The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories

by Connie Willis

  Paul moved around the table to her. Janice was paging through the Bible, looking frantically for the right scripture. Paul took hold of Elizabeth’s arm, but she shook it off impatiently. “In Matthew we see that he was raised from the dead and is alive today. Right now,” Janice said, sounding frightened. “And no matter what sin you have in your heart, he will forgive you if you accept him as your personal Savior.”

  Elizabeth brought her fist down hard on the table so that the plate of cookies shook. “I’m not talking about sin. I’m talking about opening a window. She stepped in the puddle and the worm went over the edge and drowned. I shouldn’t have left it on the sidewalk.” She hit the table with her fist again. Dr. Brubaker picked up the stack of coffee cups and put them on the counter, as if he were afraid she might start throwing them at the wall. “I should have put it in the grass.”

  Paul left for work without even having breakfast. Elizabeth’s ankle had swollen up so badly she could hardly get her slippers on, but she got up and made the coffee. The filters were still lying on the counter where Janice Brubaker had left them.

  “Weren’t you satisfied that you’d ruined your chances for a job, you had to ruin mine, too?”

  “I’m sorry about last night,” she said. “I’m going to fill out my job application today and take it over to the campus. When my ankle heals…”

  “It’s supposed to warm up today,” Paul said. “I turned the furnace off.”

  After he was gone, she filled out the application. She tried to erase the dark smear that the worm had left, but it wouldn’t come out, and there was one question that she couldn’t read. Her fingers were stiff with cold, and she had to stop and blow on them several times but she filled in as many questions as she could and folded it up and took it over to the campus.

  The girl in the yellow slicker was standing at the end of the walk, talking to a girl in an Angel Flight uniform. She hobbled toward them with her head down, trying to hurry, listening for the sound of Tupper’s bike.

  “He asked about you,” Tib said, and Elizabeth looked up.

  She didn’t look at all the way Elizabeth remembered her. She was a little overweight and not very pretty, the kind of girl who wouldn’t have been able to get a date for the dance. Her short hair made her round face look even plumper. She looked hopeful and a little worried.

  Don’t worry, Elizabeth thought. I’m here. She didn’t look at herself. She concentrated on getting up even with them at the right time.

  “I told him you were living in the Alpha Phi house,” Tib said.

  “Oh,” she heard her own voice, and under it the hum of a bicycle.

  “I’m dating this guy in ROTC. He’s absolutely gorgeous.”

  There was a pause, and then Elizabeth’s voice said, “Thanks a lot,” and Elizabeth pushed the rubber end of her crutch against a patch of ice and went down.

  For a minute she couldn’t see anything for the pain. “I’ve broken it,” she thought, and clenched her fists to keep from screaming.

  “Are you all right?” Tib said, kneeling in front of her so she couldn’t see anything. No, not you! Not you! For a minute she was afraid that it hadn’t worked, that the girl had turned and walked away. But after all, this was not a stranger but only herself, who was too kind to let a worm drown. She had only gone around to Elizabeth’s other side, where she couldn’t see her. “Did she break it?” she said. “Should I go call an ambulance or something?”

  No. “No,” Elizabeth said. “I’m fine. If you could just help me up.”

  The girl who had been Elizabeth Wilson put her books down on the cement bench and came and knelt down by Elizabeth. “I hope we don’t collapse in a heap,” she said, and smiled at Elizabeth. She was a pretty girl. I didn’t know that either, Elizabeth thought, even when Tupper told me. She took hold of Elizabeth’s arm and Tib took hold of the other.

  “Tripping innocent passersby again, I see. How many times have I told you not to do that?” And here, finally, was Tupper. He had laid his bike flat in the grass and put his bag of Tupperware beside it.

  Tib and the girl that had been herself let go and stepped back and he knelt beside her. “They’re not bad girls, really. They just like to play practical jokes. But banana peels is going too far, girls,” he said, so close she could feel his warm breath on her cheek. She turned to look at him, suddenly afraid that he would be different, too, but it was only Tupper, who she had loved all these years. He put his arm around her. “Now just put your arm around my neck, sweetheart. That’s right. Elizabeth, come over here and atone for your sins by helping this pretty lady up.”

