CHAPTER 3
“So the company you work for is called Nano. What’s the main guy’s name again?” George shouted to make himself heard above the sound of the wind and raspy growl of the VW’s engine. It was a fire-engine red VW GTI. He didn’t even know Pia could drive, let alone like this. He gripped the edges of his bucket seat and nervously watched the winding road as Pia slalomed along.
Every time they turned, he reflexively pressed his left foot against the floor pan as if he could influence what the car might do with an imaginary foot brake. The last thing he wanted was for the vehicle to spin out on one of the hairpin turns. They were heading up into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains that cascaded down onto Boulder like an angry sea. The aspens were still leafless despite the fact that it was almost May, and their spidery branches, in contrast to the dark evergreens, looked yellow. On straightaways, where he felt he could release his life-or-death grip on the seat, George wrapped his arms around himself. Coming from Los Angeles, he thought the place was damned cold. Pia seemed immune. She was still dressed in her jogging clothes and a sweatshirt thrown over her shoulders.
“Berman. Zachary Berman,” Pia yelled back. The car’s windows were down, and the wind was whipping around her jet-black, nearly shoulder-length hair. She was wearing a pair of cycling sunglasses that curved around the side of her head. When George hazarded a glance in her direction, he saw a distorted reflected image of himself. His hair was standing on end and his face was twisted horizontally.
“What’s he like?”
“I don’t know much about him,” said Pia, telling a white lie. Despite what she wasn’t telling George, Pia didn’t know a huge amount about Berman above and beyond what was in the press. He was a kind of international playboy in the mold of a few other more famous, relatively young, highly successful business entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson and Larry Ellison. But she did know that although he was married with kids, it was, in his words, an open marriage.
The reality was that Zachary Berman had happened upon Pia in one of Nano’s several cafeterias and was actively pursuing her. At first Pia had allowed herself to have a few casual dates with the man because she was truly impressed with what he was accomplishing in nanotechnology and the promise he represented in medical nanotechnology. But when he started to get personal, and she learned about the Berman family in New York, she put an end to it, to Zachary’s chagrin.
Then it became a problem. As a man unaccustomed to hearing the word no from a woman, he’d become a pest, as far as Pia was concerned. Even if he hadn’t been married, she wouldn’t have been all that interested in any kind of a relationship. She was in Boulder to work and recover from the emotional trauma she’d experienced in New York City. Besides, she didn’t even know if she was capable of a relationship even if he was not the driven, selfish man she thought he was. Over the years, Pia had become quite knowledgeable about her social limitations.
“Is he single?” George continued.
“No, he’s married with two kids,” Pia shouted back without elaboration, hoping the topic would end there. She didn’t want to trouble George with the information that Berman was attracted to her and that his attentions had gotten to the point of being bothersome. Also in the back of her mind was the gnawing discomfort that Berman was due back that very day from an important business trip that had thankfully taken him away for almost two weeks.
“How old is he?” George persisted.
“Late forties, something like that.” Pia clenched her teeth. George could be tedious about such things.
“I think I saw a picture of him,” George said. “It was in People magazine, taken at the last Cannes Film Festival. He has one of those big yachts.”
“Really?” Pia responded vaguely, as if she weren’t interested, and she wasn’t.
“Was he involved when the company, as you said, gave you this car?”
Pia massaged the leather steering wheel. She didn’t like where the conversation was going but didn’t know how to prevent it, short of saying she didn’t want to talk about Zachary Berman, which would have conveyed the message she was trying to avoid. George was behaving exactly as she remembered he did — he was always full of questions that probed her private life. He had fussed around Pia’s apartment for twenty minutes before she could get him to leave, with his litany of questions about whether or not she was looking after herself properly with no appropriate food in her refrigerator, suggesting that perhaps she wasn’t actually living there. Pia knew George was trying to find out if Pia was seeing someone.
“Actually, he was involved. He had found out that I had been cycling to work and wanted me to have one of the company cars. He said it was too dangerous on the mountain roads, especially at night when I have to go in to check on some of my experiments.”
“It looks brand new,” George said, glancing around the interior.
“Guess I got lucky,” Pia responded, looking over at George. George was annoying her, but maybe his showing up like this might actually serve a positive purpose. Perhaps it was a way to discourage Berman from pestering her.
“Pia!” George yelled.
She looked back at the road and something flashed in front of the car. There was a dull thump.
“We hit something,” said George, and he turned around to look behind. Pia slowed the car, stopped, and flipped into reverse. She then backed up the road faster than George would have preferred. Pia stopped and jumped out of the car, the engine still running. Before George could get out, she came around to his side of the car, holding something in her hand. George got to his feet to see what it was.
“It’s a prairie dog,” she said. “Must have barely clipped it; at least I hope that was the case. It’s alive, I think. Damn, I hate this kind of thing.”
Pia cradled a small fur ball in her two hands. George could see a creature like a fat squirrel. It didn’t look like it was moving too much.
“They’re all over the place farther down the mountain,” said Pia. “What are you doing up here, little guy?” Her voice was quiet and kind, and awakened in George a confusion he’d harbored about Pia. He knew she could be remarkably dismissive of people, himself included, as if she thought others had no feelings. But with animals, she couldn’t be more caring. In physiology lab during the first year of medical school, Pia had refused to take any part in elaborate experiments using dogs, because the animals were euthanized at the end. Even stray cats around the med school dorm never failed to get her attention in some form or another.
“Here, you take him!” That was more like Pia, George thought. She handed him the small, still-warm bundle. “There’s a vet in town that’s open on weekends. We’re making an emergency detour.”
George held the animal as they drove in silence back into Boulder proper. George thought the creature was dead, but Pia intently stared ahead, a woman on a mission. Over the next half hour, they visited the vet clinic and determined that, yes, the animal was dead, most likely of a broken neck. Pia was as upset as George had ever seen her, her eyes even watery. For George that was definitely a first.
Leaving the vet, George was pleased when Pia pulled into a nearby Burger King. They didn’t talk until they’d gotten their food.