“I thought I heard something too.” My bent, outturned leg was still in his grasp when the front door bolt clicked in.
He slid his fingers from my vagina, jerked down my dress and stepped away. I pulled my shoulder strap back up. “Oh, shit, how did she get a key? Step out of sight until I get rid of her.”
“Her? I see you’re dependable all right.” I grabbed my high heels and slipped one on, then balanced on that leg and wobbled as I slid on the other shoe.
“It’s not what it looks like.”
“It never is.” I stood with my hands on my hips as the door whined open.
“Hurry – get out of sight. This could be awkward.”
“Not for me. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll pull up a chair and enjoy the show.” I dragged a chair across the tile, plopped down and crossed my legs just as the tall large-breasted blond woman stepped through the door.
“And who exactly are you?” I tipped my head onto one elbow and allowed my dress to ride high up my thigh.
“Hmph.” The woman turned up her nose at me and walked so close to Justin, I thought she might pummel him with her breasts.
“Oh, you don’t speak English. Didn’t think so.” I feigned a yawn.
Justin redirected his glare from me to her. “What the hell are you doing here, Chloe?”
“I just came by to check on you.” Her voice sounded syrupy sweet. “Who is she, anyway?” She frowned and scanned me up and down.
“She’s uh, um…”
“What he means to say is I’m one of his students. You know how it goes. First he says he wants to help you with your manuscript, then the next thing you know, he’s trying to get into your pants.”
“What the—” said Justin.
“Stop talking and leave,” said the blond woman, pointing toward me with one of her razor-sharp fingernails. “Now.”
“Leave now and miss all the fun?” I dropped my gaze to Justin’s crotch. “God, look at that hard on.”
“It’s not what you think.” Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead and his body language screamed let me out of here.
“No, it’s not what you think at all.” It looks like the Empire State Building’s about to burst from his pants yet he’s going to tell you that’s not his dick.
“Where did you get a key? You said you gave them back.”
“So, I lied.” She twirled the keys around her fingers. And anyway, maybe it was a good thing I stopped by. Even if we’re over, a little quickie wouldn’t hurt anyone. Or we could try a threesome.” She pressed her too-big-to-be-real-breasts into him.
I was going to projectile vomit just like Jennifer if I heard another word of this nauseating conversation. He doesn’t want to play games, he says. Yeah, right. What else would Barbie be good for?
“He’s all yours.” I nudged her out of the way and reached for the door. “Maybe since I just used and abused him, this time he’ll last more than five minutes.” God, that sounded good. Then I stepped through the door, slamming it shut behind me.
Justin flung open the door. “Marissa, wait.” I turned to glare at him. His eyes seemed to glow in the dark. Under the moonlight, his skin looked metallic. If we stand out here long enough, he’ll probably turn into a werewolf. It wouldn’t shock me in the least. I have such excellent taste in men.
I looked at him once last time and then swung my head around and walked briskly down the streets, my high heels clicking down the sidewalk. I turned to see if he was coming after me, but he’d shut the door. That figures. A trickle of breathy female laughter projected through an open window. He’s probably already forgotten about me, I thought, as I slid into a miserable state of self-pity.
I walked along the beach toward Scripps. Orange flames from a bonfire illuminated faces of couples swaying and dancing to music that blared from a metallic boom box. I could be laughing too, I thought. Instead, I stumbled through the sand alone, my ankles and toes screaming for me to remove my high heels. These shoes suck. I’d already turned my ankle over and over again, walking so high off the ground on the uneven, dimly lit surfaces. I tugged the shoes off and flung them one by one into the ocean. Now that felt good.
My cell phone rang repeatedly. I stared at it before powering it down. I walked gingerly over the uneven ground up the hill to the building, punched in my security code, and strode down the hall to my office.
