1. December 31, 1965
The enormous ballroom is filled with glimmering lights, candles, and the preponderance of diamonds and gems that the women are wearing. Gossamer gowns are encrusted with rhinestones and sparkles, and even the tablecloths are sprinkled with a tasteful dusting of glitter. A band plays on a stage at one end of the ballroom, its members bedecked in sapphire blue shantung silk tuxedos pinned with white rose boutonnières.
On the polished wood dance floor, astronauts in sleek tuxes—some with tails, some without—whirl their ladies around to the musical stylings of Denny Hitzman and the Hitmen. On stage, Denny’s broad, white smile gleams from his tanned face, and the bass player shakes his head as his fingers fly across the guitar's frets. The band is doing a rousing and imaginative cover of the Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love" as couples move to the music. Bill Booker cuts through the crowd of women in their elbow-length gloves and wrist corsages, and he dodges flying elbows as men turn beautiful women under their arms, let them spin out, and then pull them close again gracefully.
"Excuse me," a woman says breathlessly as she approaches Bill. She is blonde and all business, her dress giving away the fact that she's there for work and not simply to celebrate.
"Lieutenant Colonel," she says smartly, giving him a wide, pearly grin as she stands before him. She's barely over five feet tall and can't be much older than twenty-five, but she has the attitude of a born go-getter. "My name is Polly Vanderbilt. I'd love to escort you over to the merchandise showcase, if you don't mind."
Bill lifts an eyebrow as he looks around the bustling dance floor. "The merchandise showcase?"
Polly nods eagerly, her blonde waves bouncing as she holds out a hand like an airline hostess pointing to an emergency exit. "Yes!" she says, sounding giddy. "Against the wall there."
Intrigued—both by the notion of a merchandise showcase, and by the over-exuberance of this young woman—Bill follows.
"Booker!" Vance Majors says, clapping Bill on the shoulder as he passes. "Happy New Year!"
Bill shakes hands with his colleagues and coworkers as he winds through the throng of well-dressed partygoers, smiling and tossing back well-wishes for a happy new year as he follows Polly Vanderbilt.
On the side of the ballroom, there are several tables set up with giant advertisements propped up on easels. Professional photographers with oversized flashbulbs attached to their cameras move about expertly, bobbing and weaving as they rearrange and reconfigure the astronauts around different products and items.
"What's going on here?" Bill frowns down at Polly Vanderbilt. "What are we doing?" He gestures at Todd Roman and Jay Reed, who are mugging for a camera as Todd throws an arm around Jay's shoulders. Dave Huggins, NASA's own staff photographer, stands to the side, photographing the other photographers. The whole thing is mysterious to Bill. "I don't understand."
"Well," Polly says, placing her hands together daintily and stepping towards a table with the grace of a ballerina. She beckons for Bill to follow. "NASA has entered into some very exclusive deals with a variety of vendors, and in exchange for their lucrative sponsorship and the added exposure, we are working with these hand-selected companies to advertise their products."
Bill stands before the table, eyeing the items that are displayed there. "Rolex?" he asks, eyebrows shooting skyward. "We're advertising Rolex watches?"
Polly's head bobs excitedly as she reaches for a watch nestled in a leather box. She eyes the security guard stationed there, and the tall, beefy man gives her a single nod of approval. Polly takes the watch out of the velvet interior and holds it out for Bill's inspection. "Here," she says, "this one is for you.” Bill looks at the gleaming watch.
"This is a stainless steel of the highest industrial grade," Polly says, eyes wider than Bill might have imagined they'd go. "Every man in America wants to be an astronaut, and every astronaut in America will be wearing a Rolex on his wrist. You do the math on that one."
Bill holds out his wrist and allows her to fasten the watch in place. He admires it, turning the face under the lights and watching the way it shines. "Huh," Bill says, tugging the wrist of his tux over the watch to see how it feels. He can't lie: it feels like success. But reality gnaws at the back of his brain as he thinks about what it means to allow advertisers to use his body like a billboard. "But what if I don't want to participate in any of this?"
