don’t answer right away. What should I say? Saying little as possible is often best. I say, “None that I know of.”
The psychologist clears his throat. “Didn’t you have an affair with her? Your sister-in-law? Your own brother’s wife?”
“Excuse me?”
Matter-of-fact: “The affair.” In fact.
“Affair,” I say.
“Don’t deny it.”
I can’t. Goddamn it: “How do you know these things?”
“What did Mrs. Kornbluth say about her husband?” he asks. “When you were with her, before or after you committed the act.…”
“Pillow talk?”
“Call it what you wish.”
“I need to get out of here,” I tell him, “I need some air, some sunlight. This madness has to stop. Let me out of here.”
I stand. He reaches and touches my arm. I sit down.
He says, “In due time.”
“What do you want to know?”
“What did Mrs. Kornbluth confide to you about her husband?”
I tell him: “The affair was short, a mistake, it didn’t last long, and it was two years ago.”
“What did you two discuss?”
“We didn’t talk much.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“I’m telling the truth. We fucked. We didn’t talk,” I say.
“How do you think we learned of the affair?” the psychologist asks. “Colonel Kornbluth told us, in the psych evaluation before he was picked for the mission. He knew, sir. Your brother knows what you did with his wife.”
IV.
They replay the video transmission Jack sent twenty-four hours ago: he looks so calm and serene as he says, “Listen. This message is to go straight to the President of the United States. I have murdered my crewmates. This is correct, gentlemen: I killed the pilot and the man who was to press the button. I’m on the button now. This mission is an error—this impending war is foolish and I will stop it. The missile with the warheads that was targeted at the enemy’s capitol is now targeted at Washington, D.C. If the President does not recall the Navy and sign the proposed peace treaty within seventy-two hours, I will press the button and the government will see what it is like to nuke a city over petty indifferences. You will see what it is like to slaughter innocent civilians: children, women, the homeless, people who have nothing to do with politics. The clock is ticking, gentlemen.”
V.
“Jack, listen, this madness has to stop.”
VI.
Gretchen: oh, Gretchen, they have brought Gretchen in. Beautiful Gretchen: my brother’s trophy wife, a wife fitting for an astronaut: tall, blonde, chiseled features, perfect teeth, perfect breasts, long legs. Smith College, former teenage beauty queen, law degree.
We are in the cold empty room together, sitting at the metal table. We’re alone but I know they are watching and listening.
“I tried to talk to him,” I say.
“Me too.”
“They…?”
“…had us both trying to reach him,” she says, “and who knows whom else.”
“What do you think?”
“Think?” she says. “What am I supposed to think? I don’t have any thoughts on this. I don’t have an opinion. I’m nobody, we both are, nobodies in this big game. Who are we? Nobodies.”
“They know,” I say.
“Of course,” Gretchen says.
“Jack knows.”
“I told him.”
Pause.
“Why?”
She says: “I had to come clean.”
“Jesus Christ.”
She says: “Do you know what he said?”
“I don’t.”
She says: “‘I don’t care.’ That’s what he said. ‘At least you kept it in the family,’ he said.”
I laugh.
She asks: “You find that funny?”
“How else am I supposed to ‘find’ it?” I say. “How am I supposed to react to something like that?” I ask.
She laughs too. We both have a good laugh. We hope that those who are listening and watching also laugh.
VII.
The bed they provide is stiff and uncomfortable. Nevertheless, I need sleep; I have been up nearly twenty hours. In have slept on harder surfaces in the past: the ground, the street.
The clock is ticking.
Every three hours my brother transmits a message: “Forty-two hours left.” “Thirty-nine hours left.” “Thirty-six.” “Thirty-three,” he says, “a pivotal year for any man, the most significant year of Jesus. Thirty hours left,” etc.
Sleep and dream: sex with Gretchen and the sex is as good as I remember it was between us. Gretchen enjoys the rough treatment: slap across the face, biting the nipples, smack on the ass, leaving a handprint embedded into white creamy flesh. “Jack has always fucked like a pussy,” she says in the dream (like she said in real life), “but you fuck like a caveman and that’s what I like. Pull my hair, punch me, stick it my ass.…”
I wake up. I have a hard-on, what they call a “quality erection” for men my age who have problems with tumescence without pharmaceutical aid. A dark figure stands by my bed. It moves near me. It’s Jack. He holds his space helmet in his hand, but he’s naked. He gets into bed with me and grabs my cock and takes it in his mouth—
I wake up. A dream within a dream. I still have an erection. Why would I dream of such a thing about my brother? A dark figure stands by my bed. It moves near me. It’s Gretchen. She’s not naked. She wears the same clothes. She gets into bed with me but she does not grab my cock. She snuggles next to me.
“They let me in here,” she whispers; “they wanted me to come in here for some reason.”
“I’m dreaming.”
“We’re all dreaming.”
“Don’t get philosophical on me, you bitch,” I
