Still. Four hours compared to one.
He knows he’s a fool. The question is, how much of a fool, to consider this progress?
* * * * * * * * *
Carol’s Diary:
Carol thumbs through her diary, surveying the torn, slashed, shredded, mangled, hanging-by-a-thread, pages. What a pleasure, after a long day like today, to make a new entry. Afterwards, though, she feels an unexpected emptiness, as though something is missing that shouldn’t be. She can’t quite put her finger on it, other than to call it “peace of mind,” which is far too vague to be helpful.
This happens on a succession of nights, and on each of them she falls asleep, fully expecting she’ll wake in the morning with a workable answer. But she doesn’t, and finally, after a particularly restless night, she wakes with a new feeling. Or rather the same feeling, subtly amended: it’s not, to be precise, that she’s missing something she had, but rather that she’s missing something that, prior to getting those stupid e-mails from her ex, she didn’t have. Something, in other words, that previously didn’t exist and now does.
How fascinating, she thinks . . . to an ontologist. How infuriating to her.
It’s the news of his book and his offer to give her a sneak preview. Dangling the bait. She wouldn’t be much of a scientist, not to mention an epigeneticist, if she weren’t curious. Say what you will about the man, he’s always been an exceptionally deep and original thinker. It would be a feather in her cap, professionally speaking, to get a first peek. Who knows—if he’s true to his word about her being an inspiration (she remembers this clearly), she might find her name in the list of acknowledgements.
The more she considers, the more she thinks, Why not? It’s not as if he’s asking for anything. It’s no slight on her character, no affront to her dignity, no encroachment on her sovereignty or disrespect to her person that he wants to share the news. If anything, it’s an opportunity.
From irritation to interest. From annoyance to cautious optimism. How the mind enlarges. Some say it’s a pendulum that swings equally forward and back. Rubbish, says Carol. The mind either shrinks or grows, regresses or advances.
Only a fool would not consider this progress.
* * * * * * * * *
As the day of their meeting approaches and finally arrives, Dr. Jim is beside himself with excitement. A normal excitement, he feels. He checks himself in the mirror, checks the time, the mirror, the time, a non-sustainable activity that he interrupts with nervous glances out the window. She said two o’clock, and it’s ten minutes past. So many possible reasons for this, but unlike her. Her voice sounded different, too, throatier, more muscular, as if fashioned by a hitherto unknown and unplumbed equation. After hanging up, he found himself wondering if there was a new man in her life. He searched the Internet, which didn’t have the answer but did have an alternate one. Two separate papers described anatomic changes to the female larynx (and a subsequent deepening of speech) as said females ascended various corporate and non-corporate ladders. So the voice thing could be due to that and not some guy, which relieved him somewhat.
At eighteen past the hour, an SUV pulls into the driveway. He rushes to the front hall, and when the doorbell rings, flings the door open.
Perched on the threshold is a woman who, at first glance, he barely recognizes. She has long black hair that flies from her head in an explosion of curls. Deep-red lipstick and deep-red, miter-shaped nails. A long-sleeved black knit dress. Bracelets on both wrists. A silver barbell eyebrow ring. Eye shadow the color of smoke.
She’s grown, it appears, both in size and in stature. An imposing package.
He invites her in and escorts her to the living room, which he has swept, vacuumed, dusted, and straightened within an inch of its life. Thinking this will please her, as it used to.
Without comment, she sits.
“You look well,” he says.
“Different, you mean.”
“Different, yes. But also well.”
She inclines her head. “I am. Very.”
“Your work agrees with you.”
She assumes he knows what it is from having reached her online and seen her various postings. “I love my work. I love being tenured. I love being able to do what I choose. Within limits, of course.”
“Limits agree with you, too.”
“If you say so.” She pushes a bracelet up until it’s tight on her forearm, like a bridle choking a snake. “I love being able to call the shots. Not all of them, obviously. There’re plenty of hungry fish above me in the chain, but in my little school, my fiefdom, I’m boss.”
“As you should be.”
“I completely agree.”
“You’re secure.”
“I’ve always been secure. Now I have security.”
He wants to ask if she’s happy, knows it would be a mistake. “Have you been writing?”
“I have. It’s what I was hired to do. Among other things.”
“About what?”
“You don’t know?”
“I saw you’ve written a book.”
It sounds like he hasn’t read it. She didn’t expect that he would and in fact has prepared herself not to be bothered by this. Which is not to say she isn’t.
“Yes. It’s the one I was working on when you were . . .” She stops, rephrases. “Before you started on yours.”
“How has it done?”
“It’s gotten some play in the press. Mostly the academic press, but not exclusively.”
“Has it been well received?”
“Very well. I’ve become something of a celebrity. The high priestess of cultural epigenetics. A lightning rod for visionaries, idealists, crackpots, and the suppressed.”
“The suppressed?”
“Yes. I tell them to express themselves. That’s something I learned from you.”
“Do they listen?”
“Actually, I tell them they’re expressing themselves all the time, whether they know it or not. The epigene, it turns out, is key. That’s where expression begins. I know you don’t agree, but there it is.”
