Light of Falling Stars Read online

  “About time,” Toth said, standing. Behind him, the cowboy stood too, bracing himself against a post.

  Upstairs, there was a message on the arrivals and departures board: “See Attendant.” A small crowd had gathered around the desk. The attendant was talking to a family of four. She nodded solemnly at the father, a balding man wearing a black satin jacket. “…with you in a moment,” Lars made out.

  “Canceled in Seattle, I bet,” Toth said.

  The father stepped closer to the attendant and raised his voice. Her face flushed. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  A tall man appeared wearing an AirAmerica cap and pilot’s jacket. He touched the balding man’s shoulder and spoke some quiet words. The mother pulled her daughters closer.

  “What’s going on?” a woman whispered to Lars.

  “I don’t know.” But the room felt strange, united in a way airport crowds never are. People hunkered in little groups, glancing over their shoulders at the uniformed man. The cowboy lurched into the crowd. He looked sick.

  The uniformed man raised his arms into the air, like a priest. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. His voice was deep and loud, seemingly without effort. “Let me thank you for your patience. You’ve waited a long time, I know.” Lars looked at his watch: 6:14. It hadn’t been a long time at all. He glanced out the windows and saw no planes anywhere.

  “If you’ll follow me,” the uniformed man said, “I can explain.” A murmur broke loose in the crowd, and he moved to go. At this, the attendant bent over the desk and grabbed his arm. Her lips moved silently and quickly. He whispered back, and she closed her eyes and nodded. Then she covered her mouth with one hand.

  Toth bit his thumbnail. “I don’t like this.”

  They followed the man down the hall, past the stairs and through a door into a glass-walled room full of high-backed wooden benches. The uniformed man stood at the front, beside a low pulpit, his hands behind his back. On a table at the side of the room were a freestanding crucifix and a menorah. Two potted plants and a stack of books—Bibles, Lars guessed—sat on a narrow shelf running across the back wall. Everyone sat down and nobody spoke.

  The cowboy was the last to enter. There were empty seats, but he walked directly to the back and stood there, next to one of the plants. The uniformed man walked to the door, pulled it shut, and returned to the front of the room. Lars looked through the windowed wall to the desk. The attendant was gone.

  “I’m afraid I have bad news,” the man said. “Flight one fourteen crashed during its descent into the Marshall Valley. We have no reports from the crash site, but it appears…serious.” He brought his hands before him and pressed them together. “You must prepare yourself for the worst. Passengers have certainly died.”

  Silence. Then a man burst suddenly into sobs.

  At first Lars didn’t make the connection. It was not the kind of thing Megan was likely to get herself into. She might be flighty, but she was safe. She always used her turn signals. Lars felt Toth’s hand on his shoulder and jerked away, irritated. Words came to his lips—Knock it off—but he didn’t say them.

  The uniformed man’s eyes were half-lidded, his face stoic. “I will be here until we receive further information. I will answer whatever questions I can.” He swallowed audibly. “In addition, this is a chapel, if you wish to speak to your God.” Two more people bent over now and began to weep. Lars heard himself whisper, “Stop it.” Someone in front of him turned.

  “How did this happen?” a woman asked, her voice wheeling in the air like blown paper. “Does anyone know how it happened? Was it the pilot’s fault?” The uniformed man looked alarmed. He seemed to have nothing left to say.

  Lars imagined Megan tightening her seat belt and strapping the oxygen mask over her face. Its white rubber strap tangled in her hair. She was sitting next to a child and helped him with his mask. Her hand touched the child, brushed hair off his face. That touch—Lars’s breath rushed up into his throat and stopped there, and he doubled over, his chest on fire. When the fire receded a wave of fatigue washed over him. He wanted all this straightened out. He wanted to sleep.

  “I don’t know,” the uniformed man told the woman. “Nobody knows yet.” Quiet returned. The criers cried in silence. Lars felt Toth’s hand on his arm and the arm felt hot beneath it.

  “Lars.”

  “What.” He raised his head. Toth’s face was open and empty as a dog’s.

