Sensibility

Just because we’re trapped in a space station, running out of oxygen, freezing by the second, and using decades-old suits to stay alive, isn’t reason enough to not stop for a moment and talk about our crumbling marriage.

Right?

That’s what I thought!

But wouldn’t you know it?  Cody wants to go pressurize this and seal that and hydroponics this other thing.  What a fucking tool.  And yes, his name is Cody.  Yes, like the super-mega-famous transexual porn-slash-legit movie star.  God, I should’ve seen that a sign.  But twenty years later, I’m middle-aged and following him around in zero gravity, with him trying to save us, and all I want is to ask him whether or not he still thinks I’m pretty.

This guy.

Christ.

What am I going to do with him?

Somewhere in a room with a lot of plants and a lot of water and a lot of light, he’s trying to get some fans to work.  I think they’re fans.  The were over thirty of us before everything stopped working, but Cody and I have been cut off from the rest of the station, and he’s here, fiddling with fans and plants and I want to ask him if he’s ever cheated on me.

The sign outside this large plant room said “Hydroponic Forest” and it doesn’t look like a forest at all.

There are lights everywhere.

Cody gets a fan working and then rushes past me as I’m trying to get him to look me in the eye and ask whether or not I looks fat.  Not in this suit, no - everyone looks huge in these contraptions.  No, I mean fat when I’m in a dress or a skirt.

We don’t wear dresses or skirts out here in space.  Practicality or something.  But, you know, like, when we lived on Earth and I wore them.  Did I look fat then?

I’m sure whatever he’s doing it must be important.  Life and death things.  But I’m not worried.  Things like this have happened before and we always come back: in the last ten years of living out here, no one’s died from anything that isn’t natural.  I mean, vacuum is natural, right?  So, opening an airlock door is natural in the same way drowning is natural.

I follow him to where a huge and heavy metal door is cutting us off from the rest of our little…community?  I don’t know if that’s the right word, but that’s how it was sold down on Earth.  Whatever: Cody signed up and so did I.  And now, I just want to ask him what color I should dye my hair, which hair color he’d like me in, and he’s soldering things that I could swear he just tore apart from a keypad next to the door.

I guess maybe coming up here with him wasn’t the best idea, but I was young and in love and after we got married, I knew I’d made the right decision because, otherwise, he’d be up here, in this space station, and I’ve seen how that fucking tramp Jessica’s been looking at him over the years.  Jessica’s older than I am but there’s no expiry date for being a tramp.

A hiss of air and the metal door slides open, maybe a foot or two wide from the floor, and you can see under all these lights the air rushing out and I wonder if that’s good or not because I need to sit Cody down and ask him if he ever did it with Jessica.  These things I’m thinking are important, and here is my husband, sliding beneath the door, into the bigger sections of the space station, and all I want to know is whether or not he still wants me.  Not loves me but WANTS me.  This is important.

We could stop being alive any moment, but someone needs to tell my husband to set his priorities straight.


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