Page 15 of Supernova

Outside, the rain had turned cold as it fell in pellets that felt like sleet. Fallen leaves in autumnal colors clogged the gutters as rain rushed down the street, and Frankie clenched her bodyagainst the chill. Whit put an arm around her protectively as her teeth chattered, guiding her down the street wordlessly. Frankie had barely had any wine, but already she felt unsteady on her feet.

The bar itself was dark and full of wood and velvet and discreet wall sconces. At every tiny booth sat a man and a woman, and Frankie scanned them all quickly, noting that, for some reason, none of the couples looked like the kind of people who belonged together. At one table the man was much older and distinguished-looking, while the woman was dressed in a revealing dress with garish red lipstick that looked tarty against her bleached blonde hair. In another booth was a couple that didn’t appear to be talking to one another or making eye contact; instead, they glanced around the bar anxiously, sipping amber liquid from short crystal tumblers.

“Is this where you bring the women you don’t want to be seen with?” Frankie joked, giving in as Whit helped her off with her trench coat yet again. It suddenly occurred to her that she knew nothing about Whit Evans beyond the fact that he was overly involved in the theater and the performing arts.

Whit chuckled nervously. “Francesca, every man would want to be seen with a Rockette.”

While she got comfortable in her side of the booth, Whit ordered them both French 75s. She wasn’t sure that statement was even true; sure, being a Rockette was fun and it held a certain cachet, but there were plenty of people of a certain caliber who might have thought that dating a woman who danced on stage in layers of makeup and hairspray was a little déclassé.

Whit leaned back in his seat as he lit a cigarette. “Want one?”

Frankie shook her head as she held up a hand. “No, thank you.”

“Now, tell me more about you,” Whit said, exhaling a stream of smoke towards the ceiling as the waitress set their drinks on the table. “What does a gorgeous woman like you want out of a mean city like New York?”

Frankie sipped her French 75 and glanced at Whit over the rim of her glass. This was her chance. A man like Whit had money. Power. Connections. She didn’t want to sleep with him, but she knew that his approval and his guidance could take her places that she wouldn’t even have access to on her own.

“I want to be on Broadway,” she said boldly, holding the flute glass by its stem. “I want to act and dance and sing.”

Whit kept the smirk off his face, but just barely. “Of course you do,” he said. “And I believe you can get there.”

Frankie brightened; maybe having dinner with Whit Evans hadn’t been such a bad idea after all. “You do?”

“Sure.” Whit motioned for another drink, glancing at hers, which was still mostly full. “But the real question is, what are you willing to do to get there?”

Of course that was the question, Frankie thought, the excitement in her stomach plummeting like a sinking stone. Of course it was.

SEVEN

ed

The viewfrom the top of the Space Needle is vast and sweeping. Ed stands on the observation deck with the rest of the group he’s come with, looking out over the grim and rainy city. He misses Frankie.

“Everything is so…gray,” Hubert says. Hubert is an engineer from Kentucky, and he, too, has been flown to Seattle to work on this special NASA/Boeing project. “There’s no color anywhere.”

“Oh, I bet there is,” Ed says. “They’ve got mountains and trees here, and all this rain has to makesomethingturn green.”

“Well, I haven’t seen it yet.” Hubert puts his hands into his pockets as he walks around the circular observation deck.

Ed opens up the brochure he’d been handed after buying his ticket.The Space Needle’s opening on April 21, 1962, was attended by various celebrities and dignitaries from all areas of life. Elvis Presley attended, as well as…Ed’s eyes skim the page until he lands on Neil Armstrong. “Hey,” he says to Jack, another engineer he’s come to like, and who is the third person in their trio for the day as they check out some of Seattle's high points. “Did you know Neil Armstrong was here when this thing opened?”

Jack, who is ambling by, looking down at the streets laid out far below, gives a shrug and a nod. “Sounds about right. I mean, it is called the ‘space’ needle.” Jack pushes his glasses up on the bridge of his nose and keeps walking.

So far it’s been thrilling to work on the project at Boeing. Ed and a group of engineers and scientists are testing out different ideas and theories about extended space travel, testing to see what sorts of extreme measures and circumstances they can come up with, and theorizing different survival strategies for astronauts who might find themselves in these conditions. It’s exciting and demanding and it’s raising a lot of questions for Ed.

“So you don’t want to go to space after all?” Frankie had asked the evening before during their short phone call, which has become a part of Ed’s evening ritual. He usually has dinner at a restaurant by his hotel—sometimes with Hubert and Jack, sometimes alone—and then he goes back to his room and stretches out on the bed with a cigarette to call his wife.

“It’s not that, Frank,” he’d said, shifting the receiver from one ear to the other as smoke drifted up from his cigarette. He set it in the heavy glass ashtray on his nightstand. “It’s just that this is sointeresting. We’re coming up with solutions to what might be real problems that our men encounter in space.”

Frankie stayed silent.

“I could be useful here, and there’s no guarantee that I’ll ever get chosen for a mission anyway.”

“Right,” Frankie said, and he could picture her twirling her hair around her finger as she listened to him. “So do you want to back out of the space program? What are you saying?”

“No!” Ed sat up on his bed, leaning against the pillows and the headboard. He reached for his cigarette. “I’m not saying that. I’m just being realistic. Formulating a back-up plan. It can destroy a man to work for something and then discover that it’s out of his reach. This is within my reach. I fit in here,Frank. These people are interested in the same things that I’m interested in.”

“Okay,” she said. In the background, he could hear her parents talking loudly to one another.

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