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orange.
Nick was a white-haired man in his late fifties, face florid with too much
food
and stress. "I'm sorry about Geneva," he said. "She had spirit. I never
expected
to outlive someone like her."
Dylan made himself smile. "My mother said she was like a flare, brief but
beautiful."
"You don't believe that," Nick said.
Dylan took a deep breath. "You didn't call me in here to talk about Geneva."
"Actually, I did. Indirectly." Nick stood up, and shoved his hands in his
pockets, stretching out his pants like a clown's, and making his potbelly pool
out. Geneva used to call him Chuckles when he did that, a comment made all the
better by the fact that the gesture meant Nick was going to say something
difficult. "Word is that you've been acting a bit erratic lately. Letting
classes out early, missing meetings, spouting spontaneous philosophy in the
halls."
"Doesn't sound like the crime of the century," Dylan said, then bit his lip.
Defensive. He couldn't get defensive.
"No, and it's not even all that unusual--except for you, Dylan. You were
always
consistent and quiet. I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong, but your
wife
just died. I wanted you to take the term off, but you insisted on working, and
I'm not sure that was such a good idea."
Dylan stared at him for a moment, uncertain how to respond.
It begins with little complaints, Geneva once told him. Maybe your clothes are
a
little unusual, or you don't conduct class according to the right methods.
Then,
one day, you wake up and find you've been imprisoned for your beliefs.
He opened his mouth, closed it again, and thought. The classes meant nothing
this term. The students, merely full-sized reminders of how much time had
passed
since he had sat in their chairs, since he had met Geneva.
"You're right," he said. "I think I should take a leave of absence, maybe come
back next fall term."
Nick turned, pulled his hands out of his pockets, and frowned. Obviously he
hadn't expected Dylan to acquiesce so easily. "Sure it won't leave you alone
too
much?"
Dylan smiled and shrugged. "I'm not sure I'm really alone now," he said.
Toward the end, she had shrunk to half her size, her skin so translucent, he
could see her veins. The hospital room had deep blue walls, a bed with
restraints on it, and a television perched in the comer. The restraints were
down, the television off, and the window open, casting sunlight against the
awful blue.
Dylan sat beside the bed every day, from the moment visiting hours began until
the moment they ended. At noon on August 23rd, she opened her eyes and found
his. Her gaze was clear for the first time in three days, for the first time
since he had brought her to the hospital.
"Dylan?" Her voice was no more than a rasp.
He took her too-small hand. It no longer fit just right in his. "I'm here,
Geneva."
"You know those two tiny beings on the lake equivalent?" Each word was an
effort. He leaned forward so that he could hear her. Her grip was tight in
his.
"I think in about eight minutes, they're going to see a supernova."
She closed her eyes. He couldn't hear her breathing. He pushed the nurse call
button, once, twice, then three times.
The grip in his hand tightened. Geneva was looking at him, a small smile on
her
face. "Don't mourn, Dylan," she said. "Forever, remember?"
"I remember," he said, but by that time, she had loosened her grip on his
hand.
The nurses came in, with their equipment and needles, pushing him aside. He
watched as they checked her, as they looked under her closed eyelids, and felt
for her pulse. One of them turned to him, and shook her head. He shoved his
hands in his pockets and walked out of the room, a much poorer man than he had
been when he entered.
On All Hallow's Eve, he packed his car to the light of the single streetlight.
During the afternoon, he had taken the cat over to Ross's, explaining that he
was going on a short trip, and wasn't sure when he would be back. He waited
until dark, packed the car, and headed west.
He had awakened with the idea, the jigsaw puzzle complete in his mind. He knew
how to find her, and how they could be together, forever, as she had said. As
he
drove over the Coast Range, the puzzle became clearer; the answer seemed
right.
Steam engine time, she had said. But who would have thought that a philosophy
professor would be the first to ride the rails?
Geneva had. She knew that philosophers were used to broad concepts of the
mind.
He pulled into the public beach at Lincoln City, grabbed a blanket and a
cooler
from the back of the car, and walked to the loose sand. He was careful to sit
on
a driftwood log, untouched by high tide.
Geneva called the point where the sea met the sky infinity. In the dark, it
seemed even more vast than it did in the day. He put the blanket on the sand,
set the cooler to the side, and leaned on the driftwood log.
He managed to arrive on the dark side of the moon. The night sky was full of
stars, points of light, points of history. To their friends, these stars could
be dead, but to him, they lived, and twinkled, and smiled for one last show.
His
mind could grasp each point of light, see it for what it was, and for its
pattern, feel the backdrop of blackness against it and beyond.
The ocean spoke to him in its constant roar, and beneath it, he heard Geneva's
voice talking about sound and waves, waves and sound. Inspiting, she had said,
and so it was.
The edge of the universe was just beyond his imagination. The whole universe
was
within his grasp. He didn't want to see the big bang or the end of everything.
He didn't want to see all of time, nor all of time and space. Only those
points
of light that were Geneva, from her birth to her death and back again. He
wanted
to hold all of those points in his mind at the same time, to be lying with her
on the dock at the same time he sat here alone, to be holding her hand in the
hospital while they played at intellectual foreplay in her dorm. He wanted his
mind to be like the sky, holding history, the future, and infinity at the same
time.
Geneva.
She was out there, in time and space, each moment of her existence a moment
for
him to hold.
He cast his mind into the inky blackness --
-- and felt the barriers break. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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