by Nicola Yoon
The other, secret thing that I don’t say to anyone is this: I’m not sure I’m capable of love. Even temporarily. When I was with Rob, I never felt the way the songs say you’re supposed to feel. I didn’t feel swept away or consumed. I didn’t need him like I needed air. I really liked him. I liked looking at him. I liked kissing him. But I always knew I could live without him.
“Red Tie,” I say.
“Daniel,” he insists.
“Don’t fall in love with me, Daniel.”
He actually sputters out his coffee. “Who says I’m going to?”
“That little black notebook I saw you scribbling in, and your face. Your big, wide-open, couldn’t-fool-anybody-about-anything face says you’re going to.”
He blushes again, because blushing is his entire state of being. “And why shouldn’t I?” he asks.
“Because I’m not going to fall in love with you.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t believe in love.”
“It’s not a religion,” he says. “It exists whether you believe in it or not.”
“Oh, really? Can you prove it?”
“Love songs. Poetry. The institution of marriage.”
“Please. Words on paper. Can you use the scientific method on it? Can you observe it, measure it, experiment with it, and repeat your experiments? You cannot. Can you slice it and stain it and study it under a microscope? You cannot. Can you grow it in a petri dish or map its gene sequence?”
“You cannot,” he says, mimicking my voice and laughing.
I can’t help laughing too. Sometimes I take myself a little seriously.
He spoons a layer of foam off his coffee and into his mouth. “You say it’s just words on paper, but you have to admit all those people are feeling something.”
I nod. “Something temporary and not at all measurable. People just want to believe. Otherwise they would have to admit that life is just a random series of good and bad things that happen until one day you die.”
“And you’re okay with believing that life has no meaning?”
“What choice do I have? This is what life is.”
Another spoon of foam and more laughter from him. “So no fate, no destiny, no meant-to-be for you?”
“I am not a nincompoop,” I say, definitely enjoying myself more than I should be.
He loosens his tie and relaxes back into his chair. A strand of his hair escapes his ponytail, and I watch as he tucks it behind his ear. Instead of pushing him away, my nihilism is only making him more comfortable. He seems almost merry.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so charmingly deluded,” he says, as if I’m a curiosity.
“And you find that appealing?” I ask.
“I find it interesting,” he says.
I take a look around the café. Somehow, it’s filled up without me noticing. People line the bar, waiting for their orders. The speakers are playing “Yellow Ledbetter” by Pearl Jam—another one of my favorite nineties grunge-rock bands. I can’t help it. I have to close my eyes to listen to Eddie Vedder mumble-sing the chorus.
When I open them again, Daniel is staring at me. He shifts forward so his chair is grounded again on all four legs. “What if I told you I could get you to fall in love with me scientifically?”
“I would scoff,” I say. “A lot.”
ONE POSSIBLE SOLUTION to the grandfather paradox is the theory of multiverses originally set forth by Hugh Everett. According to multiverse theory, every version of our past and future histories exists, just in an alternate universe.
For every event at the quantum level, the current universe splits into multiple universes. This means that for every choice you make, an infinite number of universes exist in which you made a different choice.
The theory neatly solves the grandfather paradox by positing separate universes in which each possible outcome exists, thereby avoiding a paradox.
In this way we get to live multiple lives.
There is, for example, a universe where Samuel Kingsley does not derail his daughter’s life. A universe where he does derail it but Natasha is able to fix it. A universe where he does derail it and she is not able to fix it. Natasha is not quite sure which universe she’s living in now.
Area Boy Attempts to Use Science to Get the Girl
I wasn’t kidding about the falling-in-love-scientifically thing. There was even an article in the New York Times about it.
A researcher put two people in a lab and had them ask each other a bunch of intimate questions. Also, they had to stare into each other’s eyes for four minutes without talking. I’m pretty sure I’m not getting her to do the staring thing with me right now. To be honest, I didn’t really believe the article when I read it. You can’t just make people fall in love, right? Love is way more complicated than that. It’s not just a matter of choosing a couple of people and making them ask each other some questions, and then love blossoms. The moon and the stars are involved. I’m certain of it.
Nevertheless.
According to the article, the result of the experiment was that the two test subjects did indeed fall in love and get married. I don’t know if they stayed married. (I kinda don’t want to know, because if they did stay married, then love is less mysterious than I think and can be grown in a petri dish. If they didn’t stay married, then love is as fleeting as Natasha says it is.)
I pull out my phone and look up the study. Thirty-six questions. Most of them are pretty stupid, but some of them are okay. I like the staring-into-the-eyes thing.
I’m not above science.
HE TELLS ME ABOUT SOME study involving a lab and questions and love. I am skeptical and say so. I’m also slightly intrigued but don’t say so.