  She had already picked her books up and was holding them against her chest, looking angry and eager to get away. She looked at Tib, but Tib was picking up the crutches, stooping down in her high heels because she couldn’t bend over in her Angel Flight skirt.

  She put her books down again and came around to Elizabeth’s other side to take hold of her arm, and Elizabeth grabbed for her hand instead and held it tightly so she couldn’t get away. “I took her to the dance because she helped with the Tupperware party. I told her I owed her a favor,” he said, and Elizabeth turned and looked at him.

  He was not looking at her really. He was looking past her at the other Elizabeth, who would not answer the phone, who would not come to the window, but he seemed to be looking at her, and on his young remembered face there was a look of such naked, vulnerable love that it was like a blow.

  “I told you so,” Tib said. She laid the crutches against the bench.

  “I’m sure this lady doesn’t want to hear this,” Elizabeth said.

  “I was going to tell you at the party, but that idiot Sharon Oberhausen…”

  Tib brought over the crutches. “After I asked him, I thought, ‘What if she thinks I’m trying to steal her boyfriend?’ and I got so worried I was afraid to tell you. I really only asked him to get out of weekend duty. I mean, I don’t like him or anything.”

  Tupper grinned at Elizabeth. “I try to pay my debts, and this is the thanks I get. You wouldn’t get mad at me if I took your roommate to a dance, would you?”

  “I might,” Elizabeth said. It was cold sitting on the cement. She was starting to shiver. “But I’d forgive you.”

  “You see that?” he said.

  “I see,” Elizabeth said disgustedly, but she was smiling at him now. “Don’t you think we’d better get this innocent passerby up off the sidewalk before she freezes to death?”

  “Upsy-daisy, sweetheart,” Tupper said, and in one easy motion she was up and sitting on the stone bench.

  “Thank you,” she said. Her teeth were chattering with the cold.

  Tupper knelt in front of her and examined her ankle. “It looks pretty swollen,” he said. “Do you want us to call somebody?”

  “No, my husband will be along any minute. I’ll just sit here till he comes.”

  Tib fished Elizabeth’s application out of the puddle. “I’m afraid it’s ruined,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Tupper picked up his bag of bowls. “Say,” he said, “you wouldn’t be interested in having a Tupperware party? As hostess, you could earn valuable points toward…”

  “Tupper!” Tib said.

  “Will you leave this poor lady alone?” Elizabeth said.

  He held up the sack. “Only if you’ll go with me to deliver my lettuce crispers to the Sigma Chi house.”

  “I’ll go,” Tib said. “There’s this darling Sigma Chi I’ve been wanting to meet.”

  “And I’ll go,” Elizabeth said, putting her arm around Tib. “I don’t trust the kind of boyfriend you find on your own. Jim Scates is a real creep. Didn’t Sharon tell you what he did to Marilyn Reed?”

  Tupper handed Elizabeth the sack of bowls while he stood his bike up. Elizabeth handed them to Tib.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Tupper said. “It’s cold out here. You could wait for your husband in the student union.”

 
; She wished she could put her hand on his cheek just once. “I’ll be fine,” she said.

  The three of them went down the walk toward Frasier, Tupper pushing the bike. When they got even with Carter Hall, they cut across the grass toward Frasier. She watched them until she couldn’t see them anymore, and then sat there a while longer on the cold bench. She had hoped that something might happen, some sign that she had rescued them, but nothing happened. Her ankle didn’t hurt anymore. It had stopped the minute Tupper touched it.

  She continued to sit there. It seemed to her to be getting colder, though she had stopped shivering, and after a while she got up and walked home, leaving the crutches where they were.

  It was cold in the house. Elizabeth turned the thermostat up and sat down at the kitchen table, still in her coat, waiting for the heat to come on. When it didn’t, she remembered that Paul had turned the furnace off, and she went and got a blanket and wrapped up in it on the couch. Her ankle did not hurt at all, though it felt cold. When the phone rang, she could hardly move it. It took her several rings to make it to the phone.

