by Holly Hight & Richard A. Lovett
* * * *
There are things so pervasively important to people that it’s hard to define their essence....
Seattle, 2010
I sit in the park, watching children play. I imagine their packs swinging as, earlier, they’d sprinted home from school, glad to be released into a spring afternoon. Later, dinner will be clanking silverware and gulps of milk. Then it’ll be study time and bath time, with bedtime stories and goodnight kisses, reassurances in the hall as the light’s left on. But for now, it’s slides and jungle gyms, softball and tag.
It wasn’t like I didn’t know what I was doing when I chose the tenure track over the baby track. In the sciences, twice as many women as men are divorced or permanently single. But I’d always figured I’d be one who beat the odds. After all, I was dedicating my career to studying love, or at least the neurochemistry behind it. Think serotonin, norepinephrine, estrogen, testosterone—hormones with forms like snowflakes looking for matching snowflake-receptors in the brain. But I lost most of my grant funds today: the dream I’d nurtured just as surely as these parents nurtured theirs.
I see a small boy, two or so, with hair the color of straw and eyes like the sky. He wants to swing, like the older kids as they kick their feet up, daring each other to go higher. His mother helps him onto the seat, holding the chains as she gently pushes. Soon, he’s far enough up for it to be scary, but she isn’t going to let him fall, and he knows it. He’s flying, pretending he’s a big kid.
My research involves putting couples in brain scanners and watching the parts of their brains that light up as I try to puzzle out what it is that wires some for love, while others spend their lives searching. Sometimes, I give them printouts of their scans, small supernovas of brilliant hues set against black, the hieroglyphics of experience. When I see a good one, full of serotonin and dopamine and norepinephrine in just the right places—something my software renders in red and yellow the shade of a summer’s-eve sun—I count it as true love.
The one I keep tacked above my desk is from an older couple, in their seventies. They eat lunches in the local buffet, play Boggle in the afternoon, spend summer evenings gardening. She likes petunias and he likes squash. “She makes the best fried squash around,” he’d said, squeezing her hand. Their scan reminds me that true love really exists. It thrives in Alice and Victor Burgess.
The two-year-old has had enough. Before he can start to fuss, his mother plucks him from the swing and bounces him on her hip. Toddlers have short attention spans.
My grant covered two grad students and a postdoc. Not much in the big scheme of things but in the calculus of grant committees, too much for too few papers. But doing science isn’t like being a toddler on a swing. You can’t just shut it off when someone decides you’ve had enough. As I walk from the playground, I make a decision. I’ve got six months left on an older grant. Not a lot of money, but enough, if I’m frugal. This project means too much to me. I’ll continue as best I can.
* * * *
Baltimore, 2003
Nausea pulsed through me as I prepared for the symposium, my notes laid out by the hotel-room sink. Was it just nerves? I peeked out the bathroom door to where Carl still slept, the heavy curtains drawn.
The night before had been late: sushi and sake with a dozen others from this wonderfully diverse meeting, one of the few where we could both present. Astrophysics one day, neurochemistry the next.
Carl had drunk. I hadn’t.
I locked the door and slipped up a palm to touch a tender breast, my brain whirring with what I’d tell him when he woke. “Carl, I think I’m—” No, wait. There couldn’t be any “think”; I had to be sure. “Hey, Carl, I’m—” No, too direct. He’d need time to adjust. “Hey, Carl; I need to talk to you about something . . .” He’d have his dark head bowed, looking at some journal, “Yeah?”
“I need to talk to you.”
He’d look up. “Uh-huh.”
“About something really important.”
He would set the journal aside and bite his lower lip. “What is it, Julia?” There would be a hint of impatience.
I’d catch it, chicken out. “Never mind.”
“No, what is it? You’ve got my attention now.”
“I think I’m—” And then I’d do it all wrong because I’d say the first thing that came to mind, not what I’d rehearsed, which is what I do when I’m nervous.
“You’re what?”
“I didn’t say I was; I said I think—”
“You think?” He’d stand, throw his hands up in exasperation. “What do you mean you think? Damn it, Jules. Weren’t you careful?”
“Yeah.”
“Then how did this happen?”
I’d shrug, redden a little. “I don’t know.” Perhaps it was a blessing.
What would that conversation be like? I know we didn’t plan this, but maybe it’s a good thing. This conference was the first thing we’d done together in ages. Maybe a child would pull us back together.
But even then, I knew it wouldn’t work. Because what I wished he’d say was as impossible as my mother’s Christmas gift.
