic loc. No TV signal. No Radio reception. Must live on site. Furnished apt.

I wondered if an ax murderer placed the ad, but I decided any ax murderer using bait almost no one would want didn’t really have his heart in it. Besides, I still had that roller rink security flashlight. I shoved the classified page into my purse and walked down to the corner payphone to call — mine had been disconnected the week before for nonpayment. 

Klasky, my as-yet-unseen boss, answered. He explained the job, and he explained the Bubble. It’s a plot of land between some low southern Colorado mountains. The air pressure, altitude, and some other stuff kept radio signals from getting in. The Bubble had a telephone that was hardwired and underground. But TV, the AM and FM dials, CBs and other shortwave signals — even the low frequency waves that the army used — none of that stuff worked.

Klasky told me that there’d be occasional overnight travelers to deal with. Take their cash. Give them a key. Then all I’d need to do was wipe the cabins down and change the sheets when they left. However, twice a year the whole place would fill up with the RVs, the pickups connected to trailers, and the tents of ballooners who kicked off the Spring Mountain Festival and closed out the Summer Harvest Gathering.

Klasky had asked for references. I’d said my mother was dead, but I could probably ask the librarian. Klasky said he’d take me at my word if I could be there before the Harvest Gathering ballooners arrived at the end of the week.

I thought I was desperate. I asked him what happened to the last caretaker, and he said, “Sometimes people just disappear.”

Yeah, exactly like I was about to do, to take the job — except I don’t think you can disappear when there’s no one to look for you. I’d lost touch with my few school acquaintances when my mother became ill, and I had no notion of how to go about making friends now. Even the lovers I imagined to push against the lonely edge of night had no faces.  

I sold what I could to raise gas money for the trip. Most of my stuff, I packed off to Goodwill. When I headed south, the trunk of my beat-up Ford Maverick contained lots of books, some clothes, and a sparse collection of cassette tapes gleaned from Goodwill’s music racks. I’d looked for a secondhand boom box, but I’d only found a tape recorder with one tinny speaker. Still, it’d be better than nothing.

The San Luis Valley has chunks of desert and chunks of farmland. Situated between two mountain ranges, there’s a double rain shadow effect. The valley sees seasons, but relatively little rain and snow — at least compared to the Rockies further north. It’s pretty, and it’s empty. I have only Polaroid memories of anything before mom started losing it, but we’d driven through here once when I was a kid. I don’t know where we were going or why, but I remembered this feeling of light trying to get out of my chest.

The Bubble was 25 miles off Highway 17 at the box end of a wide canyon. The turn-off road’s edges were cracked and cleaved by past winters, sage, and salt-grass. Who goes down this road looking for a place to sleep for the night? I thought. However, as I left Highway 17, I had the unmistakable feeling of going home.

I drove until I saw the green cattle-gate. Above it, wrought iron letters spelling “The Bubble” arched across the gate in cowboy cursive. Attached to the gate was a combination lockbox. That’s where Klasky told me I’d find the keys to the gate and cabins. As I was turning the combination in the lock, the first ballooners pulled up in a dual-wheeled black Dodge. They had Texas plates and towed an enclosed trailer with hot air balloons painted on the side.

I waved, finished the combo, and fished out the keys as the Dodge’s driver walked up. He was a heavy man, a mix of muscle and belly, wearing a too-tight white button-up shirt with blue stripes and worn jeans that looked equally uncomfortable.

I unlocked the gate, and he opened it before holding out his hand. “Don Parks.”

I shook with him, “Thanks for grabbing the gate. I’m Melissa, the new caretaker. Are you early? I didn’t think the festival started till the end of the week.”

“What? No Miss Maybell?” The Texan shook his head, “Don’t you worry, Ronette and I,” he gestured to the truck passenger, but all I could see through the windshield was an arc of big blond hair-helmet. “We know the way. We generally come a few days early. The winds are almost always a launch-perfect four to six miles an hour here. There’s a moment when you rise above the canyon, and the whole valley spreads below you. I like having that a few times before all my friends arrive. You know what I mean?”

“I can imagine,” I said. 