Polly's face falls like an avalanche; she looks as if she might cry. "You...you don't want a Rolex? I worked so hard on this campaign, Mr. Book--I mean, Lieutenant Colonel," Polly catches herself, correcting his title. "It's such a good opportunity."
Bill can sense her growing flustered as he watches his fellow astronauts from the corner of his eye. They rotate through the different tables, trying on the swag and posing for photos.
"Listen, Miss Vanderbilt," Bill says, holding himself in check so that he won't reach out and lay a paternal hand on her shoulder. "You can call me Bill." Polly clamps her lips together and nods her head. "And I just need a minute to process all of this. I've never imagined someone handing me a watch worth thousands of dollars and then just asking me to pose for a photo in exchange. That is all we're being asked to do, correct?"
Polly nods rapidly. "Yes, sir," she says. "And, of course, wear the watch when you go out in public. But nothing official," she tells him.
Bill puts a hand into the pocket of his tuxedo pants and surveys the rest of the tables as Denny Hitzman and the Hitmen switch to "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes.
"Alright," Bill says with a nod. The rest of the guys seem to be eagerly participating, and he can't lie to himself: walking around with a Rolex on his wrist feels pretty damn good. "Where do you want me?"
Over the next half hour, Bill moves around, allowing himself to be repositioned with his fellow astronauts, laughing and smiling as they clamp their lips around Cohiba cigars, pose with Spalding golf clubs and tennis rackets, and talk jovially with tumblers of Seagram's whiskey in hand.
As the flashbulbs pop, the band changes songs repeatedly, and the loud laughter of the men rings out through the ballroom. Much to Bill's surprise, he's having a good time. The golf club feels particularly natural in his hands (though he's less convinced about whether he might actually hit the links in a tuxedo), and the Seagram's goes down smoothly.
Bill is handing back the tennis racket and slipping a few extra Cohibas into the breast pocket of his jacket when the band starts to play "I Only Have Eyes For You." Instantly, Bill scans the room, searching for Jo. His gaze lands on her as if by magic. Almost as inexplicably, the crowd seems to part before Bill's eyes, and it feels like a spotlight sweeps across the dance floor until it finds Jo.
There she is, Josephine Booker, his bride. She's standing there in a mint green dress that hugs her curves, its fabric sprinkled with tiny sequins that catch a million sparks of light and make her glitter. Jo's lovely hands are covered up by white gloves that reach to her elbows, and her hair is swept off her neck, twisted and pinned into an elaborate updo. On her ears are two sparkling diamond studs.
The music swells slightly and, as Bill is watching her, Jo's gaze finds his. They've always loved "I Only Have Eyes For You," and Bill is about to pull away from the other astronauts and go to her, to sweep his wife up in his arms and sway along to the music.
But then Frankie Maxwell walks right between Bill and Jo and says something to Jo that makes her light up with a huge grin, and the spell is broken. Bill watches them talking, and then he turns away, ready to say something to Ed Maxwell about the way their wives are stealing the show in the middle of the ballroom.
But before he can speak, his eyes land on another singular vision, this one suspended in a different spotlight. It's Jeanie Florence, the woman he'd kissed in a stairwell and who he can't get out of his mind. She's standing near the glass doors that lead out to a balcony overlooking the water. Behind her, a first quarter moon hangs like a sliver of silver in the dark sky.
Bill's breath catches in his throat as he watches her: Jeanie, with her long, straight brown hair slicked away from her face and knotted at the nape of her neck. In comparison to Jo's glimmering pastel dress, Jeanie is in strapless black satin, and the fabric snakes down her body like she’s been painted into it. Jeanie is wearing black, opera-length gloves and a pearl necklace, and her face looks bare and innocent, save for the bright slash of red lipstick on her lips. Bill sucks in a breath as his eyes snag on her naked shoulders.