* * * *
The Christmas I turned seven, my mother bought me a doll—a nice one, with a porcelain face and features like a real child’s, with raven hair and real pink silk. It must’ve taken her months to save the money. We were poor and she was single.
I still have it in a drawer, her hair still as black and the silk still as pink. From the start, I knew she was one of those toys that are too nice to really play with, the type adults talk about when they tell you how things used to be. Eventually, I named her Poinsettia because she came on Christmas, and would carry on long, intimate talks with her from her shelf in the darkness of my bedroom. But that was later. At the time, what I wanted was a snowflake.
Of course, that’s what I told my mother. Seven-year-olds can be cruel. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate the doll. It was just that there was something else I wanted more. A perfect, feathery, one-of-a-kind snowflake like I’d seen in my grade school science book.
She could have satisfied me with a Christmas ornament, or even by teaching me to cut snowflake shapes from folded paper. But for some reason she chose to take me literally as I tried to wrap my seven-year-old vocabulary around the intricate, fractal images in my picture book. “I want a snowflake,” I said. “One I can hold forever.”
She looked away, bit her lip, went to her bedroom. A moment later, she came back with a jewelry box. Once, she’d kept pearl earrings in it, earrings she’d gotten from a man she’d loved.
“Open it,” she said.
I did, but it was empty.
“Look hard.”
I looked, but there was nothing.
“You can’t hold a snowflake.”
The box still reminds me of the earrings she used to wear on special outings with my father, but I’ve never dared put anything in it. I never knew what happened to them, but the earrings represent all things lost and gone forever.
* * * *
I slide into the brain scanner I’ve moved to the basement lab, the only space my shrunken funds now justify. At least I was able to keep the scanner. It’s big enough for two and fast enough to catch the play of their brains interacting. I listen to its clicks and hums as I recalibrate it, feeding it my own shifting emotions. I have the monitor turned so I can see from inside. The images are like aurora borealis, dancing curtains of color encoding joys and tragedies, sparked by a slide show of selected pictures.
The first are neutral. A fluffy cat on a gingham couch. A black-and-gold barge on a stormy sea. A skyscraper flashing sunlight from blue-tinged windows. Then I move up the emotional scale to an old green Volkswagen, a yard with grass yellowed by August sun, a tiny figure on a twilight beach. Another notch and it’s my father’s young, handsome face with the playful smile. A Christmas tree with ornaments from the 1970s. My mother’s hands and the knit blanket she made when I started kindergarten. What do I see? Reds, oranges, and yellows. Heat. Energy. Soul. Me at my best, and worst. Humanity’s core.
I shut the slide show off, close my eyes. Breathe. Shove myself out and look again at the images of my brain on fire. I wipe a tear, rain after the blaze, and gaze at the color, the topography of my life, wishing it were different.
* * * *
“Julie?”
I’m caught in a memory, six years old.
My mother’s face is gilded in candlelight. She’s trying not to cry. “Daddy wanted me to tell you how much he loves you.” Her voice breaks and I feel her arms around me. Too tight. “He had to go away, you know...”
I look up, into her face. “Where?”
“Far away.”
“But where?”
She looks at me. “Europe.”
“Where’s that?”
“Across the world.”
I try to imagine it. Fanciful birds and exotic animals. Fantastic buildings. Tall people. “Why’d he leave?”
“He had something important to do.”
I go to bed dreaming of Europe. Does it smell different? Is the grass a different color? What about the sky? I can’t sleep. I peer through the skinny crack in the door, watch as my mother cries at the kitchen table, the tiny flame dancing with her breath. I wonder why she’s so sad; Dad’s doing something important. She must miss him. I feel a pang. I miss him, too.
* * * *
On the final night of the conference, a dozen of us celebrated in the hotel bar: martinis, imported microbrews, wines from half the globe. I drank a virgin margarita, still thinking I had a secret. I looked around, wondering how many of the others once had similar secrets. In nine months, I was going to be one of the lucky few who danced between the tenure track and the baby track. One of the few who found and held love. I touched my belly under the table, looking over at Carl as he discussed string theory or the first picoseconds of the Big Bang or something equally incomprehensible. He made it sound like gossip, exciting and juicy. More exciting to him, I suddenly knew, than the news I was waiting the right moment to tell.
I got up, went to the bathroom, and that’s when I saw it. Blood. One small, damning stain. My heart sank, the realization setting in that maybe the miracle wasn’t going to happen, that maybe it was for the better, anyway. The baby hadn’t really been what I’d wanted. The real dream might as well still be a snowflake.