I went back to my car leaving the gate open now that the Bubble once again had a caretaker. I drove another couple of miles. Don and Ronette followed. The Bubble’s office was well-marked with a sign. I found the right key after only a couple of attempts. Don waited behind me. I hesitated before opening the door. A ripple of unease washed over me. The last caretaker had disappeared, and I really had no idea what I would find on the other side.

But I couldn’t stand there all day, could I?

I opened the door to a wood-paneled room that could have passed for the vestibule to Graceland. Dozens of framed young-Elvis pictures lined the walls. Elvis figurines, promoting his various movies, lined a set of shelves behind the wood counter. There was an Elvis clock with pendulum legs and an Elvis phone next to a neat desk set emblazoned with Elvis’ face.

I went behind the counter because that seemed the right place for someone with my job. I’d expected to have a least a couple of days to orient myself.

“What? Miss Maybell left without all her things? I don’t believe it,” Don said. “You know that telephone plays ‘Jail House Rock’ and dances when it rings. That was her prize possession. Collectible. She said, ‘It may be worth a fortune someday, but it’s priceless to me right now.’ You lift that handle and see. There’s a plate saying it’s a limited edition and everything.”

I lifted the phone’s receiver politely and looked. It didn’t seem like the edition had been too limited if this one was number 987,426, but there were probably more than a million crazed Elvis fans out there. My eyes fell on a sheaf of white envelopes lined up next to the blotter. The one on top had Don and Ronette Parks written on it in an old-fashioned looking squashed Palmer-script. I set the receiver back in place and opened the envelope. Inside was a key for cabin 14 and a neatly tallied bill in the same distinctive handwriting.

Bless you, Miss Maybell.

“It looks like wherever she went, she prepared,” I said. “Maybe she decided to elope with an Elvis impersonator.”

“I sure hope so,” Don said, sadness tarnishing his genial Texan demeanor. “I’d hate to think she decided to make the kind of exit where you can’t take it with you, if you know what I mean.”

I shivered and said, “I’m going to imagine my predecessor is honeymooning in Vegas.”

Don nodded. “Yeah, me too.”

I watched the Parks’ truck pull up to the cabin furthest from the office — a half mile of sage and scrub away. A clacking gyration and labored version of “Jail House Rock” startled me. The artist had made Elvis’ eyes too big for his face and sloppily painted the white the same brilliant blue as the iris. I picked up the receiver and Elvis stopped his racket. He stared at me with his accusing, marionette eyes.

“Hello?” I said.

“Oh good, you made it,” Klasky responded.

“Yeah, I already checked in my first guest,” I said. “He seemed worried that Miss Maybell hadn’t taken her Elvis collection. She really just disappeared?”

“People do strange things.”

Yeah, like take jobs in the middle of nowhere half a state away. Maybe I should have been uneasy at the thought, but it filled me with exhilaration. I wanted everything to be okay because I didn’t want to leave.

Klasky was still talking. “I’ll try to make it down there at the end of the week.”

I hung up the phone, making Elvis shiver, and looked around the office. In a drawer, I discovered a detailed list of check-in and maintenance instructions, as well as a map of the property which showed the location of the fourteen cabins and thirty-two campsites. There were also three ovals labeled Thermal Bathing. Funny that Klasky hadn’t mentioned that. After six hours driving, I was ready for a walk, and the idea of kicking off my shoes and wading into a hot spring sounded like heaven.

However, first, I went out to the car for the few groceries I’d picked up on the way — some farmstand veggies, eggs, cheese, pasta, oatmeal, and bread. In the kitchen, the refrigerator was empty but for a bottle of ketchup and an unopened tub of Country Crock margarine. The color scheme was neon pastels, popular at retro-50s diner chains. The appliances were an electric light-blue. The glittery pink hexagon floor had a black chrome-and-Formica table in the middle of it. The table only had one chair. The trim was black, and the white walls were covered with Elvis records held up by push pins through their centers. The Miss Maybell in my mind had a Lucille Ball poodle cut. She wore pedal pushers and a tied-up shirt during the day, but changed into A-line dresses with petticoats underneath for her dinner — even if she was eating alone.

