"The future?"
"I saw what we're doing now … you and me getting messed up on a couple of pents of beer and talking like this."
"But we do this all the time. How is tonight different from any other night?" I moved to stand beside him.
He paused. He gazed at me with a serious look in his face. "Because I saw myself leaping into the sea."
"Kill yourself? Why? There's no reason to thr—"
"Let me finish. I never reach the sea. I don't know what happens, but I don't touch it."
I gazed out on the motionless sea. "I don't understand."
"It still mystifies me, but it's like the Elysar Sea doesn't exist."
"That's ridiculous. Everyone knows it exists. Why, if it weren't punishable by death, I'd spit into the sea so you could hear the sizzle. And you, a cosignum, a Guardian of the Great Boardwalk of the Elysar Sea, know that better than anyone."
"What we see isn't always what we know."
Then Rashka described for me his theories on the fourth dimension. He said the established theory was wrong: the fourth dimension isn't time—it's thought. We react to things as we perceive them and believe them to be, he said. What we think is hydrochloric acid, we believe is hydrochloric acid.
Of course, this was asinine to me. "When the Earthlings discovered the Elysar, they didn't know what it was until after one of their fool space sailors dipped his hands in and watched in horror as they melted away. Everyone here knows that. Schoolchildren know that. How could you say such a thing?"
"Perhaps his mind was cluttered. Or maybe he wasn't ready to enter the fourth dimension. I don't really know the answer. But time and space become unimportant. All that matters is the mind. The Elysar Sea only opens when the mind is open to the possibilities."
"And you know this how?"
"I simply know."
I'd heard that explanation used many times before. It never settled well in my mind.
He picked up his final beer, raising it toward his face as if making a toast. "Let's finish these together," he said.
I saw clearly what was about to happen and that there was absolutely no way I could change his mind. At that moment, an unexpected feeling washed over me: peace. We downed the final beers together and looked at each other as true friends.
"I will miss you," Rashka said. Tears welled up in his eyes. Mine too, for that matter.
"Will I be able to see you go into the sea, or will I see you burn up?"
He nodded. "That's a good question. It depends on how strongly what I've said tonight has affected you. If you don't believe any of it, then to you I'll be dead, perhaps in a blaze of glory or insanity. If you do, however, then I'll exist in your mind. In more ways than one, I believe."
He smiled again and said no more.
It seemed like hours as he climbed up the wall and poised at the top. I thought I felt a soft breeze, though not a ripple appeared on the Elysar. Rashka looked at me where I stood, the smile still on his face. I thought I heard him say goodbye, but his lips never moved. Then he was gone.
There was no splash. No noise. And I had never felt closer to him.
The Evolution of Love by Robb Grindstaff
At the beginning, she took a seat at a small table across from the man. He looked nice. Thirties, about her age. Glasses, short hair, clean cut. She couldn't quite bring herself to make eye contact as she adjusted in her chair.
"So," she said, "we've got, what, three minutes, right? Is that how this works?"
"Your first time at speed-dating too, I see. Good. I was afraid I'd look like a complete idiot if my first date was experienced at this sort of thing."
He smiled at her. She liked his smile and finally met his eyes, then glanced at his nametag.
"Hi, Steven. I'm Dempsey."
His gaze drifted down to her nametag, as if to verify her assertion, or possibly to check the spelling. She got a lot of requests to repeat her name or to spell it. Perhaps a bit unusual for a girl's name, but her parents were the unusual type.
"Hi, Dempsey. It's nice to meet you. And please, call me Steve."
"Okay, Steve, so what do we talk about in our three minutes before we use it all up with introductions?"
"I have no idea," he chuckled. "I've never really been great at conversation when I first meet someone, so I don't know why I thought having a timed event would help. Maybe just knowing if I couldn't think of anything to say, there'd be no more than three minutes of uncomfortable silence."
"I'm the opposite. Especially if I'm nervous, it's hard to shut me up. I just start babbling to fill gaps. So relax, you'll be fine. No awkward silences with me in the room."
She forced herself to stop talking for a moment. The awkward silence descended.
"Tell me, Steve, what do you do for work?" She tried to remember the three basic questions she had chosen to ask every 'date' this evening. She wanted to learn something about each person, but mainly she wanted to ask and listen rather than rambling on about nothing and the three minutes would be over without her date getting in a single word.
Steve cleared his throat and took a sip of water before answering. Very methodical, she thought. A sign of intelligence, rationality.
"I'm a scientist," he said. "More precisely, a research microbiologist. But that's too boring to talk about here. I can't even explain it in three minutes. What about you?"
"I'm a pediatric nurse at the children's cancer center."
"That must be terribly hard, you know, to deal with children who are so sick, especially when one dies. I really admire that, but I couldn't do it. I like dealing with microbes. Wow, I probably just sounded very uncaring and insensitive, didn't I?"
"Not at all," she reassured him and reached over to pat the back of his hand, which still gripped his water glass like a trapeze bar. "Maybe it means you're too sensitive, that you would have difficulty dealing with death."
"How do you deal with that?"
"My faith gets me through the rough times. Faith that they will get better, and faith that those who don't get better go to a better place. God gives me the strength to keep smiling and I always try to give each child hope."
