Launch on Need by Daniel Guiteras (small books to read txt) 📗

Having been in front of the camera for most of the day, he welcomed it in fact. He felt alive. He should have felt exhausted, should have been too tired to eat. He’d gone on the air at 6 A.M. that morning, broadcasting from CNN’s booth at the Kennedy Space Center. But now, instead of feeling wrung out, he felt energized by his work. Rescue mission coverage had expanded to nearly around the clock. As he approached his car, he found himself wishing it had been parked another quarter-mile away—his legs felt that fresh.

He started driving back to his hotel in Cocoa Beach, figuring he would stop for something to eat if a suitable place caught his attention. As he drove, he found it hard to stop thinking about the rescue mission and the impact the story was having on him and the rest of the country, too, it seemed. The rescue mission was all anyone was talking about. And that was just the way Stangley thought it should be. The general public finally cared about the space program again. Stangley heard it in the way people talked; there was a certain newfound optimism spreading across the country. People believed that the astronauts could be rescued, that NASA could pull it off. But the sentiment went much deeper than that. The rescue mission was giving people the feeling that America could be great again, that it was safe for Americans to rise up, to cheer for a team they had not been sure could win. The mission was restoring a collective sense of dignity, and helping to close and heal some of the wounds of 9/11. It was time to buff things back to a shine.

Stangley’s thoughts were interrupted by his ringing cell phone. He fished it from the car’s center console and answered the call. “John Stangley.”

“Hey, you eat yet, you big TV star?”

“Uh,” Stangley laughed and hesitated as he searched for a comeback. “No, I haven’t. I’m on my way back to Cocoa Beach. I think I’m leaning towards Flaminia’s.”

“Won’t they be closed by the time you get there?”

“No, the restaurants have been open late because of the crowds. Maybe you’ve heard about the rescue…”

Brown cut him off, “Very funny. Hey, you want company?”

“Uh, yeah, Ken, that sounds good, actually.”

“All right, I’ll meet you there. Probably take me twenty minutes or so.”

“See you there.”

Stangley closed his phone with a practiced hand and smiled. He was feeling good about his growing friendship with Brown. They understood each other; both were widowed and both were passionate about the space program. Stangley hoped Brown’s presence would help him stave off the memories of Claire that were likely to return at the restaurant.

Stangley had been to Flaminia’s Famous Italian Kitchen many times with colleagues, but only once with Claire. By the way she talked about it after just the one visit, though, one would have thought it was her all-time favorite restaurant. She had loved the food, especially the homemade breadsticks—an important point, since Claire considered herself a connoisseur of bread. He smiled, remembering how she would pour, with a chemist’s care, two equal-size pools onto her bread plate, one of olive oil, the other of vinegar. But the dipping technique was what was most important. “You’ve got to dip the bread in the vinegar first,” Claire would insist. “If you dip it in the oil first, the oil seals off the bread so the vinegar can’t soak in. Do that, and you’ll end up with a mostly oily taste because the ratio is all wrong.” It was her little habits, her “Claireisms,” as Stangley called them, that he missed most.

Stangley reached for the radio in hopes of finding a little diversion from what was quickly becoming a saddening focus. After scanning the FM band and finding nothing that suited his mood, he switched to AM to check the local talk-radio stations.

“It’s six minutes after nine on a Friday evening, thanks for joining me. I’m Craig Randall, sitting in for the vacationing Jack Sanchez. You’re listening to AM 790 WSPX, Florida’s choice for news and talk, up and down the Space Coast.”

Stangley adjusted his back against the seat, settling in, and figured he would give this segment a chance.

There was a moment of dead air and then Randall began.

“All right, this hour I want to talk to you about an aspect of the rescue mission that you might not have given much attention to. Now, before you think about tuning away because you think you’ve heard all you can about the rescue mission and you wish NASA would just launch Atlantis already and get it over with, bear with me for a minute. Indulge me.

“Tonight I want to explore another angle of the rescue mission. If you have considered it, then we certainly want to hear from you, hear your thoughts. We will be taking your calls in just a minute, at one-eight-hundred seven-nine-zero WSPX. But before we go to the phones I need to set something up for you. So close your eyes if you have to. Free yourself up in whatever way works best for you, so you can give a little thought to what I’m about to say. Now if you’re a part of our driving audience tonight then we of course don’t want you closing your eyes. Those of you who are driving will have to do the best you can with your eyes open, or I guess you could pull off the road or something. See, at WSPX, we’re always looking out for your safety,” Randall said with a chuckle, and light laughter could be heard from the studio background.

“All right, tonight I want you to imagine that you are among the seven astronauts marooned on Space Shuttle Columbia. You’ve been in space sixteen full days now, and if your mission had been going as planned you’d be home now. You’d be back on Earth, your mission would be over, you’d be celebrating and carrying on