I might tire of Miss Maybell’s eye-assaulting 1950s homage, but for now, the strangeness was inviting. I went outside for the rest of my stuff, then went in search of the bedroom. It was a study in black chiffon that could have been the fever dream of a 1950s film’s art director. The fabric had been pulled into three decorative scoops at the ceiling, with long drapes to the floor that framed the bed. Each scoop had a neon pink bow affixed to it. The effect was echoed on the bedspread. The dresser had a similar extravagant fabric frame. The room’s walls were painted the same neon pink as the bows. The only thing on the black lacquer nightstand was a tiny framed picture of Elvis. He sat shirtless, looking up, and inviting the camera into the bed he leaned against.

Saucy, Miss Maybell. Why would you leave that behind? I added a demure-sexy baby-doll nightie to Miss Maybell’s imagined wardrobe.

I was relieved to find the dressers empty. It made it easier to imagine Miss Maybell lounging around a Vegas pool with a dark-haired crooner singing “Love me Tender” in her ear. Still, it felt a little indecent putting away my things when so much of the previous occupant was still around.

The bathroom, a stark white space, was medicinally clean and smelled of bleach. It was empty of personal items and so clean it felt like it had never been used. I opened the mirrored cabinet, and it was equally barren until I put my toothbrush and toothpaste inside it. Settling-in chores done, I headed for the back door. The view gave me that bursting light feeling again. The canyon opened like arms. The sun half hid behind the mountains, gilding the sandy hardpack and tired plants.

The cabins were directly ahead, the thermal pools off to the left. I turned left and found Don and Ronette soaking in one of the three 10-by-12 pools. Ronette was a narrow mouse of a woman but for the blond hairsprayed helmet above the stick-straight wisps of hair the water had flattened to her neck. They were both naked.

Don was sheepish, but not embarrassed, “Another one of those things we can’t do once everyone gets here.” As I turned to go, he said, “If you’re up early tomorrow, you’ll catch me and Ronette putting up the envelope. The conditions look to be right for the box effect. The upper atmosphere should bring us right back here, so we’re going for a real flight rather than just tying up to look over the canyon.”

“Thanks. I’ll do my best.” I left the naked couple and walked a wide arc past the cabins. I’d meant to ask Don and Ronette if they had everything they needed. Oh well, they’d let me know. They weren’t shy.

The sun wasn’t quite down, but already the sky was turning into a bowl of early stars when I headed back to the house. The office occupied what would have been the house’s living room, so it looked like I’d be spending a lot of time in the rock ’n roll kitchen. I brought the tape player, a stack of tapes, and the paperback copy of IT that I had treated myself to when I saw it in a truck-stop rack. I’d spent the last 10 months coveting the hardback I couldn’t afford. My whole life was coming together.

I read, absently turning or switching cassettes when necessary, cycling through Willie, and Stevie, and OMD, but barely aware of any of them. I was hungry a long time before I was able to bring myself to put that book down. At home, I would have read while I cooked, but I didn’t know where anything was in this kitchen. I rooted around in the cabinets till I found a stock pot and sauté pan. While I boiled pasta, I sautéed a few veggies, then threw the whole mess together with garlic powder, pepper, and a spoonful of Country Crock. I stood at the counter eating when I saw the heavy hardbound copy of The Joy of Cooking on top of the fridge.

I pulled it down. It was a book I’d almost purchased several times in second-hand stores, but had always passed up for something else. Mom and I had watched a lot of Julia Child on PBS Channel Six over the years, and Julia swore by “The Joy.” I flipped through while I ate and saw more of Miss Maybell’s squashed Palmer-script annotating the recipes with ingredient substitutions and alterations. It was cute, but I was finishing my dinner, ready to return to my real book, when I found the page with the skinned squirrel.

The booted foot and the hand pulling the blank-eyed squirrel from his skin were startling enough for someone for whom meat came from the grocery store, but it was Miss Maybell’s notes that seized my attention.

He knows I know. A God disappointed in his creation.

I stand on broken glass. My feet bleed in the cracks.

They haven’t eaten in 160,000 years.

They’re almost here.

I won’t let them in.

This strange poetry was written in the same handwriting as all the notes I’d found, but I couldn’t square this mind with the personality of the house. Don Parks’ dark worries of suicide blackened the cozy, enveloping night.