Steve took another sip of water. She wasn't sure if he was thirsty or if that was an excuse to withdraw his hand from her touch. The look on his face told Dempsey she'd gone too far. She'd already deviated from her plan by bringing up religion in the first minute. He squirmed a little and glanced at the timer. She jumped straight to her second question to break the two seconds of silence and deflect attention away from an uncomfortable subject.
"What do you do for fun in your spare time?"
"I suppose that's why I'm here. I haven't had any spare time in so long, I haven't even had time to meet people, women, you know, to date or become friends or have relationships. Besides my research in the lab, I write articles for research journals or participate in panel discussions at institutes or attend seminars. But I've completed my Ph.D. now, and I've got a tenured position, and I realized life was going to pass me by if I didn't start getting out. A co-worker recommended this as a way to jump right into the deep end, so to speak."
"Yeah, I definitely think we're in the deep end of the dating pool here." She looked around the room at the other couples – some in animated, lively discussions, some glancing around the room in agony over each ticking second. "But I think we're doing fine, keeping our heads above water. Don't you think?"
He agreed.
Their time ran out and the emcee blew a whistle to signal all the men to move to the table on their immediate right. She didn't have a chance to ask her third question.
"It's great to meet you, Steve."
He took her extended hand and shook it gently. He had soft hands and kind eyes. Dempsey liked something about him. Too bad she'd blown it with all her God-talk. Even though he was her first speed-date partner, and she had nineteen more to go over the rest of the hour, she didn't hesitate to place a checkmark beside his name on the form in her hand. H
e probably didn't do the same in return, which meant there would be no exchange of phone numbers or e-mail addresses or any way to get in touch with him again.
Dempsey settled in for the rest of the event, sometimes getting through all three of her questions with plenty of time to spare, sometimes not even needing her questions to keep the conversation flowing.
One man was way too old for her. A few were too young. Some, she could tell immediately, weren't the least bit interested in her. Dempsey was quite comfortable in her skin, and she knew she was pretty, in a slightly overweight girl-next-door kind of way, but she wasn't 'hot,' which was okay with her. The guys looking for hot would have to suffer through three minutes with the taller than average, big-boned girl with the beautiful cotton candy blonde hair, her best feature.
Several men seemed very interested in Dempsey, but she wasn't interested in them. It made her feel shallow and hypocritical to admit she didn't find them physically attractive. One man had yellow teeth and his halitosis wafted across the table. She had to lean back in her chair, which she thought probably made her seem very stand-offish.
The night ended with only the one checkmark on her form. If Steve didn't check her name too, her night would turn out a total waste.
* * *
On the second day, her cell phone rang just as she finished putting away the last of her dinner dishes.
Steve.
* * *
"I'm really glad I went because I met you," Dempsey said over dinner on their second date, "but I will never, ever do speed-dating again. It was a horrible experience. Not fun."
Steve laughed. He had a hearty laugh, Dempsey thought, and he'd definitely relaxed more and talked easily. He'd seemed more nervous on their first real date than during their initial encounter.
"Yeah," he agreed. "I could've stopped after the first three minutes and been done for the evening. Yours was the only name I checked. It's definitely not for me. But it worked out quite well that we connected. And it was the first time for both of us, and we were paired up on the first round. So random."
"I don't know if it was random," Dempsey said. "Things always have a way of working out for the best, don't you think?"
* * *
They never said it out loud, but by their fourth date, they both knew they were in an exclusive relationship, just taking things very slowly. Not that either of them had other suitors queued up. Steve called her to say good morning at seven each weekday, knowing she would be sitting on her patio reading the newspaper and having coffee, getting ready for her workday. They would chat for ten minutes before he had to say goodbye and begin his commute to work.
She called him on her lunch break every afternoon.
He told her all about his work. He said it was great to have someone to talk to about it who wasn't another scientist, but who could understand the concepts he was so thrilled to analyze each day. Dempsey's nursing background made her the perfect person for this. He didn't have to oversimplify things for her to understand, and her genuine interest and intelligent questions could keep him talking about his latest findings for hours. When he apologized for going on and on about his research, she waved her hand dismissively and asked another insightful question.
* * *
She called him on the afternoon before their sixth date, in tears, to cancel that night's plans for a movie. She wouldn't be good company tonight, she explained through her sobs. She'd lost a precious little one from her floor that day.
Steve arrived at her doorstep within half an hour, uninvited, with a bouquet of flowers and a box of tissue—gift-wrapped. They sat on Dempsey's couch and he held her while she told him all about little Talia, who never complained, always smiled, who let the other kids draw pictures with washable markers on her smooth scalp.
Steve kissed Dempsey that night for the first time. When she'd sobbed herself hoarse, exhausted, he tucked her into bed and kissed her again before turning out the light, feeding her cat, and locking the door behind him as he left.
He called at seven the next morning to see how she was doing.
"Fine," she said. "I'm much better now. Talia was such a gift, and I'm just so blessed to have had her in my life for a few months. Thank you for being with me last night. I needed that, and it means a lot to me. Oh, and thanks for feeding Kitteh."