The meteorite conference in Prague was only a week away. Deflated ego or not, I had every intention of stunning my audience, every intention of showing up for class tomorrow, every intention of acting as if I didn’t care that Justin had lied, that he’d likely spent the night with Chloe instead of giving me multiple orgasms. The interruption had been a lucky break. After all, if we’d actually had sex, it would have stung so much more when I learned that nothing about him had been real. He was just an incredibly gorgeous jerk who had nearly swindled me into believing he was Mr. Nice Guy. Why do I care? I wondered. I only wanted him for sex anyway, didn’t I?
Before Chloe showed up, I had assumed his arrogance wasn’t true arrogance, but only appeared that way to someone who didn’t know him well. I’d thought it was more like the confidence I had, knowing I had a special gift. He was a master of the written word. I was the only scientist who knew the world’s clock was ticking. But I’d been wrong. He really is an arrogant jerk with a women-are-disposable attitude. While I, on the other hand, am an overly confident scientist on the brink of making a complete idiot of myself. I sighed. It’s time to take an intermission from the soap opera. I slid on my glasses, feeling safe again. Back in my intellectual frame-of-reference, emotional turbulence couldn’t harm me.
I spread out images of the NRG meteorite impacts across a light table. For weeks, I’d been baffled by the mysterious structures. When a meteorite strikes the ground, it pulverizes it, tossing shards in a discarded ring around the crater’s perimeter. But all these sites lacked this usual signature.
I’d sent several instruments to the ocean floor to study the craters, and I’d managed to collect some samples. One time when I sent submersibles down, the crater profiles had disappeared from the radar by the time they landed. It was as if they were craters one minute and then flattened out into the normal topography of the ocean bottom the next. My studies had revealed the unbelievable. But what kind of scientist stands behind a podium and tells people there are now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t meteorite craters on the bottom of the ocean? Or says the end of the world is just months away? No scientist other than me. In my realm, there had been nothing I couldn’t handle, until now.
I awoke the next morning, face down on the light table. I glanced at my watch. It was already eight thirty AM. I barely had time to call a cab and make it to class, and looking in the mirror was completely out of the question. During the ride to campus, I raked my untidy hair with my fingers.
I stumbled into the classroom feeling shaky and disoriented. “Where have you been?” asked Jennifer. Her usually stone-smooth brow creased with concern. “You look like you’ve been out all night or something.”
“Or something,” I said, dully. Justin hadn’t arrived yet. Maybe he’s about to cum in that bimbo’s mouth and forgot about class. My head throbbed. After a long night of champagne and bad company, I craved coffee more than anything.
“You look like hell today.” Steve dropped his books on his desk, making me jump.
Men really have a way with words. As for me, I can be diplomatic—if I feel like it. “Thank you, Steve. You don’t look so great yourself if you don’t mind me saying so.”
Justin walked into the room, his hair looking more disheveled than ever. Just got out of bed did you? Bastard! He probably messed up his hair even more just to irritate me.
We critiqued Mark’s work first. Justin disagreed with every comment I made, not only on his manuscript, but the ones that followed. I clenched my fists beneath my desk and smacked my knees together. Once the critiques ended, Justin read aloud one of his favorite published essay
s. It had won many awards, or so he said. His point, apparently, was that we should aim higher than average when writing genre fiction. We could create true literary work. I grumbled prick under my breath.
“Marissa, do you have something you’d like to say?” His usually warm eyes pierced through me like pale green Antarctic ice.
“As a matter of fact, I do. How you could think this stupid essay about a guy who spends his entire life buying and sniffing vanilla is literary? The author clearly smoked mind altering substances when he wrote this. Any man who wears cologne laced with vanilla deserves to be dumped. It’s no wonder the only relationship he ever had lasted ten days. If he travelled to the tropics, the female mosquitoes would have been all over him, though.”
Laughter erupted around the room. Justin peered over the rim of his reading classes, his eyebrows tipped angrily inward. “It seems to me you’re being rather close-minded, making a judgment without all of the information.”
Why do I get the feeling he’s not talking about the story?
“Well, you have to admit this essay was really lame, even if it was well written,” grunted Mark. Despite the fact that it was nine AM, a five o’clock shadow clouded his face and the dark circles under his eyes screamed hang over.