For a moment, Bill Booker has no idea where to look: towards his wife, with her sparkling, transfixing beauty—the woman who is the mother of his children and the keeper of his happiness—or at Jeanie Baxter with her lush, youthful glow. It’s an unfair comparison, as there is nearly a decade between the women, but Jeanie’s glamour in her black satin dress feels almost accidental; she’s zipped herself into a dress, pulled her hair away from her face, applied red lipstick, and slipped from the house. Jo, on the other hand, spent hours having her hair styled and sprayed at the salon, then followed that up with layers of tight undergarments, a variety of face creams and products, and the application of the kind of jewelry meant to catch and reflect the light around her. The results are no less arresting, but there’s something so appealing about the ease with which Jeanie has achieved this level of beauty that Bill can’t take his eyes off her.
And so he doesn’t. He stands there, caught in the moment like an image captured by a camera lens, immovable and unchanging. He watches Jeanie with no regard to where Jo is at the moment, and he doesn’t even try to make himself stop until, once again, the song changes, jolting him back into the moment.
Jo , Bill thinks. And there she is, still standing near Frankie with a wide smile on her face, looking like a gorgeous vision come to life.
Bill looks back at Jeanie, noticing her hesitation as she glances at the sparkling chandelier that hangs over the room, then back at the dance floor. She’s come alone; he can sense that immediately. And she’s regretting it just a little, feeling as though everyone in the room is paired off, leaving her to fend for herself and to make her own way to the bar for a glass of champagne. Bill can’t help himself as he watches her: he wonders who will kiss her at midnight. If everyone else is paired off when the clock strikes twelve, will Jeanie turn to the nearest busboy and allow one of the college-aged boys to kiss her for good luck as they trip their way into 1966? Will she be gathering a fur stole from the coat check as midnight approaches, looking up and down the carpeted hallway as the countdown rings out from the ballroom and her heart aches with loneliness? Will she let the closest drunken man lean in to kiss a pretty girl as a new year dawns and sweeps them all into the second half of the decade?
“Booker!” Ed Maxwell says, holding a hand in the air to get his attention. He waves Bill over.
Bill walks away from his spot directly between the two most beautiful women in the room, shoving both hands into the pockets of his pants sheepishly. “What’s up?” he asks Ed, nodding at the other men who are gathered there. “What am I missing here?”
“Moon shot,” Ed Maxwell says. “We’re scheduled for third quarter of 1969, which feels like a long way off, but it’ll be here in the blink of an eye.”
Bill nods and jingles the keys in his pockets. “Sure will,” he agrees, clearing his throat. He knows Ed Maxwell and Todd Roman, but he isn’t yet acquainted with the third man standing in their small group and he reaches out a hand to the man. “Bill Booker,” he says.
“Ted Mackey,” the man says, offering a hand that’s somehow larger than Bill’s and more authoritative. Bill tries not to react visibly as Ted Mackey grips his fingers in a handshake that’s meant to announce who the alpha male in the group is.
It takes a moment, but recognition arrives as Bill is about to free his hand from Ted Mackey’s. “Ah, Senator Mackey’s son,” he says, nodding and holding the handshake just a beat longer. His eyes flicker over to Todd Roman.
“Barbie’s older brother,” Todd says encouragingly.
Of course this guy is Senator Mackey’s son , Bill thinks. And since Todd is married to Barbie, and this guy is Barbie’s brother, Ted Mackey is Todd’s brother-in-law. All the puzzle pieces fall into place.
“Pleasure to meet you,” Bill says, feeling his guard go up. He’s not a fan of discussing NASA plans or classified information with outsiders, even though Senator Mackey himself has been a huge supporter of the space program.
“Likewise,” Ted Mackey says, his eyes following a woman as she sashays past in a tight, powder-blue satin dress. Ted looks right at her behind, shaking his head slowly before looking back at the men. “They sure grow ‘em pretty down here in Florida,” he says with a low whistle.
Todd’s eyes widen just slightly in Bill’s direction, but he smiles at his brother-in-law. “Lots of pretty ladies from up north, too,” Todd says, lifting his glass tumbler before taking a sip.
“Sure,” Ted agrees dismissively. “But they’re stuffy, you know? Looking for a husband to bankroll their shopping excursions and private school for the kids. Women down here seem like they’re just looking for a good time.”