I returned to the table a different person. I flagged the waiter. Deadpan, I said: “One Manhattan and a Long Island Iced Tea.”
He looked at me. Hesitated. “You want both?”
“Both.”
“At the same time?”
I held them up. “I’ve got two hands, don’t I?”
* * * *
Thirty minutes later I left, both drinks next to my plate, untouched. In the room, I couldn’t stop crying, even when I heard Carl’s key card in the door.
“What the hell’s wrong, Jules?”
“I hate this.”
“Hate what? This room? This hotel? The sushi roll? What?”
I sat up. Drew a breath. “I want more, Carl.”
He sighed, long and hard, melodramatically. “This again.”
“Please listen to me.”
He shrugged out of his jacket, tossed it on a table. “I’m tired, and we’ve been through this before.” He kicked off his shoes. “You cling, Jules. You try to grab so tightly that you crush the life out of whatever you’re trying to hold.”
I sat up straighter, as though slapped. But when we got home, it was Carl who filed for divorce.
* * * *
What is love? Whatever it is, it starts with neurochemicals. Maybe that’s all it is: snowflakes meeting snowflakes. Link them the right way and something beautiful happens. Pair them wrong and they melt and disappear.
I type the ad: Researcher looking for students willing to participate in study about love. What makes for good and lasting relationships . . . ?
They will kiss, I decide. And as they kiss, I’ll look at the sparklers in their brains. Love will exist as neurological firecrackers, snared on a machine, if only I can tease it out of the background of exams, car payments, soccer kids, or whatever else might be going on at the same time. I’ve been doing this now for seven years. Ever since Carl. Mapping brain activity against neurotransmitters, trying to tease out the secrets of the emotion that binds . . . and destroys.
I glance around the lab. For years it’s been a storeroom and private work space, collecting an amazing assortment of detritus: a three-year-old horse calendar still turned to giant Belgians; mystery novels for the chemistry experiments that had to be babysat overnight; snow boots from the big snowstorm . . . how many years ago?
And of course there are pictures. One in particular: sweat-stained and grubby. Small enough that I’d carried it in my purse for years. I’m not sure how it got here and have no idea what to do with it now, so I stuff it randomly in a drawer, an emotional land mine I’ll stumble over again some time, but out of sight for the moment.
* * * *
Every day I asked about Europe. By then, I knew the people were no taller, that the sky was still blue and the grass still green. In my history classes people crossed the ocean in sailing ships and returned in less time than Dad had been gone.
I was eight when I found out the truth.
By then, I knew people went to Europe in airplanes, so I decided to skip school and walk to the airport, which had to be on the south side of town, since that was the only direction I’d never been. Mom was still sad and whatever Dad was doing couldn’t be as important as she was. As I was. The picture was to show people so they could help me find him once I got there. It was of him and my mother on a camping trip, smiling, sitting on a log. It was the first picture I’d ever snapped, something magical I could hold forever.
I passed Benjamin Kendall’s white picket fence, then waved at Ralph, Mrs. Jergin’s old basset hound. I walked by the municipal pool and the park with the yellow swing set. I went up on the hill and looked for them, all those planes flying to Europe. But there weren’t any. No runways, no shiny jets, no tall traffic towers. Nothing but wheat fields and distant mountains.
I sat down, buried my head in my arms, and cried.
I woke to crickets and frogs, the moon, full and bright in the east. I picked my way home, through branches and gloom, and found my mother crying at her table. She looked up and was suddenly furious.
“Where have you been?”
I couldn’t answer; there was no excuse good enough.
“Not you, too, Julie. I can’t lose you, too.”
* * * *
I’m still trying to regain my composure when I hear a knock at the lab door.
“Are you Julie Rasmussen?”
I look up and see a man with clear blue eyes and sandy, shoulder-length hair.
“You’re the researcher, right? Sorry; I didn’t mean to—”
I stand, shoving my hair out of my face. “Yes. I’m Dr. Rasmussen—Julie. Just call me Julie. Jules, if you want . . .” I stammer, take a breath. “Sorry. Yes—you’ve come to the right place.” He reminds me of the perfect son or husband or father, soft-spoken, smart. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
He laughs. “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”
“No, I mean . . . what category?” I grab my clipboard, hold it up. “I need to put you in a category.”
“Oh . . .” He grins. “Single.”
