what if I were somewhere more isolated and the only way to get around was to rent a car? I’d be stranded.
Calvin knew all of this now. He’d long ago learned my limitations and my hang-ups, but he also knew I’d adapted and managed for thirty-four years, and I didn’t need someone “more able” to rush to my aid. He knew I had methods for living in the world, and that if I did need help, I was capable of making it known. I didn’t always ask with words—maybe that was in part due to the teases and taunts I endured as a kid and not wanting to draw attention to myself—but Calvin understood. The other week I’d handed him a carton of coffee creamer, and he read the expiration date aloud and gave it back. That was it. No explanation from me and no pity from him.
So moments like this—when I held a hand out and he simply took it and started walking? I could feel my anxiety ease with each step. I’d be fine here, because Calvin would help and not make me feel less of myself for it.
We walked down a long—very long—passage of mostly empty gates and shops shuttered for the evening. The wheels of our suitcase echoed on the polished floor, and the overhead speaker system played a canned safety announcement. Calvin gently tugged me to the side just before one of those buggy golf carts honked and zoomed past. Eventually we reached the Jamba Juice in question, the lights off and gate pulled down over the entrance. Calvin took the left as the hall branched in a few different directions, and we came to a stop outside a sort of incognito setup behind a glass wall.
“Mission Operations,” Calvin read from a blinking neon sign overhead.
“Beam me up.”
He smiled as the glass door automatically opened with a sort of whoosh sound effect. We had to adjust to single file down a narrow corridor that ended with a check-in counter and a lone employee, all of it obscenely backlit in some, I guessed, futuristic space aesthetic.
The guy sitting at the counter glanced up from his phone, sighed audibly as he pushed it aside, and said with such a bored tone that he might as well have been unconscious, “Welcome to Mission Operations.”
I looked around Calvin’s hulking figure and answered, “Houston sent us.”
Calvin shot me a look. “Don’t antagonize,” he whispered. Then he turned back to the counter and the apathetic astronaut. “Do you have any rooms available?”
“You don’t have a reservation?”
“No,” Calvin said, holding up a finger when I opened my mouth, like he could just sense the smartass remark I had ready to let fly.
Astronaut sighed again, directed his attention to the monitor on his right, and said after a moment, “We have one pod currently available.”
“Great.” Calvin reached for his wallet.
“It’s by the hour,” the astronaut continued.
“So like a love hotel,” I replied.
“Shush,” Calvin murmured before saying, “We’ll take it until seven.”
Astronaut shifted to one side on his stool in order to look back and forth between us. “You’re going to share?”
“Sharing is caring,” I told him.
Astronaut didn’t seem to think this was a great idea, but eventually shrugged, ran Calvin’s credit card, passed him the room key, and wished us luck.
I followed Calvin through another automatic door to the right and down an even narrower hall, barely the width of our suitcase. On either side were tiny doors with one round window, giving even more credence to the space station theme. They alternated between two steps down and two steps up so as to fit as many pods into the limited real estate as possible.
“I’m becoming suspicious of why he wished us luck,” I said quietly, mindful of the occupied rooms around us.
Calvin stopped outside pod sixteen, scanned the card, and the door popped open. He pushed it back, and the sound that escaped him was a combination of a grunt and disbelieving laugh. “I get it now.” He walked forward, awkwardly maneuvering the suitcase in alongside. As Calvin turned to look at me, he stooped a little, and I realized that his six feet and change was flirting with the ceiling.
The pod was maybe five feet deep. Maybe. The bed—one of those smart designs—was currently in a sitting position, which allowed for enough leeway at the end to wriggle around it, shove the suitcase into the farthest corner, and then slide sideways into the bathroom. Although, calling it a bathroom implied it