Flocking

FLOCKING

A NOVEL

By Steve Greenberg

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2011 by Steven Greenberg

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

To Deena for her patient reading and invariable encouragement, to Zeke for his linguistic inspiration, and a special word of praise for Catherine Adams, for the skillful editing and practiced input that helped to turn a clever book into a work of art. To each of you, my humble, heartfelt, hearty thanks.

Chapter 1

Risley Hall

He would have noticed her in any case:

If the place had been crowded to the rafters, say. Or if their tables had been twice as far apart…

If there’d been not one feature of her face, not one aspect of her manner or her pose that struck him as familiar—Yes, let’s set the bar so high that all the traps and barricades imaginable might have joined to block his recognition: Even then he would have noticed this incomparable creature; she had that magical a presence in the room.

Oh, that’s not to say that Jeremy was one whit less than a devoted husband; nor Sibyl one iota less than a desirable wife. It’s not to say that he was particularly observant that day; or that he was inclined to be flirtatious (which he decidedly wasn’t, by the way—our Jeremy was quite the opposite, if you want to know the truth)—Or that he had the slightest expectation of ever running into her again after all these many, many fallow years.

She was sitting at a table with four younger girls, her left rear-quarter profile presented to his view. Forty feet away, glimpsed mostly from behind, a little to the side, past three vacant tables in the mostly empty hall: Indirectly seen, not too clearly visualized; and yet he stared in wonderment—And as he stared in wonderment, it wasn’t at all remembrance that drew his eyes resistlessly to her, but rather the sheer magnificence of the splendid sight he saw.

For the woman was magnificent—Let’s give the gal her due: Purely, dazzlingly magnificent—well, what with that satiny blouse in beige; the slim, lithe form; the regal set of her posture, and the delicate elegance of the way she held her limbs.

And the soft smooth curve of her suntanned cheek—when he caught a sidewise glimpse of it from where he sat a dozen yards behind and slightly to the left—Why, it might have been the cheek of a celebrated actress, the way it shone there in the buttery midday light, or of a fairy princess brought to striking actuality from some gorgeous colored graphic in an illustrated book… And the way she moved her hands in gesturing, just so: as though the motion were set to music, deftly, gently, with an infinite degree of poise…

And that extraordinary hair! A long black shimmering mane of it, radiant as a stellar moonless midnight ‘neath the candelabra glow: Amazing hair that coruscated downward in great profuse curvilinear ringlets to swirl about a pair of slenderish feline beige and satiny shoulders, clothed immaculately: The shoulders, to judge things from this dozen-yard-away perspective, of a poised and stylish woman looking some years younger than her still-a-maiden chronologic age of (he would have to postulate the wildest, craziest hazard-of-a-guess), say, late twenties—m-a-y-be early thirties at the most…

A striking, riveting, radiantly polished-marble creature, in sum and substance, so deliriously different from the girl that lived unaltered in his dreams these past eight years, that there couldn’t have been a glimmer of recognition there at first; not the faintest, foggiest hint…

For what he remembered—what he’d never quite managed in those eight-odd

timeworn academic years entirely to forget—was a little girl, fresh-faced, uncaringly uncouth, shabbily dressed… Ah! and yet miraculously beautiful despite it all! A discombobulated girl in a sloppy shirt and ragged jeans and with vagrant hair that looked as though she’d hacked at it herself with a pair of plastic kiddy scissors in a bathroom’s stingy light.

Yes, almost brazenly unfashionably gauche the pretty little kid had been back then, well-nigh wantonly disdainful of her looks… And yet with that sweet angelic visage and those brilliant incandescent eyes: Eyes of Mediterranean azure, gazing up at him shyly, demurely from the very front-most row of the lecture room: Twelve delightful weeks disabled by those luminous, sky-blue beacons in his face—twelve amazing, wrenching, never-quite-forgotten weeks, watching that incomparable creature with those soulfully communicative eyes—those windows-on-the-soul that promised anything and everything he’d ever longed for in a woman: That promised soul’s sweet paradise on earth forever—if only he’d been free…

My God! but she’d been beautiful!—Beyond beautiful, to tell the veritable truth, what with that pouty little chin and quasi-tearful smile and the pretty pinkish mole astride her lip that had displayed for him, at his very first glimpse at it and ever afterward in piquant memory, just why a so-called ‘beauty spot’ had been entitled to its name.

It filled his every thought just now, that trivial defect on the lovely visage of a long-departed girl; some never-quite-forgotten, ever-present imagery evoked oddly, unaccountably by this strange alluring female seated roughly forty feet away. A woman’s back and quarter-profile: That was the cumulative sum of what he saw: A woman, poorly visualized, unfamiliar—yet beheld by our eminent Dr. Lipton this August Wednesday noontime with an oddly rapt emotion, as he sat at lunch with old pal Vincent in the dining room of Risley Hall, amid the cumulative scents of burgers on the grill and roasting cheese on pizza and the fetid, vegetable earthiness of Vince’s plate of pasta on the wooden tabletop to his immediate left. Our poor, Professor Jeremy! wantonly neglecting his barely bitten tuna-fish on rye, as he peered obsessively here, now—for fate and pungent memories decreed that he could do no other and no less.

And as he stared in gape-eyed fascination beyond the numerous intervening tables left mostly vacant in this quiet time of mid-semester calm—for autumn classes were not slated to begin again till five days hence—as he watched in weird and utter awe: The elegance of this favorite lunching place of his and Vincent’s faded to bland obscurity around: The high-arched Tudor ceiling, the gleaming tile-clad floor, the polished walnut furnishings, the pendant chandelier-type lights: All might have never existed for him, so taken was he at that incandescent moment with the lovely sight before him and the undeparted memory of a long-departed girl.