“What are the five key ingredients to falling in love?” he asks me.
“I don’t believe in love, remember?” I pick up my spoon and stir my coffee, even though there’s nothing to stir together.
“So what are the love songs really about?”
“Easy,” I say. “Lust.”
“And marriage?”
“Well, lust fades, and then there are children to raise and bills to pay. At some point it just becomes friendship with mutual self-interest for the benefit of society and the next generation.” The song ends just as I finish talking. For a moment all we can hear are glasses clinking and milk frothing.
“Huh,” he says, considering.
“You say that a lot,” I say.
“I could not disagree with you more.” He adjusts his ponytail without letting his hair fall into his face.
Observable Fact: I want to see his hair fall into his face.
The more I talk to him, the cuter he gets. I even like his earnestness, despite the fact that I usually hate earnestness. The sexy ponytail may be addling my brain. It’s just hair, I tell myself. Its function is to keep the head warm and protect it against ultraviolet radiation. There’s nothing inherently sexy about it.
“What are we talking about again?” he asks.
I say science at the same time that he says love, and we both laugh.
“What are the ingredients?” he prompts me again.
“Mutual self-interest and socioeconomic compatibility.”
“Do you even have a soul?”
“No such thing as a soul,” I say.
He laughs at me as if I’m kidding. “Well,” he says after he realizes that I’m not kidding, “My ingredients are friendship, intimacy, moral compatibility, physical attraction, and the X factor.”
“What’s the X factor?”
“Don’t worry,” he says. “We already have it.”
“Good to know,” I say, laughing. “I’m still not going to fall in love with you.”
“Give me today.” He’s suddenly serious.
“It’s not a challenge, Daniel.”
He just stares at me with those bright brown eyes, waiting for an answer.
“You can have one hour,” I say.
He f
rowns. “Only an hour? What happens then? Do you turn into a pumpkin?”
“I have an appointment and then I have to go home.”
“What’s the appointment?” he asks.
Instead of answering, I look around the café. A barista calls out a string of orders. Someone laughs. Someone else stumbles.
I stir my coffee unnecessarily again. “I’m not going to tell you,” I say.
“Okay,” he says, unfazed.
He’s made up his mind about what he wants, and what he wants is me. I get the feeling he can be determined and patient. I almost admire him for it. But he doesn’t know what I know. I’ll be a resident of another country tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’ll be gone from here.
I SHOW HER MY PHONE, and we argue over which questions to choose. We definitely don’t have time for all thirty-six. She wants to ixnay the four minutes of soulfully staring into each other’s eyes, but that’s not happening. The eye thing is my ace in the hole. All my ex-girlfriends (okay, one of my ex-girlfriends—okay, I’ve only ever had one girlfriend, now ex-girlfriend) have liked my eyes a lot. Grace (the aforementioned singular in the extreme ex-girlfriend) said they looked like gemstones, specifically smoky quartz (jewelry making was her hobby). We were making out in her room when she first said it, and she stopped midsession to get an example for me.
Anyway, my eyes are like quartz (the smoky kind) and girls (at least one) dig it.
The questions fall into three categories, each more personal than the previous. Natasha wants to stick with the least personal ones from the first category, but I ixnay that as well.
From category #1 (least intimate) we choose:
#1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
#2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
#7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
From category #2 (medium intimacy):
#17. What is your most treasured memory?
#24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?
From category #3 (most intimate):
#25. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling…”
#29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
#34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
#35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?
We end up with ten questions, because Natasha thinks that for number twenty-four we should talk about our relationship with both our mother and father.
“How come mothers are always the ones most blamed for screwing up children? Fathers screw kids up perfectly well.” She says it like someone with firsthand experience.
She checks the time on her phone again. “I should go,” she says, pushing her chair back and standing too quickly. The table wobbles. Some of her coffee splashes out.
“Shit. Shit,” she says. It’s kind of an overreaction. I really want to ask about the appointment and her father, but I know better than to ask right now.
I get up, grab some napkins, and clean up the spill.
The look she gives me is somewhere between gratitude and exasperation.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say.
“Yeah, okay. Thanks,” she says.
I watch as she navigates around the line of coffee-starved people to go outside. Probably I shouldn’t stare at her legs, but they’re great (the third-greatest pair I’ve ever seen). I want to touch them almost as much as I want to keep talking to her (maybe a little more), but there are no circumstances under which she would let me do that.
Either she’s trying to shake me loose, or we are in a speed-walking competition that I’m unaware of. She dashes between a couple of slow walkers and skirts along the outside of sidewalk scaffolding to avoid having to slow down for people.
Maybe I should give up. I don’t know why I haven’t yet. The universe is clearly trying to save me from myself. I bet if I looked for signs about parting ways, I would find them.