I feel something in my gut. Apprehension. Sadness. Hope. I imagine my neurons firing, producing the color my scanner would see.
“How about you, Doctor? Boyfriend?”
“Not exactly.”
He walks over to the machine. “What is it you’re looking for? Love?”
“Sort of.”
He moves closer. “What does love look like?”
I imagine it. Dendrites and neuro-pathways lighting up. Snowflakes building . . . melting.
He is too close, looking at me now, not the machine. “You think maybe you’ve found it?”
I turn away, embarrassed. “Please leave.”
“What? What’d I do?”
“I’m not a test subject.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I’m not interested.”
* * * *
She comes in with black hair tangled around her shoulders and an attitude to match. The first thing I hear is her gum.
“You pay?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“They didn’t renew my grant.”
“Don’t you know that’s what separates us from them? People get paid. Guinea pigs don’t.”
I feel myself smile. “You’re in it for love and money, huh?”
She shakes her head. “Nope. Just money.”
Sadness swells through me as I notice a butterfly tattoo on her left ankle, the wings green, blue, and purple—colors that, on a scan, would mean inactivity.
“How do you know it’s not just lust?” she adds.
“I take both single people and people who are in committed—”
“Bring in a john.”
I stand there with my mouth open, like an idiot.
“You think of that?” She comes closer. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe the variable you think you’re measuring isn’t there at all?”
I feel my face redden. She is not stupid, not uneducated. “Where do you go to school?”
She snaps her gum. “Here.” Her gaze is hard, accentuated by black liner circling two piercingly blue eyes. “I’m going for my Ph.D. in physical education.” She grins. “Get it?”
“Huh?”
“Physical education?” She raises a wry brow. “Nevermind. You professor types think you’re smart, but really—”
“I want you as a part of my study.”
“Your study? If I participate, wouldn’t it be our study?”
“Okay. Whatever you say. Are you in or out?”
She smiles. “In. This ought to be entertaining.”
* * * *
“You want tongue or no tongue?”
I turn and there she is with a man, green-eyed and quiet.
“This is John.” She giggles. “Get it?” Then she kisses him, open-mouthed, gum and all.
“Uh...”
She turns and smiles. “Want to catch it on that machine of yours?”
“You know, this isn’t exactly—”
She walks up to me. “It is exactly.” She grins. “You want to know what love is, I’ll show you.”
My gut tightens. This isn’t love. “What’s your name again?”
“Karla.”
“Karla, I don’t think this is such a good—”
“Wait.” She winks, a dare, climbing into the machine. “Turn it on.”
I do, and I watch. Their brains, like twin stars, each pulling on the other, light up. My heart sinks. So it all looks the same.
She climbs out, still grinning. “What’d you think?”
“You looked happy.”
“Happy?”
I print the image, hand it to her. “All that yellow . . .” I catch her gaze, want to say that’s love, only it isn’t.
“So, that’s us.” She looks at me. “What’s it mean?”
“It means you like each other.”
“Just like?” She raises an eyebrow.
I catch his gaze, his eyes sea-foam green. “You’re . . . stimulated.”
She snorts.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Karla and . . .” Whatever his real name might be. I look at him and can’t stop looking.
“Trevor,” he says, taking my hand. His grip is firm, confident.
“You two are free to go.”
“So that’s it?”
I catch the dumbstruck expression on Karla’s face. “Yeah, that’s it.”
“I thought this was a study on love.”
“It is.”
She stands there, momentarily taken aback. “No wonder you didn’t get your grant.”
* * * *
I dream about him. Ocean Eyes. I wonder what it might be like to be in Karla’s place. In the dream, he has a slightly European accent—German, maybe. Or Dutch. But my father’s eyes were blue. Blue, flecked with gold. Eyes of sky, not of sea. Trevor is the same age my father was when he left, but he isn’t my father. Maybe that’s the appeal.
Is he really a john? And why is it that her brain lights up when he’s nothing more than a stranger?
As soon as I’m fully awake, I call her.
She answers, groggily. “Yeah?”
“Karla?”
“Yeah? Who the hell’s this?”
“This is Dr.—”
“Julie? You wanted me to call you Julie, remember?” Her voice gets harder, louder. “Do you know what time it is?”
I glance at my watch, the digital numerals reading 5:24. “I, I’m sorry, look, I just need you to come back in—you and . . . Trevor.”
“I thought you were done with love.” But her voice is no longer harsh.
“Not yet.”