As Mackey says this, Jeanie Florence drifts across the floor, passing them by with only ten feet between them. Ted eyes her with obvious appreciation, looking her up and down. “Wouldn’t mind taking a lovely young lady like that for a spin.”
Todd looks uncomfortable. “Jeanie Florence is a brilliant engineer,” he says in her defense, though he’s openly staring at the wedding ring on Ted’s finger, and, most likely, thinking that this man is married to his sister.
This exchange sends a shock of guilt through Bill, as Todd had been the one to let him know that gossip was spreading throughout the ranks at NASA about his close relationship with Jeanie. Todd is a good, reliable man. In fact, Todd had let Bill know that the women in the office were talking about Bill kissing Jeanie the night of the explosion, though he has no idea how anyone actually knows about that. Poor Todd: he’s just a simple, loyal guy—they do exist, and Bill is, generally speaking, one of them—but even his minor transgression with Jeanie has sent a shockwave through Todd’s sense of propriety, and Bill can tell from the way he’s acting that he isn’t a fan of his brother-in-law’s bawdy talk about other women.
“Anyhow,” Bill says, changing the subject. “You came down for the holidays, I presume?” He looks right at Ted Mackey. “Wanted to ring in 1966 in the sun?”
Ted gives Bill a cocky smile. “My parents own a place in Palm Beach,” he says, jiggling the ice in his nearly empty glass. “Thought I’d bring the wife and kids down for Christmas, let the missus do some shopping, and let the nanny hang out at the pool with the little ones.” A more devious smile replaces the cocky one. “God bless nannies who wear bikinis,” he adds with a laugh.
Bill can’t help it: it’s a comment too much, even for him, and he can’t blame Todd for the distasteful glance he shoots at his own brother-in-law.
“Right,” Bill says, shaking his own ice in a way that mimics Ted’s move. “Well, lucky you, getting to enjoy the beach when it’s surely cold up in Connecticut.”
Ted nods. “Christmas on the golf course beats the hell out of Christmas stuck in a cabin in the woods with the family.” He lifts one finger at a passing server and leans in to ask for another drink as the young man walks by with an empty tray. “But I really came here at my father’s behest. I wanted to see NASA for myself, and to find out more about the program.”
Lots of people want more information about the space program, but the fact that Ted Mackey’s father is a politician means that there’s more at stake.
“I’m considering a run for Senate myself,” Ted offers boastfully. “My dad is getting ready to take a step back from public life, and I’d like to try my hand at politics.”
“Well, you’re already acting like a Kennedy,” Bill mumbles, taking a drink of his whiskey. The music from the stage and the din of the crowd swallows his words, but he can feel Ed Maxwell cough on a laugh next to him.
“What’s that?” Ted asks, leaning into the circle with a big, toothy, white grin. It’s a politician’s smile if ever Bill has seen one. “Didn’t hear you.”
“Sounds fantastic,” Bill says, smiling just as insincerely in return. “We need more good men in politics.” Which is not a lie, but no part of Bill thinks that Ted Mackey is one of the good guys. He can just feel smarminess oozing from Ted’s pores.
“I’d ask for your vote, but you’re not registered in Connecticut,” Ted says with a laugh. “But I sure wouldn’t turn down the support of one of the three men who are going to land on the moon.”
Bill frowns; who is to say that he, Bill Booker, has any claim to a spot on Apollo 11? There are still several Apollo test missions standing between him and the moon, and Bill has yet to prove himself on any one of them. But as he looks into Ted Mackey’s face, he realizes that this jackass from Connecticut, this guy who spent his Christmas putting golf balls and eyeing the nanny’s fanny, knows more about Bill’s job than he does. What he doesn’t know is how Ted Mackey knows anything in the first place.
Bill pulls himself together and takes a fortifying swig of whiskey. “Well, Ted,” he says authoritatively, “there’s no way of knowing who will end up on that mission just yet, so I’m not sure pulling an endorsement from me will be of any benefit to you in the long run.”
