Kim Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting

Then Marta walked in the room and he couldn’t have followed them even if they had been reciting the periodic table or their ABCs. That was the effect she had on him.

And she knew it; and did all she could to press home the effect. “Oh hi, Frank,” she said with a microsecond pause discernible only to him, after which she merrily joined the other two, pushing the outside of the discussion envelope, where Frank was certain to be most uncomprehending.

Irritating, yes. But then again this was stuff he wanted to know. So he worked on focusing on what Yann was saying. It was Yann who would be leading the way, and emphasizing this truth with his attentiveness was the best way Frank had of sticking it back to Marta, anyway.

So they jostled each other like kids sticking elbows into ribs, as Yann invented the proteomic calculus right before their eyes, and Leo went deep into some of the possible experiments they might run to refine their manipulation of the biochemistry of cell wall permeability.

A very complicated and heady hour. RRCCES was off to a good start, Frank concluded at the end of this session, despite his sore ribs. Combine the efforts of this place with UCSD and the rest of the San Diego biotech complex, not to mention the rest of the world, and the syncretic result could be something quite extraordinary. Some newly powerful biotech, which they would then have to define and aim somehow.

Which was where the work at the White House would come in. There had to be some place where people actually discussed what to do with the advances science continually made. Somewhere there had to be a way to prioritize, a way that didn’t have to do with immediate profit possibilities for outside investors. If it took ten more years of unprofitable research to lift them into a realm of really robust health care, leading to long, healthy lives, shouldn’t there be some place in their huge economy to fund that?

Yes.

Which was why he did not have to feel superfluous, or on the wrong track, or that he was wasting his time, or fooling around. As Marta was implying with all her little digs.

But then she said, offhandedly, and almost as if trying to be rude, “We’re going to go out to dinner to celebrate the lab getting back together. Do you want to join us?”

Surprised, Frank said, “Yeah, sure.”

Ah God—those two words committed him to an awkward evening, nowhere near as serene as eating tacos on the edge of Black’s Cliffs would have been. Decisions—why be so fast with them? Why be so wrong? Now he would be pricked and elbowed by Marta’s every glance and word, all night long.

And yet nevertheless he was glad to be with them, slave as he was to Homo sapiens’ universal sociability. And also, to tell the truth, he was feeling under some kind of new dispensation with Marta: not that she had forgiven him, because she never would, but that she had at least become less angry.

As him with her.

Mixed feelings, mixed drinks; mixed signals. They ate in Del Mar, in one of the restaurants near the train station, on the beach. The restaurant’s patio and its main room were both flooded with sunset, the light both direct and reflective, bouncing off the ocean and the ceilings and the walls and the mirrors until the room was as hyperilluminated as a stage set, and everyone in it as vivid and distinct as a movie star. Air filled with the clangor of voices and cutlery, punctuating the low roar of the incoming surf—air thick with salt mist, the glorious tang of Frank’s home ground. Perhaps only Frank came from a place that allowed him to see just how gorgeous all this was.

Then again, now that he thought of it, Marta and Yann were just returning from a year in Atlanta, a year that could have been permanent. And they too looked a little heady with the scene.

And there was an extra charge in this restaurant, perhaps—some kind of poignant undercurrent to the celebrating, as if they were drinking champagne on a sinking liner. Because for this row of restaurants it was certainly the end time. This beach was going to go under, along with every other beach in the world. And what would happen to the beach cultures of the world when the beaches were gone? They too would go. A way of life, vanished.

Places like this first. Someone mentioned that high tides had waves running into the patio wall, a waist-high thing with a stairway cut through it to get to the beach. Frank nursed his margarita and listened to the others talk, and felt Marta’s elbow both metaphorically and sometimes literally in his ribs. He could feel her heat, and was aware of her kinetically, just as he had been years before when they had first started going out, meeting in situations just like this, drinks after work, and she the wild woman of the lab, expert at the bench or out in the waves. Passionate.

After dinner they went out for a walk on the beach. Del Mar’s was almost the only beach in North County left with enough sand for a walk; development meant all the southern California beaches had lost their sources of sand, but enough was left here to provide a fine white promenade for the sunset crowd. Surfers, shrieking kids in bathing suits, sandcastle engineers, runners, couples, and groups on parade. Frank had played all these parts in his time. All there together in the horizontal light.

They came to the mouth of the Del Mar River, and turned back. Marta walked beside Frank. Leo and Yann were chattering before them. They fell behind a little bit farther.

“Happy to be back?” Frank ventured.

“Oh God yes. You have no idea, ” and all of a sudden she collared him and gave him a quick rough hug, intended to hurt. He knew her so well that he could interpret this gratitude precisely. He knew also that she had had a couple of margaritas and was feeling the effects. Although just to be back in San Diego was doubtless the biggest part of her mood, the boisterous high spirits he remembered so well. She had been a very physical person.

“I can guess,” Frank said.

“Of course,” she said, gesturing at the sea grumbling on and on to their right. “So—how are you doing out there, Frank? Why are you still there and not back here too?”

“Well…” How much to tell? His decision gears crunched to a halt with a palpable shudder. “I’m interested in the work. I moved over to the Presidential Science Advisor’s office.”

“I heard about that. What will you do there?”

“Oh, you know. Be an advisor to the advisor.”

“Diane Chang?”

“That’s right.”

“She seems to be doing some good stuff.”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Well, that’s good….” But still: “I bet you wish you could do that from here.” Gesturing again at the sea. “Won’t you have to come back to UCSD pretty soon?”

“Eventually, sure. But the department and the administration are happy to have someone out there, I think.”

“Sure, I can see that.”

She considered it as they walked along behind the other two. “But—but what about the rest of it? What about girls, Frank, have you got a girl friend?”

Oh God. Stumped. No idea what to reveal or how. And he had only a second before she would know something was up—

“Ah ha!” she cried, and crashed her shoulder into him, like she used to—just like Francesca Taolini had in Boston, so familiar and intimate, but in this case real, in that Marta really did know him. “You do have one! Come on, tell me, tell me!”

“Well yes, kind of.”

“ Kind of. Yes? And? Who is it?”

She had not the slightest idea that it might be Diane Chang, despite him having said he was following her from NSF to the White House. But of course—people didn’t think that way. And it was not something Frank had told anyone about, except maybe Rudra. It was not even really true.