She’s right: he doesn’t. Her statement is not only true but prescient. His own book contains a long and detailed argument against this very point of view. It stops short of being a diatribe, though she might not agree, especially given what he’s titled the epigene section—“High Hopes, Diminishing Returns”—which she won’t possibly miss if she has even a cursory look. Now has to be the worst conceivable time to give her the opportunity. A quarrel is the last thing he wants.
So what is it with him? Pride? Boastfulness? Ingenuousness? The desire to share something precious with her? His natural and troublesome impulsivity, aka the uncanny ability to shoot himself in the foot? What is it that makes him blurt, “I’ve written a book, too.”
“Yes. You said.”
“Would you like to see it?”
“Now?”
“Why not?”
He leaves and returns with a tome as thick and heavy as a brick. It’s got a clear plastic cover, beneath which is the title page. She reads it aloud:
“The Halo, Not the Helix: The Science and Promise of Perigenetics.” She raises an eyebrow. “It’s a science, is it?”
“An evolving science. Feel free to have a look.”
She riffles through the pages, pausing every now and then—at section and chapter titles, or at one of his winsome little hand-drawings that are sprinkled throughout the work.
“Take it home if you’d like.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I’d welcome your opinion.”
“You want me to read it?”
“I insist. I’d love to hear what you think.”
She hides her pleasure at this. “I’m extremely busy these days—you know how it is. I may not get to it for a while.” She pauses. “Quite a while. I’m really up to my ears with work.”
This is payback, pure and simple, for his not reading hers. In truth, she’d like nothing
better than to dive into it at once. She can’t wait to see where his prodigious intelligence has taken him. Knows there’ll be plenty to chew on. Expects to be inspired, challenged, irritated, and galvanized.
“Take your time,” he replies with equanimity. “It’s good to have a full plate. I’m always happiest when I’m busy.”
He’s so different from how she remembers. Patient, attentive, engaging.
“What’s up next for you?” she asks, warming to him.
“Next?”
“Yes. What’s your next project? I assume you have a next project. Actually, I assume you’ve already begun.”
He smiles.
She laughs. “I’m right, aren’t I? Want to tell me what it is?”
He won’t meet her eyes.
“C’mon. Tell.”
“It’s hard to put into words.”
“Shall I guess?”
“If you like.”
She rattles off a series of ideas and projects, each one a little more provocative and outrageous than the last. When she’s done, he shakes his head.
“None of those.”
She leans forward to study him more closely, as though to read his mind. The light from the street catches his face in such a way as to make him look young, boyish even. All the boys she’s ever known have had double, or triple, lives. It feels pointless to continue guessing.
“I give up.”
“It’s not an easy thing for me to say.”
She gets a tightness in her chest, as though something hurtful is on the way. This infuriates her, to fall prey like this, and she rises quickly, weight on the balls of her feet, prepared in an instant to walk out. At the same time, unconsciously, she claws her hands at her sides.
“Spit it out,” she says.
He nods decisively. But as the seconds tick away without his uttering so much as a peep, the tension mounts.
Finally, he summons his courage and breaks the silence. “Would you ever think of trying again?”
Her eyes widen. Her ears, she decides, are playing tricks on her.
“Trying again?”
“Coming back.”
“And doing what? Getting remarried?”
They’ve been divorced a year. Swiftly, he calculates what to say next.
“Not necessarily that. Just trying again. Trying to do better.”
Shock gives way to a peal of laughter. “You want me to come back? To you? To a man who works every minute of every day? Yet somehow, at the same time, defines the word unsteady? A man with more moods than a mood ring. A man not merely divided in his attention but divided against himself.”
She’s spoken the unspeakable. He would never have allowed this before, but he’s hardly in a position to tell her to shut up.
And now that the gates are open, she’s not about to hold back. “Do you know what it’s like? I’ll tell you. It’s like living with three people in the house. Someone is always the odd person out. Always. If you live alone, you get lonely sometimes. If you’re a couple, you fight and make up. If there’re three of you, there’s always a third wheel. Someone’s always out in the cold. Three is the absolute worst.”
“I take it that’s a no.”
She begins to reply, pauses, purses her lips. “To a threesome, yes.”
At first he doesn’t understand. Then it hits him. It’s an impossible request. Yet she’s such a commanding presence. Maybe he can do it. Maybe, with her help.
“I can’t promise,” he says.
“Can’t promise what?”
He makes a gesture to include the two of them. “You and me. Just us.”
She frowns, then pulls out her phone and types in a message. Moments later, the side door of the van slides open and a woman steps out. She has short blonde hair, a pale complexion, and a stiffish, self-conscious gait, as though balancing something breakable on her head that could, with the slightest misstep, fall and shatter.
“Recognize her?” Carol asks.
She does look familiar. The hair at the back of his neck must think so, too, because it stands on end.
“A friend of yours?” he asks.
“More than a friend.”
“Should I be jealous?”
“I can’t answer that. I will say it’s not why she’s here.”
“Are you trying to teach me a lesson? Is that it?”
“Why don’t you meet her and then decide.”
“Decide?”
Is he that obtuse? She has the urge to order the woman back into the van and slap Dr. Jim across the face. Not without affection. She would never slap a man she didn’t like or respect.
