Astronomy
Because of my frequent absences from present-day time and space, I did not hear much about the rare confluence of planets. From what I have been able to gather since, all the major planets would, from Earth’s perspective, come within six degrees of each other the week before the autumnal equinox. It promised to be an interesting distraction to a world eager for good news, if only it would stop to look up long enough. The latest figures released by the government showed the unemployment rate at nine percent and rising, and I felt badly because I couldn’t even hold on to my new paper route. My parents did not even trust me that far anymore. I may have heard about it during the times when I was forced to sit at the dinner table with them in silence, the evening news trumpeting over the day’s incremental decline of civilization, but I shoved it to the back of my mind, along with everything else I had to save for a sunnier moment.
To me, the idea that the rare confluence of planets had anything to do with the Nova Phenomenon lies purely in the realm of speculation. It is far more certain that, were it not for this syzygy, I might never have seen Karen again, and neither of us would have survived. I agonized over how to tell her about what had befallen me, but, with my every move under constant scrutiny, never found the nerve to call her. As the days passed I raised the hope that she had caught wind of my misfortune and, knowing me better than anybody, would come to understand that I was incapable of the things they were saying I did. With each ring of the phone that my mother answered during the day or my father in the evening, my faith sprang up that she had found her way through to me, but it was not to be. I finally resigned myself to the fact that she had given up on me, had cut me loose without so much as a fare-thee-well. It was this terrible uncertainty that drove me to risk all on a midnight foray to her house. I dressed in black, unfastened the screen and unlocked the wrought iron grate on my bedroom window, to climb out and walk again under a starry sky, no Moon to betray me. Not even the streetlights were aware of my passage, so well had I mastered the skill of moving unseen, as I followed the same route I had taken that fragrant morning a year before. And just as on that morning, Karen was seated on the step of her front porch, gazing up at the glorious firmament. She had wrapped herself in a blanket against the cool of that early hour, and a small votive candle flickered beside her. Again, she did not seem at all surprised by my presence, as though she were expecting me. “Come here,” she beckoned. We sat for uncountable minutes as the stars wheeled westward and the night made its peculiar sounds, all the more palpable because we made none. Somewhere a siren wailed, and I fancied that the word of my flight was out. At last I focused my tired eyes toward the northeast, where Karen had intently been staring, and saw it just above the treetops—steely Jupiter, amber Saturn, ruby Mars, and brilliant, adamantine Venus. It was as if the four had been attached to a magical balloon, to leisurely ascend beyond the atmosphere, the better to witness the coming change in the weather. We raptly watched the lights rise higher, until the old crescent Moon rose, the sky over the Caramel Mesa turned silver and they began to fade. Then she took me in without question, lay me down to rest my weary mind, and together we took our leave from the society of good and decent people forever.
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