Poor Lonely Cassiopeia

words: 3,354

We’re bored. For most of us, it’s been billions of years since we were born from those shock waves, compressed and compressed until we finally emerged a cluster of protostars. After that, life on the Main Sequence is little more than fusion. Four hydrogen molecules into one helium molecule keeps us luminous, but doesn’t give us much to pass the centuries with. Swirling around the strongest point of gravity in the galaxy lends itself to a lot of down time, so most of us have been fascinated with humans since you crawled out of the mud and had the bright idea to look up. We delighted in the attention, our luminosities finally shimmering for an audience. You painted us on cave walls, looked to us for guidance, and named us. For the first time since we’d burst into existence, we felt important. 

But then, as your own culture grew and expanded, we were pushed to the background of your existence. You had wars to fight, peoples to conquer, and a planet to generally destroy. So we started getting a little more selective with our attention—the greats, Galileo, Newton, Brahe. They were interesting enough for a few minutes, but you all vanish so quickly. That’s when we decided we needed histories of our own, just like you all had for us. So we started picking people to watch: 

☆

Cass got to the observatory first, corralling a group of kindergarteners with very little success because Sarah M.’s mom caught the flu and couldn’t chaperone. The rope with brightly colored handles for each student to hang onto was only effective if all fifteen of them actually held it, which we could tell was decidedly not the case. Sarahs M., P., and Z. had somehow orchestrated a coup between the parking lot and lobby where an uninterested attendant explained the observatory’s rules. Instead of attempting to capture fifteen attention spans, he’d resorted to shooting Cass angry looks. He was grumpy and apathetic, and not much fun to watch. Frankly we were a little tired of watching Cass deal with what we could only classify as tertiary characters. 

But then, just as Alex B. and Lauren R. made a dash for the automatic sliding door, a man stopped them with a hand on top of each of their heads. Ten adults dragged their feet behind him, clutching notebooks that had HIS 325K or C C 315R scrawled across the front. Any semblance of excitement melted from their faces when they saw the group that had beaten them there.  

“Ma’am, would you like some help?” the man asked, nudging the two runaways back in Cass’s direction. “I think these might belong to you.” 

“Oh, god,” Cass started, “I’m so sorry. Alex, Lauren, back here now.” The aforementioned children made their way towards the defunct rope slower than they’d run away from it. “Please, go about your…field trip?”

“You’re here for the tour of the observatory too?” he asked. 

A chorus of high pitched voices shouted a, “Yes!” that made him take a step back. 

“Well,” he said, “why don’t we kill two birds with one stone and combine our tours?” We didn’t want to jump the gun, but something seemed special about him. 

We  took stock of Cass’ brood. Her kids squirmed and fidgeted like their lives depended on making as much of a commotion as humanly possible. Natalie B. and Sarah M. were singing a brand new composition about their favorite colors, foods, and smells. Alex L. and Sarah Z. sat on the floor and were taking turns counting backwards from 100. As pink is good and pizza is good and we! love! cake! blended with 97, 96, 95, 93, no, 95, 94, 93, Cass made a decision we hadn’t seen her make in at least six years: she took a chance. 

☆

We aren’t supposed to meddle. For most of human existence, we’ve done a pretty stellar job, but when the boredom really hits, it’s hard not to give in and make things happen. When we do, it tends to turn out poorly. After all, just look at Romeo and Juliet. We thought persuading him to go to the Capulet ball would help mend his broken heart, but it didn’t quite pan out. To our credit, we’d never interfered in Cass’ life, even when she’d begged for someone to do something and make her dad come back. But we didn’t want to accidentally doom her to a tragic death, so we just listened while she cried until her eyes were bloodshot and the boys in her AP Chemistry class asked if she was on drugs. 

We didn’t help her when she moved to Seattle on her own after college graduation, nothing but a degree in early childhood education and a cat packed into a crate, yowling the whole way from New York in the backseat of her hatchback, or when she went on bad date after bad date with various coffee-fed hipsters. Or even when the other teachers at Silverleaf Elementary ignored her in the break room for the first six weeks of classes. But we’d had enough of that—and Cass’d had enough of being alone. 