* * *
Steve cooked for Dempsey on Saturday afternoon at his place. A gourmet meal. She had no idea he was an amateur chef – professional quality. Steve sat quietly while Dempsey said grace before she dove into the meal. The pecan-crusted salmon, flaky and firm, basted her tongue in a myriad of delicate flavors. White asparagus spears – spargel, he called it – imported from Germany and steamed to perfection, with a white cream sauce that perfectly complemented the salmon. A wild rice with truffles. Dempsey had never eaten truffles before. She knew what they were, and she knew they were expensive. She learned they were delicious beyond anything she'd imagined.
They sat on the couch with a glass of fine wine and kissed for hours before she finally pulled herself away.
"I have to get up early tomorrow. I should go."
"You don't work tomorrow."
"I'm filling in as a substitute Sunday school teacher for first-graders tomorrow. You could come to church with me, if you want."
Steve poured himself another glass of wine and chuckled. "No thanks. That's not really for me."
* * *
Tuesday night, Steve once again held Dempsey as she cried, this time over little Bradley, three years of age.
"At least he's not in pain anymore," she said.
"I don't understand," Steve said once she had settled into acceptance. "How can you believe in God when you see these children suffering every day?"
"I believe when I see the joy and love in their faces despite their troubles. I believe when I see the miracles of healing every day. And I have to believe that when we lose one, they've gone to heaven. How could I see this every day and not believe?"
"So you believe in a God who would strike innocent children with horrible diseases, then thank him when modern science cures one, and thank him when one dies because he's no longer suffering. I just have trouble wrapping my head around that logic."
"And you believe in a God who is inherently evil, inflicting children with illness, and you think it's up to science to come to the rescue and save them."
"That's not what I said." Steve stood and paced back and forth in Dempsey's living room. "That's not what I believe."
This is our first fight, Dempsey thought as she tried to swallow her anger.
"What exactly do you believe in?"
"I believe in what I can see," Steve said. "What I can measure."
"These microbes you study, the microscope you see and measure them with, before that microscope was invented, before scientists could see them, did those microbes exist?"
"Of course. We just didn't know about them yet."
"So even though you couldn't see them, they still existed?"
"I know the point you're trying to make, but that's not the same."
* * *
Steve didn't call Dempsey at seven the next morning. Dempsey didn't call Steve during her lunch break. Steve didn't call Dempsey that evening.
He showed up at her doorstep without calling first.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't want to fight anymore."
Dempsey pulled him inside with kisses until they collapsed on the couch. They didn't come up for air until Kitteh jumped on Steve's head and scratched his ear.
"Come to my lab on your next day off. I have something I want to show you."
* * *
Dempsey squinted and adjusted and tried to focus on the translucent gray squiggle.
"What am I looking at? What am I supposed to be seeing?"
"It's a new bacterium."
"You've discovered a new germ?"
"Not discovered. Invented. Created. We made it right here. We spliced the DNA from two different bacteria and create
d this one."
"If this thing escapes, couldn't it cause a worldwide epidemic, like in that movie?"
"No," Steve laughed. "It's strictly beneficial. And this one won't reproduce. Not yet anyway. When we perfect the sequencing, it will. This is just a prototype, but we're working toward designing one that will eat cancer cells and leave healthy cells alone. When there are no more cancer cells, they would stop reproducing and die off."
Dempsey pulled away from the eyepiece of the microscope and grinned at Steve.
"Sounds kind of like high-tech leech therapy."
"Yeah, I guess it is."
* * *
They sat on Dempsey's patio that evening and Steve grilled hamburgers. Not any old hamburgers. Hamburgers with bleu cheese crumbles mixed in with the meat, topped with fresh spinach leaves.
"Come to the hospital with me this Saturday. I want you to meet some of the kids your work will help."
"I'm not sure our work will be ready in time to help any of your patients."
"Come anyway. Maybe they'll inspire you to work faster."
"I'm not really that good with children."
"Think of them as amoebas."
* * *
Marissa, at fifteen, was by far the oldest. She wore a Diamondbacks baseball cap cocked sideways at an angle, which didn't really hide her hair loss.
"He's kinda cute," Marissa whispered to Dempsey. "Nice butt too."
"Do not be looking at my boyfriend's butt," Dempsey scolded her with a grin. She'd just called Steve 'my boyfriend' for the first time. "And yeah, he does have a nice little tushie, doesn't he?"
Marissa stayed at Dempsey's side, as she always did. She helped Dempsey with all the younger ones, keeping them happy, making sure they had water or juice, refereeing the occasional fuss over who was playing with what toy first. Marissa never acted like a patient, but like a full-time, live-in nurse's aide.
Raymundo wanted to play ball with Steve. Five years old, but no bigger than a two-year-old, he pulled Steve by the hand over to the side of the children's play room and tossed the Wiffle ball to him. Steve caught it and tossed it back, underhanded, gingerly. The ball bounced off Raymundo's thick, swollen fingers and rolled away. The little boy reached down for it and fell over.
Marissa was right there to dust him off and stand him back up. Raymundo just grinned and tossed the ball back to Steve. Steve handed the ball to Marissa.