Ted reaches over and punches Bill lightly on the shoulder. “Why don’t you just plan on giving me your official support, and the rest will work itself out,” he says with an annoying wink.
Bill dislikes this guy immensely. He can’t help himself. There’s no way he’s going to be stumping for some senator from Connecticut in his flight suit, and furthermore, he’s annoyed at Ted Mackey’s implication that the roster for Apollo 11 is already a done deal.
“Well, unless you’ve got word from some extremely official source,” Bill says, “then we don’t have any clue who’ll be in the cockpit for that mission.”
Much to Bill’s annoyance, Mackey steps across the small circle of men and claps him on the shoulder heartily before leveling his gaze on Bill and dropping his voice so that only Bill can hear it. “I think you can assume fairly that I’ve gotten the word from God himself.”
It takes everything in Bill not to shake Mackey’s hand off his shoulder right there and punch him in the face, but instead he gives a tight smile and turns to look at Ed Maxwell. “If you’ll excuse me,” he says in the politest and calmest voice he can muster.
Bill steps away from the group and is immediately greeted by the sight of not two spotlights on two women, but two women gathered beneath one spotlight: it’s Jeanie and Jo, standing together in what feels like the center of the dance floor, hands holding one another’s forearms as they speak earnestly. Jo is smiling prettily, and even with one glance, Bill can see that she’s putting on a front of some sort..
“Shit,” he mutters to himself. He’s torn: cross the dance floor and approach the women to circumvent any awkwardness between them or—selfishly—to ensure that they’re not discussing anything that will roll downhill and land on him, or go to find Arvin North, potentially interrupting his celebratory evening in order to find out why the hell Ted Mackey knows more about Apollo 11 than any of the astronauts do.
The band starts to play “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling” by the Righteous Brothers as a mirror ball way up above the room begins to spin slowly, casting sparks of light over the men and women on the dance floor. A rainbow of reflected light passes over Jo’s cheek as Bill watches her, her hand still on Jeanie’s arm.
“Double shit,” Bill whispers, still debating which direction to go. He’s got a nearly empty whiskey glass in hand, and a third option presents itself in a flash: find the bar and get a refill. Smooth out the frayed edges of his nerves and get back to that relaxed, anticipatory feeling of New Year’s Eve. This is not the night to be worrying about whether Jo and Jeanie are about to hash things out on the dance floor, or if Ted Mackey has any say over who goes to the moon—this is the night to bid farewell to a year that has brought both challenges and rewards.
Following the death of his fellow astronauts in the Gemini orbital mission a year earlier, Bill had been certain that he would unravel. He’d kissed Jeanie the night of the accident, and his relationship with his wife has been on a mini-roller coaster ever since. It was his own fault, to be sure, but Bill had put off reading the stories that Jo had gotten published in True Romance magazine, and when he finally got down to it, he’d been dismayed to find that much of her characters’ relationships and dramas far too closely mirrored his own. There’d even been a bit in the story about the main male character in a parking lot, sharing a private moment with a female coworker, and Bill, mortified and angry, realized that Jo had seen him in the same situation at The Black Hole with Jeanie. All of these thoughts equal one point for heading towards Jeanie and Jo to break up their little dance floor powwow.
But then there’d been the protests outside of NASA and the continued bad press following the accident. Bill had gotten caught in the crosshairs of that public relations nightmare, having been the one who’d tried unsuccessfully to convince Arvin North at the last minute that the Gemini mission should be pushed. The result had been the death of two astronauts, a widow going off the rails and packing up her children to join the protest movement, and months of panel interviews and investigations that had done little to quell the public’s growing unease with the danger and expense of the space program. So there’s one point for finding North and trying to peel back the layers on any work-related drama before it spirals out of control.
Bill sighs, rattling the rapidly dwindling ice cubes in his glass. The decision is easily made: he’s getting a drink first, then waiting to see which way the wind blows—that’s the only answer.
Bill spots a passing waiter with a tray and holds up a hand to get his attention. Whiskey first, then everything else.
* * *