“And you were there?” Doc asks him.

“Of course not. But I know what I know. I know he didn’t follow procedure. I know the chopper pilot told him to wait, and he didn’t wait. That’s common knowledge. And who paid for that capsule? The taxpayers, that’s who. You and me.”

I remember hearing about the incident, though it happened years before I started working for NASA. Grissom splashed down after a suborbital flight and they got him out of the water unscathed, but his capsule ended up at the bottom of the Atlantic.

Doc brings the end of his index finger straight down onto the bar over and over. “I want to see you in that capsule when the hatch blows and the water starts coming in. You think you know brave? They were blasting our boys a hundred miles into space, and the only way to get them back down was to toss them into the ocean. Drowning was a very serious risk for those guys. Sometimes they had to break procedure. I’m telling you, there was nothing wrong with Gus.”

These two are ex-NASA, I’d put money on it: sitting in a bar in the afternoon arguing about the Mercury project, a little too invested. They sound like the photographers at Technicolor who had nothing to do in between launches but smoke and pitch rumors in the break room across from where I worked: mean stories about whose bowels had turned to water at T-minus ten seconds; whose monkeying with the cooling system may have caused the AS-204 fire. Grissom had died in that fire, six years after the hatch incident. It was considered bad form to criticize him.

Sitting there, nursing my drink, I decide I’m with Doc. Even if Grissom did blow the hatch early, give the man a break. Honestly, when you get right down to it, who wants to go down with the ship?

I order another drink, and a joke comes to mind, one I remember the photographers telling. It’s not a good joke, but I’m starting to feel my drinks and want to chip in. So I clear my throat and say to the two guys, “Hey, what do you get when you cross twenty billion dollars of taxpayers’ money with three thousand pounds of moon dirt?”

They glance over, as if suddenly realizing I’m there.

“I don’t know,” Doc says.

“Three thousand pounds of moon dirt.”

They don’t laugh.

Festus says, “That’s real funny, pal.”

“I’m with you,” I tell Doc. “There was nothing wrong with Gus.”

Doc gives me a cautious nod, as if worried I might want to join their conversation.

Festus mumbles, “Who asked you?”

Coward, I think. How many drinks is it going to take for you to work up your nerve to call her?

I stand.

“You all right, there?” Doc asks.