She glances around the room, then up towards the ceiling, imagining the upper floor. In her mind she’s measuring the house. She has to decide, too.
She turns her eye on Dr. Jim. “We’re not that different, you know.”
“Decide what?” he asks.
Measuring him, measuring herself. “If there’s room.”
CHOOSE POISON, CHOOSE LIFE
The town was called Villa Gardenia. It was nestled into the foot of a mountain whose arms enclosed a bay. It had once been a sleepy town. Resorts now lined the beach. Violet had booked a room in a place she had stayed years before. Its paint was peeling, and its rooms were austere. She didn’t plan on being there long.
Her flight got in late, but she rose early. She showered, brushed her hair, then dressed and went outside. A man was setting up a souvenir stand on the street. Briefly, she considered buying herself a parting gift. Instead, she followed a path around the hotel through a stand of palms to the beach, which at that hour was nearly deserted.
She crossed the sand, slipped out of her sandals, and waded into the water, stopping where it licked her ankles. Its surface was crimson, pink, and ruby red with predawn light, as though smeared by carnations. She hadn’t slept at all the night before. Or the one before that. She was jittery, exhausted, and overwhelmed.
She waded further, halting when the water reached the hem of her shorts. Several miles offshore sat two small islands, lush with vegetation. Local legend spoke of twin deities, sisters who had raised the islands from the ocean floor, destroyed them in a fit of rage, created them anew, and now slept deep beneath them.
Violet envied them their sleep. She was here to sleep.
She took a few more steps, each one more difficult than the last. She was in a dark, dark place, but life did not give up easily. She was thirty-four years old, and for thirty-four years it never had. It cried out to her now.
Was there anything she hadn’t tried? Anything she hadn’t done? Anything left? Anyone left? Anyone unknown to her who might stem the tide of self-destruction? Anyone hidden? Anyone anywhere—anything—to justify living?
As if in response, the goddesses seemed to stir from their watery beds. They knew a thing or two about destruction, and also about creation. They’d created the islands, after all, which were filled with living things. They themselves seemed alive, and to Violet’s wonderment, they now spoke to her, not in words, which she wouldn’t have understood, but in images. They painted portraits in her mind, and teased other portraits from her, portraits favoring creation and life, all on the theme of survival and resilience. Portraits of people she might be, portraits of survivors, as if to say, consider these.
There were myriad possibilities, myriad lives, but she didn’t have time for myriads, not with her life hanging by a thread. What she had was what she permitted herself, which was time for two.
DAISY
It looked like a crack in the rock from below. Daisy was surprised not to have noticed it earlier. She’d been using the trail ever since she’d discovered it. It was the most direct path across the island, and it ran past the fresh water lagoon where she and Richard swam and bathed. At first they thought the trail was man-made. The way it followed the contours of the jungle floor, wrapping around a clump of trees here, switchbacking up a slope there, was clearly the product of intelligence. Something with a practical, top
ological mind. Their hopes of being rescued had soared. But in the ensuing weeks they’d found no human beings, nor any trace of humans. They had, on the other hand, caught glimpses of a shy, retiring, fox-sized creature, along with scat, tufts of matted hair, and once, a crown-shaped tooth. It was an animal path, though less of one, naturally, once they began using it. They were not getting off the island anytime soon.
The crack was almost vertical, splitting the rock like a sideways grin. The rock itself was huge and shaped like the head of a lion. It jutted above the jungle canopy as if in the process of declaring its prowess. She had admired it on more than one occasion, though typically in passing, which may have explained why she’d failed to see the crack. She doubted it was new. True, the island was volcanic: witness the ubiquitous rusty red rock, spotted black with lichen in places, like leopard skin. But there’d been no signs of activity, no belching of gas, no spitting of flame, no tremors, and by the undisturbed profusion of vegetation, she guessed it had been hundreds, if not thousands, of years since the earth here had shaken. She was glad of this, having no way to escape if the volcano chose to wake from its slumber, although a different part of her would have loved to be present for the spectacle.
She and Richard had discussed the pros and cons of trying to get off the island and back to the world that, through no choice of their own, was lost to them. The pros boiled down to they might make it; the cons, they might not. In the early days the pros outnumbered the cons by a wide margin, as neither of them, relative strangers to one another, took pleasure in being marooned. But as the weeks wore on, their willingness to risk their lives without knowing where they were—and more importantly, how far they were from civilization—took a back seat to the unspoken but shared decision to make the most of the lives they had. There was food on the island. Daisy knew something about plants, and this something, together with what they could catch from the sea, was enough to keep them from starving.
There was water, too. Richard had woven a leaky basket out of reeds that allowed them to portage the water a short distance. Daisy had improved on his design by adding a milky white pitch she’d seen on an injured tree. Sticky when wet, rubbery when dry, this sealed the basket completely. Now they had water wherever and whenever they liked. For shelter, they’d built simple lean-tos. But with time on their hands, and hands that liked to stay busy, they’d hatched a new plan. Daisy drew it up in the sand, and Richard, after suggesting a modification or two, was eager to get started.
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