The Rocket's Last Glow

Keiko Takahashi, twenty-eight years old and a pool attendant at the Swanton community aquatic center, had exactly one day off this week. And she had spent it at the Mountaintop Mushroom Fair, of all places.

Why the fair? Well. That was the question, wasn't it? The truth was she liked being around crowds without being part of them. She liked being looked at. She had known that about herself for years, ever since a certain summer two years ago when she was twenty-six and a fellow lifeguard had caught her changing behind the pump house and neither of them had said a word about it for three days. That summer had ended. The itch to be seen had not.

So she wandered the last usable field near the condemned county rocket launch site, past the funnel cake stand, past a man selling oyster mushrooms out of a wagon, until she found herself in the open-sided exhibition tent. Rows of model rockets on folding tables. And one table at the end hung with pennant banners made of felt.

"That banner looks like something from a old-timey parade!" she said, right as the man behind the table hooked one up on his display stand.

The man was thirty-one, maybe taller than that in spirit, with sawdust still clinging to his forearm like he'd left work an hour ago. Andreas Granger, according to the little card on the table. Cane mill roller groover, according to the same card, which was a job title she had never once heard in her life.

"You think so?" he asked, and he smiled like the compliment had actually landed somewhere. "That one's my grandfather's. He made it for the first county rocket club, back when this field still had a future."

Keiko stepped closer. The banner was red felt with a white rocket stitched on it, and the trim was ric-rac, that wavy stuff her grandmother used to sew on everything. She reached out and ran her finger along the ric-rac, slow, feeling each little bump.

"It's soft," she said. Her hand was awfully close to his hand on the stand. Closer than it needed to be. She noticed. He noticed. Nobody moved.

"Feel free to handle it," he said. "It's survived worse than fingers."

"What's worse than fingers?" she laughed.

"Hail. A dog. My uncle after two beers." He straightened the pennant against the pole. "He made a dozen of these. This is the only one left. The club folded in, oh, must have been decades ago, and the rocket site got condemned, and the fair just kept coming back anyway. Like a cat that won't leave the porch."

Keiko laughed again, louder than the joke deserved, maybe. And so what? It was her day off.

"So what brings you here alone?" he asked. "No kids, no husband dragging you to the mushroom wagon?"

"Just me," she said. "I wanted to feel free, I guess. Is that a dumb answer?"

"That's the best answer I've heard all day, and I've heard about forty."

"Your turn, then. Why are you alone at a table of felt banners?"

Andreas leaned on the table with both hands. "Honestly? I like watching people who don't know they're being watched. People are their real selves when they think nobody's looking. They pick things up. They smell the beeswax candles. They make faces at the rockets. It's the most honest show in town."

Oh. Oh, that landed somewhere in Keiko's chest and then slid lower, and she felt her face go warm. She looked at him a beat longer than was polite.

"And what do I do," she asked, "when I think nobody's looking?"

"You touch things," he said. "You touched every banner on that table before you said a word to me. And you checked over your shoulder twice, which means part of you wanted somebody to be looking."

The air in the tent got thick all of a sudden, like soup. Keiko picked up a paper program from the table and fanned herself with it, which fooled exactly no one.

"You're dangerous," she said.

"I'm a groover of cane mill rollers," he said. "Danger is my whole job description."

Somewhere outside, a loudspeaker crackled. "Final launch of the day in twenty minutes! Rocket club members to the launch field!"

Keiko turned toward the back of the tent, and that's when she saw it. Behind a partition hung with canvas, there was a screened-off alcove with a hand-lettered sign: COSTUME CHANGES, VENDORS ONLY, PLEASE KNOCK. And beside the alcove, shoved half into the shadow, sat an old steamer trunk with brass latches. The prop trunk. She could see the corner of something yellow and ruffled spilling out of it.

"What's in the trunk?" she asked, though she already knew the answer was going to be good.

"Fair costumes. Old parade dresses, mostly. Some of them older than my grandfather's banner. The vendors change back there between shifts." He said it easy, like it was of no consequence, but his eyes stayed on her face and didn't wander, which somehow made it worse. Or better. Honestly, worse and better at the same time.

"Can anybody try one on?" she asked.

"Anybody brave enough," he said. "That's the rule. I didn't make it up, but I like it."

Keiko looked at the trunk. Then she looked at Andreas. Then she looked at the curtain over the alcove, the canvas one, the one with a gap at the edge where it didn't quite meet the frame. A gap about the width of a man's polite, steady, watching gaze.

She had told herself the truth back at the funnel cake stand, hadn't she? She liked being seen. She had spent two years pretending that itch had gone away, and here was a man who admitted out loud that he liked watching, standing six feet away with sawdust on his arm.

"Well," she said, and picked up her pace before her courage could change its mind, "the rocket launch is in twenty minutes and I need something festive to watch it in."

She slipped through the curtain. And she did not pull it all the way shut. She left it open a hand's width, just so, just enough.

From the other side she heard him say, quiet and even, "I'll be right here at the table. Doing my job. Looking at absolutely nothing."

"Liar," she said, and she was grinning so hard her cheeks hurt.

The trunk opened with a smell of old fabric and cedar. Yellow ruffles. A sash that said MISS SWANTON HARVEST, 1971. A little cap with a fabric mushroom on it. She held the yellow dress up against herself and checked, uselessly, because there was no mirror in there, only the gap in the canvas and whatever was on the other side of it.

She kicked off her sneakers. She unzipped her hoodie. She was still in her work clothes, pool attendant khakis and a polo, and she peeled the polo up over her head slow, slower than she needed to, and she heard the smallest shift of weight on a folding chair outside the gap.

*He's looking,* she thought. *He's actually looking. Oh god, he's looking!*

And out on the launch field, somebody counted down from ten into a crackling loudspeaker for a test rocket, and the whole tent rattled when it went up.

The rocket thundered and died, and Keiko stood there in the alcove with her polo in one hand and her heart doing something medically inadvisable.

She had her khakis on. She had a plain white bra on. She was twenty-eight years old and hiding in a vendor tent like a woman with a plan, except the plan was "be seen on purpose," which was not a plan, it was a confession.

And through the gap, she could see the edge of him. Shoulder. Jaw. The steady line of a man looking exactly where she wanted him to look.

So she reached for the buttons of her polo she'd worn under the hoodie. One. Two. She did it slow, meeting his eyes through the gap the whole time, and he did not look away. Not a flicker. The whole point of him was that, wasn't it? He didn't pretend. He watched her unbutton her shirt through a gap in a canvas curtain at a mushroom fair, and he held her gaze like it was a conversation.

Three. Four.

Her breath had gone shallow. She could hear the fair outside, the loudspeaker, somebody's kid yelling about funnel