“Well, then . . .” I imagine her bounding out of bed. “What are we waiting for?”
* * * *
She doesn’t bring Trevor. This time she arrives with a different guy, younger, with wild, unruly hair a generation out of date. “This one’s really John,” she says. “Yesterday, Trevor filled in. John had a gig.”
John meets my stare. He’s clad in stained blue jeans and a black tee. Karla matches. They are casual, sloppy, love all that seems to matter. But how is it possible? And why the hell, after bringing Trevor in yesterday, is she flaunting it to John?
The machine gives strange readings. There’s heat, but not in the right places. They’re going at each other with apparent passion, and the pleasure centers of their brains are nicely lit up, but there’s way too much going on in the cortex, and something else I haven’t even begun to figure out by the time they unclench.
I let her see the new scan, with its bursts of yellow, red, green, and blue. To her, it must look like yesterday’s. “See,” she says to John. “I told you you’d be good.”
“Huh?” Something about Karla always reduces me to monosyllables. “How’d you two meet?”
She glances at him sidelong, grinning wickedly. “You mean, am I really a working girl? Sure, who isn’t? But not that kind.”
“What kind are you?”
“Student. Pre-med for a while. These days I’m more into theater. That’s how I know John, though he’s mostly a musician.”
“What about Trevor?”
“Nosy, aren’t you?”
I reach for my clipboard. “Background.”
“Yeah, right.” She unwraps a wad of Bazooka, pops it in her mouth and works her jaws. Dramatically, I now realize. I should be angry, but mostly I’m remembering the dream. “Trevor’s a playwright,” she says eventually. “He and I were an item a year or so ago, but he’s a bit too traditional.” She pops the gum, loudly, with authority. “He’s one hell of a kisser, though. That was never a problem.”
By this time, she’s out of the machine, heading for the door. They’re already in the hallway when she turns, and with perfect timing, drops a parting shot. “By the way, John’s gay.”
* * * *
For an hour after they’ve left, I seethe. I don’t like being played for a fool. But eventually I pull up the scan and study it. All that activity in the cerebral cortex? I bet that’s the part of their brains they use when acting. It’s stronger in John, maybe because he had the tougher role. His performance was certainly good enough to fool me. The other stuff? Maybe that’s what you get when you’re secretly laughing at someone.
I flick the scan off again. I really don’t like being played for a fool.
But I remember Karla’s enthusiasm when I called her back. Deep inside, she’s curious. Maybe it’s just about the scanner; over the years, most of my subjects have been fascinated by it. That’s why I give them printouts as souvenirs. But maybe she too is curious about love. She’d never admit it, but she’s wounded too, or she’d never have played out this little charade of johns and Trevors. Unless, of course, she’s practicing a role. Hooker with a heart of . . . well, not gold. More like diamonds in the rough.
Not that it matters. I think back on the waiver I make all my study participants sign. There’s not much risk to the scanner, but I’d written the thing pretty broadly. Maybe it’s time to take this to the next step.
* * * *
Getting her back in is as easy as I’d hoped it would be. “Can you bring in both John and Trevor?” I ask.
“Ooh, getting kinky, aren’t we?”
I sigh. “Not at the same time.”
“Aw, what’s the fun in that? Who do you want first?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
* * * *
It turns out to be John. She’d wanted to come right away but I’d stalled because I needed a few days to prepare.
“Good,” I say when they arrive. “This time I’m going to want you to kiss three times.”
“Only three?
“You can have as long as you want on each.”
Karla’s grin is wolfish.
“Within reason.”
The first is a baseline. Similar results as before, though with less of the odd stuff I presume to be humor. Maybe the joke is wearing thin.
“Great,” I say and let them climb out. “Let’s let you catch your breaths a bit. “Want anything to eat? Coffee? Sandwich?”
For once she doesn’t have gum. “Nah. Got a big audition next week. Gotta starve.”
I poured myself a cup of coffee. If my nerves show, I can blame it on the caffeine. “Okay, now we’re going to test the effect of personal hygiene.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, if you’d eaten the lunch, you’d have found it full of onions, pepperoni, garlic, and stuff like that. Since you didn’t, we’ll have to try it this way.” I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a couple of small glasses, capped with Saran Wrap.
Karla peeled off the lid and took a sniff. “Ew! What’s that?”
“Juice.” Straight from Carl’s old health-food juicer, which he’d never bothered to retrieve and I’d never gotten around to taking to Goodwill. The lab’s not the only place that accumulates junk. “No calories. Just the good stuff.” The two concoctions are slightly different so they’ll each get the full impact of the other’s breath. “Bottoms up.”