For truly and achingly and beyond the vaguest shadow of a doubt, the kid, as he remembered her, had been the seventh biologic wonder of the world! That gorgeous little college girl of—what would she have been back then?—Maybe twenty-one, give or take a year or so? Yes, he calculated casually, thinking back: As a nearly graduating senior she would have been somewhere in the close vicinity of twenty-one or twenty-two—no more than that for sure—in those sleepless, breathless, never-to-be-forgotten days of both their academic youths.

Oh but this girl—this fully caparisoned woman now: No; she bore at first inspection not the faintest trace of similarity to the one so long remembered, not the merest vaguest hint… Until she turned a bit, that is. There was a pudgy, frizzy-headed co-ed to her immediate left at the table, a pin-curl bottle-blonde whose cotton-candy locks sat smack-dab (damn it!) in his line of sight. And as the blonde leaned slightly sideways (as he’d hoped and prayed she might!) and the elegant, as-yet-not-quite-familiar woman with the raven mane of hair turned gradually counter-clockwise to speak, and as her profile notched s-l-o-w-l-y round to half and then three-quarters or so frontal, rendering her face now eminently visible—yes!—and the pouty little chin emerged—at last!—into his view.…

And as he got that longed-for unobstructed look, our rapt Professor Lipton thought: My God! It COULDN’T be—could it? No possible goddamn WAY it could (he argued with himself, and pretty darn convincingly too) … until… Well, until that silly little smile flashed forth toward her companion, that lovely somber not-quite-tearful smile so oft remembered (and so lovingly!), and the one-of-a-kind incomparable nose with its diminutive, charming, and thoroughly unrepentant beauty spot beneath, diagonally beside the nostril—It IS! he thought at last. Goddammit but it IS!

And then to top the whole enormous megavoltage jolt of recognition off—to top it off appropriately with whipped cream and crumbled almonds and a maraschino cherry to boot—there shone into his disbelieving gaze those shaggy-lidded eyes of fondest memory: Not blue for certain-sure at this deceptive distance and perspective, but likely blue, promissory of blue…

And as he stared in rapt astonishment at the now unquestionably familiar face, our memory-ravaged Dr. Lipton thought: My God! It really truly IS her! How can that possibly BE? (It having been so very, very long, you see)… And as she ratcheted now a fraction more leftward toward him, her eyes—Mediterranean azure now for absolutely positive beneath those fur-bemargined lids!—Those piercing liquid oceanic eyes snapped up, honed in, and pointed laser-like at him: At HIM! And the brilliant neon crystals met his gaze, and locked there riveted and rivetingly—as his own two startled eyes could do no other than be just as rivetingly locked…

And as their lengthening moment of awareness spread and grew, it seemed for the weirdest, wrenchingest, most agonizing heartache-of-a-temple-pounding instant or two or three as though the pair of them were joined together… As though the two of them were yoked by their mutually interdigitating intersect of gaze, with so obvious a conjoint recognition, that there passed between them a kind of mental electricity running from pupil to pupil, mind to mind, that fastened one irrevocably to the other for a good, long, anguished eon-of-a-while…

And when he finally found the wherewithal to rend himself free from the mesmerizing eye-lock of this now hauntingly familiar face … and turned to Showalter to ask him something unessential—something, in God’s-honest-truthfulness, with not the teensiest-weensiest scintilla of interest at all—and turned back again toward that table forty feet away… She was …

GONE!

GONE!!! Oh my GOD! He looked right! … He looked left!

He looked clear around behind him…

And there she was again!

There! (Whew!)—Over by the refuse bins, setting her tray and plate and shiny metal dinnerware onto the collection cart and dropping her pop can into the trash.

His pulse perceptibly quickened as he stared again—stared fixedly, helplessly, wondering, mulling—until she started to turn in his direction a second time. And then, for fear of those magnetic eyes of hers locking him in once more for such a vast, excruciating, time-warp-of-an-interval, he swiveled back toward Showalter again and wrapped his lips around some silly clown-paint-of-a-smile and asked a foolish question of utter mindless nullity, to wit:

So, Vince—you ready for the new semester?

"Huh? Why shouldn’t I be ready, Jeremy? The worms and frogs and cats’ll show up right on time just like they always do. They ship ‘em in by the barrelful, pal. All I gotta do is open up the goddamn jugs and pass ‘em out with the scalpels and dissecting tongs. It’s no big deal unless some whiny little shithead dips his finger in the formalin and rubs it in his eyes. Then I gotta pack him up and drag him off to the infirmary, and…" Vincent paused hungrily and fed another fork of faintly fetid pasta to his mouth.

So that’s it—eh, Vince? You don’t have to prepare much at all, do you?

"Prepare! Hell no, pal. Vince stopped a sec to swallow. Comparative anatomy don’t change. They haven’t changed the texts in forty years at least. Maybe if I wait for evolution to rearrange a coupla organs here and there—maybe make a new jejunum to chew up credit cards or pop cans or some modern-culture detritus-shit like that… Yeah, there you go, my man: If I give the same lame pathetic course eighty million years from now, I might finally need to revise my notes. I’ll let you know—OK, old buddy?—So how ‘bout you: You ready?"

Me? Jeremy responded to the food-bespattering inquiry on auto-pilot, sans coherent thought. He was battling a devil-of-an-impulse to swivel back around again toward the girl. But he kept his focus manfully and answered with a pretty reasonable similitude of calm:

I’m just doing biochem this semester, Vince; I’ve got lectures Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings with afternoon labs from two to five—I always run my own labs, as you know—but that’s it. Even with the half-day labs tossed in, that’s plenty of time to keep up with the research. That’s where the money is, my friend. The college knows how its bread gets buttered. Ziegler makes it easy for me, you know? They switched those other two courses I taught last year to Sri Patel.

Yeah? Smart-ass little Sri? He doing your molecular biology too this year?