I turned the page. A sheaf of newspaper clippings had been pressed into the binding’s crease. All the clippings related to the Challenger disaster. They were jumbled together and not chronological. The aftermath of wreckage raining into the sea came before the profile of Christa McAuliffe. The explosion preceded a puff piece about the Kennedy Space Center.

In the corner of the explosion article, Miss Maybell had written, “His work.”

My predecessor’s mad juxtapositions sucked the air from the house. I fled its suffocating atmosphere and headed to the pools guided by the light of my roller rink flashlight. I didn’t have my bathing suit, but it was close to two am, and none of the lights were on at Don and Ronette’s cabin.

I stripped and slipped into the thermal water. I felt better. 

Seventeen percent of America saw the explosion live. Eighty-five percent of the country knew about it within 10 minutes. The Rogers Commission had published their report midsummer. I’d watched the news coverage thinking Richard Feynman was pretty hot for a cancer-ridden physicist. I’d purchased a copy of the report and read it in two days.

Though the news at the time had reported “instant death” for the astronauts, the commission indicated that most of the crew, including McAuliffe, had had two and a half minutes to imagine the implacability of their death as they hurtled toward the ocean. I could never get that out of my mind. Two and a half minutes. Did they hope for a miracle? Did they hold hands? Did they shout dying declarations of love to people who couldn’t hear them? Did they rage against the flat mirror of ocean about to smash the life from them? 

I didn’t believe they did any of those things. They were people, not characters in a book. They probably just sat there, each alone and trapped inside the prison of their skin, and waited for the end.  

So, Miss Maybell had a few clippings. The horror of watching the Challenger explode happened to all of us. The “His work,” she’d written in the margins was likely nothing more than religious pablum. Her disappointment in God’s work. I was the one with the out-of-proportion attachment to the shuttle explosion because it was wired together with losing my mother.

Sure, but the line about the broken glass kept coming back. 

Miss Maybell was not all there.

But she wasn’t here either.

By the time I climbed out of the pool, I knew what I would do.

I should have been too tired, but the pool had energized me, and I wasn’t going to sleep in that bed while it still felt like hers. I pulled the chiffon down from the ceiling, carefully collecting the staples that fell on the bed. I removed it from the dresser and stripped the sheets. I folded the fabric and placed Bedroom-Elvis on top. One of Miss Maybell’s notes had informed me that there was no trash service, but there was an incinerator near the back door and a big burn barrel out by the cabins. I threw the fabric and the picture into the incinerator’s hold, but I would wait till it was full to light it, per Miss Maybell’s instructions.

Back in the bedroom, I made the bed with my own sheets and a screen-printed comforter I’d picked up at a flea market. It was black with a ghost turtle swimming among swirling stars. It was better. I’d paint the walls later, but I could sleep here, at least.

Now I was tired, so tired my head felt swimmy and strange, but dawn drew me to the window where the rainbow colors of Don and Ronette’s balloon billowed on the ground. It was enormous. I went outside for a closer look. I’d never been this close, and I had had no appreciation for the flying craft’s scale. The basket was tipped over on its side. Don and Ronette worked together with the smooth orchestration of partners who’d danced these steps many times. Mousy Ronette moved with precision and confidence. Round muscles came out on her upper arms as she lifted a heavy tank from the back of the pick-up.  

Those two were like a universe unto themselves, and they were beautiful in their revolutions. The balloon filled enough to rise from the earth, tipping the basket upright. A few minutes later, Don and Ronette climbed in and cast off the ballast. The balloon rose quickly. I wanted to watch longer, but my body screamed for sleep. I fell into the bed I’d recently made mine.

I woke up lost in the unfamiliar room. I didn’t remember my dreams except the feeling that every terrible thing had already happened, and now I was the Challenger crew two minutes between me and the ocean. The wind, like a trapped moth’s wings, buffeted my walls. Strange light disoriented me. I’d slept, but I’d also traveled.

I grappled for my common sense. I was feeling the price of an all-nighter. The light was strange because it was afternoon.

I stumbled into the shower, but the hot water increased the fog. I toweled myself dry. The sudden clacking dance of Elvis in the office tore through my lethargic haze. 

“Shit,” I ran through the little house. Elvis flailed obscenely, but I snatched the receiver from him anyway.        

“Hello, Melissa.”