When they’re done, I have them kiss again. Not surprisingly, the starburst is less intense, with some previously unnoticed activity, largely in the olfactory centers. It isn’t a truly legitimate test because, other than the olfactory stuff, it might just mean the novelty is wearing off. But the next step is the one that matters.
“Now, let’s see what happens when you freshen up a bit.” I hand them each a small spray bottle. “Breath freshener.” Which is partly true. Nice minty taste and all that. But the real show is in the chemicals behind the mint. Oxytocin. Testosterone. Estrogen. Epinephrine. A few others I suspect might play roles: excitement, stimulation, pair bonding—the whole shebang.
They’d never climbed out of the machine, and the scanner is quick enough to catch an image, even though they’re not holding all that still. A bit blurry, but enough to see their brains light up like firecrackers. The epinephrine hits first, then there’s a petal-like unfolding as the others kick in behind it. You can feel it happen—I tried it at home—but it’s mild enough I was sure they’d put it down to the mint. How do they describe mouthwash in ads? Bracing, or something like that. Some of the rush I’m seeing is simply that. But hopefully, I’ve also primed them enough for the next kiss to be . . . interesting.
And from the looks of the scanner, it appears to have worked. John pulls back, startled, but Karla’s the type who lives for the moment, so she won’t let him go. This time the kiss lasts five minutes, and I don’t intervene, as the starburst blossoms then fades.
“Wow,” Karla says. “What was that stuff?”
I hold up a bottle of Scope. “Mouthwash.”
“Huh. Guess I don’t know everything after all.” She’s oddly subdued and for a moment I feel guilty. Then I remind myself that they fooled me first. I feel a bit more guilty about John; if the kiss was as potent as the scanner indicated, he might be having a crisis of sexual identity. But like Karla, he brought it on himself. Whatever he’s feeling will be short lived, anyway.
They climb out of the machine, holding hands. But Karla is already reverting to her old self. “That was fun,” she says. “When’s the encore?”
“Excuse me?”
“When do I come back? With Trevor? Or anyone else? I know a lot of guys.”
But suddenly, I’m remembering my father. Before he left, back in the good years, he dabbled in magic. Even then I knew he wasn’t very good, but the first time he did a card trick he was good enough to fool me. But he could never resist doing it over, and by the second or third time, I always got him. It was a bit of a game, where from his point of view losing was also winning. I saw that Daddy! You can’t fool me! But it wouldn’t be the same for Karla. She’d bring her own mouthwash or maybe some kind of breath-freshening gum and when that didn’t have the same impact, it would be like me spotting my father’s badly palmed card.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” I say.
“Why not?”
“I found what I was looking for.” It’s probably the biggest lie I’ve ever told in my life. In addition to my father’s magic, I’ve also remembered that Karla and Trevor were once an “item.” John will figure out soon enough that today was an aberration. But Karla and Trevor must once have shared kisses that were the real thing. Rekindle that, and they might decide to replay the relationship that hadn’t worked a year ago. I wasn’t sure which bothered me more, the fact I had no right to do this to them or the fear that this time it might work out.
Karla drops John’s hand, approaches me. She’s close enough for me to see flecks of darker blue in her light-blue eyes. “You’re scared, aren’t you? Why?”
For every step I take back, she takes another forward. “I’m not scared.”
“Sure you are.”
“No I’m not.”
She snorts and turns to leave “Liar.”
“Wait.” My words surprise me. “I need Trevor’s contact information. I’m not sure I know how to reach him except through you.”
She snorts again. “Yeah. Gotta have the background.” But she rattles off a phone number and I write it down without knowing what I’m writing, as though my fingers, my brain, have gone numb. I imagine it on a scanner. Blues and greens. Ocean hues.
* * * *
I dream about him again that night. Every time I drift off, I see those sea-green eyes. The next day, I power up the scanner. Climb in and think about him. But the scan tells me nothing. Lots of activity, but no pattern I’ve seen before. Confusion, in other words, which is pretty much what I’m feeling.
I finger the spray bottle, then figure what the heck and give it a whirl. Everything sparks up, but it’s not like Karla and John. Not like anything. Just me and a fantasy. A man who might as well be in Europe.
On the third day, I call him. My hands shake. My mouth is dry. I hear it ring on his end, anticipate his voice.
“Hello?”
“Trevor?”
“Speaking.”
