On the moon

“Somehow I thought you’d be different.”

“Why’s that?” Neil said between sips. “Wait, you want one?”

“No, it’s alright. I don’t drink.” I started to take a seat in the folding lawn chair next to him, but hesitated. “Is it alright if I sit?”

“Whatever.”

I eased back and rapped my fingers on the chair’s plastic arms to fill the awkward silence. Neil drank the rest of what must have been at least his fourth can with a series of loud gulps then let it float off in to the blackness.

“You know I don’t think you can ever trust a man that doesn’t drink.” Neil eyed me suspiciously as he reached for another beer in the cooler between us. It sounded oddly threatening, but I was quickly distracted when my left flip flop drifted off.

“Crap!”

Neil let out a drunken chuckle followed by an uneasy belch. “What’s the matter? Borrow your wife’s shoes? Well she ain’t getting them back now.”

“A guy can wear flip flops.”

“Whatever. Anyway, why’d you think I’d be different?”

I just stared at him. What could I say? Where to begin? “You’re an astronaut!”

“Was. I was an astronaut. Now I am officially unemployed.”

I shot to the edge of the lawn chair, confused, to say the least. I did my fare share of news watching, and it seemed something like this would have at least made the crawl, but nothing!

“What? How?” Now, I’ll be honest, the first thing I suspected was the drinking, but I kept an open mind. This was Neil Armstrong for crying out loud!

“Yeah, they picked a fine time to fire me, huh? You figure they’d at least take me back to earth.”

My mind was spinning. It was like every thought was in a different foreign language and I didn’t understand any of them.

“What are you doing here anyway?” His words pulled me out of my haze. With the flood of surprises this man had just doled out, it took me a few moments to form the words.

“Wrong turn. I was on my way to the hotel, but you know how Houston can be.”

“Can’t say that I remember.”

“Oh, right. Well there’s all this construction and traffic and I had never been there before, so…”

He interrupted me with a wave. I thought it was because he wanted to explain things, but nothing came.

I looked toward the earth. Something about it was strange. I stared for a while, cocking my head from left to right, but I just couldn’t figure it out. Neil must have noticed because I heard another chuckle from his direction.

“It’s upside down, ain’t it? That fools them all.”

He was right. With the new perspective I realized that we were somewhere over Africa. “I guess none of this is what I thought it would be.”

“Yeah. I could move and be able to look at it right side up, but I don’t want to walk all that way. Anyway it looks just fine the way it is. What’d you say your name was?”

“Oh I’m-”

“Never mind. So you say you took a wrong turn?”

I waited, to make sure it actually was my time to speak. “Yeah like I said they sent me to the hotel-”

“Who?”

“My company. I’m a-”

“Bosses! Don’t bring them up here. No sir I want nothing to do with any of that. Not anymore.”

This next silence was equally my fault. I didn’t want to say anything for fear of getting interrupted, again. The two of us sat there for a while. I wondered if he still used hours or days to measure time. I wondered if he measured time at all. That was kind of a freeing thought. Then I wondered where he used the bathroom. I glanced over at him but he just kept drinking.

Many more questions floated in and out, in and out. I kept silent though. Finally, after what could have been years, I turned to Neil and shook my head. “This doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

He slapped a cold beer in my chest. “It’s the moon, boy, it doesn’t have to.”