  “I thought you weren’t going to answer,” Paul said. “I made an appointment with a Dr. Jamieson for you this afternoon at three. He’s a psychiatrist.”

  “Paul,” she said. She was so cold it was hard to talk. ‘I’m sorry.”

  “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?” he said. “I told Dr. Brubaker you were on muscle relaxants for your ankle. I don’t know whether he bought it or not.” He hung up.

  “Too late,” Elizabeth said. She hung up the phone. The back of her hand was covered with ice crystals. “Paul,” she tried to say, but her lips were stiff with cold, and no sound came out.

  At the Rialto

  Seriousness of mind was a prerequisite for understanding Newtonian physics. 1 am not convinced it is not a handicap in understanding quantum theory.

  —Excerpt from Dr. Gedanken’s keynote address to the 1988 International Congress of Quantum Physicists Annual Meeting, Hollywood, California

  I got to Hollywood around one-thirty and started trying to check into the Rialto.

  “Sorry, we don’t have any rooms,” the girl behind the desk said. “We’re all booked up with some science thing.”

  “I’m with the science thing,” I said. “Dr. Ruth Baringer. I reserved a double.”

  “There are a bunch of Republicans here, too, and a tour group from Finland. They told me when I started work here that they got all these movie people, but the only one so far was that guy who played the friend of that other guy in that one movie. You’re not a movie person, are you?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m with the science thing. Dr. Ruth Baringer.”

  “My name’s Tiffany,” she said. “I’m not actually a hotel clerk at all. I’m just working here to pay for my transcendental posture lessons. I’m really a model-slash-actress.”

  “I’m a quantum physicist,” I said, trying to get things back on track. “The name is Ruth Baringer.”

  She messed with the computer for a minute. “I don’t show a reservation for you.”

  “Maybe it’s in Dr. Mendoza’s name. I’m sharing a room with her.”

  She messed with the computer some more. “I don’t show a reservation for her either. Are you sure you don’t want the Disneyland Hotel? A lot of people get the two confused.”

  “I want the Rialto,” I said, rummaging through my bag for my notebook. “I have a confirmation number. W-three-seven-four-two-oh.”

  She typed it in. “Are you Dr. Gedanken?” she asked.

  “Excuse me,” an elderly man said.

  “I’ll be right with you,” Tiffany told him. “How long do you plan to stay with us, Dr. Gedanken?” she asked me.

  “Excuse me,” the man said, sounding desperate. He had bushy white hair and a dazed expression, as if he had just been through a horrific experience or had been trying to check into the Rialto.

  He wasn’t wearing any socks. I wondered if he was Dr. Gedanken. Dr. Gedanken was the main reason I’d decided to come to the meeting. I had missed his lecture on wave-particle duality last year, but I had read the text of it in the ICQP Journal, and it had actually seemed to make sense, which is more than you can say for most of quantum theory. He was giving the keynote address this year, and I was determined to hear it.

  It wasn’t Dr. Gedanken. “My name is Dr. Whedbee,” the elderly man said. “You gave me the wrong room.”

  “All our rooms are pretty much the same,” Tiffany said. “Except for how many beds they have in them and stuff.”

  “My room has a person in it!” he said. “Dr. Sleeth. From the University of Texas at Austin. She was changing her clothes.” His hair seemed to get wilder as he spoke. “She thought I was a serial killer.”

  “And your name is Dr. Whedbee?” Tiffany asked, fooling with the computer again. “I don’t show a reservation for you.”

  Dr. Whedbee began to cry. Tiffany got out a paper towel, wiped off the counter, and turned back to me. “May I help you?” she said.

  Thursday, 7:30-9 P.M. Opening Ceremonies. Dr. Halvard Onofrio, University of Maryland at College Park, will speak on the topic, “Doubts Surrounding the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.” Ballroom.