“It’s Dr.—Julie.”
“Dr. Julie?”
“Sorry. It’s Julie.”
“Uh . . . hi.”
“Can you come back in?” I swallow. “Alone?”
“Why?”
“I have some questions for you. I sometimes need to interview subjects separately.”
“Oh.”
“Does this afternoon work?”
“Sure.”
“How’s one o’clock?”
“Fine by me. See you then.”
I set down the phone, trembling again. I’ve got enough spray for one more test. Then, if I want more, it’ll be another week in the chemistry lab.
* * * *
He arrives ten minutes early, in dirty khakis and a green polo that matches his eyes. I see his shadow first, lingering in the hall, not wanting to interrupt.
I swallow. “Trevor?”
The shadow turns into a man. In the dim light, his face seems young, unlined. I think of my mother and the way she aged, the way her hurt stole the softness from her face and made her sadder, so I could see it even when she tried to forget.
He walks in, smiles. If there’s hurt there, I can’t see it. “So...”
I take a breath. “I made some coffee. Would you like a cup?”
“Thanks, but I don’t drink coffee.”
“Me, I live on the stuff.” The corner market, in fact, makes a brew they call Ultra-Extreme Super Jolt. I don’t think they sell much: it tastes like reagent-grade caffeine mixed with burned cork. It does the job, but I know better than to offer it to others. At the moment, I’ve got a thermos of Kenya’s best.
I pour myself a cup, and try to get to the point—try to pretend there really is a point. “Karla can be a bit . . . enigmatic.”
“You don’t say?” The smile touches his eyes and it’s all I can do to keep my train of thought.
“Is she really an actress?”
“Yes. And I’m really a playwright. Though that’s not my only job. I’m also a sail maker.”
“A what?”
“I make sails. For boats. Down near Shilshole Bay. It’s what, in my field, they call a day job.”
“And the two of you?”
“We gave it a go, but she’s a long way from being ready to settle down. I’m not sure why I let her talk me into this. She gets these goofy ideas, and then you’re in, up to your eyebrows, wondering what you’re doing.”
I check my clipboard, trying to figure out how, earlier, I’d gotten so rattled I never even asked him the most basic questions. “How old are you?”
“Older than I look. I still get carded all the time. I actually collected a degree in mechanical engineering before I quit the corporate rat race. Some of it comes in handy, though, working with boats.” He’s looking at me oddly. “I’m forty-one. And you?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“This isn’t about science, is it?”
It hadn’t been about science since I’d lost my grant. Maybe for some time before that. If it had been, I’d have remembered to have him fill out the damn intake form before we’d started. If it had been, I’d have had no excuse to call him back.
“Didn’t think so,” he says. “Can we go to dinner?”
I almost say no because I’m afraid of what it is that draws me to him: those eyes, so much like my father’s. Kind and confident in the good years . . . and then, gone, like the snowflake you can never hold. I want the good years, but can’t stand another round of bad ones. “Let me think about it.”
* * * *
I can’t concentrate, and there’s nothing I need to be doing for the rest of the afternoon. Without conscious plan, I find myself drawn to the same park bench where weeks before I’d watched the children play. It’s summer now, and the park is crowded.
I know now that there really is a neurochemistry to love—or at least to the attraction that’s fueled a million sonnets. It’s potent stuff, mediated by chemicals strong enough even to blast through years of sexual orientation, at least temporarily. I may not have identified them all, but I’ve found a few dandies. And I’ve used them to create a love potion. Chemistscan create diamonds in the lab, real in every way but for the fact they don’t come from the earth. Soon perhaps, anyone can buy them. How much does that matter? Is there a clear distinction between that which comes naturally and that which is forced, even when what’s forced looks like the real thing?
More than just the seasons have changed since my last visit to the park. Then, everything seemed magical; now, a little boy is screaming, throwing himself on the ground and flailing his limbs, pounding fists too small to do damage except to himself. “No!” He screams. “No home! Want stay. Not all done!”
What is it that I want? True love that can’t be lost? Or just a man to call me beautiful even though I’m not and to let me gaze in his eyes and pretend I see . . . what? Someone worthy of his love?
A little girl runs after a ball. She’s laughing, no thought but for the ball. But she’s running fast, on a sidewalk. I can see it coming; she’s running too fast for those little legs. I see her tip forward, try to catch herself, and go down, hands and knees on rough concrete.
On the other side of the playground, two boys are tugging at a tricycle. “Mine,” one yells. “Mine!”
