Gregory Benford - Timescape

With that Lakin shook his head quickly, as though erasing the matter, and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “I think you have wasted your time here.”

“I don’t really—”

“My advice to you is to focus on your true problem. That is to find the source of noise in your electronics. I fail to understand why you cannot seek it out.” Lakin turned, nodded to Cooper curtly, and was gone.

An hour after Lakin had left, after the equipment was turned off or cycled down, the data collected, the lab books compiled and details filled in, Gordon waved goodbye to Cooper and walked out into the long corridor leading to the outside. He was surprised; the glass doors showed gathering gloom, and Venus rising. Gordon had assumed it was still late afternoon. The frosted glass in each office door was black; everyone had gone home, even Shelly, whom he’d counted on talking to.

Well then, tomorrow. There was always time tomorrow, Gordon thought. He walked down the corridor woodenly, lurching to the side as his briefcase banged against a knee. The labs were in the basement of the new physics building. Because of the slope of the shoreline hills, this end of the building gave out onto flat land. Beyond the glass doors at the end of the corridor night crouched, a black square. Gordon felt that the telescoping hallway was swimming past him, and realized that he was more tired than he thought. He really ought to get more exercise, stay in shape.

As he watched, Penny stepped into the framed darkness and pushed through.

“Oh,” he said, staring at her blankly. He remembered that he had mumbled a promise this morning to come home early and make supper. “Oh damn.”

“Yes. I finally got tired of waiting.”

“God, I’m sorry, I, I just…” He made a gawky gesture. The plain fact was that he had completely forgotten, but it didn’t seem wise to say that.

“Honey, you get too wrapped up.” Her voice softened as she studied his face.

“Weil, I know, I… I’m really sorry, God I am…” He thought, self-accusingly, I can’t even get started on an apology . He stared at her and marveled at this compact, well-designed creation, womanly and slight, making him feel bulky and awkward. He really ought to explain how it was with him, how the problems took up all the space inside him while he was working on them, leaving room for nothing else—not even for her, in a sense. It sounded harsh but it was the truth and he tried to think of a way to tell her that without…

“Sometimes I wonder how I can love such a dope,” she said, shaking her head, a small smile beginning.

“Well, I am sorry, but… let me tell you about the set-to we had with Lakin.”

“Yeah, do tell.” She bent over to pick up his briefcase. She was wiry and she lifted the bulging case without difficulty, shifting her hips. Despite his fatigue, Gordon found himself studying the motion.

The tightening of her skirt made her thighs leap into outline beneath the fabric. “C’mon, what you need is food.” He began his story. She nodded at his words and led the way out the back and around the liquid nitrogen filling station and down into the small parking lot, where safety lamps cast shadows of the guard railings, making a stretched and warped fretwork on the fresh blacktop.

PENNY TURNED THE IGNITION KEY AND THE RADIO came alive, blaring a shrill, “Pepsi Cola hits the spot! Twelve full ounces, that’s a lot —” Gordon reached over and clicked it off.

Penny pulled out of the parking lot and onto the boulevard. Cool night air fanned her hair. The strands were mousy brown at the scalp but then lightened into blond, bleached by sun and the clorine of swimming pools. A sea tang thickened the soft breeze.

“Your mother called,” Penny said carefully.

“Oh. You told her I’d call back?” Gordon hoped this would chop off the subject.

“She’s flying out soon to visit you.”

“What? Goddamn, why?”

“She says you’re not writing her at all any more and she wants to see what the west coast is like, anyhow. She’s thinking of moving out here.” Penny kept her voice calm and flat and drove with quick, precise movements.

“Oh, Christ.” He had a sudden mental picture of his mother in a black dress, walking down Girard Avenue in the yellow sunlight, peering in the windows of the shops, a full head shorter than everyone else going by. She would be as out of place as a nun in a nudist colony.

“She didn’t know who I was.”

“Huh?” The image of his mother frowning at the thinly clad girls on Girard distracted him.

“She asked if I was the cleaning lady.”

“Oh.”

“You haven’t told her we’re living together, have you?”

A pause. “I will.”

Penny made a humorless smile. “Why haven’t you already?”

He looked out the side window, which was smeared with oil where he had been leaning his head against it, and studied the scattering of jewellike lights. La Jolla, the jewel. They were running down the bumpy canyon route, and the fresh, minty scent of the eucalyptus stands filled the car. He tried to place himself back in Manhattan and look on things from that angle, to anticipate what his mother would think of all this, and found it impossible.

“Is it because I’m not Jewish?”

“Good God, no.”

“But if you had told her that, she’d be out here in a flash, right?”

He nodded ruefully. “Uh huh.”

“You going to tell her before she arrives?”

“Look,” he said with sudden energy, turning in the bucket seat to face her, “I don’t want to tell her Anything. I don’t want her butting into my life. Our life.”

“She’s going to ask questions, Gordon.”

“Let her ask.”

“You won’t answer?”

“Look, she’s not going to stay in our apartment, she doesn’t have to know you live there, too.”

Penny rolled her eyes. “Oh, I get it. Just before she gets here, you’ll start hinting that maybe I should pick up a few of my things that are lying around the apartment? Maybe take my face cream and birth control pills out of the medicine chest? Just a few subtle touches?”

He wilted under her withering tone. He hadn’t thought that clearly, but yes, some idea like that had been floating around in his mind. The old game: defend what you have to, but hide the rest. How long ago had he gotten into that pattern with his mother? Since Dad died? Christ, when was he going to stop being a kid?

“I’m sorry, I…”

“Oh, don’t be a retard. It was just a joke.”

They both knew it wasn’t a joke, but instead hung somewhere in that space between fantasy and a reality about to materialize, and that if she had said nothing he would have stumbled his way into the suggestion eventually. It was this uncanny way she had of seeing his mind working on a problem with its blunt tools, and then leaping ahead to the spot he would reach, that endeared her to him at the most unlikely of moments. By tipping over the rock and exposing the worms underneath she had made it easy for him; there was no alternative but to be honest. “God damn, I love you,” he said, suddenly grinning.

Her smile took on a wry cast. Beneath the flickering street lights she kept her eyes intently on the road, “That’s the trouble with going domestic. You move in with a man and pretty soon, when he says he loves you, you hear underneath it that he’s thanking you. So, you’re welcome.”

“What’s that, WASP wisdom?”

“Just making an observation.”