“Where are we heading?” I ask her when we come to a stop at a crosswalk. The haircut I’m supposed to be getting is going to have to wait. I’m pretty sure they let people with long hair go to college.
“I am heading uptown to my appointment and you are tagging along with me.”
“Yes, I am,” I say, ignoring her not-at-all-subtle emphasizing.
We cross the street and walk along quietly for a few minutes. The morning settles into itself. A few stores have propped open their doors. The weather’s too cold for air-conditioning and too hot for closed doors. I’m sure my dad’s done the same thing at our store.
We pass the extraordinarily well lit and extremely crowded window display of an electronics store. Every item in the display is tagged with a red ON SALE! sticker. There are hundreds of these stores all over the city. I can’t understand how they stay in business.
“Who even shops in these?” I wonder out loud.
“People who like to haggle,” she says.
Half a block later we pass another, virtually identical store and we both laugh.
I take out my phone. “So. You ready for these questions?”
“You are relentless,” she says, not looking at me.
“Persistent,” I correct her.
She slows down and looks over at me. “Do you really think asking me deep, philosophical questions is going to make us fall in love?” She puts air quotes (oh, how I dislike air quotes) around deep and philosophical and fall in love.
“Think of it as an experiment,” I say. “What’d you say before about the scientific method?”
This gets me a small smile.
“Scientists shouldn’t experiment on themselves,” she counters.
“Not even for the greater good?” I ask. “For furthering mankind’s knowledge of itself?”
That gets me a big laugh.
USING SCIENCE AGAINST ME is pretty smart.
Four Observable Facts: He’s perfectly silly. And too optimistic. And too earnest. And pretty good at making me laugh.
“Number one’s too hard,” he says. “Let’s start with question two: Would you like to be famous and how?”
“You first,” I tell him.
“I’d be a famous poet in chief.”
Of course he would. Observable Fact: He’s a hopeless romantic.
“You’d be broke,” I tell him.
“Broke with money but rich with words,” he counters immediately.
“I’m going to vomit right here on the sidewalk.” I say it too loudly and a woman in a suit gives us a wide berth.
“I’ll clean you up,” he says.
Really, he’s too sincere by half. “What does a poet in chief even do?” I ask.
“Offers wise and poetic counsel. I’d be the person world leaders came to with nasty philosophical problems.”
“That you solve by writing them a poem?” The skepticism in my voice cannot be missed.
“Or reading one,” he says, with more unflappable sincerity.
I make some gagging sounds.
He bumps me lightly with his shoulder and then steadies me with his hand on my back. I like the feel of his hand so much that I speed up a little to avoid it.
“You can be cynical all you want, but many a life can be saved by poetry,” he says.
I scour his face for a sign that he’s joking, but no—he really does believe it. Which is sweet. Also stupid. But mostly sweet.
“What about you? What kind of fame do you want?” he asks.
This is an easy one. “I’d be a benevolent dictator.”
He laughs. “Of any particular country?”
“Of the whole world,” I say, and he laughs some more.
“All dictators think they’re benevolent. Even the ones holding machetes.”
“I’m prett
y sure those ones know they’re being greedy, murderous bastards.”
“But you wouldn’t be that?” he asks.
“Nope. Pure benevolence from me. I would decide what was good for everyone and do it.”
“But what if what’s good for one person isn’t good for another?”
I shrug. “Can’t please everyone. As my poet in chief, you could comfort the loser with a good poem.”
“Touché,” he says, smiling. He pulls out his phone again and begins thumbing through the questions. I take a quick look at my own phone. For a second I’m surprised by the crack in the screen, until I remember my fall from earlier. What a day I’m having. Again, I’m thinking about multiverses and wondering about the ones where both my phone and headphones are still intact.
There’s a universe where I stayed home and packed like my mom wanted me to. My phone and headphones are fine, but I didn’t meet Daniel.
There’s a universe where I went to school and am safely sitting in English class instead of almost being hit by a car. Again, no Daniel.
In another Daniel-less universe, I did go to USCIS, but I didn’t meet Daniel in the record store, so our chatting didn’t have a chance to delay me. I arrived at the crosswalk before the BMW driver showed up, and there was no near-miss accident. My phone and headphones remain intact.
Of course, there is an infinite number of these universes, including one where I did meet Daniel but he wasn’t able to save me at the crosswalk, and more than just my phone and headphones are broken.
I sigh and check the distance to Attorney Fitzgerald’s office. Twelve more blocks. I wonder how much it will cost to fix my screen. But then, maybe I won’t need to get it fixed. I’ll probably need to get a new phone in Jamaica.
Daniel interrupts my thoughts, and I’m kind of grateful. I don’t want to think about anything having to do with leaving.