From a hundred feet away, I can hear the frustration in the mother’s voice. “We have to share, Jackson. Let Tyler have a turn.”
“No, mine!”
Where have all the daydreams gone? What happened to the magic?
I remember Alice and Victor, the retired couple, still capable of generating neurochemical flares just by talking to each other. They’d been married for fifty-one years. Back then, I’d been doing real research: I’d spent an hour collecting their bios. “We met at a sock hop,” she’d said. “I bet you don’t even know what that is.” Which was right; I had to look it up.
That kind of love is rare. I try not to think how rare. I’d rather believe one in a thousand than one in a million. My father’s face flashes again through my mind—that grin, buoyant and heartbreaking. There and then gone.
I have a concoction that might not only generate love, but bring it back on demand. The good years, forever.
* * * *
Trevor and I meet at an outdoor café. It’s still sunny and warm, a slight breeze riffling the blue umbrella above us.
I’ve dressed up, the first time in years.
“You look beautiful,” he says.
I feel myself smile. “Thank you.”
We talk comfortably and a bit randomly. About academia, the weather, sailmaking.
“Do you have a boat?”
“Yes. A thirty-two foot trimaran. I keep her at Shilshole. Maybe you can join me sometime.”
I like this quiet man. But will he go the way of my father? Even Carl and I generated sparks at first.
In my pocket is the bottle that can, if not hand me my dreams, at least bring them closer. I don’t have to spray both of our breaths; he’ll pick up enough from mine. The old love song about kisses sweeter than wine: that’ll be me. This time there’s not even any mouthwash to give it away. Tasteless and odorless, that’s the potion in my purse.
But if it works, all he’ll see is me. There will be no memories to ignite the blaze. No squash or petunias. No summer barbecues or Christmas Eves cuddling by firelight. No vacations basking on faraway shores or camping beneath the Milky Way. My potion will bypass all of that. An instant sun, created from nothing.
The café isn’t far from my home, so Trevor offers to walk. Time to use the spray soon, if I’m going to. But my mind is on fried squash and petunias.
One of the things that made Alice and Victor different was that they had four decades of shared memories. You can’t get those from a bottle. It wasn’t just the squash and flowers: it was what they signified. Alice and Victor were attentive. Carl was an okay kisser, but he was never attentive—always more wrapped up in his astrophysics than in me. As I, to be honest, had been more wrapped up in chemistry. Chasing tenure is an all-consuming goal—too much attention divided by too little time. Neurotransmitters are both causes and effects. Maybe what I’d created was a drug, masquerading as love.
Trevor is talking, but I’m not catching much of it.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yeah. Just a little . . .” What? Confused, but that’s not what I want to say. On a scan, my cerebral cortex would be lighting up in spots and flickers all over the place. “. . . out of practice,” I finally say, because that too is true.
Then my apartment is in view. Ground floor in a nice old Victorian. Ground zero for my moment of truth. A block away, I open my purse, fumbling as though for keys. Pull out the sprayer.
Whatever love is, it doesn’t reside in the cerebral cortex. It shouldn’t take a Ph.D. to know that. Nor is it something you strive for like tenure. Alice and Victor had been attentive, but they’d also been relaxed, comfortable not only with each other, but also with themselves.
I veer into an alley and throw the spray bottle into a dumpster.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.” Nothing and everything. In a distant corner of my mind, my father’s eyes twinkle at me. I never asked my mother what happened; just assumed that somehow he changed. But maybe it had been at least partly her fault. Maybe she’d tried too hard, like she had with the porcelain doll and the snowflake box. Like she had with the story of Europe. I’ll continue my work, but this time I’ll do real science. This time, I’ll look at how our brains work . . . and not try to force them.
I’m suddenly aware of Trevor beside me.
“Thanks for saying yes tonight,” he says.
“I didn’t.”
He grins.
“I said okay.”
“Semantics.” He moves closer and I realize we’re about to have our first kiss in the alley behind Wong’s Chinese Buffet. He’s not the artificially created diamond I’d been trying to perfect, but a diamond pulled from the earth, mammalian and primal. Whatever else this will be, it will be real.
Every neurotransmitter in the book must be playing in my brain, plus a few never seen by science. I suppress them all. Brains have will, not just chemicals. I don’t need an instant supernova or flare. Even stars take millions of years to ignite, and suddenly, they don’t seem so rare. He leans in, and so do I....
Copyright © 2010 Holly Hight & Richard A. Lovett