Von Braun looked momentarily taken aback but recovered himself. Give him credit: Having generated so much of his own in his lifetime, the man knew bullshit when he heard it. “Perfect,” he said. “Just the place for them.”
But that was not the end of the story of magic coffee-cup lid. Later that afternoon the young shuttle engineer from Brooklyn came looking for my grandfather. His attention had been drawn to the Véronique and the Centaure models and he had to agree, the work was exquisite, just as Dr. von Braun had told him. He wondered if my grandfather might be amenable to or interested in building models for NASA, both as part of the research and development process and for purposes of education and display? The pay, he said, would be not half bad.
My grandfather said he would think about it. Then he changed his mind and decided to accept the young engineer’s offer without thinking about it. He said he did too much thinking as it was, and if he got this decision out of the way it would free up his brain to think about something else. The young engineer asked for an example of the kind of thing my grandfather had in mind, thinking-wise. “Jews on the Moon?” my grandfather said.
“Oh yeah, I heard about that,” said the young engineer. “I think the old Nazi motherfucker was totally freaked out.”
My grandfather started to laugh.
“Score one for the Hebes,” said the young engineer.
At that my grandfather laughed long and hard. When he could speak again he thanked the young engineer, wrote down his telephone number, and they agreed to be in touch soon. Over the next fourteen years my grandfather went on to build more than thirty-five models for NASA, of different types and functions, at a variety of scales. The reputation of his work for faithfulness and quality brought him commissions from private collectors all over the world. He had no doubt that the work Wernher von Braun indirectly brought his way had helped him emerge from mourning the loss of my grandmother and of the company and the success that meant so much to him.
34
My grandfather stood on his left foot to pull his jeans on over his right leg and lost his balance. He reached out to steady himself on the edge of her dresser. He missed the dresser and knocked into a floor lamp. The lamp had a chrome stand whose surface reflected just enough ambient light to be visible in the dark bedroom, and he could see that it was falling. It was not yet sunrise. He was trying to be quiet. Meanwhile he was falling, too. He had to choose between breaking his own fall or the lamp’s. He opted for the former, making a second, successful try for the edge of the dresser. The lamp hit the terrazzo floor with a cowbell clang, and there was a blue burst in the dark, the soft pow! of a lightbulb losing its vacuum.
“So when you said you weren’t going to sneak out at dawn anymore,” Sally said. Her voice was coming from somewhere underneath a pillow. “You meant you would still leave, but you would make a lot of noise.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Broom’s in the kitchen.”
He went to fetch the dustpan broom, and when he got back she had gone into the bathroom. He heard the chord of her urine spray resonating against different curvatures of the toilet bowl. It was a sound he had always found comforting. It erased all midnight loneliness. He righted the lamp and swept up the glass, then went to the kitchen to dump the mess in the trash. The trash can was full, so he cinched the bag and carried it out to the bin alongside the house. It took him another minute to track down a sixty-watt bulb. By the time he returned to the bedroom, she was sitting on the made bed, lacing up a pair of duck boots.
“What’s this?”
“You’re going to spend all morning chasing after that fucking snake again?”
“I was just going back to my place.”
“And then?”
“And then I was planning to spend all morning chasing after that fucking snake.”
“So today I’m coming with you.”
“I’m meeting Devaughn.”
“Did Devaughn let you stick your thing in his bottom last night?”
He was shocked by the question, or the way she phrased it, or the startling image it rhetorically conveyed, but that was all right. He needed a woman who could deliver him a shock. He conceded that indeed Devaughn had granted him no such liberties.
“Is Devaughn going to make you waffles?”
“That seems unlikely.”
She stopped tying her boot and looked up at him, her eyes saying, I rest my case.
“Fine,” said my grandfather. “But could you please make them for me at my place, on my waffle iron?”
“All right.” She looked surprised, not unpleasantly, and a bit puzzled.
As of this point in their relationship Sally had never been to his place. This was just becoming a bit odd. He knew that the longer he put it off, the more it would begin to seem like he had something to hide.
“What’s so special about your waffle iron?”
“It works better than yours.”
“Is that so?”
“Mine, the iron is better seasoned. The waffles never stick.”
“I see. You’ve seasoned yours very thoroughly, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I imagine there’s an entire procedure.”
“That’s right.”
“A right way and a wrong way.”
“Oh, there’s more than one wrong way.”
“And only one right way.”
“If that.”
When they got to my grandfather’s place, Devaughn was sitting on the front steps smoking a Tiparillo. My grandfather was seven minutes late. “Sally’s going to drive me today,” he said.
Devaughn looked genuinely confused for a few seconds and pretended to be confused for a few seconds more. Then he looked a little hurt. He had not said so, but my grandfather could tell that the guard had started to enjoy their expeditions into the ruins of Mandeville.
“She know how to kill a snake?”
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
Devaughn looked at Sally.
“I know you aim for the legs,” Sally said. “Right?”
Devaughn hauled himself to his feet. He stood on the doorstep, rocking back and forth, crunching the plastic tip of the cheroot between his teeth.
“Yes?” my grandfather said.
“Least you could do’s pay me for all the time I done wasted.”
“What am I, Warren Buffett, I don’t have that kind of money.”
“I mean today. This morning.”
“I cost you an hour of Devaughn Time.”
“’s right.”
My grandfather gave him a ten. Devaughn folded it and folded it again, then slid it into the Tiparillo box that he carried in his shirt pocket. He nodded to my grandfather and touched the bill of his cap to Sally.
My grandfather unlocked the door to his condo and stood aside to let Sally in. There was a small foyer that opened onto the living room. They were separated by a partition wall about waist-high. Along the top of this partition, posed like a row of duck decoys on display bases, six large-scale models re-created the history of the space shuttle program in order of construction, from Enterprise to Endeavour.
“Spaceships, huh?” Sally said.
“Shuttles.”