“Dudes,” Gwen calls to us from the porch. “Get thee the fuck out here.”
Sunil and I set down our beers and fast-walk to join Gwen outside, where she’s staring at the night sky. Without turning around, she says, “Check this shit out.”
It’s another jumble of space junk burning through our sky. Sunil types something into his phone and says, “It’s a satellite. Kazakhstani.”
We’ve seen Chinese space junk, Russian, Israeli. This is our first Kazakhstani – a cluster of burning, orange fragments, looking like a Boeing exploded mid-flight over our mid-sized American city. If we didn’t know what it was, if our phones couldn’t tell us, it would be very concerning.
Sunil: “Man, anyone can put anything in the sky.”
Gwen: “Elon Musk owns over five thousand satellites.”
Me: “I hope he had to sign something.”
Sunil, reading from his phone: “You need a Part 25 Space Station license from the FCC. It costs a hundred and sixteen thousand dollars.”
Gwen: “Anyone can put anything in the sky who has money.”
Sunil: “Precisely.”
We watch the burning garbage plummet in silence.
Then: “The Earth is space’s garbage can,” I say.
Gwen: “It feels like no one’s in charge.”
“Someone’s in charge,” Sunil says, “they just have questionable priorities.” His fingers fly over his phone, like a kid on a Game Boy. “Astronomers say the slew of satellites makes it harder for them to observe the stars.”
Me: “You’re using a satellite to get your information about satellites.”
Sunil stares at me. “Woah.”
The next day, we learn that debris from the Kazakhstani satellite was found in a nearby soybean field. No GMO soybeans were harmed. Another chunk pierced the roof of someone’s house.
Sunil, eyes on his phone screen: “They say no one’s ever been killed by falling space debris.”
Gwen: “Of course they’d say that.” Gwen is an alarmist, which doesn’t preclude her being right sometimes.
Me: “Never having killed anyone seems like a low bar.”
#
Two days later, it’s Kenyan space junk lighting up our night.
“I’m starting to get a little mad at the frequency of this,” Gwen says from our observation area on the porch.
Sunil: “It’s a reminder that we’re not in control.”
Gwen: “We never are.”
Me: “Frustrating.”
Gwen: “Precisely.”
The Kenyan space junk is a little smaller but burns a bit brighter than the Kazakhstani space junk. No debris is reported to have been recovered.
“But can we know for sure?” Gwen says.
She’s leaning against the porch railing in those shorts I admire. We’re all just roommates, but when she wears those shorts, I get ideas.
#
For the next few days, smoke from yet another forest fire blankets our mid-sized American city in a thick orange haze. The world smells like a campfire, pleasant at first, then not.
The days look like one long orange dusk. School is canceled. Stores close.
Sunil, checking on his phone: “Hotter weather is causing more and bigger fires. Their smoke causes more hotter weather.”
Gwen, re our Martianesque sky: “It’s strangely beautiful. Too bad it’s an ecological disaster.”
If any space junk burns up at night, we aren’t able to see it through the haze.
“Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” Gwen tells us.
We stay inside and run the HEPA filter, which may or may not help. The many articles do not agree.
Three roommates together for three days could have been a challenge, but after our 78-day lockdown, it’s comparatively a breeze. We’re pros at it. Gwen is our Mama Bear. She keeps us in line. She’s a taskmaster, and a nurturer – the whole package.
On day four, the sky begins to clear. We see a few stars that night.
“Finally,” Gwen says. “How am I supposed to see all the flaming space garbage when the sky is smoked over?”
The next day, we’re free to go out. Gwen returns to work at the nursery. Sunil gets a new substitute teaching assignment. I head off to the disposal facility to sort recyclables.
All three of us tried to find jobs we thought would help make the world a better place: Gwen grows things, Sunil teaches the nation’s youth, I reduce the world’s waste.
“Except almost none of our recycling actually gets recycled,” Gwen says one night. “I just read an article. We ship it all overseas and they toss it in a landfill.”
Sunil, looking at his screen: “One million tons a year.”
Me: “I feel attacked.”
“Don’t,” Sunil says. “I say I’m teaching the next generation, but all I’m teaching them is how to take tests.”
Gwen: “And all the plants at the nursery are pumped full of synthetic fertilizer – it’s a river killer.”
“Let’s all quit,” I say.
Gwen: “We need money for food.”
Sunil: “And rent.” He wiggles his phone in the air. “And cell service.”
Me: “Fucking capitalism.”
#
The next morning, we’re awakened by the shaking of our home. Cups fall from cabinets, pictures drop from the walls. I’m first up. Soon, Sunil joins me, rubbing his eyes.
“Look out for glass,” I tell him. He’s in his baresies.