  “Lars, man…”

  He was enraged. “Leave it.” Behind them, off to the right, stood the cowboy. His arms were crossed over his chest and his hat lay on the shelf behind him, next to the Bibles. His hair was matted into the shape of his hat, and he hadn’t bothered to fix it. His mouth was open and his eyes glittered. The sight of the cowboy made Lars tremble—it was wrong, this whole situation was all wrong—and he gripped his knees with his hands. As he did this he noticed the shorts he was wearing, a pair of cutoff chinos, and suddenly thought they looked ridiculous. He picked at the strands of thread that dangled from the edges. Toth wasn’t touching him now.

  “What are the chances?” a woman somewhere cried. “What are the chances they’re okay?” Lars looked up. What a stupid question.

  “I’m afraid we just don’t have that information, ma’am. I should say it doesn’t look too good.”

  The woman was sitting in the front row. Now she nodded her head in wide, sorrowful arcs.

  “If anyone would like to be alone, feel free to leave the room and sit elsewhere in the airport. Listen for the loudspeaker. We will call you back if we have any news.”

  Lars looked at his watch. Six-thirty. He had made dinner reservations for seven. He should call. He stood, and so did several others, their faces stricken, and they all moved toward the door. Toth got up and followed.

  “Where are you going?” he said in the lobby, too loudly. “You’re not going anywhere—”

  “I’m going to use the phone.”

  Toth stopped. Lars walked another twenty feet before he turned.

  “What?” he said. “What!”

  “Who are you calling?” Toth began to slouch, his arms hanging limp, like empty sleeves. “Are you calling her parents?”

  “I’m calling the restaurant.”

  He nodded as if he understood, his face crumpling. “Lars.”

  “What?”

  “She’s my best friend, Lars.” His shoulders began to shake. “What do we do? What do we do now?”

  Lars marched back to where he stood and grabbed his shoulders. He had planned to shake Toth until he stopped crying, but now that he had grabbed him he didn’t want to.

  “Lars!” Toth cried.

  Lars lowered his head to Toth’s and their foreheads met. It was hot in here, everything was hot despite the air conditioning, and he thought about the three of them, himself, Toth, and Megan, getting into the car with her bags. He thought about them driving into town, talking loud over the noise of the street. He’d never felt so hopelessly held fast, so trapped in a place, as in this airport.

  “What are we going to do?” Toth whispered to him.

  “We’re going to use the phone.”

  * * *

  Lars remembered Megan six months before, at his apartment, a winter morning. She went into the cold bathroom to run a shower, and a few minutes later he followed: he undressed, went to the bathroom, pulled back the shower curtain and stepped in. There she stood, her back to the spray of water, her shoulders and breasts and stomach and her cupped hands before her face all covered with a pink mixture of lather and blood. Blood dripped down the wall at her side and vanished in the swirling water around her feet. Megan’s eyes were wide and blank as saucers in the steam.

  It was a bad nosebleed. They stuffed her nostrils with toilet paper and cleaned up the tub, and everything was fine. But this was the moment Lars gave himself over to her—the moment she first betrayed a crack in her invulnerability, standing stunned at the failure of her body to follow the rules she’d set for it
. To Lars, her surprise only pointed up how astounding her faith was in the first place. He was in love.

  But now the memory terrified him. Now he preferred the earlier, invincible Megan, the one who could not be intimidated.

  “Lars.”

  “Yeah.” They were back in the bar, both of them with drinks. Somebody had tipped off the bartender and the drinks were free. Neither drank them. There was a TV in the bar, but it wasn’t on. Lars was glad.

  “Do you think she’s alive?”

  “Of course she’s alive.”

  “What if she isn’t?”

  “Stop it,” Lars said. Toth’s face was damp with tears and sweat. A whorl of blond hairs stuck to his forehead.

  “Lars,” he said, whispering now, “I think she’s dead.”

  “I’d know it if she was dead,” Lars said.