So if we decided to meddle just slightly and start one chain of events, can you blame us?

☆

By the time the grown students had each taken a look at us through the telescope and sat through his supplemental lecture about the significance of those myths and subsequent impacts on human culture, Cass’s kindergarteners were subdued to the point of falling asleep. Bram—he’d introduced himself with a firm handshake and a prepossessing grin—had tried to make his speech interesting enough for five year olds, but Disney would admittedly have done a better job. At least they were finally quiet. 

“You really didn’t have to help keep them entertained,” Cass said, checking her watch. Five to nine, which meant we’d see parents arriving any minute. 

“It was no problem,” he said, even though we knew they’d been a handful and a half. “They were sweet.”

Tired parents began filtering in through the sliding doors, so Cass floated back to her heavy-lidded students. As she matched each tiny raincoat and galoshes with their larger counterparts, Bram smiled. We asked around and found out it had been exactly ten months since he’d been so instantly enamored of a woman—divorce, but we had nothing to do with it. Cass had an air of independence and uniqueness about her that he might have found wildly appealing. 

We knew Cass hadn’t met a man so willing to help without the promise of a reward in ages. Ever, maybe. It helped that he looked just like the rugged lumberjacks conjured in middle school fits of loneliness. She herded the final few parents outside, mysteriously including Sarah M.’s mom, and then turned back towards Bram. He stood tall beside the statue of Galileo near the doors, eyes dropping to his watch when she caught him looking at her. Something stirred inside her, something that had been brewing and boiling since she took the job at the elementary  in August, and long before that if she allowed herself to be honest.  

Cass looked up and out the window, made direct eye contact with us. 

She tilted her chin up towards us, almost defiant. “Do you want to stick around for a bit?” she asked Bram, emboldened by that something in her gut (and, hopefully, our nudging). 

He took a step forward, emboldened by her boldness. “I’d love that, actually.” 

Behind them, the attendant coughed. “You two wanna lock up?”

“Is that allowed?” Cass asked at the same time Bram said, “Yeah, sure!”

The attendant shrugged. “Don’t steal anything and don’t fuck near the telescope.”

A thick, awkward silence blanketed the three of them. Cass’s eyes were stuck wide open as she looked at Galileo, willing him to come to life and distract from the it. Bram’s thick eyebrows were lodged firmly in his hairline. The attendant coughed again. “I’m just kidding,” he said, walking towards the door. “I don’t care if you fuck near the telescope.” He pressed a keyring the size of a fist into Cass’s palm as he went by and slipped outside. The automatic doors pressed together with a squeak, and we bumped him from tertiary to secondary. 

“Well,” Bram started, taking a step forward and offering his arm, “how’s about we go for a spin?”

We watched the wheels turning in Cass’s head—the mental pro/con lists she was managing, judging all of the potential outcomes against her actual feelings. She bit her lip and crossed her fingers behind her back, the same good luck charm her father had taught her before he walked out. “Yes,” she said finally, smoothing her free hand down the front of her a-line dress. “Let’s do it.” 

☆

They wound up side by side in the rounded auditorium, seated in the second row from the back. Cass’s fingers moved insistently across the constellations printed in her skirt while she went on about the stars projected on the domed ceiling above them. “And that’s Polaris, y’know, the North Star? But the thing is,” she paused, turning towards Bram so he was face to face with her warm brown eyes and the few dark freckles dusted across her almond complexion, “that wasn’t always the North Star.”

“I knew that,” Bram offered. We weren’t that impressed, but  Cass smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners. 

“Did you know that for a while there wasn’t a North Star at all?” She fought back a giggle, totally at ease talking about the galaxy. “Well, according to Pytheas, at least.”

“The navigator?”

“Exactly,” Cass said. She looked back up at us and swept her hand across the starscape. “Beta Ursae Minoris was closest, but he didn’t consider it a true Pole Star.”

“Wow,” Bram started, “I wonder what it must’ve been like without something to guide mankind.” He placed his hand on her knee and she inched her own closer along the navy fabric draping her legs. This is when we noticed it: Bram, musing on the philosophical nature of us, while Cass was far more concerned with our physiological properties and relation to the observable world. Neither one of them was wholly correct because we’re so much more than they’d ever be able to comprehend, but we saw what happened next coming a mile off. 