Klasky. Damn it. I was probably supposed to be manning the desk or something. “Hey, Boss.”

“I hope you’re settling in all right.” His tone gave me the feeling he knew exactly the state I was in. 

“I have good news,” he said. “I was able to catch a ride down earlier than expected. I’ll be there in an hour or so.”

I tucked the towel more tightly around me and wiggled my bare feet on the linoleum. “Oh, that’s great.”

“Yes,” Klasky said. “I’m looking forward to meeting you and giving you a full rundown.”

Chills broke out on the back of my neck.

I raced back to the bedroom, threw on clothes, and twisted my hair into a couple of quick Heidi braids. My dishes from last night were still in the sink. I scrubbed them while the coffee brewed. I sucked down the coffee and scarfed a quick slice of toast. Then I went into the office. I sorted through the envelopes and did my best to look like someone who hadn’t slept through her first day on the job.

Fifteen minutes later, I saw Klasky cutting across the campsite between the cabins. He and Don must shop at the same Yellow Front store. His shirt was white with blue stripes, his jeans faded, but where Don’s belly had strained at the buttons, Klasky’s tall, spare frame left the shirtfront flat enough to iron. He was too far away for me to make out his features, but his stride was the purposeful lope of a man who had things to do.

He saw me looking out and lifted his hand in a jaunty wave. I waved back, and from the tape recorder in the kitchen, the Door’s “Touch Me” started to play. Morrison’s imperative landed hard despite the tinny flat sound that was all the single speaker could manage. I ran from the window into the kitchen and snatched the tape recorder from the table. The volume immediately shot up, making the little machine vibrate in my hands. I tried to drop it but my hands wouldn’t open. 

None of the buttons were pushed, the tape reels were not spinning, and the cassette inside was Bruce Springsteen’s, “Born in the USA.” The volume leapt higher and the song rammed into my consciousness, drowning me in Jim Morrison’s sly lust and Ray Manzarek’s voyeuristic keyboards.

Klasky’s hand fell on my shoulder, and the song cut off like someone had used a knife.

I turned, and that turning may not have taken two-and-a-half minutes, but everything had already gone wrong without me knowing it. I didn’t rage. I didn’t shout. I didn’t hope. Trapped in the prison of my skin, I revolved toward my doom.

His voice came from the tape player. “There you are, Melissa. I’ve waited so long to see you.”

His face was blank below the eyes like all my fantasy lovers.

“Two days,” I muttered. I was distracted by that flying feeling. I thought it had come from the landscape. But it was coming from him. 

“Oh no.” He laughed like a wolf. The tinny speaker made it an alien sound. “Much, much, longer. Since our star fell from the sky. Isn’t that how the song goes?”

The end of the world should not feel like coming home, but I was born falling to my death. It was a relief to see the annihilating ocean’s waves.

I moved toward him, the tape recorder held between us. He reached out with arms that, despite his height, were too long. He gripped my shoulders. His hands were hot and kneading. I stood a breath away from him.

“That’s better. That’s much better.” His voice vibrated against my chest. His hot hands caressed my neck, my cheeks. He rested his thumbs on my closed eyelids and a shudder moved through him. “Such exquisite imagination. The creature I’d made to hold your place could not compare.”

“Hold my place?” I said. Some narrowing corner of my mind really wanted to know, but I was mostly concerned with the dizzying heat of his hands.

“In each of our thousand incarnations, I have waited for you to be ready.”

“For me to be desperate? Desperate enough for —”

“Mmmm.” The syllable of mechanical hunger made me shudder.

We were in the bedroom.

I set the tape recorder on the night table where Miss Maybell had kept hot Elvis. I drew my faceless lover down to the bed. I took him into me, and I fell into his eyes. Figure eight rings twisted above the black hole of him. Our thrust and pull friction-generated embryo stars. Klasky was light. In the light, everything burns. Everything burns forever, but eternity is cold.

I awoke to night blowing in the bedroom window, but its trapped-moth’s-wings sound was much louder. Klasky stood before the glass, his back to me, the pale outline of him in front of the window was my magnet. When I stood at his side, I saw the fabric of Don and Ronette’s balloon. It had twisted itself around their truck. The wind was singing through the places it pulled taut. The basket lay on its side nearby. The gusts picked it up an inch or two and dropped it.