  The call came at seven-thirty. They mounted the stairs to the gate, passing happy people from another flight. Upstairs the crowd, now subdued, gathered in the chapel, many with their arms around each other: there seemed to have been some coalescence Lars and Toth had missed, some declaration of solidarity, and a few people eyed them with suspicion when they entered. Lars recognized the woman who had asked whose fault it was. Her eyes were wrinkled with anger, but her mouth hung wetly from her face like a washcloth and he thought she might fall over. The cowboy was still there, in the same place, though his hat was back on. He had it pulled down over his eyes.

  The uniformed man returned. He cleared his throat. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “There are no survivors.”

  Next to Lars, Toth made a choking sound, then began to moan.

  “It will take some time to identify the victims,” the uniformed man said. He seemed to be losing control of his voice, and he turned away, fished a handkerchief from a back pocket, and pressed it to his face. The sounds of crying had spread through the room. Lars wanted to stand up and scream at them.

  “Pardon me,” the uniformed man said. “The pilot and copilot were my friends. I know they were…capable men. They—” And he stood there, his mouth open, looking out through the chapel wall.

  A moment passed, and the uniformed man shook himself. “Pardon me,” he said again. “It is important that we identify…We realize that you must make arrangements…” He cleared his throat. “Jeanne will take your names and telephone numbers. We will need access…We may need…dental records.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You should all go home. I’m sorry,” he said. He pressed his thumb and forefinger into his eyes. “When the victims have been identified, we…somebody…will call—”

  Lars felt more than saw a quick motion at the back of the room, then turned to see one of the potted plants sliding down the shelf toward the other. It struck and the pots shattered, spilling dirt and red potsherds onto the floor. The cowboy flung his hat onto the ground. “You all shut the hell up!” he screamed. “You all shut the god damn hell up!” Everyone was watching. He bent over, panting like a beaten prizefighter. He growled. He kicked his hat across the back of the room, into the pile of dirt. Then he stumbled out, leaving the hat behind, and stomped down the stairs.

  The uniformed man stood at the front of the room gaping, then with shocking speed stormed to the door. He strode stiff-legged down the hall, pushed the men’s room door open with his shoulder and disappeared inside.

  * * *

  Lars gave his name and number, and her parents’. He patted his pocket to make sure he still had the car keys, her car keys. Toth was leaning against a window, looking out over the tarmac.

  “Let’s go, Toth.”

  “You aren’t crying, man. Why aren’t you crying?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let me come stay with you.”

  “I’ll be okay.” He marveled at how easy it was to say that. Okay, okay, I’m okay. Much later he would remember this moment and realize it was Toth who needed him, that Toth was making no pretense of being okay.

  Toth rubbed his face with both hands. “Oh, Jesus.”

  “It’s time to go.”

  They drove back to town with the windows open. But this is her car, Lars kept thinking. We’re in her car. She’s sitting right next to me, she’s wearing sunglasses. But when he looked, there was Toth, leaning against the door, his head half out the window.

  Toth lived on the North Side. They drove over the bridge that spanned the train tracks, through pocked and patched streets, and stopped at Toth’s house. Tarpaper peeled off the sides. The porch roof sagged. One of Toth’s housemates, a sullen art student, was sleeping in a cat-shredded armchair just outside the door, a beer bottle on the porch floorboards beside him. The car idled.

  “Why don’t you come in, man,” Toth said. “I can fix you something.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “What am I gonna do in there? What’ll I do?”

  A rock band often practiced in Toth’s basement, and Lars could hear them now, imprecise and loud. For a second he felt sorry for Toth and his haphazard, sloppy life, but the feeling gave way to a desperate longing for home, not his apartment but Wisconsin, his old bedroom, his mom, the dog.

  “I should be home. I should wait for them to call.”

  Toth’s breath caught and Lars watched as his chest hitched once, twice. He fell against Lars and let out one sob, ragged and awful. Lars held him with one arm. When it was over, Toth straightened up. “I’ll call you,” he said.

  “Don’t. The phone.”

  They sat in silence. On the next block, a child wobbled around on a yellow bike.

  “Well. I’ll be here if, you know, you need anything.”

