Worlds

10. Chemistry Lesson

O’Hara didn’t like him at first. The Light Head is a fine little bar, but women are generally immune to its main attraction, a low-gee stripper. She was unreasonably annoyed by the way his eyes kept wandering, and said some outrageous things, to nail down his attention and John’s.

So they spent a lively hour arguing, then a half hour conceding, during which Daniel’s eyes didn’t wander. O’Hara found herself liking him, and casually decided that she would try to lure him into her. He didn’t take much luring.

It was a difficult, vulnerable time of life for her. She’d been just nineteen when Charlie left her, and hadn’t had enough experience with such things to handle it gracefully. She was butterflying with grim determination, taking to bed almost anybody who could get there under his own power. By chance or her unconscious design, though, none of those men approached being her intellectual equal. Daniel Anderson did, and that was going to make a considerable difference.

By Devonite standards, Daniel would not have been considered a good lover. Their slang for men like him was “hard place”: he had the minimum physical requisite but none of the skills they prized so highly. To O’Hara that was less a disadvantage than an interesting challenge. She enjoyed being good at things, and showing off her talents. So Daniel became the latest draftee into the platoon of men who indirectly benefited from Charlie Devon’s religious upbringing.

He was the first one who didn’t seem to be particularly impressed. Grateful, yes, and properly responsive to her ministrations, but from the beginning he seemed more interested in her brain than in the other organs. Rather than flattering her, this made O’Hara anxious. She had always taken her mind for granted.

But that was evidently what it took to make her fall in love. Intellectual combat she searched out all of Daniel’s most cherished beliefs and held them up to analysis, even ridicule; he gave it right back. They fenced and sparred and gleefully shouted each other down, and usually wound up in bed. It was an odd combination, pepper and honey, but they both responded to it. Within days, they had captured one another, and they grew ever closer during the two months she had remaining.