Lydia Netzer - How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky

“You know you can point the orbiting telescopes out to count the stars and measure space. But you can also point them in, you know? And sometimes at night the earth looks almost just the same. The stars out there, the people and cities down here.”

Irene laughed. “Somebody told me you believe Toledo is built on the ruins of ancient Babylon, and I thought they were shitting me. Is this all to say that I’m standing on some kind of tomb?”

George shook his head. “The ziggurat was not a tomb. It was a temple. So, you’re standing on a kind of altar. A very tall one. This is where it would have been. By the river.”

“Comforting,” she said. “Like blankets and hot tea, but warmer and safer.”

“I’m about to tell you the best part. This is the reason I brought you up here.”

“Oh, good,” said Irene. “I was beginning to think this nutburger you were feeding me about the Tigris and Euphrates was the point.”

“See the Maumee River? That’s the Tigris.”

“Oh, dang, it is the point,” sighed Irene. But she smiled at him, as if it were all OK.

“So where’s the Euphrates?” George pressed on. “Where do you think?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s in Iraq, with the rest of ancient Persia.”

“Nope. It’s here, too. You just can’t see it.”

“Do tell,” said Irene.

“Have you noticed,” George began, feeling like a proud parent on Christmas morning, about to rip the paper off a shiny bicycle, “that lots of people at the institute whisper about what’s ‘downstairs’ and then maybe they point down sort of suggestively like there’s something underground that they’re being very secretive about?”

“No,” said Irene. “I’ve noticed you doing that, but not everyone doing that.”

“Well, there is something underground that we’re being very secretive about, but since I believe you’re about to be asked to be pretty much in charge of it, I think the time has come for you to know it exists.”

“What?” Irene was now interested.

He pointed, and she turned to look west toward where the sun had set, toward the institute. He moved to stand behind her, so that the light breeze blew her ponytail back to brush against his shirt front.

“It starts over there,” he said. “And it comes this way, that way, this way, down to here.” He traced a path with his finger. “And then crosses under the Tigris, and goes back up that way, that way, and up to there.”

“But that’s a circle. You’re telling me this thing is actually following the path of an ancient river?”

“An ellipse actually. But never mind.”

“Rivers aren’t circles.”

“Yes, I know, but this is a supercollider. It’s only called the Euphrates because we already have a Tigris. It’s metaphor. Like poetry is. Like music. Sing it. The Euphrates!” He sang.

She was glaring intently at the place where he’d gestured, and he could see her mentally calculating.

“It’s eighty-seven kilometers,” he said. “The beams intersect in six places, with six different detectors. I’m sorry, five. They’re waiting for one more. I think you have it in your lab. It might be attached to a figure-eight-shaped device at the moment, but I’m sure it can be fitted to the river.”

“The river,” said Irene slowly.

George put his arm more securely around her. He started to say something: “I’m so—” But he stopped. They stood there together silently for several minutes. It was as if his entire life had led up to that point and she had been there the whole time, just quiet. She fit so perfectly into his arm, and there was no bumping of hip bones or awkward dangling of arms. She was exactly the perfect size.

“Since our mothers were astrologers, I have to ask you, what’s your sign?”

“Scorpio,” she murmured without hesitation.

“Really?” he said. “Me too. What day?”

“The eleventh.”

“What?” he said. “That’s my birthday, too!”

He spun her around to face him, holding her now by both arms.

“You know what? I have to go,” she said. She sprang away from him and marched back to the patio door, threw it open, and went inside. He chased her.

He caught up to her next to the elevator, mashing on the DOWN button with an angry little finger.

“We can be birthday buddies! Let’s do a joint party. Let’s see, what could the theme be? I know—nebulas! You could dress like the reflection nebula, you know, all shimmery, and I could go as a horse head.”

Irene stared at the crease in the elevator door. After pursing her lips together for a few seconds, waiting for the elevator car to come, she spat out, “I’m leaving.”

George laughed. “I see that. Making the elevator come usually leads to leaving.”

There was a ding, and the doors slid open. Irene turned to look at him. “Well, bye,” she said. She slipped into the elevator and began to mash the CLOSE DOOR button. But George followed her in.

“I’m leaving, too,” he explained.

As the digital numbers descended 10, 9, 8, 7 … she finally spoke: “How old are you?”

George said, “Twenty-nine.”

“You are not,” said Irene.

“Yeah, I am,” said George. “Are you?”

He felt his stomach contract. He actually felt nervous. “Move,” said his stomach. “Move, move, move. Act, act, act.” At the first floor, Irene raced him to her car.

“But if we were born on the same day,” he said, rushing along behind her, “then Irene, we’re not just birthday buddies. Don’t you get it? This is why we know the same poetry. This is why we know the same songs.”

“I don’t know those songs. I don’t like that poetry. Don’t be weird,” said Irene.

She had her car door unlocked when she was ten cars away. It beeped and blinked at her, and George skipped ahead, getting between her and the door before she could reach for the handle.

“Toledo General? Toledo General? Come on, were you born at Toledo General?”

“I’m sure not. No, I don’t—”

“Then where?” said George. “Where? We’re twin souls, Irene! Twin souls.”

His back was against her car and he was braced there, against it; she could not open it. She came toward him, as if she might attack him or climb him or shout at him. But then she pressed her body up against the front of him and put one hand across his mouth.

“I don’t want you to go home,” he said through her hand. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop talking, but—”

“George, shut up,” she said. She put her hand behind his neck and kissed him. He stood up from the car, and she came up with him, his hands under her butt, lifting her, catching her to him, and she clung now, her hands around his shoulders, mouth still touching, now opening, a small soft tongue brushing against his lips. He felt her mouth touch his, causing a long, slow, swell of happiness that started from where the rough denim of her jeans pressed against his khakis, continuing up to where her hips lay against his belt, her breasts pressing against his chest, and all of her warmth and anger spilling out of her like a fountain. Her fingernails were in his hair when she pulled her face back.

He spoke first. “OK, forget whatever I was just saying. I have nothing else to say.”

“Really? Because you had so much to say, thirty seconds ago.”

“I was stupid then. I can’t even remember what I was thinking about.”

He went in for another kiss, but she turned her head to the side.

“You can put me down,” she said quietly. He set her back on the sidewalk. She put her hand on the car door again.

“Let’s get a grip here, George,” she said.

“No,” he said. “Marry me.”

It was all he could do to keep his hands from plunging in between the buttons of her little button-down shirt, shedding it from her, putting his mouth over her collar bone, her breast, her hip bone, yanking off her pants.