Schrödinger's Ball

by Adam Felber

  We watched Dr. Schrödinger with something approaching admiration. The old guy really knew how to sell it. For the second straight day, Humdingers were selling like hotcakes on the banks of the Charles. In fact, people seemed to be strolling down to the water just to find the old physicist and his wares.

  The wares had improved, we had to admit. “Dori” had obviously been working overtime, and now the World’s Largest Molecule (sic) could be purchased in a variety of formats, including pendants, rings, keychains, bracelets, earrings, brooches, belt buckles, “Handi 3-Paks,” aglets, cuff links, lapel pins, deely boppers, refrigerator magnets, barrettes, hood ornaments, Christmas ornaments, door knockers, “Economy Size” boxes, necklaces, and “Classic.” There was even a new “Mini-Humdinger,” which made no sense at all when we thought about it.

  In fact, we thought as we watched the crowd huddle around the hastily assembled card tables, just what is the appeal of these things? Do they do something that we’re missing? And is it really safe to market a new, untested molecule even if it doesn’t have a use (that we know of)? Though we admired the doctor’s entrepreneurial savvy, we couldn’t help looking with disdain upon the legions of willing suckers as they opened their wallets to what appeared to be a bit of a chemistry-based scam.

  Before leaving, however, we bought one, just to determine exactly what this silly fervor was about. We chose the belt buckle, because it appeared to be a sturdy and not unattractive accessory for when we were done studying the molecule itself.

  Grant’s Escape Plan is, naturally, brilliant. Though perhaps a bit baroque. It is extremely important to Grant that it works, because Grant is starting to feel an overwhelming urge to get away from Deborah Johnstone. Not that he dislikes her company (oh no, not even close), but so much has happened or failed to happen that he very much needs to retreat, regroup, consider, and process.

  The root cause of Grant’s problem with women is so pathetically easy to divine that no remotely honest psychoanalyst could conscientiously take him on as a patient. Not that any of them are likely to have their honesty tested in this manner; Grant himself is well aware of the cause of the malfunction: familiarity, or lack thereof.

  Grant is male-identified. More precisely, he was raised by his father, who is terrible with women in his own right (the root cause of that, incidentally, is much more complicated and continues to make a seemingly endless sequence of psychoanalysts wealthy without much strain on their consciences). It was a two-man household, Grant and Dad. They were not a physically demonstrative family of two, but they were a functioning democracy, and no decision was ever made without reasoned debate leading to consensus. Grant’s dad’s occasional girlfriends never lasted long enough to gain suffrage, not that their vote would’ve made a difference once Grant and his dad had distilled each issue and arrived at identical conclusions, thus producing the necessary two-thirds majority.

  When Grant describes his childhood to friends, the world of his household always comes across as bizarre and even a little cold. But it never seemed cold to Grant at the time, nor does he feel very different about it now. There are, however, certain deficiencies that Grant now recognizes. His latest theory about his dealings with women isn’t that he’s lost his reason or that women are illogical (Deb, for instance, displays exemplary thought processes); it’s just that a certain vital part of the interface between them is strongly encrypted and requires some sort of workaround.

  That Grant might be right about this doesn’t change the fact that the knowledge is utterly useless from a practical standpoint. Which is why escape is so vital.

  Chapter 10

  OUT ON JOHNNY’S LAWN, among the faithful are a few opportunists, people who’ve shown up because there’s a crowd, a happening. Money is sure to change hands, and there are a few people there who intend to be among the receiving hands.

  Floyd is one of them.

  Floyd doesn’t discount what happened the other night, the blond kid and great music and the undeniable heaviosity. But after he was woken up by a friend’s phone call at noon the next day letting him know about the Happening, it only took a sideways glance toward the unusually generous hatful of money from the previous night for Floyd to figure out where his bread might get buttered.