At least someone’s on my side—maybe I should ask for his number after class. “Yeah, see.” I turned to Justin and narrowed my eyes. “And I have all the information I need, thank you very much. As a matter of fact, with this author, it’s a clear case of too much information. By the end of the essay, I feel like if I hear another word about his vanilla obsession or his pathetic love life, I’m going to have to grab a handful of vanilla beans and stone him to death with them. But a man can never get over a blond with big jugs, right?”
“His ex-girlfriend’s appearance wasn’t even described in the essay,” said Steve. “Where did you come up with that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. This author just seems like the kind of guy who would try to seduce one woman while another still has keys to his house.” Just when I thought I had it under control, my mouth became a runaway train.
“What? Did you give her a different essay?” asked Amanda. “I thought the protagonist seemed like a nerd, not a serial womanizer.”
“Oh, he’s a nerd all right.” I felt Jennifer’s gaze burning into my back.
Justin shifted in his chair and peered at his watch. “Well, it seems we’ve run out of time and I’ve got a lunch date to rush off to. I’ll see you all next week.” He tossed a serves you right smirk my way. Gritting my teeth, I jumped up from my chair, walked briskly toward the door and threw my water bottle at his head as I passed.
“That was mature,” said Jennifer. “What’s going on with you two?”
“In a nutshell, I went to dinner with him and it went great until his ex-girlfriend showed up. I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”
“Fine,” said Jennifer. “But when you do want to talk about it, let me know. I’ve known you for almost ten years and I’ve never seen you so upset.”
“Do I look upset to you?” I forced a smile that came out like a grimace.
“Hell, yes you do. You’re going to get lockjaw if you make those faces much longer. I’ll take you somewhere we can order a stiff drink.”
Chapter Six
Unable to sleep during the long overseas flight to Prague, I spent the night studying my notes on the NRG meteorite sites. I wasn’t sure how to present my conclusions, since my research had opened up more questions than it answered.
Frustrated, I slid my notes back into my briefcase and opened up my science fiction novel file on my laptop. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to read it. It was a little science and a lot of imagination.
I’d learned the craters were sometimes visible on radar and that the altered rocks had altogether unfamiliar chemistry. In most cases, when a meteor struck the ground, it fractured and or melted the rocks, sometimes imbedding trace amounts of elements contained in the meteorite in the upper layers of the crater. In this case, though, I observed a completely new set of metals and minerals—ones never before observed on earth or in any extraterrestrial object.
I typed out thoughts that popped into my head and rested my chin on my elbow to stare at what I’d written. The scenario I’d outlined for my novel sounded fantastical. But too improbable to be true—maybe…
I waved my hand to signal one of the taxis outside the airport terminal. Once the driver greeted me and placed my luggage in the trunk, I asked him to take me to the Waterfront Congress Centre.
Thank goodness, the driver spoke English. I’d experienced how a slight mispronunciation of a Spanish word could send a Hispanic into a laughing fit. I could only imagine what my muddling together of multiple consonants would do to a native Czech’s ears. “You are from the United States,” the man said, as if stating a fact.
Why is it so obvious? Is it my Guess jeans, my blond hair or my high neckline that gave me away? The driver sat erectly, his face muscles tightening when he spoke. Whenever I asked a question, he fired back a curt response. He never welcomed me to the Czech Republic or offered suggestions on places to visit.
Many of the austere looking buildings looked like prisons with immense stone or brick facades and rows of small windows. Perhaps mentally ill patients were housed inside. I imagined quaking hands wiping dust from a window.
A row of parking spaces had yellow numbers that at first struck me as swastikas. “They are numbers, you idiot,” I whispered to myself. The man’s dark eyes studied me curiously in the rear view mirror.
The overcast skies, the pollution-blackened buildings and the driver’s cool mood reminded me I was thousands of miles away from my familiar world. I longed to hear Jennifer’s patronizing voice. A sliver of sunlight crept out from behind a cloud, illuminating the historic part of the city, which stood in the distance on the far side of a river. Then, I breathed in a different Prague.