Jeremy grunted an absentminded yes in confirmation. Funny—molecular biology was the course that she’d been in, the pretty little girl that gorgeous full-grown woman so unaccountably seemed to be: Pretty little Marcy: in the lecture room ten minutes early every day, staying on ten minutes late. After the first couple of weeks or so, he had found himself coming in early too, and staying late, and chatting with the gorgeous little half-grown coed non-stop in those precious loitering minutes, then walking with her aimlessly around campus when their ten minute post-session loitering was through. They’d talked about everything in those palmy, carefree days: A couple of regular confidants—of soul-mates, he might have said—in another life, another time. They’d talked of art and science and college life and relationships… Until that last, regrettable talk of theirs; that horrible admonitory lecture he’d given her so much against his will…

But molecular biology—of all the damn fool things to bring up at such a time!—How truly strange it was that Vince should stumble on that single course, that one significant subject of all the two-dozen-plus less relevant things he’d taught these past eight years! Strange; unaccountable; frankly a little outright weird in fact—but…

Oh the hell with it! He tossed the thankless task aside and turned again to look for her… And found her instantly: There! Over to his far right, there by the coffee urns talking to that bleach-blonde tablemate from a moment ago. She was smiling, radiant, standing front-lit by a glow of autumn sunlight echoing softly through the room and…

Hey, whaddya keep staring at, Jeremy? What’s the fuckin’ deal with you today? asked Vincent with a sort of makeshift irritation; talkative again, now that he was two-thirds sated and three-quarters finished with his meal. (Vince generally ate a very generous dessert.) You seen a ghost or something? You been lookin’ at a goddamn…?

No … there’s a girl…

"A girl! Hey, screw you buddy, you got no business lookin’ at girls—what with that awesome piece of poon-tang you got lying in the sack at home! And a goddamn master chef to boot! Shit, man! A gorgeous broad like Sibyl who cooks up deep-fried catfish like some goddamn Paula Dean, and you’re looking at some fuckin’ GIRL?—Hey, gimme a break, pal! Give your buddy Vincent a goddamn break, OK?!"

"I wasn’t looking like that, Vince. She just looked like somebody I used to know is all, and…"

"And what, huh? And fuckin’ what? I recognize half the little bitches in this place. I don’t stare at ‘em, though—do I? Hey, maybe I’ll tell Sibyl on you—huh? Shit!—if I just clicked my phone right now and called her up—Hey that’d serve you right, you handsome little bastard you! That’d serve you goddamn right!"

OK, Vincent, give it a rest, will you? Sibyl doesn’t need to worry about my loyalty—you and she both know me well enough to understand that. I just saw a girl who looked like somebody I used to know, and I was wondering if she might happen to be the same one; that’s all. So eat your goddamn pasta, all right?—And give it a fucking rest!

He hoisted a half-forgotten half of sandwich from his plate and had it v-e-r-y nearly to his mouth … when something beige and satiny and utterly enthralling appeared right-angle to his line of sight. It pulled out a vacant chair, plopped a stack of books next to his Diet Coke can, and nestled into the seat.

It was the girl.

"Well, hello there!—Dr. Lipton, I presume?—How are you?—It’s Marcy—Marcy … um—well, ‘Randall’ back in my school days… I guess it’s got to be seven or eight years ago by now, but, um… Do you remember me?"

His jaw dropped.

"You do remember, don’t you?" she asked again, her smile half-mast and flagging quickly, looking… What exactly? Perplexed? Uncertain? Uncomfortable? The little pink mole-of-a-beauty-spot declined a millimeter or two as the waning smile collapsed into a pensive, vulnerable frown. Yet for all the apparent self-doubt … or discomfort … or flat-out perplexity she might have felt at his long and lengthening silence, the physical bearing and facial demeanor of this gorgeous, grown up college kid he once had known in younger days bespoke the sort of style and dignity and charm-school poise he never in a million years would have expected to encounter in the shy, unkempt young woman of so very many years ago. Never… Never!

They weren’t being rude, he and this unanticipated visitant beside him in the chair to his immediate right. No; if you need to pin a label on their mind-set and behavior, say instead of ‘rude’ that they were ‘transfixed’, or ‘preoccupied’, the both of them. For Vincent, in the chair to his immediate left behind his shoulder blade, sat gaily chewing to his heart’s content—and sat in unrelieved neglect.

And as for Jeremy himself: Well, the wide-eyed Dr. Lipton, perennial master of savoir faire and savoir vivre—Poor thing! For possibly the first time in his deft and personable life, he scarcely knew what to say or how to say it, so many pungent thoughts went streaming through his brain. Some seconds passed—whole centuries they must have seemed to him. But in a queasy little bit of time he snapped out of his fit of stupefaction just enough to tell the stunning creature at his side:

"Well yeah! Of course I remember!—Marcy!—But… My God! … I mean … I wasn’t absolutely sure that it was you at first. You’ve … you’ve… You’re…"

"But I thought you were sure though, this captivating beauty, this rollicking embodiment of his pedagogic youth replied. I thought back at the table there… She made a fleshly pointer of her finger that seemed somehow singularly apt for that specific use. I thought we kind of recognized each other from where I was sitting over there…"

His gaze was ushered by her indicating finger to the spot—Where two of those former tablemates of hers sat rigidly in place with their empty plates and trays before them, rapt and wide-eyed, looking on.

"Yeah, I know, I know—but… But I wasn’t sure. I mean—how could I have been sure! How COULD I? After all, for God’s sake… Look at you—LOOK at you! The way I remember you from back in the old days …"

"Old days! She cut him off with a bashful little smile and an eerily sophisticated flicker of the wrist. Dr. Lipton! Seven-and-a-half years is hardly long enough to call them old, don’t you think? But you’re right, I guess—about me, I mean. I kind of tend to forget how terrible a little idiot I was back then. I guess I was a pretty gauche and stupid little pest back in my college days, wasn’t I? A nerdy little pest."