  So Floyd has spent the last day and a half at the edge of Johnny’s lawn, toward the street, with his guitar and Mouse amp, filling in the long gaps between Johnny’s intermittent appearances with sets of his own. There are one or two other buskers from the Square there, but they keep a polite distance, and Floyd’s the one who’s getting the crowd. After all, Floyd’s the guy who was there when Johnny went nova—he might even have something to do with it, for all anyone knows. For all Floyd himself knows, that might be true, but he secretly doubts it. This doesn’t stop him from casually referring to his and Johnny’s “synergy” during his patter and firing up “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” as often as he can get away with it. The money comes at a steady pace, which justifies his approach.

  It’s all going great for Floyd until late the next day, when the blond kid comes out of the house, steps off the porch, and comes straight at him.

  Dr. Schrödinger is taking us out to dinner on his “Humdinger money,” and, frankly, we’re surprised. The old physicist has done nothing but freeload in the past few days, and even his recent success in molecule-vending shouldn’t be enough to change the behavior of a habitual bounder. But he seems sincere, and his “fiery Latin lover” (his words, we assure you) has made herself scarce for the nonce. Apparently, the doctor has a burning need to “impart just a few more quick thoughts,” as though he intends to leave soon. Judging by the miniature fort of notebooks, magazines, and snack-food containers that he has constructed around our couch, this would not seem to be the case. But the dinner is appreciated.

  As we settle into a cozy booth in a Harvard Square restaurant named for one of Beowulf’s most monstrous opponents, we muse that we’ve come to like the old codger quite a bit in the past day or two. Why this is, why our emotions regarding Dr. S. have swung so violently, is not entirely clear. But as he absently dips his spectacles into our water glass to clean them, we feel a surge of grudging affection. We’ll listen. Besides, there’re a few intriguing specials to order….

  If we’d known then that Dr. Schrödinger was going to contrive somehow to stick us with the check, we probably wouldn’t have ordered quite so many drinks and appetizers.

  “Now,” says Dr. Schrödinger, slathering an obscene amount of butter onto a seven-grain roll, “about my cat …”

  Grant’s Plan for Escape was, as previously noted, far too complicated, needlessly baroque, obviously flawed, required too much effort, and was entirely less reliable than any number of simpler plans to get the four of them out of the house unnoticed. It was straight out of a bad movie, substituting entertainment for sound logistics.

  Naturally, they all loved it.

  This is how it went down:

  Around 6 P.M., Johnny floated out the front door and across the lawn, the crowd parting around him in a reverential manner that provoked some quickly stifled laughter from inside the house. Johnny headed toward the curb, toward the very same street musician he’d accosted two nights before.

  At first it looked like the guitar player was going to turn and run, but he seemed to calm down as Johnny put a hand on his shoulder and said something that was inaudible to the rest of the crowd. Moments later, the two of them were heading back up the walkway, the musician toting his guitar and tiny amplifier.

  “This is Floyd,” Johnny told everyone once they’d reached the front porch. Floyd looked a little dazed. “Floyd is going to play for you,” said Johnny. He patted Floyd once on the top of his head, smiled at everyone, and retreated into the house.

  Floyd played.

  It’s entirely possible that Floyd’s playing and singing was exactly the way it had always been, that he sounded no different from the slightly embittered street entertainer that most of the crowd h
ad heard at various outdoor Cambridge locales over the past few years, a reasonably talented performer in a city loaded with an unreasonable number of great musicians. It could well have been that Floyd up there on the porch, rather than a suddenly blossoming and ennobled Major Talent.

  But we’ll never know. Music doesn’t work that way. What with the surreal setting and the singular benediction of Johnny himself, what the assembled Johnnyheads heard was a one-of-a-kind performance from a man specially selected for them. They swayed and nodded to the Square fare that Floyd offered, and, seeing the reaction, Floyd himself started to believe in its beauty, which may in fact have helped him take his game to that fabled next level.

  Or it may not have.

  Either way, the grooving faithful were too enrapt to notice four youths emerge from behind the house and look interestedly at the musician on the porch, trying to convey the impression that they were arriving via some nearby shortcut. There were two men and two women.

