Richard Powers - Gold Bug Variations

Jeannie is radiant, rubbed beautifully coral in the raw March air. She can stand the cold nakedness of this copse of trees only by huddling against him. Fierceness is gone. She does not use him this time to discharge her explosive, agitating thistle. No more gangster attempt to recover the androgyne. The two of them fit, couple to one other so wholly that friction is an unnecessary irritation.

Today she is downy, quilt-frightened, narcotically surprised by the unthinking pleasure she finds here. She makes love to him like a girl of sixteen. No, as if they had met at sixteen, and lost sixteen more intervening years, banished from each other by some wrong turn. They roll up in the quilt, so tightly wrapped that they cannot move except to fill each other's missing spaces, conform skin to skin, vapored breathing. They lie for a long, unmeasured time, until the light gives out. The spell failing to sustain, they dress, each helping the other, keeping the other warm until clothing can take over. For the last time they return to the car, enter, hug briefly on the seat, an afterthought, then ride home north in dark, in silence.

Jeannie breaks the quiet. "Tell me that story again."

"What story?"

"How you came to Champaign."

"Why?" He tickles her under the chin. She frowns.

"I like it."

"What's there to like about it?"

"I like how I'm waiting there, in town. How you don't have the first idea of how I'm there."

"You are, aren't you?" Daring, not daring to believe. "You really are, aren't you?"

"Love," she says, with heartbreaking alto. "Whatever you think about me when you are old, I want you to remember that I never lied to you." Never, an overtone in her voice gives away, about anything fundamental. It chills him, past the rapidly falling temperature. This once, despite everything he believes, he chooses not to decode.

They creep back into town, protected from notice by the anonymous car. She drives slowly, dropping almost to zero, delaying the end of their one stolen day of unmitigated intimacy. She continues to halve their speed, but Zeno does not keep Stadium Terrace away. They sit in the front seat looking at one another, hungry again, separate, needy. They would have each other, even here, if they thought for a minute that the magically patterned quilt could hide them. A noise jars them back to the realities of K-court. A couple across the street launching into the cruelty of familiars. Someone's failure to take out the garbage, wash a dish, or pick up a sock escalates into mutual hatred. Recrimination floats out upon the spring night, elides with a cry of disgust that tears free from the back of Jeannie's throat. "God. Listen. I hate people. I really do. The whole wretched lot of us make me ill."

His heart is so full with her, he sees through her without thinking. Her would-be misanthropy is misguided, jejune. He is strong enough now to take on human kindness. "I know. I used to hate people too."

"And?"

He kisses her, grazing her breasts gently into agreement. "Then I met a few." He shakes her, squeezes her shoulders until she giggles. The sound salvages them. She holds on a little tighter. But in her touch, the suggestion of inevitable mitosis. Her mouth stays pursed, expressively silent. She reaches a cold hand up under his shirt, connects the moles on his back with a grazing finger. Jeanette closes to him on the narrow car seat, as if just filling the space between them a few seconds longer will fix everything. Her eyes are wide, groping for words like a drugged woman. Sexual dizziness; she is thinking herself into climax, pushing herself out over the edge again. Jeannie, his Jeannie, comes, shudders, loses herself against him, just out of holding, refusing to stunt love.

Recovering as quickly as she took off, she raises her incredulous head. "Where did that come from? Did you do that to me?" Ressler just holds her, blood testing the weak points in his veins. He curls over her, makes the first motions of leaving. Her voice originates inside his ear. "Stuart, promise me something." All play gone.

"Name it," he says, straining for humor.

"Promise first."

"I promise. What?"

"You must never die."

The Paperwork Reduction Act

So Jimmy won the salary lottery and, thick with suspicion, accepted the windfall. The next time he stayed late, it was about another fluke, linked to the first, less benign. This man, whose most extravagant profanity was "chili con carne," who could not shout except apologetically, waited furiously in the computer room when Franklin and I arrived after an afternoon of playing house. "Problems, Uncle Jim?" Frank asked.

"That's one name for it. They've dropped me from the group insurance."

"They?" The word irritated Todd, with its overtones of conspiracy.

"Our loyal machines. This has to be the work of independent-minded computers. No human being would do such a thing without serving notice." Good faith, touchingly misguided.

"Beginning, please," Franklin said, hanging his jacket on the corner of the CPU.

"What do you mean, 'beginning? There is no beginning. This is the Information Revolution, son." Jimmy was shaken by being singled out to receive the random hit. "Look at this." He handed over the customer copy of a three-part micro-perforated form. The lines did not quite fit into their intended boxes — a bit of operator negligence I would never have noticed before my days of helping to load such paper. The piece was telegraphic: undernamed no longer carried on major medical group policy number XXX because of failure to pay premium during previous period.

"Failure to pay!" Todd laughed, throwing the form into the air. Jimmy scrambled to catch it. Todd's voice shifted register at the blanket stupidity. "What are they talking about? How can you fail to pay? The premium is deducted automatically from every check."

Jimmy groaned. "Supposed to be deducted." He reached into a pocket and withdrew the now heavily crumpled statement stub that had recently thrown him into moral convulsions. The one announcing: You are the lucky winner. "In all the excitement over that salary nonsense, nobody even noticed." He smoothed the ratty scrap and handed it over. Todd reexamined the figures he'd secretly produced. Jimmy didn't notice, but Frank's face changed color. He shot me a look, but in front of the victim, we could say nothing.

Cavalry-like, Dr. Ressler arrived, carrying a bag of zucchini from his rooftop garden, a plot that must have had more soil than Battery Park. "I'm glad you're still here, James," he said, dividing the crop three ways. All anxiety ceased until he finished doling out his gifts. "Now. I can tell something's up. And today," he smiled at me as if I knew the reason, "I'm prepared to solve all problems."

Jimmy laid out the crisis, and Dr. Ressler's brows narrowed over the relevant documents. He did not look at Franklin, but the refusal to mete out the punishing glance was itself crushing. He studied the forms for hidden explanation. Jimmy said he'd called around, and all the relevant executives had apologized but assured him that his not intending to skip a payment did not change the fact.

"When will they reinstate you?" Ressler asked.

"The period after the period when I first pay again. Barring further electronic bolts from the blue, I should be back on coverage within eight weeks."

"Well, that's easy, then," Todd joked. "For two months, just look both ways before you cross the street."

Jimmy managed an anemic grin. Dr. Ressler asked, "James, may I hang on to these?"

"It's hopeless. I've talked to everyone. All I can do is pay up and wait. I wouldn't waste any more breath on it."

"I'd just like to think about this before notching up another round for the corporations." More than passing inconvenience: the individual in a mismatched battle. His asking for another look before conceding inevitable defeat reminded me that the actual quote, eternally misused, was "But for the grace of God there goes John Bradford" A name immortal in its oblivion, four hundred years ago swapped out for the generic I .