He did his level best to keep a poker face. A ‘pest’ she’d said? Well yeah, OK; you might have called her ‘pest’—if you had the heart to be uncharitable: Sneaking past his house all hours of the night and weekend mornings mere moments after dawn, where he’d catch a glimpse of her in the freshly budding shadows of that memorable spring. Or dialing his phone on weekdays late and lazy weekend afternoons with just the vaguest hint of breathing on the line. Not a word, not the least suggestive syllable of speech to peg the caller with any certainty, no. But he’d known as well as anything in his strictly ordered universe that it was her; that it could be no other living, breathing spirit in the whole of God’s infinitude but her … nobody but her…

Yes, seeing her slip past his place those chill spring misty morns, intuiting her tacit presence on the line, you might have said she’d been a ‘pest’ of sorts—if you were insensitive enough to call her that. Few men would have thought her so however: Not once their eyes had gazed upon her face, not once their infatuated spirits had caught the essence of her soul.

But, all right; all right! Given the indictment, allowing the unwarrantable verdict to stand: If ‘pest’ she’d been convicted of, then a charming little pest she’d been indeed: She’d been that by the strictest rigors of the definition no doubt, res ipsa loquitor… And yet it seemed somehow appropriate just now to tell this captivating woman at such a many-year remove:

"No, no. You weren’t a pest—And you certainly weren’t ‘nerdy’—that’s for sure! You were… He shrugged, reaching deep within him for the apt and proper verbiage, and reaching there in vain. I hardly know what to tell you, Marcy—I’m speechless! My God, young lady! I’m totally, absolutely speechless!"

"Are you? Really?" Her cheeks dimpled shyly in the darling, schoolgirl fashion emblazoned in his memory. Her bright eyes widened, moistened—turned bluer somehow, a noontime Mediterranean blue, redolent of morning sun on cliff-edged waters, depthless as infinity, as her voice sprang forth to ask him:

But—I don’t get it, Dr. Lipton: I mean … weren’t you kind of expecting me? Hadn’t you kind of heard through the grapevine or someplace or other that I was coming back?

"Back? Back where?"

"Well … here." The blue-moon eyes glared straight on through his skull, then echoed disarmingly within.

"Here? You mean to—to Ithaca?"

Uh-huh.

But… He shook his head, spread his questioning hands unseen beneath the table in a fit of utter gesticulate perplexity. "Well … but where would I possibly hear something like that?"

Where? Well, umm, don’t you guys discuss those kinds of things at your monthly meetings?

"No—I mean—what kinds of things? What kind of meetings are you referring to?"

She shrugged: "Umm, well … department meetings, I suppose. Don’t they discuss those kinds of things when you guys have your regular meetings every month?"

"I never go to the regular meetings if I can get out of going—and I usually can get out of going, by the way. But what kinds of things are you referring to? What was it exactly that I didn’t make the last year or so of department meetings to hear? Are you saying that…?"

"I’m saying that I’ll be a colleague of yours—or that I am a colleague, rather. I’m on the faculty now. In the Biology Department, same as you are. Dr. Ziegler signed me up to teach this next semester—But … gosh! You really didn’t know about it? Really? Her lovely face turned cutely quizzical. A cutely, comically, so-enticing-you could-eat-her-up-alive variety of quizzical. You really didn’t hear anything from Dean Ziegler or Mrs. Johnson or anybody else?"

"No—No! I don’t know anything! Ziegler never mentioned a thing. And Mrs. Johnson—well, all she does is send me memos about the meetings I never plan on going to anyway—so… But—Wow! So you’re really back in Ithaca?—To live here?—For good?"

"Uh-huh, I guess. I don’t know if it’s for good, but for the time being, anyway. Hey! Don’t look so darn shocked, OK? Didn’t you think I’d ever amount to anything?"

The liquid-crystal eyes flashed full at him again crinkled minimally at each outer edge, in the enthralling way young women’s outer eyelids crinkle minimally: Dean Ziegler signed me on to teach the intro course in field biology. I’m doing two classes starting next week—and of course I’ll have the standard Cornell research stuff to do. Publish or perish, you know.

"You really are, huh? An instructor at Cornell! My God! I’m speechless! I don’t believe it! But—so you finished your degree? … Well sure, I guess you must have if… That’s great though: The last I heard…"

He stopped right there dead still, remembering at once, and all too soberly as well, just what it was he last had heard… And after a pensive little pause on his part and a sort of chomping-on-the-bit flush of impatience on hers, she nudged him gently onward toward the sticking point with:

"Well? … What was the last you heard?"

Hmm… Fingers to the bridge of his nose, lips pursed in hesitation, he paused some pregnant seconds to fabricate an answer. And once that answer was constructed at least a little bit, the footers and basement and floor joists in place, if not yet the plaster-boarded walls, he laid the ready part of it open for her quick, preliminary walk-through tour by volunteering:

I guess I know you dropped out and…

"Uh-huh? A-n-d?—And what?"

He laid a second course of brick and mortar, leveling carefully; though no real concept of the superstructure was yet to be discerned: I heard some other things as well, it seems to me. But it’s been a while, and I’m not so sure that I remember everything in detail word for word.

Did you hear I’d gotten married?

Gulp! He swallowed hard, nodding gravely: Yes, yes, that was the saddest thing he’d EVER heard—EVER!—after what he’d gone and said and ultimately done to this wonderful, wide-eyed, little-more-than-a-schoolgirl-of-a-woman who had manifestly loved him in the captivating way he’d always dreamed of being loved—soulfully and recklessly and…

I guess so. I suppose I remember hearing that, he reluctantly affirmed, wresting that disobedient mouth of his into what felt like the lamest, saddest, most phony-looking pseudo-grinning visage of his life.

Her azure eyes flopped down like wing-shot quail. "It’s true, you know. After I left—dropped out, I mean … the way you said… Well, it was your course that I dropped out of with the rest, you know, so I suppose you might remember some of that—I mean, especially under the circumstances…"

She looked at him again, up from the unfathomable depths, her gaze steadily unfazed—Amazingly emotionless, he thought. The net effect, however, was anything but emotionless on him.