  The women were tall and ungainly and wore far too much makeup for their style of dress, which conveyed a slouchy chic. The blonde was fashionably slim, pretty even, and the bespectacled brunette was obviously overcompensating by swinging her hips convulsively as she walked. The men were shorter, both with a discernible five o’clock shadow. They were grungier than the women, wearing baggy clothes and poorly tied bandannas over their hair, which they doubtless referred to as “drug helmets.” Despite the facial hair, they looked distinctly boyish.

  The quartet self-consciously ambled through the crowd, trying far too hard to communicate that they were just looking for a good place to sit, making desperately casual eye contact with their peers as they jostled by. If not for Floyd and his unbelievably well-received rendition of “The Hook,” they’d have been spotted instantly. Instead, they made their way through the crowd to the street without incident, and soon found themselves in the clear. Twenty minutes later, they were among the trees on the deserted campus of the Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, exchanging clothing in the fading sunlight. Which may have been the real reason for the charade in the first place.

  “You guys would get so hit on if you went out like that,” said Arlene, as she and Deb watched Grant and Johnny wriggle out of their too-tight pants. The girls admired their handiwork—Grant’s and Johnny’s newly shaved calves looked great, in their estimation.

  “Yeah, chicks with dicks are totally in right now,” agreed Deb.

  “It’s nice to be popular, for once,” said Grant, making sure that he’d pulled on his own pants before taking off the Gypsy blouse and sock-stuffed brassiere, so that he was only halfway nude at any given time. Johnny, naturally, preferred to strip completely first, even the Speedo (Grant’s and Johnny’s usual boxers would have been, they assumed, too conspicuous under their womanly disguises), and he stood gloriously naked in the sun, feeling the slight breeze on his still-tingling calves, tiny golden hairs shining everywhere else on his slender frame. Arlene and Deb made no attempt to conceal their staring at either of their friends; they hooted and whistled unabashedly; Grant felt a bit jealous as well as oppressed on behalf of his gender when Deb leered at Johnny and raised her hand to Arlene for a congratulatory high-five. His own body, a bit more compact than Johnny’s and unexpectedly muscular, was also the subject of some genuinely appreciative leering, which Grant immediately interpreted as mocking and somewhat cruel.

  Having changed, the boys came to the aid of their counterparts, dutifully undoing the clips of the ace bandages that had rendered them (more or less) flat-chested. Their breasts (all four of them now red-marked with their recent restraints) flopped into view, providing an odd counterargument to the scruffy facial hair that had been drawn on the girls’ faces.

  Two days ago, Arlene probably would have changed in a Grant-like fashion, perhaps even attempting to remove the ace bandage with her shirt still on. But today was different, today Arlene was different, and soon she and Deb found themselves clad only in their panties. Their bodies, hers and Deb’s, thought Arlene, really weren’t all that different. They were both, she realized suddenly and hopefully … beautiful, though, Arlene still being Arlene, she could not complete the thought without mentally kicking herself for previously being so hung-up on her body image and wasting all that time.

  Deb’s and Arlene’s stripping, it should be noted, was greeted not with raucous catcalls and hooting, but with a deep and uncomfortable silence. Even though Johnny was different now, even though Arlene and Johnny had spent the last two nights together, even though Grant’s obsession with Deb had raged for many, many months, even though they all spoke about sex as easily and casually as friends could, still there was something unexpected here. Grant realized that, despite all the sex swirling between them and around them, as a unit the four of them had been androgynous. Together, they’d been a group: not two men and two women, but a single entity with its own distinct personality. But that entity was fragmenting, differentiating, going to soil. The last of the inevitably fragile conceit seemed to burn off in the glare of the women’s nakedness, and for the first time all the complexity of sex and personal politics emerged into the open and filled the air between the foursome.

  Until Arlene and Deb were dressed again, at which point the illusion that creates any personality, singular or collective, resumed. Albeit shakily. The four of them brushed the feeling off, talked about nothing, laughed, headed back toward the streets of Cambridge.

  Dear Diary,

  Cambridge is emptying of robots for the first time in years. I think they’re scared, or maybe they just don’t want to be here. You can tell that something very human is going to happen. At least I can.

