Lydia Netzer - How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky

Irene and George stood on the porch of the country house, holding hands. In the field, the crystal maze hummed and flickered. In the well, nothing gurgled. Birds pecked at the dried remnants of summer berries, and a breeze puffed over the trees.

They had meant to go rushing inside and fall upon each other, and they were already laughing, but then Irene had put her hand up to stop. Now George paused, his hand on the doorknob, a floorboard creaking under his foot.

“Someone’s inside,” whispered Irene. “I heard—”

Then George nodded. He heard the voices, too. Still hand in hand, they tiptoed over to the window and peered inside. The big front room was empty and dark, but beyond that a light gleamed in the kitchen, and Irene heard a man’s voice say, “You can’t. I won’t let you.” Then there was a crash.

Irene felt alarmed. Had they disturbed a break-in? Way out here in the woods? But George was shaking his head. “It’s my dad,” he mouthed to her, silently.

“I can do whatever I want,” came Sally’s voice, and then Sally herself came into view in the hallway.

“And my mom, apparently,” George said.

She wore a long handkerchief dress and had no shoes on. Her hair was mussed and she had a wineglass in one hand. She raised the glass, drained it, and repeated, “I can do whatever I want. It’s my property.”

“But they were born here. This is where they played—”

Dean came into the hallway, chasing Sally, leaning into her. His shirt was open at the throat, his old painter pants rolled up to the knee and wet around the bottom, as if they had been wading. He sank his hands into her waist and pulled her to him.

“I don’t care,” Sally said. “That’s as good a reason as any.”

“ They were born here?” George repeated into Irene’s ear. “They?”

“Maybe you have a sibling,” Irene wondered.

“Just wait,” said Dean. “Wait. I’m begging you.”

“I’m selling it, Dean,” Sally snapped. “I want it gone. You can go live someplace else. Maybe I’ll even let you come and live with me. If you change your pants.”

“What, these pants?” Dean laughed, and began to undo his belt. Sally laughed. She actually laughed.

George shook his head, clasping Irene’s hand tightly. He took two quick steps backward, fell into the porch swing, and then bounced backward into a bush. Both Sally and Dean snapped their heads around to stare at the window, and Irene waved feebly. Sally rushed for the door, trailing Dean behind her, and swung it open.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I could ask you the same thing,” said George from the bushes, swinging one arm up onto the porch.

“Are you alright, son?” Dean went to help George clamber back up, and when he was upright and had brushed himself off, Sally said, “I come here, sometimes.”

“She does,” said Dean. “It’s true.”

“I am the owner,” Sally pointed out. “I own this. That’s what I’m doing here.”

“Yeah, you own this,” said George, “But you haven’t been out here in forever. And now you’re here and…”

“Having sex,” prompted Irene.

“Ugh!” George protested. “I was going to say wearing hippie clothes!”

“It’s none of your concern what I’m wearing,” said Sally, drawing herself up regally, which didn’t work as well without her heels on. She turned to Irene. “And it’s no concern of yours what I’m doing.”

“Are you selling this place?” George wanted to know.

“No,” said Dean. “She’s not.”

“I am,” said Sally. “I should have done it years ago.”

She shook her head sadly and set her empty wineglass on the porch railing. “Sentiment,” she said to Irene. “It’s such a bitch.”

WARNING: Conveyor may start without warning. Moving parts can cut or crush. Keep hands and body clear of conveyor.

Irene was lying down flat inside the supercollider. Around her head, an array of trapezoids spread out in colorful arcs. She wasn’t wearing any pants. The lights were bright in the wide cavern where her experiment was being built. Out there, you could walk around with a clipboard, nod and smile at passing colleagues, learn and use science facts. But inside the tunnel, where the beam pipes themselves would be, it was pretty dim. Pretty shadowy. If you’re a pion, you don’t need a lot of light to find and smash into another pion. You just do it.

It was George’s idea to come here, after their failure to find privacy at the country house, after they’d made their embarrassed departure. “Such a college problem,” George had said. “Madly in love and nowhere to be alone.” So he had dragged a foam pad of high-density insulation into the pipe in order to lay her down on it.

“You’re a proton,” said George. “I’m a proton. Let’s go in here together.”

“Kind of a tight fit,” said Irene.

“That way there’s only room for us two,” said George.

WARNING: Beyond this point: Radio frequency fields at this site may exceed acceptable amounts for human exposure. Failure to abide by all posted signs and site guidelines for working in radio frequency environments could result in serious injury.

When the construction team at the Ur insertion point had clocked out for the night, and the engineers from the Uruk detector were safely in bed, George and Irene entered the elevator together. They put their eyes up for the retinal scan. Then they were four hundred feet below ground, alone. Irene loved being with George. There wasn’t anything going on in her mind right now except that there was no one else around. They could take their clothes off, and she could knock him to the floor, take his hip bones in her hands, and crouch over him. If she wanted to.

George climbed the bright green ladder that stood at the end of the pipe where the detector would eventually be mounted when it was built. He looked so small against the structure, against the scaffolding, so smooth against all the hard angles of the metal plates. He began to take off his shirt. They had deactivated the door. They had put a sheet of aluminum against the elevator window. The ventilation whirred and puffed, the light buzzed, the computer on the desk growled occasionally, making backups. There was no mood music. Irene imagined that George’s face was changing shape, becoming more blurry, more smoky. Turning into animal George. Irene felt her body drawn to his as if there was a gravitational event happening inside her belly, and he was a nearby star, getting drawn into her, getting closer. She kicked off her boots, yanked off her jeans, unbuttoned her lab coat, pulled her T-shirt over her head, and stood there in her socks.

Then, as she watched, he put his feet inside the tube and slipped inside, like a kid into a water slide, and was gone. The last things she saw were his smiling face, the hair across his forehead, his fingers gripping the side of the tube, and then he went on in, feetfirst.

She climbed the ladder, put her hands on the lip of the opening, and peered inside. She could see him in there, looking out. His elbows, spread wide, reached across the tunnel. He was grinning.

“Come in,” he said. He motioned with his hands for her to enter.

The air was cool in the tube and smelled slightly of oxygen. There was a light breeze coming up the tube from behind George. She put her arms into the tube, put her head in.

“Not headfirst, the other way,” he said. He reached out his hands toward her. And that’s how she landed on her back, with her head at the opening, her feet hooked over his shoulders and behind his arms, still in their white socks.

“No,” she said. “I don’t—”