by Paul Dueweke
* * *
Elliott’s gaze rebounded from the display, almost not seeing it. The antics, the staging, the battle of light vs. sound, all seemed so foreign to him. He reached for a bottle of cabernet, his eyes fixed on infinity.
It was 2010, he thought. That’s when it happened—2010.
He knew how long ago that was. If he could just cut that year out of his life, just cut it out. He looked at the field of daisies on the cabernet label. A beautiful, slender woman with barely-reddish hair sat on a blanket holding her glass toward a man as he filled it. She wore a white dress, too, just like Susie did on her wedding day, at least according to the photo she sent him.
Last time he said more than a handful of words with Susie was at Luke’s wedding. She and John wanted to get married “away from the world.” He accepted the maroon liquid tempting his lips. Away from me, he thought.
That was more than a dozen years after the science fair, and she still couldn’t forgive her father. And now, so many more years had elapsed. I won’t have my lab to hide in anymore. No more Higgs particles and quarks to count. Just me and Martha—and our ugly history—and all this bullshit around us.