The Path of Minor Planets: A Novel by Andrew Sean Greer Page A

ally. She had only held on to Eli, first because he fascinated her, then because she loved him, but never because he was like her. Nobody was. Turning away, she dismissed the thought as pathetic and terribly vain.
    The cries of “Time!” were coming thickly now. She raised her head to see if she could catch a meteor, but the cries kept coming and she saw nothing. A bad fisherman. She longed for a book, but this was not allowed. What did they all see up there that kept them riveted past the hours for sleep? What had made her husband bike up a mountain as a boy? What had drawn Denise away from her comfort, her wealth, her family? Nothing seemed to change up in the darkness. Nothing made a sound. Kathy felt like a skeptic in a haunted house. These necks craned upward, these tense smiles of suspense—a creak on the stairs, the chandelier moving eerily—then the gasps around her while Kathy couldn’t see a thing.
    What would it be like to have one single passion? The question worried her. She looked over at her husband, who sat alone now in his chair, head to the stars. He loved her. But he loved the dead sky a little more.
    “Time!” she shouted loudly.
    The only one who looked her way was Professor Manday, who nodded and scribbled in his notebook. So now she was part of their record. It would appear in a journal, that stray mark, that lie. They were so easy to fool, these true believers, taking any sign to be from their specific god.
    “Time!” she cried again, grinning.
    She tried to feel good, solitary, strong—the way she had in college, the way she had before she’d married Eli, before she’d chosen him, before she’d fallen in love and found herself puttering and sulking when he was away. He didn’t know, he couldn’t understand her, he was nothing like her, but over the years she had come to need him. Kathy felt powerless. Why had it come upon her so unexpectedly, even after marriage, when she was sure she’d be safe? Why love him now? But there was nothing she could do. It was all right, anyway. She turned back, saw him tilted toward the sky. And once again, as always, a horse began to run in her heart.
    She heard a woman say beside her, “It feels like we’re at war.”
    It was Denise, sitting in a chair, her face pale and prominent. She went on: “War. You know… castle ramparts, the tense beachhead, the palm trees. The rockets’ red glare….” She smiled and Kathy wondered who had put her up to this.
    “Who are we at war with?” Kathy asked. “I forgot….”
    “Spain.”
    “Oh that’s right,” she said, holding herself against the breeze. “Spain.”
    “How are you doing?”
    She looked over and examined Denise carefully. “Oh, I’m fine.”
    Denise smiled, brushed an invisible hair from her face. She looked weary, maybe hungover, or tired from the pressure to forget. She said, “You seem a little off tonight. Is it being around all those stupid wives this afternoon? All the cocktail queens? Or something else?”
    “You saw Carlos last week, right?”
    Kathy saw Denise stiffen, and thought she might shake off the question, insist on probing Kathy’s own mood; but in the end Denise relented, saying, “That’s right. We had lemonade, if you can believe it. In his friend’s restaurant, and it had a lousy jukebox.”
    “Did you say anything mean?”
    “No.”
    “I remember I used to say mean things. It doesn’t help, though.”
    The way Denise looked at her suggested that she couldn’t imagine this: Kathy heartbroken, Kathy being cruel. As if she’d found Eli so easily, as a gift, perhaps, or by saving up on green stamps. “Of course not,” Denise said.
    “I used to think you could win them back.”
    Denise didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she grinned. “It’s stupid, isn’t it? Here I am, a grown woman. It’s just so stupid of me. And I just heard,” she said, talking slowly now because she hadn’t yet spoken these words, “Jorgeson said Carlos bought a new