I do; you’re right. Of course I do. I remember it all. I remember every bit of it as though it happened yesterday—Listen, Marcy, I… He was pretty nearly whispering now; vocalizing each word, each fraction of a syllable, so quietly, so cryptically, that they eked out in a sort of solemn grumbled hum. To him, just then, the way they sat alone conjoined in breathless interlinked communion, no living soul beyond the two of them existed in the room.

No, it’s OK. Her head began to shake its solemn mimery of ‘no’ in slow and steady cadence while her eyes sank to the tabletop yet again.

I was a silly little idiot back then, she murmured softly, unwaveringly sad, half whispering herself now, her head persistent in its rotatory motion when she paused. And with the angular see-saw swivel of her head—the deliberate and metronomic ‘no, no, no’—the glossy black ringlets of hair tossed to and fro like wind-blown foliage across the satiny blouse, beige and smooth and stoically immobile.

What you did—what you said to me…, she resumed, as all the while the soft luxuriant tresses kept up their rhythmic clockwork sway, professing, with all that graceful, leaf-like fluttering, a curt and most improbable denial of everything ever said or done before between the two of them—Everything and ever, as though such things as those could possibly be denied. Jeremy, riveted to this perfect woman’s every breath-sound, to the merest flicker of a nostril, the briefest titillated blinking of a furry-lidded eye, watched the girl’s inimitable features from but a foot or so away as they moved in their graceful futile cadence of denial: their steadfast, tick-tock gesturing of ‘no, no, no’.

What you said back then was correct and proper, she sold him in a dry deliberative voice: A young and saddened girl’s voice was what it was, though eerily unfaltering. I understand that now. And I did back then too, in a way. I would have done the same as you did if the situation had been reversed.

"Would you?" he asked, and swallowed hard again. His throat was sere; his mouth a wad of batting.

Yes, of course. The head, the eyes flashed up at him again, steady now—though the penetrating blueness was maybe a wee bit tinctured with an unexpended veil of tears. "Of course I would, she muttered—Well, anyway…"

Now this was amazing, truly! He was veritably taken back in awe. Her visage brightened visibly, suddenly—magically! Her textbook smiling countenance returned at once as though it had never for one fraction of an instant gone away. Her face, her bearing—Good God almighty, but the girl was transformed utterly! It was a metamorphosis of the highest order: Pupa to butterfly, wretched little duckling turned to gorgeous full-fledged swan—and yet…

Anyway… Her shaggy eyelids narrowed, her mouth reset itself into a placid, imperturbable immobility, as she queried him—quite genially, with:

"So! I hear from the campus scuttlebutt that you’ve been doing well."

Me? … I… To others’ eyes—had there been any others looking on—he would have seemed perplexed. That’s because he was perplexed. She might have changed her bodily structure into the format of a mermaid or a leprechaun and he wouldn’t have been shocked one milliampere more by her instantaneous change of mood.

Um … I…, he stammered. Well, but—How do you mean?

How! She smiled, cryptically, beautifully—incongruously. Her beauty—the sheer unmitigated gorgeousness!—of this quondam pretty kid, was unearthly and disarming. Utterly disarming, whatever she said, however incongruously she said it.

"You know! she chuckled. Your research, of course. Everybody I’ve talked to ever since I got back here last weekend—When was it?—Saturday, I think it was when the moving truck rolled in. Anyway, everyplace I go, all the campus gossip is that you got some humungous grant for the research stuff your lab is working on. So? Is it true?"

"Uh-huh. I suppose it is true. It’s a hefty sum of cash—that I can’t deny. The university was sure ecstatic about it. But…."

No! Christ Almighty! What was the point? There wasn’t any point to this at all! Small talk; pretense; banality. The grant! What did he care at this crossroads of existence about the goddamned grant? What did she? He leaned forward toward her, a little closer, an inch or two nearer the sort of intimate proximity he’d really need just now, but couldn’t possibly attain in these environs, damn it all! Elbow buttressed on the tabletop, things to say so hopelessly prolific no orator with a thousand flailing tongues could even dream of keeping pace, he tried to speak the words as quietly and confidentially as his agitation and the public circumstances would allow:

Look … Marcy … about what happened back then…

No, no; that’s ancient history after all this time. She cut him off with a resolute head-shake and a countervailing waggle of her hand. "Don’t even think about it. But hey, I want to hear about your research though, OK? The stuff you got that pile of funding for? Tell me something fascinating about it."

I will, I’ll get to all that in a minute, but…

"No. No ‘buts’. Tell me now. Please? All that gossip made me really curious."

All right, I’ll tell you everything you want after just a bit, but…

"Please? Please tell me now? P-l-e-a-s-e?"

I… He shrugged and shook his head resignedly, defeatedly. "OK, well I … (he cleared his throat) I work on pharmaceutical development—as I think you likely know—and this amazing chemical we found—this avian neural isolate—It’s … well it’s…

"Well? What? What does it do?"

It … it’s this incredible kind of…

"What? Incredible kind of what? Tell me—P-l-e-a-s-e?"

It’s not that easy to explain without a lot of background preparation, but…

He straightened in the chair, resolved to be professional. The girl had got her life on track, and done it far, far better than your average college kid might do; so why dwell on what was over, dead and gone? There had been a fleeting moment just a little while ago this autumn afternoon when he might have broken through the barrier she’d set in place before her feelings. The liquidity in her eyes, the telltale film of moisture in his own through which he’d viewed her: both had passed them all-too-swiftly by in this all-too public time and place.

It was futile anyway, all of it: Why was he kidding himself? All the apologies, all the regrets in heaven and earth—and all those repented sins in hell’s environs too—could never recapture what might have been. Those days were gone forever now; vanished into nothingness beyond all hope or prospect of recall. He was beginning to see that now; beginning to accept it. And so he flashed his death’s head grin again and swallowed hard and bowed his will to the inevitable. He owed her that at least. This wonderful, amiable creature once had loved him hugely, then gotten on to a successful life, a happy marriage, a guiltless mind, an estimable career. He would have wished that much for her eight-odd years ago; wouldn’t he? So why on earth should he have a problem with it now?