  “Thanks.” Lars was watching the child. She traced a figure eight in the street. Toth waited another moment, then got out of the car. He climbed the steps to his porch, passed the sleeping housemate, went inside.

  The little girl moved to the curb when Lars passed. Their eyes met and she looked away.

  I have her car, he thought. Everything’s okay.

  * * *

  “Hellenbeck here.”

  “Mr. Hellenbeck?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is Lars Cowgill.” Nothing. “Megan’s boyfriend.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Howyadoin, Lars?”

  “Not so hot, sir.”

  Another pause. Lars was sweating. His cat stood ten feet away, next to its empty food bowl, meowing.

  “What’s going on here?”

  “I have bad news.”

  There was some sort of disturbance on the other end, something brushing the receiver. “Look, what is this? Where’s Megan?”

  “She’s not here,” Lars said. “Her plane crashed.”

  Lying on the bed was a gray sweatshirt of hers. Lars stared at it. It looked alive there, like it might suddenly fly across the room at him. He began to shake, and for a moment forgot where he was or what he was doing.

  “What in God’s name are you saying?” Mr. Hellenbeck was yelling.

  “I was just at the airport. They said it crashed. They said nobody lived.”

  “You’re calling me with this bullshit!”

  “I’m sorry. I gave them your number.” Why did everyone have to yell?

  “I have to hear this from the likes of you! I don’t have to take this from you, you sonofabitch! I don’t have to take it!” His voice was somewhat distant now, like thunder. Lars imagined him holding the receiver at arm’s length.

  “Mr. Hellenbeck?”

  “Fuck you!” he screamed, and the connection cut off.

  * * *

  He didn’t want to stay here, but even more, he didn’t want to go anywhere else. The phone had a long cord, so he moved it to within reach of the couch. He closed his eyes.

  Everything is quiet after the crash. She unbuckles her seat belt and drops the oxygen mask. She stands. No one is speaking. She climbs out into the light through a giant hole. She is in a wide field. Crows caw. She walks and walks; it’s a long way. She comes to a gas station.
I’m okay, she tells the people there. She digs into her pocket for a quarter. She dials.

  The phone didn’t ring. It was eight o’clock, but not yet dark. He realized he knew nothing at all about the crash—where it had happened, or why. Nobody had called him about it. Except for Toth, everyone he knew was gone from town, graduated and lit out for somewhere to start new lives. I ought to turn on the radio, he thought, but he made no move toward it.

  He remembered the desolate yawn of tornado sirens, and thought of his mother, living by herself. Stoughton, the town where he grew up. He thought he should call her—but why ruin her evening? And what good would it do him? She’d offer to fly out and see him, and he’d refuse.

  He picked up the phone by reflex, and before he could get it to his ear he realized he was going to dial Megan’s number. It was what he did when things went wrong. He set the receiver back on the cradle and lay down. His hands were cold and he thrust them between his legs.

  Sometime later he fell into a kind of shallow sleep. He kept waking up, twice before the late summer dark, then again and again in the night. Once he walked across the room and fed the cat, and another time let him out. Otherwise he didn’t move. At some point he’d covered himself with a blanket. When daylight came again he let the cat in and sat back down next to the phone. He examined the cord that ran from the receiver to the cradle, and the one from the cradle to the wall. He cried finally, briefly, but only for a few minutes and mostly because he made himself do it. He sat up very straight on the couch and watched the cat.

  The cat’s name was Hodge. He was striped orange. He was asleep on the bed, on the other side of the room. Lars looked through the papers on the floor until he found a blank piece and a pen. He spread the paper on his lap, with a magazine underneath for support, and drew a map of the apartment. There was the bedroom/living room, where he was now, the kitchenette, the bathroom. He drew a little toilet and a sink. He drew a bed and a couch, a table and stove. Then, on the drawn bed, he made a mark, corresponding to Hodge’s position on the actual bed.

  Ten minutes later, Hodge got up and stretched. He hopped off the bed and walked toward the kitchen. On the map, Lars traced the cat’s path with the pen. When Hodge finished eating and came to Lars on the couch, Lars drew a corresponding line.