Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

What she really wanted to do, all the time, and exclusively, was study languages. She accepted helping the miserable as an obligation of her faith and envied the nuns who appeared to take positive joy in it. Envy was, of course, a sin; but pride was a worse one, and she knew she drooped with pride; it oozed disgustingly from every pore. Unique in the world, as everyone kept telling her. People at the lab, scientists visiting from all over, from Europe, Asia, astounded scholars, all wanted a chance to peer into her brain, a waiting list a yard long, as for a particle accelerator or a radio telescope; it held, they thought, the secret of language. No wonder it swelled a girl's head. A good thing, too, she was an ugly geek, or she would have become some monster of ego, like a rock star, cut off from God. But, no, the whole point was that this muttering, filthy derelict across from her was also unique, just as loved by God. Why couldn't she, even for one instant, pull her mind away from the boil of three dozen languages and the lure of the other three thousand, word and nuance, idiom and tone, and the bottomless mystery of grammar? And there he was.

Lucy felt her face color as it always did, and she was ashamed, as she always was, and turned away to refill a tray of bread from the bin in the kitchen. When she came back to the dining area, he was among the guys, talking it up, spreading light and laughter. She paused by the doorway to spy on him. Tall, nearly six feet, and thin, dressed in his winter costume, a cheap, fake-fleece denim jacket and jeans, and his red muffler and Broncos wool cap. Nothing special to look at, most people would have said-a bony, mobile face, a long nose, pink at the tip from the chill outside, dirty-blond, ear-length hair, and blue-gray eyes that made her want to wet her pants when he looked at her. And looking, she thought, as she always did, stupid, stupid, although that did not keep her from making calculations, seventeen minus twenty-six was… so when she was twenty-five, he'd be… no, stupid!

Lucy had never had a big crush before. She went to a girls' school; she didn't have a social life to speak of, a couple of close friends, all as geeky as she, a social status at school so low that people speaking to her at lunch had to be disinfected by trained technicians before they could speak to anyone else. The people she met up at the lab where she spent the rest of her spare time just wanted to talk about her Wernicke's Area or stem affixes in Old Slavonic.

David Grale. How often had her pen, poised to take down some flaccid fact in chemistry or American history, slid into those lovely characters and outlined them, made them 3-D, shadowed and crosshatched them, adorned them with vines and ivy, placed them in hearts, before she'd ripped the sheets into tiny, tiny pieces, as she quaked with shame! And did it again.

He was talking to a man called Airshaft-so-called because some malformation had placed two symmetrical, squarish dents in his temples-and with Ralphie and Desmondo, from the yards. As she stepped forward and put out the new bread, Ralphie caught sight of her and waved, and then David Grale looked up and smiled and motioned her over.

She smiled back in a controlled, sophisticated way and started to stroll casually over, whereupon a schizo sitting at the table she was passing jerked back his chair, tripping her, and she went headlong onto the floor. She was considering crawling under one of the tables and closing her eyes until everyone left, and later inventing a story about narcolepsy, when she felt a hand on her arm, and it was he helping her to her feet, a concerned look on his face.

"Are you okay?" Grale asked.

"Yeah, fine. My feet are too big." She laughed harshly, blushed crimson. Perfect.

He sat her down with the other men, leaned back in his chair, waved his hand elegantly, and called out, "Marcel? Another round of cognacs, if you please." And to Lucy: "The service here is terrible lately. You should have seen it in the old days. Champagne flowing like water, the glittering crowds, the true sweetness of life… all gone."

Lucy said, "Ah, yes, the baroness was saying much the same thing just the other day. The caille en sarcophage were overdone. As for the Kool-Aid… barely drinkable. And it's so crowded that no one comes here anymore. Sad, really."

"True. Still, the floor show remains amusing." Grale turned in his chair toward the kitchen doorway. "There's an indefinable appeal about a man carrying a bus box that makes you completely forget Fred Astaire. There's nothing in theater quite like it, don't you find?"

"Except two of them carrying a coffee urn."

Desmondo said, "You guys are nuts," and stood up. "I got to go help a guy put stuff out. You coming, Ralphie?"

Ralphie got up, too, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. They dumped their dirty dishes in a big rubber box and left, followed by Airshaft, who left his lying there. The diners drifted out of the hall. Lucy and Grale sat and talked quietly and inconsequentially, making small jokes and allowing many long silences. It was her favorite time in her entire present life that was not connected with linguistics. Then, as usual, Grale said he had to indulge his only vice, looking up in mock fear as he did so, bobbing his head, as if he expected a celestial censure. It was still dripping outside, so they leaned against the wall under the overhang of the basement entrance, looking out onto Twenty-eighth Street. He smoked, and she smoked to keep him company, although it was not a habit, and she did not really enjoy it after the first aromatic flare.

"So what's the language of the week, Lucy?"

"Gaelic."

"Say something in it."

"You're the most wonderful man in the whole world and I lust after you, body and soul, and may God forgive me," said Lucy in Gaelic.

"Wow! What does that mean?"

"If you don't shut the door, the cat will escape and eat the chickens."

He laughed. "And why Gaelic especially?"

"Oh, we're doing this big project with Harvard linguistics, and Berkeley, too. They want to take me sequentially through the whole Indo-European reach, from Ireland to modern India. They think it'll tell them something about linguistic affinities. Like the closer the languages, the shorter the time to learn, and also they'll be studying my brain in the MRI while I do it." She shrugged. "I sort of wanted to get more into African languages, but they're paying, so…"

A cloud had passed over his face. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"Oh, sorry-a little distracted. Tell me more about this project."

"No, really… what's wrong?"

"Ernie Whalen. I'm starting to get a little concerned about him. Actually a lot concerned."

"Jingles? What's wrong with him?"

"Nothing, as far as I know. It's just that I haven't seen him in three days. He's not in his usual flops, and people don't recall having seen him. Not even Airshaft, and they usually hang with the same group. So…"

"You think something might have happened to him?"

Grale flicked away his cigarette, shook his head. "I don't know. It's a dangerous lifestyle. Funny. These guys, our guys-people think they're all the same, but they're just as different from each other as straight people. I mean except for the actual crazies. Desmondo's an entrepreneur. If he were white, and educated, and laid off the crack for a while, he'd be down in the Alley running a dot com."

"Ralphie would be vice president for public relations."

"Right. Real Ali would be a professor of comp lit at NYU," said Grale, laughing.

"What would Canman be? An artist? Or an engineer?"

Grale frowned. "Oh, Canman. You still hanging around with him?"

"I saw him today. He seemed worse than usual. Nasty."

"He's always nasty."

"Not like this. He's scared. I think it's the killer. He's thinking about leaving, going down to the tunnels."