In a strip mall just off Houston’s NASA Parkway is a restaurant called Frenchie’s Italian Cuisine. You wouldn’t know it from the unassuming beige storefront, but inside, Frenchie’s looks like a museum. The walls are covered in framed pictures of smiling astronauts, in their blue jumpsuits and puffy spacesuits, holding up bubble helmets and model spaceships.

Editor’s Note: Read Morgan Thomas’s new short story, “Bump.” “Bump” is a new short story by Morgan Thomas. To mark the story’s publication in The Atlantic, Thomas and Amy Weiss-Meyer, a deputy managing editor at the magazine, discussed the story over email. Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.Amy Weiss-Meyer: “Bump” begins with a confrontation of sorts, addressed “to those who accuse me of immoderate desire.

Electricity was late and expensive
Coming to Appalachia
Knoxville especially so
Twice a month the coal
Man would come to fill the cellar
For warmth and sometimes food
And what I loved most was the fireplace
Where Grandmother and Grandpapa would sit
Near to tell stories but
Oak Ridge came for the war
Or maybe the war came for Oak Ridge
And atomic energy replaced coal
And the cellar became a home for mice
And maybe some insects that we never
Needed to bother since they didn’t bother usOne su

Editor’s Note: Read an interview with Morgan Thomas about their writing process. This story was published online on May 16, 2021.To those who accuse me of immoderate desire, I say look at the oil executives. Look at the Gold Rush. Look at all the women who want a ring and romance and lifelong commitment, and then look again at me.