Day 87
Day Eighty-Seven
After his failure at the Integratron, Jesse redoubled his efforts, making great progress in his backyard dig (however one might define progress).
The hole was getting deeper, that was for sure, wider, too, and he had to consider how close to the house was advisable to go.
This was where having an architect would have come in handy.
At night he slept deeply, physically exhausted, and dreamed of another reality, one where he and Norman only nearly collided at the beach, yelling, “Look out!” before whisking past one another, a simple warning the only words they ever exchanged.
How many of these near misses do people experience in life?
How close are we always to our futures going in different directions?
When he woke, Jesse brewed a pot of strong coffee as he studied his changing body in the mirror.
It had been less than a month, but his digging already had a noticeable effect.
Or maybe it was his diet. Working as hard as he was, his body craved fuel and not the garbage he’d been feeding himself in the first weeks after Norman’s disappearance.
The can of frosting went back in the pantry, as he no longer had a taste for it.
He craved lean proteins and vegetables and rice and sweet potatoes for energy and, too busy to cook, he signed up for a meal plan.
He bought fruit that was precut for convenience, even though it was exponentially more expensive.
The neat squares felt orderly, a gift. And rather quickly, he grew tan.
A body started to reappear that he hadn’t seen in years.
He’d yet to dig deep enough to hit water, but somehow he’d found a fountain of youth.
When he could dig no more, he moved inside to continue his work there.
He scheduled their mortgage payment to be deducted from their joint account so he wouldn’t forget; transferred the bills that were in Norman’s name over to his (the regular business of marriage, he told the woman at Southern California Edison, no other reason than that); sent a card to Norman’s mother, who had an upcoming birthday, so his parents wouldn’t reach out to see if everything was all right.
In each task, he kept a casual tone, something just shy of aloof—it was the key to not raising suspicion.
In the days after Norman’s disappearance, he thought of himself as a battlefield surgeon in the midst of a harrowing war—he had to triage what was right in front of him.
At the time Norman hadn’t been gone all that long, little more than an extended vacation, even if such vacations would be to Italy or Thailand and not the nearest extrasolar planet scientists reasonably think could support life, a floating rock they called Proxima b.
(Jesse had googled it late one sleepless night.) Now that it was growing more clear that Norman was not coming back, he had to focus on making their home his own habitable zone.
He started by rearranging the furniture in the living room more to his liking, orienting it away from the window and better positioned to watch television.
As an architect, Norman never believed an appliance should be the focal point in a room, but Jesse, perhaps for the first time in his life, really understood the comfort of TV, its almost magical ability to stave off the worst symptoms of loneliness.
The right program could bring the illusion of life to a house that might otherwise be painfully still.
Norman wouldn’t be thrilled with these changes, but on the off chance he did ever return, Jesse didn’t want it to seem like he’d been staring out the window the whole time like a loyal golden retriever.
He liked the idea of Norman thinking him unbothered while working through a list they’d once made together of Criterion films. (“Oh, sorry,” he’d say when Norman caught him engrossed in a movie.
“Did you intend for us to watch this Wim Wenders together?”)
He took their wedding portrait down from a shelf and tucked it in a drawer for now; he barely recognized the two men in that photo anyhow, happy and at the beach.
For the bedroom he ordered new sheets made of bamboo to help him sleep and an elastic band that fit around the circumference of their mattress, gripping the fitted sheet tight like a bra; he hated nothing more than the way the corner by his head came loose every few days, even when he slept, as he currently did every night, in the mattress’s middle.
Now that he was alone he could do something about it.
He drove to North Palm Springs to visit the Humane Society of the Desert.
Dogs barked from their kennels when his car door shut, desperate cries, he supposed, for freedom.
He was greeted by a man who seemed to be the manager carrying a bucket with a rattlesnake that he had trapped by one of the dog pens.
The man promised that a volunteer would show him around as he hopped in a truck to relocate the snake down the road.
And sure enough, a woman named Lydia appeared wearing a bright Humane Society T-shirt and gardening gloves looking like she’d just been yanking up weeds.
She looked at Jesse and smiled, pulling back the oversized brim of her hat.
Jesse wondered if since she was willing to volunteer here, she might also be willing to volunteer excavating his yard.
Two people could make more progress than one, and she already had the right gloves.
“What kind of dog are you looking for?” Lydia asked, snapping him back to attention.
He felt suddenly embarrassed, like he couldn’t remember how he got there.
The barking didn’t help settle his mind, and he began to feel oncoming flop sweat.
He looked down at his shoes; they were blindingly white against the fine grit of the surrounding dirt.
He should have worn the shoes he’d been wearing for digging.
The truth was Jesse wasn’t sure what kind of dog he was looking for; he figured he’d know the right animal when he saw it.
Lydia showed him every dog in the place, even making the loop twice.
He scheduled several more visits, playing with different dogs in the visitor’s pen, until he bonded with a shepherd-husky mix with heterochromatic eyes—one brown, one blue—who seemed just as abandoned as him.
He filled out the paperwork to bring her home and then left to buy the requisite supplies.
Randall brought him a copy of the photo he had taken of the Milky Way, knocking on his door one afternoon when he’d just finished digging for the day; the photograph was artfully framed and wrapped, the presentation surprisingly elegant for a straight man.
“Randall, this is really lovely. How did you do all this so fast?”
Randall shoved his hands into his pockets until they cleanly disappeared at the wrist. He either wore the same white short-sleeved shirt again and again, or he had a closet full of them. “I have a rather large printer.”
In the Airstream?
“And my wife used to manage a framing business, so I know what to ask for.”
Jesse held the photo with both hands; it was already a prized possession. “Do you want to come in?”
Randall hesitated before saying, “No, no. I can see that you’re busy.”
Jesse was busy, this time organizing the kitchen to his liking, but it was nothing that couldn’t wait.
“I know right where to put this. Do you want to see?”
“As long as it’s not the garbage, I’m fine.”
Jesse was reminded of Norman throwing the Jonathan Adler piece in the trash when they had first moved in. He hugged the photo tightly to his chest, his way of saying it was a keeper. “Thank you, Randall. For this, for the invitation. You’ve opened my eyes to a lot of things.”
Visibly uncomfortable with sincerity, Randall retrieved one hand from his pocket and gave a hearty wave.
Jesse closed the door and stared at the photo, his eyes falling on each and every visible star.
Norman was in there somewhere, he was sure of it.
It filled a prominent place on the shelf, the empty spot where their wedding photo had been.
With his new body, his interest in sex returned; he got hard like he did as a teenager, spontaneously and often.
He found his copy of COD’s faculty directory, and scanned it to look for Orson.
They’d bumped into each other a few more times around campus, and while Orson was much too young for Jesse, he’d noticed Orson’s eyes lingering on Jesse’s newly lean torso.
And he was impossibly good-looking—exactly Jesse’s type.
Or young Jesse’s type. He didn’t much know what he liked anymore, as far as all that was concerned.
Fortunately, there was only one Orson, an Orson Bodner who taught Applied Sciences.
Jesse imagined texting him, even drafting several messages, but somehow his fingers always froze before hitting send.
After a good deal of thought, he moved money over from their joint savings account and he paid the BHRC; the embryos would be safe for another year.
He was still ducking Lally, and uncertain about her request. But he couldn’t destroy them to punish Norman or because he was scared of facing his sister.
There were valid reasons to end the contract, but those were not.