Look, he offered, smiling wanly and philosophically (however sere and drained he felt inside), if you’re really all that interested in the project, Marcy, how about stopping by the lab sometime? I’ll… His face grew somewhat sunnier with a glow of placid resignation. "OK, how about this?—I’ll give you the five cent VIP tour if you like, whenever you like, OK? No charge; I’ll waive the nickel entry fee just for you, for old times’ sake… Or…"

Or—YES! Now he brightened palpably; he felt his very spirits brighten palpably—click!—like a lamp switch snapping on to light a room. His smile grew wider, ever cheerier with his somewhat cheerier mood; he felt his body tense straight up in the chair then spring forward like some jack-in-the-box unboxed and bristling with energy on a tightly tethered spring:

That’s it! he told her. "Better yet!—Hey listen, I know! Are you coming to the party tonight?"

The Department party? At Dean Ziegler’s place?

Uh-huh. I’m sure you got an invite. You’re on the staff now, so…

"I know, I know—I was invited, but I wasn’t really planning to attend. I … I think I’d feel uncomfortable there all by myself—you know, not knowing anybody on the faculty yet, so I…"

That’s silly, though! Come on! You can bring your husband, can’t you? I’m sure they told you that spouses are invited too. Why don’t you drag him along for company? I’d kind of like to get to meet him anyway, and…

"Slow down, Dr. Lipton—slow down, OK? Look … I don’t have a husband anymore; all I’ve got is the name. Mitch and I broke up less than three months after our wedding day—or night, maybe I should more accurately say. It was a disaster from the start—both of us realized that soon enough… No, I’m single again nowadays. Actually I’m really very happily unmarried. And I know I’d feel uncomfortable at the party all by myself so…"

"But you won’t be by yourself. I’ll be there," he told her eagerly, volubly, excitedly. "And I’ll introduce you to all the other old cronies in the department who’ve managed to make it to my decrepit age. And we’ll have time—all evening if you like—so I can tell you everything about the research in elaborate detail, if you’re still the least bit interested by then—and… Yeah; and you can meet my wife, too. I’m sure she’ll take you under her protective wing before you even ask. Sibyl’s kind of the beauty queen of Ithaca, the belle-of-the-ball on campus—Although you might just give her a run for her money nowadays, young lady… I always thought…

His words spewed forth like claptrap deluge on a corrugated roof. And after he slowed, then halted momentarily for a sorely needed breath, the verbal storm now well and truly spent, his tongue awoke again to tell her—but now softly, gently, soulfully:

But never mind that now; never mind all that for the present. Look… Look… He almost whispered it, very nearly pled, then reached across and cupped her nearer hand in both of his. It was a warm hand, soft and smooth and blossoming with summer’s verdant youth, and neither obliging nor resistant to his touch.

And as he held it there, in its gentle, calm flaccidity—as he didn’t quite caress the hand but merely clung to it the way a greedy man might cling to newfound treasure of incalculable worth—as he cupped the slender fingers in his own and caught a whiff of fresh-scrubbed fragrance from her hair, and watched the glimmer of her incandescent eyes grown bluer, less violet, gazing up into his face in the August windowed daylight—Good God! he came to realize—amazingly—incredibly!—that he had somehow, strangely, never, ever touched this darling woman’s skin before.

"Come to the party tonight, OK? Please! He embraced the fingers and felt them move, minimally complicit, enclosed in his embrace. We’ll all have fun getting acquainted again—You and I and Sibyl and Vincent here and…

Oh, Jeez! He shook his head and made a clownish face, flagrantly and idiotically demonstrative, and took one hand away from hers to slap his forehead like an oaf, as he told the pretty little Marcy (once surnamed ‘Randall’ when he’d known her oh-so-fondly in those captivating days of long-departed youth); told her lamely in a lame voice emanating from what seemed to be an even lamer, more discombobulated brain:

"I guess I’m getting forgetful in my old age! Or rude or something even worse! My sincere apologies! Have you met Vincent? Vincent Showalter? He’s our comparative anatomist—Vincent, put down that forkful of linguine in your mitts a second and say hello to…

Chapter 2

The Party at the Zieglers’

There were a dozen assorted academics and their significant others gathered on the wrap-around porch encircling the Zieglers’ fine Victorian residence. Three middle-aged men debated politics; four older pundits commiserated ruefully the dismal state of education in this new, effete millennium; three weather-beaten faculty spouses ran on and on in scratchy, bitchy monotones about the cost of out-of-season vegetables in Ithaca…

But the fourth group—or, rather, pair to be precise—making up the final total of an even twelve, was more flamboyant than the rest. That less resplendent ‘rest’ seemed to sense the pair’s flamboyance, yielding to these particular two women pride of place near the wide bay window yawning broadly from the front room, so that furtive eyes from both sides of the transparency could glance in or out at them from time to time.

The shorter of the two was the younger: the pretty, black-haired, azure-eyed girl-woman we saw and met at Risley Hall in Chapter 1. Suntanned, slender, athletic, gentle in manner, she would strike the offhand viewer as somewhat diffident in her bearing toward her interlocutress…

Which interlocutress—the other, rather senior, slightly taller female whom our reticent Marcy faced vis-a-vis as the two of them stood chatting beside the window—was veritably—to put things in the verbiage of the fight game—a knockout: Older, admittedly, but extraordinary: Lithe like her younger companion, graceful like her as well, but perfect-featured in a Botticellian sort of way: Golden-tressed, tall, slender, then coiffed, clad, and manicured in the fashion of a typical five-thousand-dollar-an-hour cover girl. If there was a heterosexual male about her in the crowd—any crowd, anywhere—and if he had a modicum of perception in his psyche or of vitality in his soul, his eyes were irresistibly drawn to her. Men’s eyes clung there habitually, feasted there voraciously, and had done their clinging and feasting just so these past eight years of her memorable presence at Cornell. And they had done just so, before that, for the five former wedded and twenty-six unwedded years of her earlier, quieter, pre-university life.

