* * *
Elliott sat on the bar stool, motionless except for the figures he traced in the soy sauce. Guinda now stood beside him, drawing him close, feeling the warm tears through her blouse. Neither said anything. Neither moved, save for the subtle motion of sobs beside her.
“That’s what happened in 2010,” he finally said.
“You had a mental breakdown. It happens a lot. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Straightening up and pushing a sushi roll across his plate, he said, “It wasn’t a breakdown. It was a tantrum. I was thirty-four, had a Ph.D., was a respected member of the community with a wonderful family. I irrevocably disgraced myself and that family. And I’ve been running from that all my life.”
“You’ll feel better now, Ted, now that you’ve let it out. It can’t hurt you any more now that it’s outside.”
“If only that were true, Guinda. But the truth is, I’d give anything now for you not to know that about me. I could hide behind my Nobel Prize and all that before, but now you know who I really am. Now you’re like Susie and Luke and Martha, just another face I need to beg forgiveness from.”
“Why would you need forgiveness from me? I’m just …”
Elliott studied the soy sauce. Guinda studied Elliott.
Finally she said, “Did Susie really forsake science after that?”
“No. I guess even a raving lunatic of a father couldn’t snuff that fire out. She became a computer scientist and has been very successful designing advanced neural-networks.”
“She was able to look past her father’s limitations and measure you on a more enduring scale. How about Luke?”
“He followed in her footsteps, but he’s concentrating on the development of DNA-based computers at the University of Dayton. He’s on sabbatical in Japan right now.”
“So he, too, was able to pick out his father’s best qualities and not hold a single event against you. Are they close to you now?”
“No.”
“Well, it looks like you did a lot more right things than wrong things.”
“I think the biggest right thing I did was leaving them alone after the science fair. I shudder to think what might have happened if I’d influenced them more than I did.”
“You don’t give yourself much credit, Ted. You were probably the biggest influence in their lives. And it was during those important early years. Take it from me. My father was never around. I have absolutely no memory of him. Mom divorced him when I was real little, and I never saw him again after that.”
They and their refreshed Tecates moved to the living room after the sushi disappeared. A glass-wall exposure to the west dazzled him as he deposited the two beers on the glass coffee table. The sun shone a deep crimson as it descended toward its temporary extinction. It seemed to be suspended just outside for their pleasure alone in defiance of Kepler. The table cradled a thick glass top with deeply cut geometric patterns on its underside. The sun’s evening rays refracted their way through that maze of glass prisms, engulfing the room in a mosaic of glints and spectra. The light sought to analyze and expose every detail of those glass furrows, as if they were magnets drawing each photon into their mysterious web of angles by an invisible force and then dispatching it again in a direction prescribed by some timeless canon.
Elliott rotated one of the beer glasses and watched the display change. As he stood pondering the spectacle, Guinda walked in. “If that’s too bright for you, I can just draw the drapes.”
“No. Please don’t. Look how those patterns dance across the wall just by moving these things a little?” He performed a little show for Guinda with the colorful forms doing pirouettes around the walls and ceiling.
“That’s great! I didn’t know you were a performing artist, too,” Guinda giggled.
“I was a goat in our third-grade Christmas pageant. I butted Christine Beste and knocked her into the manger to show her my undying love.”
“I’ll bet she was impressed with that!”
“Yes, I guess impressed is one word,” Elliott continued. “She cut her lip and got blood all over the Christ child. But the worst part was that I had to take the manger home and have my dad fix it that night. And, of course, he asked all the right questions. That put a damper on my show biz career … until the next Christmas, anyway.”
“Did you get into more trouble then?”
“No. The next year I played a bale of straw, and Christine decided to sit that one out, so the whole thing was pretty forgettable.”
“Suppose we sit on the deck instead of in here, Ted.”
After arranging themselves on the glider at one end of the redwood deck overlooking the manicured courtyard below, Elliott said, “You never said much about growing up in Missouri. Did you live in the city? You know, I’m from Missouri, too. I’m a little curious about what it was like there a couple of generations after I left.”
“I guess you could call me a city girl, maybe suburban is a better way to put it. I grew up in a little town but it was all surrounded by other towns, which were also surrounded by other towns. A few of the towns even had downtowns. You could tell when you were downtown because there was usually an old church or an old town hall in among the Holo-Wars and the Century Plazas. In some towns, they’d just have a rock with a brass plate to tell you where the town hall used to be. That way you had more room for the Psych Riders and Virtual Beats and things.
“When you drove around, you’d never know what town you were in except for the sign that would say Ginkgo Heights, Home of Virgin. And then you’d pass another sign that would say Terman, Home of Rod Thumper. I’ve always been proud of coming from the hometown of Long Comma Dick and Extortia. They’re pretty famous, probably end up in Congress.”
“Did you have a favorite hangout?”
Guinda adjusted her long, golden legs across the wicker table top in front of them. Her shorts stretched upward as she sank deeper into the cushion, but no tan line appeared. “Sure, we used to hang out at the Fairway Center a lot. Our favorite place was O’Doul’s Deli. They had this Grindello Special, and if you were good friends of whoever was working there, you could count on an extra dill pickle and a free bag of chips. The owner knew about the freebies, but she didn’t mind.
“She had this big TV in the back room where we used to watch political game shows and talk shows and soaps; and when we’d go home, Mother would have the same things on TV. She said I was really lucky to be surrounded by so many solid, public-spirited influences all those years. When she was a kid, most of the shows were still the old-time ones before they started putting the public figures on them. When she was in high school, she took this course in contemporary women’s issues, and one of her assignments was to demonstrate at the state capitol for that new law that required that at least half of the TV shows feature public figures.
“She told stories about the women’s movement after the turn of the century. She said women were just beginning to appreciate their sexual powers as a strong political force and if women didn’t get into politics when they were young and sexy, they were missing a real opportunity.”
“Is that what you’re trying to do, Guin?”
“Well, I guess that’s been in the back of my mind for a long time now. I’ve kept my body in pretty good shape, and I’ve got some Olympic medals, but I’m 26 now, and it won’t be too long before my breasts start drooping and my nipples get mushy,” she said matter-of-factly, “and then I won’t be worth much in politics.”
“Do you think your breasts are your greatest assets?”
“Sure! Don’t you?”
“Well Guin, I’ll have to admit that your body is pretty exciting.” The blush rose on his face, overcoming the evening shadows. “But it’s not your greatest asset. You’re so much more than an exciting body.”
“Then what is,” she asked, sitting up straight and taking his wrinkled, hairy hand between her soft, smooth ha
nds. “I’d really like to know what your opinion is, Ted.”
“I think it’s your smile. … I think it’s your energy. … But more than anything else, Guin, I think it’s your … your honesty,” he said, responding to her touch. “I admire honesty and guilelessness and sincerity. I don’t see much of it anymore, and you’ve reminded me of the simple beauties I used to know in my youth … like the wind in my hair and the mockingbirds singing in the treetops. I knew a girl like you in another century, on another planet. I’ve replaced all that with equations and quarks for so long, but you’ve reminded me that it’s still alive and that it’s the same now as it was then. It’s me who’s changed. But you’re bringing me back.”
“I can bring even more back to you, Ted.” She stroked his hand and his arm. “Does my body still excite you?”
Elliott gulped and said fearfully, but without hesitation, “Very much.”