Gwen comes out in a tank top and underwear. I’ve never gotten used to seeing her half naked.
Those legs. Sheesh.
Those arms, for that matter.
Sunil slips on his glasses and starts poke-poking at his phone. “It’s another wastewater injection quake. Human-caused. Induced seismicity, they call it."
Gwen: “Thou art speaking of fracking?”
Sunil: “Not this time, although it causes induced seismicity as well, which I’ll call I.S. going forward.”
“I don’t love it by any name,” Gwen says, still baring those legs.
Gwen catches me ogling her and goes and covers up. She seems unperturbed, though. Just another day in the life of a woman, I suppose.
Sunil and I sweep up the glass, rehang the artwork.
Gwen, now in her robe: “So it causes earthquakes, but we’re still doing it?”
Sunil: “Correct.”
Gwen: “Seems incomprehensible.”
Sunil: “They say to expect more I.S. in the coming days.”
Gwen: “Enough already with the I.S.”
That evening, there’s a moderate aftershock. I walk through the house, make an inspection.
Me: “No physical damage this time.”
Gwen: “So we’re expected to accept this?”
Sunil: “Apparently.”
#
That night, I go to bed hoping for another temblor so I can see those legs again. But the next morning is earthquakeless. Gwen comes out in her robe as usual. Oh well.
Gwen BTW has scarring on her face from a random acid attack some years ago. She doesn’t talk about it. I am blessed to find I am indifferent to her burn scars. Gwen tells us it’s a big turnoff for prospective dates. Not for me. I offer no explanation for this and make no claims to be a deep person. Perhaps it’s just that once you know someone well, you no longer notice things like that. They just become part of their person.
It’s a hot day, another record-setter for our mid-sized American city. Hotter than some day in 1918, Sunil tells us, the now-former hottest day.
Sunil, continuing his report: “Tomorrow will be even hotter.”
In the news, there’s another crane collapse downtown, possibly related to the heat. One person is dead, two are injured.
Gwen: “What's with crane collapses? I feel like they should be rarer. Do people not read the crane owner’s manual?”
Sunil, consulting his phone: “The three top causes of crane collapses – improper assembly, operator error, unexpected weather.”
Me: “That’s a lot of causes.”
Gwen: “And it’s just the top three.”
The power goes out during the night, the grid probably overloaded by all the A/Cs. Or it’s another hack of the electrical grid. There are roomfuls of Russians working night and day on these things. Like monkeys with typewriters, only smarter.
That night, I wake up hot, so I get up, fill up a spray bottle at the sink, and spritz myself in an effort to cool down and sleep.
Gwen appears again in her undies and tank – my now absolute favorite outfit of hers.
“Spray me, will ya?” she says groggily.
She closes her eyes and leans forward to facilitate the spritzing, giving off an alluring human scent. I can’t recall if pheromones have been debunked or not; right now they seem very real. I spritz her all over, which causes stirrings in me.
Her eyes are still closed when I lean forward to maybe kiss her lips, a direct violation of our tacit roommate agreement.
Gwen, sensing me near, slowly lifts her lids and smirks. “Ya think so, huh?”
“Maybe?” I say.
She yawns and turns to head back to bed. “Maybe, maybe not,” she calls back to me.
I sleep poorly due to the heat and the stirrings inside me. Maybe not, she said. But also: Maybe.
#
Once, I got sick, scary sick. It felt like the world’s worst flu, except Sunil’s phone insisted it could not be the flu, as it was July. We had to weigh whether I, insurance-less, should empty my bank account for a doctor. Sunil’s phone said that if my temp stayed below 105, I would survive.
Meanwhile, Gwen took over my care. There were soups, teas, medicines, āsanas to get my lymph flowing. She even read to me in bed. One time, after she thought I’d fallen asleep, she gave me a little dry kiss on the cheek. But I hadn’t fallen asleep. I’d experienced that kiss, our first/only.
#
The next day is Saturday. There’s a brownout. The A/C comes on now and then, keeps us from perishing, but it’s not pleasant in the house. We pile into Gwen’s Accord, me up front and Sunil in the back, and take a drive just for the air conditioning. Due to the heat, Gwen is wearing shorts. It’s an effort not to stare.
We come to a busy intersection. Cars are honking. Someone has fainted in the crosswalk. Good Samaritans help the woman up and sit her down in the shade of a bus shelter. She sits there looking stunned.
Gwen: “They’re just going to leave her there?”
Sunil: “It would appear.”
“Move over,” Gwen says to him. “She’s getting in.”
Gwen pulls over and feeds me lines while I talk to the fainting woman out my window. I get a thrill saying what Gwen tells me to say. We convince her that a stranger’s car is safer than the extraordinary heat. The car thermometer says 116 degrees.
