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by Benjamin Crowell
Science Fiction, 20 pages.
Originally Published in Strange Horizons, 2008
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Everything is just like it always used to be. By the time Joe’s done carefully stretching his calves, his son Andy is already jogging in place: Let’s go. Andy is twelve, indestructible.
“Ready?” says Andy.
Joe tries to crack a smile, and it’s easier than he thought. They run out onto the path that will go upside-down and circle back to where they started. The lights in the park’s low ceiling are dim to make it seem like morning.
* * *
Joe walked up to the door, feeling sheepish. He’d said things to Mike and Kazuko that he shouldn’t have said, pushed Mike over the back of the couch. Stayed away for a couple of days, paid enough money for a sleep cubby that it almost emptied their bank account. He’d thought things would be better when he got back from this deployment, but instead they were worse. The marriage was going to hell, and it was time to humble himself and apologize to them. Too bad he wasn’t better with words.
He pressed his key against the lock. No click. A second try: still no click. What the hell? A knock on the door brought no response from inside. He knocked again, louder, and the sound echoed down the public corridor.
Nothing.
He turned on his phone, and before he could tell it to call them, it beeped at him. One message. He thumbed Play.
Kazuko’s face came on. “All right, Joe, so this is it. Mike wants me to speak for him, too. Me and Mike are going to raise Andy. It’s over.” Her finger stabbed at him. “Over, Joe.” The image jerked, so you could tell she’d stopped recording and then started again. “Okay, so it’s the end of the month, and we needed first and last for a new place that’s cheaper. Nice move with the bank account, by the way, that was brilliant. Great way to provide for your son. So the only way we could get the cash was by getting back the last month’s rent from the old place. They let us move in to the new one a few days early, so you’re on your own. That was my decision, not Mike’s, so I guess that makes me a real bitch, right?” She corkscrewed her finger at the ceiling like she was winding something up real fast. It was her gesture that meant I don’t care, because you don’t count. “There’s a shuttle tomorrow.”
End of message.
Joe kicked the door, then kicked it again.
You don’t count. Joe didn’t count because he didn’t bring home enough money. Didn’t count because of all the times he’d been away on deployments. Didn’t count because Kazuko and Mike could never understand why he wasn’t happy about living in Newton Habitat forever, why he always kept his E.U. citizenship. But most of all Joe didn’t count because he’d always been the extra one in the three-marriage, the optional one, the one who the termination-at-will part of the contract had really been aimed at. He was the one you threw overboard when the family was dead broke, when every night was an argument about bills and dishes.
And then there was the other thing. He’d never known who was Andy’s blood father, him or Mike. For thirteen years, all three of them had always said they didn’t care, and Joe honestly didn’t care, because Andy was his son either way. But he couldn’t help wondering now, after the way things had worked out. Maybe Kazuko and Mike knew something he didn’t, and maybe they did care.
* * *
“How you been,” asks Andy. “Okay?” Joe has always taught him to set a pace where you can still talk.
“Yeah,” Joe says. “Missed you, though.”
As long as he doesn’t look up at the ceiling, he can imagine that they’re running in a park down on Earth, and he’s showing Andy what blue sky and clouds are like. He can imagine that he’s telling Andy the truth, and everything really is okay.
* * *
The utility guy chopped the air on top of his desk like he was trying to chip a golf ball. “I’m just - honestly, Mr. Lewicki, I don’t get it. You acknowledged receipt of the delinquency notice on your phone. Why didn’t you catch that shuttle yesterday? Was there a problem with the ticket?”
“No,” Joe said to the desk. He wasn’t a citizen, so they made him prepay for an exit ticket every time he entered the hab. “It’s just that it was all... sort of sudden.” The chair was too small for him. One of the manacles around his ankles was too tight, and his foot was getting numb.
“In this situation we give you a two-week emergency air stipend, but it’s intentionally set so low that you can’t really live on it. Frontier here, can’t afford to support people who aren’t contributing. You’ll need to find some way to make up the gap between what you breathe and what the stipend pays for.”
“I want to work, but I lost my job.” His pride wound itself tight like a ball of string that was trying to get smaller. “I’m not a citizen, so when my partners ended our contract, my visa got changed -- [End of Preview.]