Maps of the Stars

Love, Celebrity Diets and Microwaves

Alex Gomeski shut the fridge.

He knew he would reopen the fridge.

He knew in the way that people who had been with their partners a long time often knew, that he might actually consume what was in the fridge whether he liked it or not because consuming whatever it might be was easier than the hurt feelings of not consuming it.

But he wanted to be certain he was correct.

He was in his first twenty-four hours at home after six months in the International Space Station and a brief post-mission quarantine.

He had watched with great interest the interviews of other astronauts, speaking about their adjustments back home.

Some of the older astronauts, in the classified interviews, had mentioned brief auditory hallucinations.

“Sorry, Kelsey, run that one by me again.”

“It’s GippyMeal Number Thirteen,” she said with the smile that had gleaned her third place in Miss Southwest Louisiana.

Alex nodded, smiled pleasantly. That was not the part that confused him.

He looked at the counter, rows of boxes with Gailann Periwinkle’s face smiling back at him. It wasn’t a smile that matched his wife’s. In fact, Alex had posed for enough NASA headshots that he thought the smile on the boxes looked like about a take number fifty-four. 

“What are the ingredients of GippyMeal Number Thirteen again?”