This supremely elegant woman of thirty-nine benevolently passing years, Mrs. Jeremy—known to her legion of admirers as ‘Sibyl’—Lipton, stood on that sticky August evening graciously attentive while her visibly younger, marginally shorter, only doubtfully less captivating companion posed a question the incomparable Mrs. Lipton would have not the slightest chance of answering to any useful end—Which is not to say that kindly Sibyl didn’t try:

"Jeremy’s research?—Oh dear! But … the stuff he’s doing now, you mean?"

The dark-haired young woman nodded eagerly. About them, declining into evening, the crickets chattered gabbily under silhouetted trees. Then, beyond the tree-line, beyond the grand and stately edifice across the street, and the lofty one beside it, and the even loftier one behind fronting on another high-end residential block—past all the splendid domiciliary property the sun hung low, so as to cast an ochre halo to the sparsely clouded sky. The early darkness gave promise to the New York fall’s impending chill. But this warm night of summer’s verdant end was redolent of August effloration and grass new-mown and the hot spiced cider residing in a basin upon a tabletop atop the porch. And amid all this, immersed in the summer-scented evening’s liquid glow, our splendid Sibyl strenuously racked her brain:

Let me think … Jeremy’s research: Umm, it’s got something to do with birds; I know that. He mentioned some business about birds when he started work on it last spring.

Yes, I got that much, ma’am—um, Mrs. Lipton, rejoined the girl, impeccably polite of voice and bearing, yet poised and confident in manner, and unfalteringly sweet. He told me a little of the basics when I first got to the party half an hour ago. Then that pushy Dr. Showalter barged in on us and dragged your husband off to another room, so he never really got much past the introductory part… But you really don’t know any more about it than that?—I mean the way the substance works or the kind of drug it is? He really never told you any of the details?

Sibyl shook her glistening golden tresses with legitimate regret. For the girl seemed truly interested in Jeremy’s research; that much anyone could tell. And she was pretty as a fresh young starlet and sweet as pecan pie and just as doggone charming as could be! And, seeing how politely the nice young thing had gone and asked—well, wouldn’t it only be appropriate and fitting for a long-time Ithacan and well-intentioned spouse of a famous scientist to be of help?—if only she could!

"No, dear, I honestly wish I knew a little more, I really do; but I never ever ask about the work my husband does. It’s really complicated business, as I guess you probably realize—And dense little Sibyl here without a scientific bone in her body—Well anyway, sweetie, I wish I could tell you something about it, anyhow; I really do… But…"

Sibyl shook that estimable head once more and shrugged those stately shoulders in legitimate perplexity. Then finally, oddly, growing just a w-e-e bit curious herself for the first time in just about as long as ever she could remember, she inquired in her own uncharacteristic turn:

"So what in the world’s so fascinating about this silly little project of Jeremy’s anyway?—You’re probably the third person who’s asked me about it just this week, starting with… Let’s see, umm—oh, that’s right: that brilliant little thing who does my manicures: Belinda is her name: She asked last Friday, as I recall. She’s a real artist, sweetie—by the way—if you need something special done about those nails… And then … Oh, right! that lady at the club too, Margie something, I think it is—Margie … Margie—oh, it’ll come to me eventually. But never mind her last name; it doesn’t matter all that much. But—well what on earth is this fascinating chemical of Jeremy’s supposed to do that’s causing so much fuss round campus all of a sudden? What’s so doggone interesting about a silly little drug?"

Sibyl raised her perfect eyebrows in the inquisitive way in which a perfect woman all-too aware of her perfection might raise such incomparable brows. To which gesture and associated inquiry the charming young woman beside her replied:

"Do?—Well that’s just what I was wondering myself, Mrs. Lipton. I was hoping maybe—between you and the professor—that somebody could finally manage to clue me in."

It was sultry-warm and humid, smotheringly close—not what you’d expect from a central New York nearly-autumn eve. The air was gelatinous and the insects still at their frolicsome summer play; and a little wingèd thing flew by and alit along some tresses of the sweet girl’s silken hair. Sibyl brushed it away reflexly without a thought, without a comment, then left her hand—fresh from its motherly act of brushing, with its ivory chamois skin and immaculately lacquered fingertips—at rest atop the girl’s slim shoulder, and looked her up and down with kindly interest and legitimate esteem:

She wore a lovely outfit, this pretty, perky newcomer to their insular college world: an ensemble just right for the occasion: Loose-knit cream cotton sweater, dressy enough for a party at the Dean’s house but not overly so; brownish slacks of linen, freshly pressed, nicely tailored; caramel-gilt open-toed slip-ons with heels just low enough for comfort, high enough for effect…

And the baby pearl earrings set against those soft blue eyes; earrings barely visible what with the fullness of her shimmering raven hair. Then the little-girl smile; the perfect teeth the smile exposed: Good Lord!—A creature in her league or pretty gosh-darn close, admitted Sibyl to herself, entirely immune to envy and generous to a fault: A girl who might have been her own grown-up baby daughter, give or take a handful of years stuck on one and lifted from the other. Yes, if she’d given in to bearing Jeremy’s child back then in those first entrancing days of their marriage, to fatten up her body, swell her breasts, to bear the lifelong stigmata of stretch marks and saggy skin and many months of every-morning vomiting; to sacrifice her own inimitable loveliness on the altar of birthing another’s: Ah yes! Jeremy would have doted on the pretty boy or girl they’d given life to; she had no doubt of that. And, looking closely at the charming shape and matchless features of this girl; listening to her talk; sensing through insensible pathways the formidable intellect in her eyes, Sibyl saw, perhaps, a hint of handsome Jeremy in the pretty little thing herself: The poised, determined stance; the scientific bent; the wide-eyed gaze of eager curiosity.

