Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [164]
I immediately went to Donna to tell her about the exchange. I could see she was conflicted. She was happy that I might be on the verge of drawing a second space mission, but terrified I would die flying it. Several of theChallenger widows were at the party and every spouse, Donna included, was watching them and thinking,That could be me.
The next week I sat in my office, snatching up the phone on the first ring hoping to hear Abbey’s voice, but the call never came. My paranoia began to ratchet upward. Maybe I had read too much into Abbey’s words. Maybe the coy smile I thought I had detected had been nothing more than a gas pain grimace. Maybe George knew of my treasonous McGuire visit and was playing with me.
The week after also came and went with no call, and I was certain I had been toyed with. If a bomb went off under his car now, I would be alone at the top of the suspect list.
Finally, on September 10—my forty-second birthday—I landed from a T-38 mission and found a note on the crew lounge door asking me to call Abbey…at home. I was sure this was the call in which I would learn of my assignment to a second mission. Why else would Abbey want me to disturb him at 10:15P.M .? What a birthday present this was going to be! I dialed the number.
But it was another disappointment. George acted as if there had been no reason to call him at home. All he wanted to know was if I had seen a letter written by a New Mexico congressman on the shuttle program. I was certain, now, that Abbey was the cat and I was the crippled mouse. He was playing with me. There was no pending flight assignment.
On Saturday night I was able to momentarily forget about mission assignments. The class of 1987 hosted its first party and provided some great escapism entertainment in the form of a skit modeled after the TV showThe Dating Game. Dan Brandenstein played the eligible bachelor. He was onstage and screened from several women…or rather class of 1987 men in drag, who were vying for his affection. The only real female participant in the skit was Mae Jemison, the first black woman astronaut. She was introduced as “celebrity host Vanna White.” I’m sure Johnny Cochran could have found a lawsuit in that. One of the men in drag was new astronaut Mario Runco. Imagine a tall, muscular Klinger fromM*A*S*H and you have an image of Mario. He had a classic Roman nose, a perpetual five o’clock shadow, and a regional New York accent—Mario spoke Bronx. For the skit he squeezed into black fishnet stockings, a low-cut dress, and high heels. It was an ensemble that revealed enough hair to have generated a Sasquatch sighting. He was, without question, the ugliest drag queen to have ever put on lipstick.
The class of 1987 gave Dan the list of questions he was required to ask of the prospective dates. Since the military personnel from the new class were also from Planet AD, many of the questions were sexually suggestive. One was an obvious play on the psych questions being asked in the astronaut interview. Apparently those hadn’t changed in the past decade. “If you died and could come back as any animal, what would it be?”
Mario appeared to fall into deep thought on such a complex question. Finally he answered, “I would like to come back as…a beaver.” As if the double entendre needed emphasis, he casually spread his legs. It was a move Sharon Stone would make famous years later in the movieBasic Instinct, but Mario did it first. It was also a move that is irrevocably burned into the synapses of my brain, where memories of my Most Terrifying Sights are stored. Even today, when I look at a blank white wall, I see that hair-way up his skirt and shiver in terror.
The remaining questions and answers were scripted to ensure Dan selected Mario’s character as his date. When Mario came from behind the screen, he went to Dan, grabbed him, twirled so that his back was to the audience, and planted a kiss on Dan’s lips…or so it appeared. Actually he clamped his hand over Dan’s mouth and kissed the back of it. Mario was a hell of