As She Climbed Across the Table

21

“Well, you’ve got a case,” said the radio talk-show host. “No problem there. But if you sue her you lose the relationship. I haven’t seen the marriage that could survive litigation.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” said the caller.

I was on the couch, still in yesterday’s clothes. I’d kicked my blanket onto the floor in the night, and tugged the sheet up in a bunch around my neck. The radio was playing in the guest bedroom.

The blind men were in the kitchen running water, clanking silverware, cooking what smelled like glue. I crept to the door and slipped out, not wanting to explain Alice’s absence to them. I couldn’t face them in the dead, used-up space of the apartment. From outside I peered in and saw Evan poking questioningly at the bedclothes on the couch. I ran.

The day was cold and bright. I crossed the lawns, retracing my steps. I’d slept badly. I was sealed in a pocket of leftover night, mouth dry, eyelids swollen.

I went back to the physics facility. Now the hallways bustled with students, their hair wet from the shower, mauling bagels or croissants as they hurried to check the outcomes of overnight experiments. Instruments that had been quiet the night before beeped and blinked at me, as though they’d detected an inauthentic presence. I was a bit of the night myself, haunting the new day. Garth would have called me a time traveler.

Lack’s outer doors were open. Phase two had started. I went inside. I was alone in the observation room. The overhead screen was dead. The blinds were down over the window to the Cauchy-space lab. I levered them open, and there was Alice in the intermediate zone, the clean room. She had her back to me. Her face was pressed against the glass of the window to Lack’s chamber.

Inside, Braxia and the Italian team frenziedly set up their equipment, a galaxy of cameras, detectors, shields, counters, and meters, a forest that overwhelmed Lack’s little table. I raised my hand to tap at the glass, to draw Alice’s attention, then stopped.

What would I say to her?

So I watched. Watched Braxia command his efficient team, and watched Alice watching, leaning on her elbows, her devotion to Lack absolute. She must have hated to see him swarmed over by the Italians. We made a pyramid, Braxia observing Lack, Alice observing Braxia and Lack, myself observing all three. I thought: If Alice still feels my eye tracks, she’ll turn. She didn’t. I shut the blinds and went out of the facility.

My first class was at three. I needed a shower and a shave before then. Maybe a nap. But if I killed some time the blind men would go out. I could have the apartment to myself. I raised my collar against the morning wind and hiked up the sunny path to the soccer fields. Practice was underway.

My graduate student had applied for funding to study the geographic spray of athletes on a playing field following an injury. He wanted to understand the disbursement of bodies around the epicenter of the wounded player, the position of the medics and coaches, and the sympathy or skepticism implicit in the stances chosen. All taking into account the seriousness of the injury, the score in the match when it occurred, the value of the player injured. Et cetera. I’d written an effusive letter in support of the application. The work had been funded generously. My student was here now on the sidelines, jotting notes on a clipboard as he watched the players sprint. I moved up beside him.

The players on the sidelines jogged in place, cold in their shorts, skin red and goose-pimpled, tousled hair glinting in the late-November sun. They were used to seeing my student by now, but they seemed wary of me. The coach straddled the line, barking orders, slapping at the men as they joined the drills.

“Subjects who express sympathy at a teammate’s fall are sixty-eight percent likelier to sustain a treatable gravity-related injury in the same game,” my student said, not looking at me, his eyes trained on the field.

“That’s good work,” I said.

“Subjects who assume a sympathetic posture at an opponent’s fall are another sixteen percent likelier.”

“Very good.”

We were like athletes ourselves, perfecting a purely meaningless activity, ears growing numb in the wind. I felt a solidarity with the players. I wanted to sustain a treatable gravity-related injury myself. I tested my weight surreptitiously, faked a limp.

It was good to see my student so busy doing what I’d taught him to do. Looking for the hidden data, the facts that hide inside obvious things. The interdisciplinary dark matter. And a protégé confirmed my existence in the world. I felt grateful. I wanted to share some kernel of advice with him, some warning about women, but nothing came to mind. It was okay. We were safe here, on the sidelines, far from danger.

So we watched the players drill. Passing the ball, rolling it backward with their toes, popping it up with their knees and foreheads. Running patterns, in bursts of speed, then falling away. The goalies lunged from side to side, protecting the sanctity of the delineated space. And when a defenseman shot suddenly upward, then fell groaning to the ground, players around him freezing, assuming revealing postures, the ball rolling to a stop unmanned, my student and I rushed together onto the field, huffing, experts who’d been waiting in abeyance for the right time to assume their roles, and had a closer look.