In the car, we ply her with bottled water while Gwen talks her into a trip to the emergency room.
Gwen: “My mother was a nurse. She’d kill me if she knew I let thee go unexamined.”
“Nurses are heroes,” the fainter says.
Gwen: “Okay.”
We turn down Royale to head to Saint Luke’s.
“Not Saint Luke’s,” the fainter says. “Central.”
Gwen gives her a look in the rearview over her sunglasses, like an annoyed mom.
“Central takes Medicaid,” the fainter says.
Gwen nods, pulls a uey.
We don’t get far before traffic comes to a standstill. We see movement in the roadbed. Something furry. Several somethings.
The fainter says, “It’s coyotes again.”
Sunil gets to work on his phone. “Heat waves drive coyotes and other wildlife into urban streets in search of food and water.”
We inch forward until we see them clearly. The coyotes are standing in the middle of the boulevard, just staring at us humans. Cars are honking, but the coyotes seem over it.
Gwen: “Aww. It looks like a mommy and her babies.”
Our passenger: “It’s a pack.”
Sunil, eyes on his phone: “Coyote attacks have been increasing in frequency. Do not feed coyotes.”
Our passenger: “I think I might faint again.”
#
We stagger together through the hospital’s sliding doors into an A/C oasis.
Sunil, tap-tapping: “OSHA legally requires all hospitals to have adequate backup generators.”
Gwen: “Our government at work, for once.”
At the ER, they’re doing triage, asking who’s there for heat-related issues, who for miscellaneous. There’s still a lot of asthma from the smoke. Also due to today’s Extremely High pollen count. The heat people get a quick once-over – pulse, temperature, etc. – and then are rushed in or not, depending. Our patient aces her preliminary tests, but when the nurse hears that she fainted and went kerplop in the street, she rushes her off.
We decide to wait for our fainter – Gwen’s concerned, and Sunil and I like the A/C. We sit among the injured, among the sneezers and wheezers.
In the heat, Gwen’s scarring has grown redder, as if she’s embarrassed. I check my brain but find I still do not care. Her concern for the fainter is a huge turn-on. Ditto the way she takes charge and gets things done. I have an urge right then to try the kissing thing on her again, but I know this is not the time.
We’re reading crap magazines when we hear a commotion. We waiting roomers turn to look for the cause. There’s a lot of movement by the hospital doors. People begin standing up, moving back – away from a possible threat?
We stand up too, look where they’re looking. I get a partial view of a man in a camouflage vest, holding an automatic weapon, which sets off alarm bells. The vest indicates advanced planning, I think. He’s come here prepared. For what? Our most recent mass shooting was a doozie.
Is he pointing the weapon at the nurses in the nurse’s station?
A little girl grabs tight to her dad’s hand. A feeling comes over me. A feeling of fed-up-ness. I think of the space junk, the orange sky, the earthquakes, the heat – all of it. I feel like I’ve had enough.
A couple of people look to be crouching down, perhaps to hide. Not me. I’m looking around for something to bash this guy over the head with. He’s not going to mass-shoot anyone on my watch, not going to interrupt these people’s quest for medical attention.
“What’re you doing?” Gwen says as I look around for a bat, or nunchucks, or a mace.
“I don’t know,” I say. I don’t, really.
Why hasn’t the camo man started firing yet?, I wonder. If he was going to mass-shoot us, I feel like he would’ve started by now. This feels like an important insight.
I see a laptop on a chair, abandoned by its owner in the commotion. In my brain, I test-smash someone over the head with it, and it seems like it will be effective. I pick up the laptop.
“Slow down, cowboy,” Gwen says as I head off.
The man in camo turns as I approach the nurse’s station, laptop over my head, poised for a head-smashing. He holds up a gloved hand as if to say Stop. Something about the way he does it – a certain professionalism – causes me to actually stop. Reevaluate the situation. I see the insignia on his uniform. His weapon is at his side.
I do not smash the laptop over his head. The National Guardsman holds out his gloved hand, and instinctively, I pass the laptop to him, like student to teacher. He doesn’t scold me, doesn’t knock me to the ground and put a knee in my back. He just chuckles and sets the laptop on the counter.
Other National Guardspersons begin passing out waters, urging everyone to drink. “Drink twice what you think you need,” one says. Good advice. Soon everyone is seated and guzzling water in A/Ced bliss.
Gwen comes and puts her arm in mine. “It’s the thought that counts,” she says. Then it all seems not so bad. Because there is Gwen, I feel like I can face things.
Gwen: “It’s good to know you’re prepared to kill for me.”
I turn red. Not because I almost brained a member of our nation’s armed forces. But because of those two words: for me.
