The Loneliness of Distant Beings

Chapter Ten

There's this one passage in West near a service transporter where you can look down into the Production bays and I find reasons to walk along there just in the hope that I might catch sight of Dom. I do, a couple of times, way down there in the dark, the shine of his hair as it flops over his face when he pulls his hat off for a minute. The way he laughs when someone cracks a joke. The way he leans on the three-metre stack of egg crates to use his pod and I wonder who he's writing to, wishing it was me.

Whenever I walk past the doors to the West cantina during second session, which is when I guess he would be eating, I pull myself up to the windows by my fingertips, right on to my tiptoes, nose pressed, heart literally flapping in my chest over the thought that I might see him, before someone tries to pass me and gives me a funny look as I walk away. Every time there is any machine to fill anywhere near Production I get these stupid, almost unmanageable adrenaline rushes just because there's an off-chance that I'll see him, this shot in the dark that I'll happen to put in the nut bar that'll be his, that I'll touch the Cheeso snack that will be the one that touches his lips. Yeah, I know, it's lame; it is super lame. There are, in fact, almost no words for how lame it is. And nothing has ever felt so good.

Then this one day after work I get back to quarters and Pan is acting like some kind of brain-dead idiot and crying over a pile of socks. She's had way too much time on her hands since she went on her maternity leave and I guess it's a hormone thing too so I'm not all that surprised until it goes on longer than usual.

'What is it, Pan?' I ask her in the end, standing there and feeling that bone-tiredness of having been at work all day.

'Cain finished his shift three hours ago but he still hasn't come home.'

'OK,' I sigh. 'But if something was wrong with him Engineering would have told you by now.'

'I know, Seren. It's just that he used to rush home to me every night and now he just . . . ' She blows her nose on one of the socks, then gestures at the rest of them. 'I wanted him to come home to darned socks but I can't even get that right.'

'So . . . what? You think he's got someone else?'

She slams her hand down on the table and glares at me. 'Well, I didn't until now! For God's sake, what is wrong with you?'

'What's wrong with ME? You're the one crying because your husband is avoiding coming home to you.'

She sobs then, really sobs, to the point that she's a total snotty mess and I actually start to feel a little bad.

'You know I always try to help you, Seren,' she sniffs. 'Every time you're having one of your bad times I try my hardest to help, even though you make it just about impossible. Can't you try being a little sensitive for once? I just want someone to listen to me.'

I shrug. 'OK, I'm sorry. Talk . . . please.'

'It's just that I really need Cain to be there for me right now and instead I'm just so lonely and I have no idea what to do about it.'

And I don't know what it is, but something makes me actually feel for her a little then, something makes me ache. Maybe it's because I have just started to know, for the first time, what it's like to miss someone. So I take a step towards her and I say, 'Just tell him how you feel.'

She slams her hands on the table in front of her and rolls her eyes. 'Don't be so naive, Seren. I don't even know why I'm talking to you. You know nothing about relationships.'

I draw back, a little lost for words. 'I . . . I know you start from a point when you love being together and you just make each other feel good and you just . . . they are the one person in the world you can rely on, who never lets you down.'