  I finally got my room at five, after Tiffany went off duty. Till then I sat around the lobby with Dr. Whedbee, listening to Abey Fields complain about Hollywood.

  “What’s wrong with Racine?” he said. “Why do we always have to go to these exotic places, like Hollywood? And St. Louis last year wasn’t much better. The Institute Henri Poincare people kept going off to see the arch and Busch Stadium.”

  “Speaking of St. Louis,” Dr. Takumi said, “have you seen David yet?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Oh, really?” she said. “Last year at the annual meeting you two were practically inseparable. Moonlight riverboat rides and all.”

  “What’s on the programming tonight?” I said to Abey.

  “David was just here,” Dr. Takumi said. “He said to tell you he was going out to look at the stars in the sidewalk.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Abey said. “Riverboat rides and movie stars. What do those things have to do with quantum theory? Racine would have been an appropriate setting for a group of physicists. Not like this…this…do you realize we’re practically across the street from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre? And Hollywood Boulevard’s where all those gangs hang out. If they catch you wearing red or blue, they’ll—”

  He stopped. “Is that Dr. Gedanken?” he asked, staring at the front desk.

  I turned and looked. A short roundish man with a mustache was trying to check in. “No,” I said. “That’s Dr. Onofrio.”

  “Oh, yes,” Abey said, consulting his program book. “He’s speaking tonight at the opening ceremonies. On the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Are you going?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, which was supposed to be a joke, but Abey didn’t laugh.

  “I must meet Dr. Gedanken. He’s just gotten funding for a new project.”

  I wondered what Dr. Gedanken’s new project was—I would have loved to work with him.

  “I’m hoping he’ll come to my workshop on the wonderful world of quantum physics,” Abey said, still watching the desk. Amazingly enough, Dr. Onofrio seemed to have gotten a key and was heading for the elevators. “I think his project has something to do with understanding quantum theory.”

  Well, that let me out. I didn’t understand quantum theory at all. I sometimes had a sneaking suspicion nobody else did either, including Abey Fields, and that they just weren’t willing to admit it.

  I mean, an electron is a particle except it acts like a wave. In fact, a neutron acts like two waves and interferes with itself (or each other), and you can’t really measure any of this stuff properly because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and that isn’t the worst of it. When you set up a Josephson junction to figure out what rules the electrons obey, they sneak past th
e barrier to the other side, and they don’t seem to care much about the limits of the speed of light either, and Schrodinger’s cat is neither alive nor dead till you open the box, and it all makes about as much sense as Tiffany’s calling me Dr. Gedanken.

  Which reminded me, I had promised to call Darlene and give her our room number. I didn’t have a room number, but if I waited much longer she’d have left. She was flying to Denver to speak at CU and then coming on to Hollywood sometime tomorrow morning. I interrupted Abey in the middle of his telling me how beautiful Cleveland was in the winter and went to call her.

  “I don’t have a room yet,” I said when she answered. “Should I leave a message on your answering machine or do you want to give me your number in Denver?”

  “Never mind all that,” Darlene said. “Have you seen David yet?”

  To illustrate the problems of the concept of wave function, Dr. Schrödinger imagines a cat being put into a box with a piece of uranium, a bottle of poison gas, and a Geiger counter. If a uranium nucleus disintegrates while the cat is in the box, it will release radiation, which will set off the Geiger counter and break the bottle of poison gas. It is impossible in quantum theory to predict whether a uranium nucleus will disintegrate while the cat is in the box, and only possible to calculate uranium’s probable half-life; therefore, the cat is neither alive nor dead until we open the box.

  —From “The Wonderful World of Quantum Physics,” A seminar presented at the ICQP Annual Meeting by A. Fields, Ph.D., University of Nebraska at Wahoo

  I completely forgot to warn Darlene about Tiffany, the model-slash-actress.

  “What do you mean you’re trying to avoid David?” she had asked me at least three times. “Why would you do a stupid thing like that?”

  Because in St. Louis I ended up on a riverboat in the moonlight and didn’t make it back until the conference was over.