“They managed okay,” Cass said. “Just used a different reference point."

Bram hummed in approximate agreement, moving fractionally closer with every second. Or as close as the armrest between them allowed. Until, on a wave of confidence and an overwhelming urge not to overthink, Cass leaned across the armrest and grazed her lips across the edge of Bram’s mouth. Things escalated from there, and if we’d have been any younger, we would have had to avert our eyes.

☆

Cass wound up in Bram’s lap, thighs bracketing his hips. Her waves were falling out of her school-appropriate updo as her mouth moved restlessly against Bram’s. She couldn’t make up her mind, lips forging a path across his skin in all directions: collar bone to high up on his neck, back to his mouth and down to the hollow of his throat. She burned like a blue hypergiant. 

“You’re a Libra, aren’t you?” Bram asked, vibrations from a laugh tickling her lips. 

She pulled away with a wet pop. “Excuse me”? Cass asked, pulling back a hairsbreadth and smoothing her hair behind her ears. The temperature dropped ten degrees, back to something normal and uncharged.

“Born in October?” Bram offered. 

“I know what a —I mean, you…believe in that stuff?”

He shrugged. “I teach it, so I at least don’t harbor a disdain for astrology.” He exhaled, then stopped just short of tilting his head down towards hers again. “Why?”

“Because it’s crap!”

Three and a half minutes of almost-kissing but mostly-staring later, as Cass reached around herself to adjust her bra—when did Bram get it undone?—she froze. “Why are we arguing about this? I don’t know you.” Then, after fishing her glasses out of her bag, where she so smartly stored them just before the making out in an empty auditorium started, she gasped. “I don’t know you! Oh my god, what am I doing?” 

Bram’s mouth fell open. “Are you okay? Look, if I read the room wrong, I’m really sorry.” 

“Shush,” Cass started, wiping smeared lipstick off of her chin. “I jumped you, okay? I just—god—you’re cute and you put up with my mob of kindergarteners and it’s been a few months, and you listened to me talk about the damn North Star, but you’re…kooky!”

He frowned. “I’m a professor, so I don’t know how that qualifies as—”

“Astrology!” Cass said. She poked a finger at his chest. “That’s nuts! Wacky! Complete and utter bull—!”

“Okay, okay, okay, hold up. You’re freaking out because I teach astrology. That is your major grievance at this point in time. You think I’m various synonyms of crazy. Am I getting that straight?”

Cass dropped her hand and nodded. 

“Well you’re plenty smart, so I don’t know how you can’t see that’s a stupid reason to stop kissing me. Unless—” his eyebrows slanted downwards as his voice softened “—you really didn’t want to be in the first place.”

She fought the urge to roll her eyes. “No, I did, I just—we’re ideologically incompatible!”

“Because I have somewhat of an interest in the history and cultural relevance of constellations.”

“Are you stuck on a loop or something?” Cass asked, taking a step backwards.

Bram stood, shaking his head. He was so sure this had been going well, that all the signs were positive. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s actually going on here.”

“What’s going on here is probably trespassing,” she said, collecting the grey rain coat folded across the railing in front of her. “And that attendant should be reported. I mean, how irresponsible?” She was looking down, trying to avoid the sight of her festive berry lipstick streaked around Bram’s mouth. 

“Okay, fine,” Bram said. He picked up his umbrella where it had rolled a few seats down. “Let’s just…lock up and go, then.”

☆

In the lobby, it was impossible for Cass to ignore the drizzle outside, a hypnotic drum against the roof and window panes. She set her purse down to get into her raincoat, and Bram reached around to help her with the long sleeves, like the gentleman we’d assumed he was. The pair walked outside under the roof covering a walkway and some benches and Bram stood awkwardly at the edge while Cass turned the lock behind them. 

“What should I do with the keys?” she asked after a solid minute staring back through the glass at the information desk. 

“Planter?” Bram offered, nodding towards a topiary a foot to her left. 

