Starless

The door closed automatically, the alarm had been activated and the warning light started to blink. Everything seemed to be all right. It was almost midnight as she left the main building of the laboratory. She looked around and breathed in the fresh air. Over her head the sky was full of stars but she could not see any of them, for her it was the most terrifying experience. It is called agoraphobia, as she learned years ago when she first met with her fears, and she could not imagine ever recovering from it.

Those few occasions when she looked up to the sky, all she could see was the deepness of her hopelessness expanding beyond her head, the deepness that tried to swallow her with all the little joys she had, that tried to destroy the reality she was trying to recreate for so many years. Sometimes she wondered how anyone could find solace when watching the stars, all those unknown worlds, expanding all the time, falling apart, swallowing everything.

Her name was Estella after her Mexican grandmother and years ago she would have been happy if she could live a life like that, settled down in a small house near the city center without her husband, bringing up their daughter alone, free and relieved. She suffered too many years in a relationship she could not change and could not escape either. How many nights had she listened to the footsteps of her husband coming home late, tried to believe his lies, tried to imagine that their marriage was still fine, but she just sank deeper and deeper in a trap that she could not escape on her own.

But she finally had luck, one of her husband’s affairs provided sufficient evidence to break the spell. How humiliating but she used it as long as she could and soon she was free but tending to be unhappy; maybe her husband’s curse kept her haunting.

“A woman so pretty, intelligent and rich... you will never find anyone who wants to marry you again” he said.

She somehow anticipated it; she had always been the best, the cleverest student in school and the prettiest girl at parties but always had the same attitude: is she really it or is it only her parents’ wish? She built a solid wall around her of fear of intimacy, mostly because of her parents.

At school she was always reserved and inhibited, during those years hardly anyone could get close to her. Finally she married one of her best friends’ brother but that marriage soon ended with disillusionment. Then she escaped into another marriage, and then, when it was over, after two divorces what could she expect, she knew the dark side of marriage without having enjoyed the bright side. She wondered sometimes if there was any.

She was a professional, lost in every day’s routine. Her job was often exhausting with lots of overtime and, although she enjoyed it at the beginning, she felt by then that she achieved everything she could in her research area. She knew there was nothing left and her job could not give her anything more. She was lost forever, hopelessly, waiting for retirement.

After the divorce she realized the emptiness around her, the starless sky over her head, the vacuum that surrounded her life, so she tried to concentrate on her profession and forgetting everything not directly linked to it. There were some occasions when she let others, mainly colleagues, come closer to her but all ended in disaster so she decided to disclose all feelings from her life.

The safest way was not to be involved in anything emotional. When she thought about her life she always compared herself to a comet, traveling alone in the endless space, unable to find a companion, unable to find anyone to settle down with.

Eight years ago after she attended a conference and a few seconds of her presentation were transmitted in the evening news, someone tried to reach her desperately. He sent her flowers to the laboratory, called several times a day and even wrote her a poem. When she looks back now she cannot really understand why she never wanted to know who he was, but at that time she was still married and apart from her research she was not really interested in anything.

She did not read the poem that time, she never liked poems, but after her divorce she found it and thought that it was the most beautiful poem she had ever read. It was about the first love that never fades away and how the boy as a grownup man brings a star from the sky to the girl to show her that he is still in love with her.

A few days after reading the poem, as she opened the daily papers, she found something that made her think of telepathy. One of her schoolmates, who became an astronomer, was in the papers. He discovered a new comet, which was nearing the Earth, and he named it Estella. She wondered why he gave it her name, and she found it weird that it even was a comet.

They were never too close, she could not even remember them talking to each other, she could only remember his smile. “It must have been another Estella he had been thinking of as he discovered the comet” she thought. But nevertheless the comet also belonged to her as it shared her name.

The comet could not be seen at that time, but at night, as she walked home from the laboratory, slowly getting over her fears, she started to watch the sky intensely, she looked it up in a star map and even identified the position on the night sky where the comet would appear.

One day the postman brought an unexpected invitation; their class would have a reunion after forty years. Working almost day and night she had totally forgotten that she ever went to school. It made her excited but also unhappy, what could she tell her schoolmates, she felt like a total catastrophe, she just could not imagine going there. She felt she was stuck somehow, without dreams, without ambitions, doing the same things everyday for almost thirty years. Lost in time without any hope of getting out of there, thinking of nothing but her tests in the laboratory.

Although she had finally agreed with herself to go to the reunion, at the last minute she decided to go to the river instead near the restaurant where they were due to meet. She was not unhappy but in that state of mind, burnt out totally, she could even imagine jumping in the river, but as she was a good swimmer it probably would not bring anything at all.

As she was standing there watching the water she heard someone saying: “So you have not yet found what you were looking for?”

She turned around and saw the silhouette of a man in his fifties, elegantly dressed and looking at her. When she strained her eyes she found his smile familiar but all she could think of was that he was a stranger trying to get closer to her.

“But I think I could finally find what I was looking for” he continued and smiled.

As he came nearer that smile made her think of one of her classmates whose smile always fascinated her. They started to small talk and she found out that they were expected at the same class reunion, because they were in the same class forty years ago, but they boycotted it for different reasons as it turned out soon.

While they were talking he suddenly looked up to the sky and noted “My comet will appear soon, so I can finally see it with unaided eyes.”

Only then did she recognize him. He was the astronomer who named the newly discovered comet after her, because he had always been in love with her, even in primary school. It was almost a shock for her. How could it happen without her knowing anything about it? They did not even speak to each other, not a single word. And he was the one who wanted to contact her after the conference and the one who wrote the poem as well.

Instead of going to the reunion they decided to lie on the blankets that they brought from the car and unfolded on the grass, and wait until their comet appeared. They continued talking like two people seeing each other for the first time, they went through their lives since primary school, as if they wanted to make up for all those lost years. They did not even realize that they talked about everything without embarrassment, as if they had always been friends for the last forty years.

Finally he held her hand in his and she did not resist. “It is time now” he said. It was nice having someone holding her hands after so many years; she could have enjoyed that moment forever. Holding each other’s hands they only talked quietly a few words as if they were afraid they could frighten off their comet. “It is so beautiful” she whispered.

The wind became stronger and they crept closer to feel more comfortable in each other’s shelter. They were just lying there, enjoying the moment and over their heads there was a sky full of stars.

(Wordcount 1577)