  I’m nervous, even though it probably has nothing to do with me. I haven’t felt this way since I turned in my dissertation. Or turned my first trick. One of those, anyway.

  I’m gonna check the egg one last time and then head for Harvard. Because it’s the tip of the arrow. And maybe I can get some work done.

  Evening was setting in, and the Citizen Formerly Known as the President of Montana was feeling particularly alive. There was joy—a beautiful warm evening in New England. There was nostalgia—a return to the haunts of his youth. And there was more than a little anticipation and fear—tonight would be the first possible time and place for him and his wife to meet, the first possible rendezvous point.

  Of course, it wasn’t too likely she’d be there. It had only been a few days since the CFKPOM had fled, and there wasn’t much chance that she was free and clear. She’d only make the rendezvous if it was safe for them both, and she was quite likely still holed up back at the ranch, trapped in the web he’d woven and Dix had made sticky. The President estimated that three or four more rendezvous appointments would pass before he could reasonably hope to see her, but, still, he’d be there, and that made tonight significant.

  The President feels like he’s teetering on the edge of things. Though not in a bad way. All the alienation he felt earlier today, back before the Kung Pao chicken, has vanished. He feels vulnerable yet powerful, benevolent toward all as he wanders up Mass Ave and across the Common. He’s a Citizen again, part of the glorious, cacophonous, ludicrous machine that somehow manages more or less to work despite everything. Not just America—people. There seems to be something about all the complex interactions between them, something he’d dimly seen years ago, known was important, and managed to forget. He thinks about this as he watches the sunset falling on the green. He sits on a bench.

  There’s a cluster of people toward the edge of the Common, and strains of guitar music. The song is vaguely familiar, but, then, anything strummed on an acoustic guitar near sunset is vaguely familiar. There’s a Frisbee in midair, and he follows its flight to the hand of a fair-haired young man with baggy shorts cut from trousers. Several dogs, all on leashes at various points along the paths, watch the Frisbee with interest, each seemingly hoping that the kid will look at him and say, “There’s an alert-looking doggy, maybe I ought to throw this
to him….” There are four young women on blankets who can no longer keep up the pretext of sunbathing and are now simply loafing and considering the night ahead….

  And suddenly the sun is completely gone, and the former President of Montana realizes that he is now officially just an old man sitting on a park bench, and who’d’ve thought it would come to that? He gets up, still feeling the buzz of humanity around him, still exalted, but a little lonely now. He heads more or less toward his destination, aware that there is plenty of time, oceans of time, and nothing in particular to fill it with at the moment. Which, he thinks, might not necessarily be a terrible thing.

  … 7. And it came to pass that the Prophet Bernie wandered in the land on the near side of the Crossing, for the Time of the Crossing had not yet come. 8. And Bernie came upon a Square, where the people there gathered in a Court of Food. And the people there spoke in strange tongues and purchased their goods with coin of which Bernie had none. 9. For the Lord had told Bernie to work not, and earn not, though without this command Bernie could probably have been a rich man indeed. For Bernie was possessed of many unique Gifts and Talents which might have brought him fame and bountiful fortune, but he applied himself not, and took direction poorly, and worked not well with others, in accordance with the Lord’s command. 10. And as the Lord commanded, and not by Bernie’s wishes, Bernie did beseech the people for alms, so that he might eat and be strong, for the Time of the Crossing was near. 11. And the people of the Square were wicked and knew not the Lord, and they spurned Bernie and shared not their goods. And they reviled the Prophet Bernie and criticized him, as had his mother before them, saying, “Fie! For thou art covered in filth and art smelly withal, and we do detest thee!” 12. For, because the people knew not the Lord, they knew not His command that Bernie wash not and drink not of water but only of coffee. 13. And Bernie did despair, and almost cried out to the Lord. But Bernie remembered the Lord’s command that He be not Pestered until the Time of the Crossing, and Bernie held his tongue and cried not, though his hunger grew and his Feelings had been bruised….