shared their small talk already in what had become a thin ritual. Gordon refused to discuss the meeting on the beach, refused to have Cliff over for a drink, and felt his withdrawal would, ultimately, settle the matter. Only dimly did it occur to him that the refusals were the cause of the curiously stale conversations they now had together.
“What’s that mean?”
“Work in a company research lab. GE, Bell Labs—” He launched into an advertisement for the virtues of working where results counted, where ideas evolved swiftly into hardware. He did not, in fact, believe the industrial labs were superior to university groups, but they did have an aura. Things got done faster there. Helpers and technicians abounded. Salaries were higher. Then too, he enjoyed the unavoidable smugness of the scientist, who knew he could always have a life beyond academe. Not merely a job, but a pursuit. Genuine research, and for decent pay, too. Maybe something beyond the laboratory, as well—look at Herb York with his consulting on “defense posture” and the cloudy theories of disarmament. The government could use some clear scientific thinking there, he argued.
“Gordon, this is just plain old bullshit.”
“Huh?” It stalled him for a moment.
“You don’t want to go work for a company.”
“I’m thinking very seriously—”
“You want to be a professor. Do research. Have students. Give lectures. You lap it up.”
“I do?”
“Of course you do. When everything’s going okay you get up humming in the morning and you’re humming when you come home at night.”
“You overestimate the pleasures of the job.”
“I’m not estimating at all. I see what professoring does to you.”
“Uh.” His momentum blunted, he ruefully admitted to himself that she knew him pretty well.
“So instead of talking up some temporary escape hatch like industry, you ought to be doing something.”
“Like what?”
“Something different. Move your x’s and y’s and z’s around. Try—”
“Another approach,” he finished for her.
“Exactly. Thinking about problems from a different angle is—” She broke off, hesitated, then plunged ahead. “Gordon, I could tell what was going on there with Cliff. I could reassure you and do a whole routine, but I’m not sure any more that you’d believe me.”
“Uh.”
“Remember this,” she said firmly. “You don’t own me, Gordon. We’re not even married, for Chrissake.”
“Is that what’s bothering you?”
“Bothering me? God, it’s you that’s—”
“—’cause if it is, maybe we ought to talk about that and see if—”
“Gordon, wait. When we started out, moved in together, we agreed we were going to try it out, that’s all.”
“Sure. Sure.” He nodded vigorously, his food forgotten. “But I’m willing, if it’s making you play games like this thing with Cliff—and that was really childish, Penny, arranging that meeting, just childish—I’m willing to talk about it, you know, ah, getting—”
Penny held out her hand, palm toward him. “No. Wait. Two points, Gordon.” She ticked them off. “One, I didn’t arrange any meeting. Maybe Cliff was looking for us, but I didn’t know about it. Hell, I didn’t even know he was around here. Two—Gordon, do you think our getting married will solve anything?”
“Well, I feel that—”
“Because I don’t want to, Gordon. I don’t want to marry you at all.”
• • •
He came up out of the muggy press of late summer in the subway and emerged into the only slightly less compacted heat of 116th Street. This entrance and exit were relatively new. He dimly remembered an old cast-iron kiosk which, until the early ’50s, ushered students into the rumbling depths. It stood between two swift lanes of traffic, providing a neat Darwinian selection pressure against undue mental concentration. Here, students with their minds stuffed chock full of Einstein and Mendel and Hawthorne often had their trajectories abruptly altered by Hudsons and DeSotos and Fords.
Gordon walked along 116th Street, glancing at his watch. He had refused to give a seminar on this, his first return to his Alma Mater since receiving his doctorate; still, he did not want to be late for his appointment with Claudia Zinnes. She was a kindly woman who had barely escaped Warsaw as the Nazis were entering it, but he remembered her impatience with late students. He hurried by South Field. To his left students clustered on the shallow steps of Low Library. Gordon headed for the physics building, perspiring from the effort of carrying his big brown suitcase. Among a knot of students he thought he saw a familiar face.
“David! Hey, David!” he called. But the man turned away quickly and walked in the opposite direction. Gordon shrugged. Maybe Selig