From my eighth floor balcony, I sipped a cup of coffee and nibbled on pastries. The Vltava River stretched out below me, decorated with boats and cross-cut by arching bridges. Hundreds of people milled around the famous Charles Bridge. An army of exhaust-blackened Baroque statues stood over the crowd on the margins of the bridge. In the historic district, buildings took on less blocky, more pleasing shapes. Buildings and churches had red tile rooftops or were decorated with pale green cupolas. A lush green hillside decorated with blossoming fruit trees—Petrin Hill—sat on the other side of the river. Beside it stood the majestic Prague Castle with its turrets, stone walls, and lines of small windows. Surrounded by Baroque, Gothic and Cubist buildings, many of which had been erected more than six hundred years ago, the timelessness of the city’s historic district welcomed me. I no longer felt like an outcast. My surroundings were as much a part of history as the rocks and minerals I studied. Here I’ll be able to see what I haven’t seen before.
Behind the podium, I looked out at the sea of scientists from around the world, feeling like my usual strong and confident self. I wasn’t Justin’s student anymore, lowering my eyes, squirming in my seat and feeling inadequate. Even the visceral attraction I’d felt for him seemed like a distant memory. It’s as if Justin and the mayhem he created don’t exist. I clicked through my slides, showing the location of all the NRG structures. After explaining the unusual characteristics of the craters, I showed microscope images of some samples I’d collected, pointing out the unusual minerals. At the end of the presentation, I clicked to the last slide, which once again showed a map of the NRG sites. The bright spots on the screen morphed into stars behind my eyelids when I blinked. All of a sudden I gasped.
The difference between a good and a great scientist is not allowing knowledge to interfere with the ability to see what’s never been seen before. Those lights I saw when I blinked connected one by one into a definitive shape. They weren’t random, like Pollock’s paint spatters. This was intentional art. The line of impact craters formed the shape of a galaxy, its long arms spir
aling out from its core. What I now suspected was that someone many light years away had a message to relay. And I was to be the interpreter.
I sipped some water and drew in a deep breath. “Indeed, there is so much still to be learned about NRG craters. Perhaps we will discover the meteorites that produced these craters and transformed ocean sands and basalts into minerals never seen before, are really shards from another planet in another galaxy that surrounds a sun similar to our own.”
My conclusions incited thundering applause. I looked around at all the faces looking up at me and wondered how they would have responded had I said aliens were trying to communicate with me. Would that applause have turned to laughter? Would the leading meteorite scientists from Stockholm, London, Paris and Beijing still step up to shake my hand?
It didn’t matter, I thought as I stepped down from the podium. When I collected all the evidence I needed to make my case, I would find a convincing way to present it so people would be ready to accept the unbelievable as believable. I shook hands and spoke with various scientists, feeling that adrenaline rush only exercise and demonstrating powerful competence incited. A journalist from a local newspaper requested an impromptu interview. I tucked a lock of hair behind one ear as I answered his first question. All around me men stood, listening, their unblinking eyes fastened on me. I had something important to say, they thought. If you only knew.
I explored the narrow cobblestone streets, stopping first at Old Town Square to see the Orloj, a medieval astronomical clock. Gathering crowds gazed up the face of Old Town City Hall’s ancient stone wall, waiting for the top of the hour, when the Apostles and other moving sculptures stepped out of the clock. Every street in Old Town offered a different surprise. Above arches, beneath pillars and along many of the buildings’ ancient rooftops, shirtless men with rippling muscles flexed and dresses draped fleshy, curvy women. All the statues looked like superheroes—the men’s chests and abdomens were perfectly chiseled and the women’s dresses looked like capes or wings. I admired their fortitude. I imagined myself standing on top of a building, the wind rustling my wings, rather than my jacket. Now my reality is fantasy. A blissful laugh escaped my lips and echoed through the narrow cobblestone corridor.
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