“Where are Don and Ronette?” I asked.

Klasky turned from the window and started putting on Don’s clothes. Hi posture radiated impatience. 

I dressed and followed him outside. We wrestled the great mass of nylon off the truck. We unhooked the strings from the basket and stuffed the fabric into the incinerator on top of Miss Maybell’s chiffon. Klasky dumped a bag of charcoal and some lighter fluid on top of it. I lit the match and Klasky dropped the lid. The nylon, covered in flame retardant, didn’t burn so much as melt as the incinerator heated around it. When the wind died, we burned the basket out on the hardpack away from the cabins.

Ashes swirling around us, I watched Klasky get into Don’s truck.

He placed his long-fingered hand across my throat in a caress that could choke the life from me. 

He looked at his reflection in the side mirror. His voice crackled from the truck’s radio. “I need a bit more definition don’t you think?” His hand didn’t squeeze, but I could feel the electric tension of his strength.

I closed my eyes, and the face I saw was Richard Feynman’s.

“Oh yes, that’s much better.” He smoothed graying hair behind his ears. “Much more every man. I’d gotten so tired of trying to hide Elvis.” He took his hand from my throat. “When our friends come down at the end of the week, you need only to imagine they are the same people who went up. Soon, there will be many more of us.” 

He left.

I went back into the house. A thousand mirror images of Elvis stared back at me. Miss Maybell had done it on purpose. She’d given Klasky a face that he couldn’t wear. The certainty landed like a personal betrayal.

She wasn’t one of them.

She wasn’t one of us.

I ripped Miss Maybell’s Elvises from the walls and from the shelves. I wrested clacky Elvis from his pedestal on the phone.

Outside, the incinerator was still hungry.

I went back inside for the Joy of Cooking. It slipped from my hands and sprawled open, spilling clippings.

Squashed Palmer-script in thick lines that looked like they had been traced over and over covered a page. He lies. He lies. He lies…

The incinerator ate her words.

From the March Issue of Space Magazine:

The visible light from the explosion of Supernova 1987A reached earth on February 24th, 1987. The light traveled for 160,000 light years at 186,000 miles per second to reach us…

Advertisement from the San Luis Sentinel: 

Come on out to the Bubble Rally. We’re growing! It’s time the San Luis Valley had the biggest balloon festival in the world…  

And somewhere in Vegas…

Miss Maybell struggled to the surface of a dream that had lasted too long. She edged from beneath the arm of Clyde, his late-Elvis pompadour still holding its shape despite the press of the pillow. Even as she wiggled sideways, the easy sleepiness that accompanied his warm heavy flesh tried to sink into her. He didn’t stir. Clyde wasn’t vigilant. He was animated clay. She would forget that if she closed her thousand-pound eyelids. Miss Maybell kept up her wiggle. Clyde’s meaty hand finally slipped from her shoulder to the bed with a quiet thump. Miss Maybell lay there in the wadded nest of hotel sheets. Her thudding heart, the only thing keeping her awake.  

Tulpas like Clyde are only partially made things. She’d started out the same, but since Klasky had created her to give him form, he’d been forced to endow her with imagination. She didn’t know who had made Clyde, why he had been so irresistible to her, or why that desire had so completely evaporated. The why was nothing. What mattered was freedom.   

Thunder rattled the window of the casino high rise, and lightning flashed across the Las Vegas skyline. Every storm is a benediction. Miss Maybell let the thunder cover the sound of her slow roll from the bed.

Clyde didn’t stir, he didn’t even look very real anymore — more dried up Play-Doh than animated clay. 

Liquor bottles littered the floor, and Miss Maybell’s legs shook as she stood. But she was awake. Miss Maybell stumbled across the room, heedless that all she was wearing was a wild look in her eyes and a thigh-length yellow baby-doll nighty. She tumbled into the hallway. Crossing the casino floor, the few gamblers and tired cocktail waitresses didn’t see her, or they decided not to see her — a half dressed woman at four am was just an invitation into someone else’s trouble.

The same went for the Vegas streets outside. Even when she started to run, the people she passed chose to examine the clouds building in the sky.

Miss Maybell ran, and the moisture-rich air filled her lungs.