And the coloring too: Dark like Jeremy’s, glowing, casually beautiful in a consciousless and prepossessing way. And yet with a face not too unlike like her own amazing face, replete with the selfsame soft, impeccable features: Yes, this could have been the spitting image of their own grown-up little baby daughter if they’d had one. She had no regrets, though. All but for the agony of growing old, her life was pretty close to perfect just the way it was.

"I wish I could be a bit more informative, sweetie; I’d really love to help. But let’s go see if we can’t track Jeremy down again for you—uh, ‘Marcy’ did you say it is? What a pretty little name! A pretty little name for a really gorgeous girl!"

The lovely young woman named Marcy smiled sweetly, demurely, seeming not too shy, not too overly assertive, but j-u-s-t right. Just dead-on-perfect right!

Sibyl let her hand slip downward from the girl’s slim shoulder and drift gently to her forearm, leading her thereby with those lacquer-finished fingertips toward the open door that issued to the crowded Ziegler front room. As their steps advanced along the outside of the bright-lit big bay window, she noticed Teddy through the glass, sipping at an icy soft drink (for he never, ever touched a drop of anything as strong as even beer!) and moving in parallel with her and the girl, so that their mutual pathways were bound to intersect just a foot or two inside the front room doorway. Which was the very thing she wanted at this juncture of the evening, for—as it suddenly dawned on her—Teddy was the one specific person just at this moment most aptly suited to the nice girl’s needs.

Oh Teddy! There you are! Have you seen Jeremy around anyplace?

Well yeah, as a matter of fact, I ,um, I d-did, Sibyl. I saw him just a little while ago in the library hanging out with Vincent. Why? D-do you need him for something?

Uh-huh, my nice friend here, Miss—uh, what is your family name, sweetheart? I don’t think you ever told me. Sibyl had a sultry alto voice, but raised it both an octave and a decibel to get it heard above the din.

For this parlor of the Ziegler domicile, as anyone who’s ever been to a Ziegler party will hasten to assure you, was veritably crackling and abuzz with sound. Capacious as it was, lofty-ceilinged, multi-doored, ambitious of encircling wall, the room was overflowing with humanity. The stuffy alcoholic air itself was rife with colloquy: Learnèd disputation swatted back and forth like shuttlecocks to the tinkled accompaniment of ice in cocktail glasses, the cymbal p-f-f-t! of Michelob and Coke cans unstoppered gaseously over at the bar. A boisterous concatenation to be sure; yet Marcy seemed to catch enough of Sibyl’s Georgian drift to offer up an answer, leaning toward that gold and diamond stud in Sibyl nearer ear and straining her own voice pretty stridently to say:

It’s ‘Ackerman’, Mrs. Lipton. It used to be ‘Randall’ back when I was a student here, but…

Now stop right there, Marcy dear. I won’t have any more of those stuffy old ‘Mrs. So-and-so’s between two brand new friends, you hear? You’re just gonna have to call me ‘Sibyl’ from now on, sweetie. Otherwise I’ll start calling you ‘Miss’—what’d you say that fancy Yankee name was?—‘Ackerson’?—And wouldn’t that make you feel matronly and old?

The girl made ready to respond, but Sibyl had turned away. Down the left-hand wall from where they’d halted for the moment was a quiet-looking corner. Sibyl spotted it straight off. And with a tug on Marcy’s forearm and a come-hither glance toward Teddy’s face, she led her young companions through the party’s teeming masses toward the isolated spot.

Let’s pause a little here and catch our breath, my literary friends, so we can watch our trio’s transit through the room. For, trust me when I tell you, clever readers all, to get the gist of Sibyl—her polished gemstone radiance, her sculpted marble cool—you’d really need to see her saunter through a crowd. She’d glide through packed humanity like a comet through the sky: stately, resplendent, and swathed in the celestial astonishment of a multitude of eyes. Mere mortals would make obeisant way for her as the aether parts for Venus; humble human jaws gape wide in awe.

Oh, Sibyl! How beautiful you look this evening!

Good heavens, darling, what a stunning outfit you’ve got on!

Those academic wives: See how they unfold their dowagery arms for one brief touch of Sibyl’s silken hand; how men’s and women’s necks torque round, their captive eyes pursue! Old Caruthers there, sere and shriveled as he’s been these ten years past (since he was forty-three or so), addle-faced (though brilliant enough—or so his students say): Can’t you see him leer and lick his skinny lips in that smarmy attitude of sickly guys who lick and leer and fantasize in empty beds? Or Rexford Hunter with that clammy hand and grudging bow, bent a bit too low as though compelled to it unwilling. Or … or how about that new man there—Finlay or Findley or however Jeremy introduced him to her last month at the Abbotts’ Sunday picnic—he, balding, fiftyish, staring her up and down as hungrily as Teddy often does. She’ll do her level darndest to ignore it, the way she generally tries to pay so little heed to looks like those from Teddy’s hungry eyes. But looks as ravenous as those get felt by such as Sibyl a whole lot more than they get seen. Discounting them is one thing; ignoring them entirely—one would likely theorize—is far less effortlessly done.

All right, my estimable friends; their trip’s accomplished now; the gauntlet has been run. Let’s click from Pause to Play again so we can watch the interaction in our reader’s mental You Tube now, the three-part dialectic sequel to their transit: A quiet corner of the many-peopled parlor, a bit of vacant elbow-space tucked snug between an empty Lazy-boy recliner on the left-hand side and a musty wall of books to Sibyl’s right. Our three figures stand, then, triangulated equally betwixt the furnishings. It’s quieter here, the tatty chair or musty books, or the isolated corner in and of itself serving as a perfect baffle to the sound. And in such sweet benison of calm and leisured quietude this sultry August evening, look sharp and you can see our long-exalted Sibyl swivel deftly toward the lovely woman at her side and deign to tell her that:

"Marcy dear, Teddy is my husband’s senior