“Oh, right. Thank you.” She dropped them in with a frown and pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders. She hadn’t brought an umbrella, a cocky oversight by a Seattle newcomer. We’d seen her looking like a drowned rat enough times in the past six months we were almost about to push her into one of the dozens of convenience stores on her weekend route to Pike Place. But an umbrella wasn’t a good enough reason to meddle. Maybe Bram wasn’t either. 

“At least let me walk you to your car,” he said, turning towards the parking lot. The only two cars left had to be theirs; a pickup, mud caked around the wheel wells, and a sensible hatchback in a nondescript silver color. 

“Mine’s the Hyundai.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Bram said leading them that way and shifting so the umbrella was above Cass’s head. 

We’d seen the situation a thousand times, though we weren’t usually the reason: boy meets girl, boy and girl make a rash decision, boy and girl part ways and never see each other ever again. So we had a pretty good idea of what was about to happen. 

“I think you’re a snob,” Bram said. Maybe we didn’t have the best idea of what was about to happen. 

“Excuse me?” Cass asked, eyes going wide beneath the rain-speckled lenses of her glasses. 

“You think I’m not worth it because I teach astrology—which just so happens to be historically tied to astronomy—and I think that’s snobby.”

“I’m not a snob!” She plunged her hand into her bag for her car keys, but came back empty-handed. “Why don’t you leave, if you think I’m such an awful judgy person?”

“I don’t want you to get wet,” he said. “But I stand by my assertion. You’re a snob. Unless there’s something you’re not sharing.”

“I—We barely know each other! I don’t owe you anything,” Cass said, ducking to actually look inside her purse. Her keys had to be somewhere. 

We could tell Bram didn’t want to push too hard, but we didn’t want him to give up, either. “You liked me well enough earlier.”

“We’ve been over—”

“Will you listen to me?” he interrupted, leaning closer to her so he wouldn’t have to shout over the wind. “I liked you, too. Like you, even.”

Cass’s heartbeat picked up, turning her cheeks rosy. “Even after I called you stupid?”

“You didn’t call me—wait, were you thinking that?” He smiled in spite of the implication at hand. “But yeah, even if you called me stupid. I like you.”

Cass sighed. “I don’t want to get into…complex specifics right here, right now.” She folded her arms across her chest. “But I have a difficult relationship with the stars.” She remembered fairy tales in the forms of the constellations, then Cosmos reruns until she could mimic Carl Sagan’s mannerisms. Then nothing. She’d always loved us, but after her dad left, Cass couldn’t stand the mysticism. She focused on the serious and logical aspects of our existence, because anything else was too fleeting. “With the more interpretive side of them, anyway.” 

“I won’t pry,” Bram said. She shot him a look, and he replied with a, “Scout’s honor,” and a three finger salute. “We can parse it out a little at a time. If you want.”

“I wouldn’t be…completely opposed.”

“And you’re not just saying that because I’m currently keeping you dry and you can’t find your keys?”

She smirked. “No, though you are particularly useful right now.” Then Bram weaseled his phone out of his pocket and turned on the flashlight app, pointing it towards the inside of her purse. We smiled at the tiny seeds of domesticity taking root, and collectively exhaled that we hadn’t actually ruined the whole night. 

“Found them!” Cass raised the keys in her fist triumphantly and Bram leaned down to kiss her. It was a short peck, necessarily so because he had to keep the umbrella upright. He pulled away and she grinned, looking up at him through her eyelashes, almost sheepish, but mostly proud. 

“Hey,” he asked, finally. “What’s Cass short for, anyways? Cassandra?”

She sighed. “Oh, you’re gonna love this,” she said, glancing up at us. “Cassiopeia.”

“Are you serious?”

“As the discovery of a new terrestrial planet in our Solar System, I am.” 

So when Bram dropped the umbrella to scoop Cass up into the kind of kiss we normally see at weddings, we shimmered in elation. But deep down, past the convective and radiation zones, in our cores, there was the smallest twinge of sadness. Though the night stretched on for Cass and Bram, it was more like a second or two for us, because we see everything. But always from the future, because the earth’s light takes so long to reach us. We’re a little like time travelers who only look into the past. So who knows what’s going on right now, but maybe Cass and Bram’s great-great-great-great-great grandchildren are running around. We hope so.