"Brian Plante - The Astronaut" - читать интересную книгу автора (Plante Brian)

form. Mrs. Horton sewed. I didn’t know that about her before.
The last bedroom was the master suite. A simple oak bedroom set, with the
standard furniture and room setup: a queen-sized bed, a couple of night tables, a
dresser, and an armoire. Nothing too fancy. The bed was made up with a plain blue
bedspread and four pillows. I don’t know what I was expecting, some sort of
pleasure den or something. This looked more like a hotel room. I couldn’t even tell
what side of the bed she slept on.
Off to one side of the bedroom was the door to a bathroom. On the sink were
two toothbrushes—the pink one used, the green one brand new. I’m ashamed to
say, I opened the medicine cabinet and looked in there, too. I wasn’t going to steal
anything, but I was just curious and wanted to know everything about her. There was
the usual assortment of analgesics, antihistamines and cold remedies. A digital fever
thermometer. Bandages. Also one pregnancy test, unopened.
I left the bathroom and went back out into the bedroom. On the dresser was a
studio portrait, a wedding picture. There was Mrs. Horton, radiant in her white
dress, hugging the tuxedoed Mr. Horton. Or Colonel Richard Keyes. They really
were married, the lucky bastard. In the photo, he looked thirtyish, handsome, and in
pretty good shape—exactly the kind of guy a lady like Mrs. Horton deserved. He
was everything I was not.
I started to leave the bedroom, but was stopped short by the sight of another
framed photograph on the wall by the door. It was a picture of him, Colonel Richard
Keyes, in uniform. It was an astronaut’s pressure suit.
He was that Richard Keyes, the one on the Romulus. An engineer. A flight
engineer. He was Mrs. Horton’s husband and my next-door neighbor, a real
astronaut.
But why would she keep it a secret, especially knowing I wanted to be an
astronaut, too? Why didn’t she take his name? Why did they live out here in the
boonies of Seguin instead of Houston, where the Space Center was?
I recalled the first time we met I told her that an astronaut had the best job in
the world and she said not everyone thinks so. Maybe she didn’t like being an
astronaut’s wife. Perhaps she didn’t want the publicity.
I really felt guilty then. Here I was, some geeky, horny teenager snooping
through their house. And how I went on and on to her about becoming an astronaut,
while all the time her husband was a real hero on his way to Mars. I was even starting
to delude myself that I might ever have a chance with a woman like that. God, how
pitiful I must have seemed to her.
Mrs. Horton had her secrets, and now, so did I. It was only because of my
snooping that I knew her husband was aboard the Romulus. If she didn’t want to tell
me that, then I wasn’t supposed to know.
I locked up the house and put the key back under the geranium pot.
****
A month later, the Romulus finally landed on Mars after its voyage of six
months. It was a huge story for me, although most of the world greeted the news
with a sigh. The crew would be on the planet for a little under a year, and the media
just couldn’t keep people excited about anything for that long. This was the third
manned landing on the red planet. It had already been done.
I started school as a sophomore at Seguin High that month. Making friends
was pretty tough, as most of the cliques had already been formed in freshman year
and I was the new kid. I buckled down and worked hard on my math, entering the
honors program. Engineers needed math.