And She’s In White

Contributed by Matthew Hartwell on 16/03/09

The picture had a kind of glow around the edges. It was real, analog. The captain claimed he could spot digital marks because of his eye, and one night, over several ounces of something that tasted shockingly like whiskey, he told me he was of the belief the photo was not only real, but in pristine condition. He declared that the way I talked about her, she must have actually glowed like that.

We used to joke about marrying rich and old. If he didn’t drop dead claiming his prize on the wedding night, she was going to sneak out of her bedroom one night, a few months post-Honeymoon, and sneak back in with a balloon and a pin, banking on a heart defect to score her a fortune.

I married the service, which counts as old, if you’re in the mood for a cheap joke. Cheap being a keyword. Whole lists of keywords and catalog order numbers, working as Quartermaster. Requisition Specialist. People forget about that when they think of the service. Someone has to make sure the pantry is stocked.

She would drag a comb through her hair a hundred times and call me into the bathroom with an ounce of alarm in her voice to motivate me. I’d rush in, thinking she’d burned herself on a curler or nicked herself with a razor, or slipped in the tub, and she’d be standing there with the comb, and start waving it in front of the tap. As if it were magic. She’d smile and the water would bend, and I’d stop being mad at her, or at least be less mad at her as I wrapped my arms around her and said “OMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM,” while pretending to eat her hair. She’d squeal and try to pull away while I laughed.

For the first tour, we wrote nearly constantly. I was relatively close, and it didn’t take long for messages to arrive. Being quartermaster had its privileges, and you could bribe the Communications Officers, military for mailman, to give your messages high priority flags. Bought them at least a day on either end.

She loved peaches, canned, fresh, fake, cooked or raw. I sent her a P-Ration of peaches one time, but she never mentioned what she thought of them. Probably a disappointment. Service food isn’t exactly gourmet. Space is a premium, and apparently flavor is something that can be removed for long-term storage.

The real problem isn’t food. You can dehydrate food to save space. You can take nutrients and fuse them into a pill, and pack in biomass powder for proteins and amino acids.

One time, while trying to bulk up, I had filled the apartment with fish oil pills and protein powders. Weights and resistance bands made up a core workout that I adhered to everyday. She would take my shirt off and tell me how much she liked real muscles. That other guys could have the same looks, but there was a difference in paying for muscle and earning it. A sexy difference.

Water is water. You can compress oxygen and hydrogen only so much, and the equipment to fuse them back together is larger than you’d hope. Earth has a lot of water, but Earth is huge and can take the time to make that much. Even recycling urine, you’re still bound by mass restrictions. Splitting urine into its respective components still leaves a bunch of chemicals you don’t want lying around. You jettison them, and the mass onboard slowly decreases. A system can’t sustain itself like that.

We would take showers together, but she’d insist on getting her hair washed first, and relegate me to the back of the tub, away from the warmth of the steam until she was done. She’d tell me she was annoyed with being kissed in the shower, but she never suggested we take turns. Sometimes, while lathering up her hair, she’d sing. She wasn’t a great singer. She’d never have a record. There, though, it was enough to make your heart hurt.

Because reclamation is limited, and the efficiency of filters slowly breaks down, your water supply dwindles. As it stands. I have about four more days of water.

Four days ago, there were still squawks from the com-station. Blips and half-words. Fragments of conversation, panic, the occasional prayer. For one fleeting moment, there was a woman, not a pop-star or an opera singer, just an ordinary woman singing the most beautiful song I’d never heard. I’m sure it wasn’t sung half as good as it could have been with the water running, circling the drain.

The way the orbit is decaying, it’s likely I’ll be hitting re-entry at about the same time I start to hallucinate from thirst. The heat shields should hold up, so I won’t be lucky enough to be cooked quickly. I’ll likely get a fireworks show, the windows blazing white.

She loved fireworks. Once, the day before the fourth of July, she strolled into the office I was working at and told my boss I was sick and had to get immediate care. She took me up near the Observatory and produced a roman candle and two bottle rockets. We set them off, one at a time, and then she produced her last surprise: a bottle of champagne. We shook it madly and opened it spraying each other with a hundred dollars, laughing and falling down and smiling like we could get paid for it if we kept practicing.

I’m hoping she’s still down there. With any luck, I’ll look out the window, and I’ll fall and fall and fall and fall and BAM, there she’ll be, waiting. And just like that, my time in the service will be up.