When he was done there was a moment of absolute silence. What impressionable children. He looked over at the Adult Ed people, saw the jagged, hostile smile on Winston Blount's face. Envious as ever, eh, Winnie ?
Then a pair of oafs near the front started laughing. That precipitated scattered giggles.
"Class!" Chumlig stepped forward and everyone applauded, even Blount.
Chumlig said a few more words. Then the class bell rang and the students were all rushing for the door. He started after them.
"Ah, Robert," said Ms. Chumlig. "Please stay a moment. That bell 'did not toll for you.'" She smiled, no doubt pleased by her command of literary allusion. "Your poem was so beautiful. I want to apologize to you, for the class. They had no right to put the — " She gestured at the air above his head.
"What?"
"Never mind. This is not a truly talented class, I fear." She look at him quizzically. "It's hard to believe you're seventy-five years old; modern medicine is working miracles. I've had a number of senior students. I understand your problems."
"Ah, you do."
"Anything you do in this class will be a favor for the others here. I hope you'll stay, help them. Rework your poem with some student's visuals. They can learn from you — and you can learn the skills that will make the world a more comfortable place for you."
Robert gave her a little smile. There would always be cretins like Louise Chumlig. Fortunately, she found something else to focus on: "Oh ! Look at the time! I've got to start Remote Studies. Please excuse me." Chumlig turned and walked to the center of the classroom. She jabbed a hand toward the top row of seats. "Welcome, class. Sandi, stop playing with the unicorns!"
Robert stared at the empty room, and the woman talking to herself. So much technology…
Outside, the students had dispersed. Robert was left to ponder his reen-counter with "academia." It could have been worse. His little poem had been more than good enough for these people. Even Winnie Blount had applauded. To impress someone even when he hates you — that was always a kind of triumph.
"Mr. Gu?" The voice was tentative. Robert gave a start. It was the Orozco kid, lurking by the classroom door.
"Hello," he said, and gave the boy a generous smile.
Maybe too generous. Orozco came out of the shadows and walked along with him. "I — I thought your poem was wonderful."
"You're too kind."
The boy waved at the sunlit lawn. "It made me feel like I was actually out here, running in the sunlight. And all without haptics or contacts or my wearable." His gaze came up to Robert's face and then flickered away. It was a look of awe that might have really meant something if the speaker had been anyone worthwhile. "I'll bet you're as good as any of the top game advertisers."
"I'll bet."
The boy dithered for an inarticulate moment. "I notice you're not wearing. I could help you with that. Maybe, maybe we could team up. You know, you could help me with the words." Another glance at Robert, and then the rest of the kid's speech came out in a rush. "We could help each other, and then there's another deal I can get you in on. It could be a lot of money. Your friend Mr. Blount has already come on board."
They walked in silence for a dozen paces.
"So, Professor Gu, what do you think?"
Robert gave Juan a kindly smile, and just as the kid brightened, he said, "Well, young man, I think it will be a cold day in hell before I team with an old fool like Winston Blount — or a young fool such as yourself."
Zing. The boy stumbled back almost as if Robert had punched him in the face. Robert walked on, smiling. It was a small thing, but like the poem, it was a start.
07
The Ezra Pound Incident
There was a dark side to Robert's morning insights. Sometimes he would wake not to a grand solution but to the horrid realization that some problem was real, immediate, and apparently unsolvable. This wasn't worrywart obsessiveness, it was a form of defensive creativity. Sometimes the threat was a total surprise; more often it was a known inconvenience, now recognized as deadly serious. The panic attacks normally led to real solutions, as when he had withdrawn his earliest long poem from a small press, hiding its naive shallowness from public view.
And very rarely, the new problem was truly unsolvable and he could but flail and rail against the impending disaster.
Last night, coming away from his presentation at Fairmont High, he'd been feeling pretty good. The groundlings had been impressed, and so had the likes of Winston Blount — who was a more sophisticated kind of fool. Things are getting better. I'm coming back . Robert had drifted through dinner, pretty much ignoring Miri's pestering about all the things she could help him with. Bob was still absent. Robert had halfheartedly badgered Alice with questions about Lena's last days. Had Lena asked for him at the end? Who had come to her funeral? Alice was more patient than usual but still not a great source of information.
Those were the questions he'd gone to sleep with.
He woke with a plan for finding answers. When Bob returned, they would have a heart-to-heart talk about Lena. Bob would know some of the answers. And for the rest… in Search and Analysis, Chumlig had been talking about the Friends of Privacy. There were methods of seeing through their lies. Robert was getting better and better at S&A. One way or another, he would recover his lost times with Lena.
That was the good news. The bad news floated up as he lay there drowsing through his scheme for turning technology into a searchlight on Lena — — –The bad news was an absolute, gut certainty that replaced the vague uneasiness of earlier days. Yesterday, my poetry impressed the groundlings . That was no reason for joy, and he'd been a fool to be warmed by it for even an instant. Any blush of pleasure should have vanished when little Juan Whosits had announced that Robert was as brilliant as an advertising copywriter. Lord !
But Winston Blount had applauded Robert's little effort. Winston Blount was certainly competent to judge such verse. And here Robert's morning insight came up with the memory of Winnie applauding, the measured beat of Blount's hands, the smile on his face. That had not been the look of an enemy bested and awed. Never in the old days would Robert have confused it for that. No, Winnie had been mocking him. Winston Blount was telling him what he should have known all along. His out-doorsy poem was shit, good only for an audience accustomed to eating shit. Robert lay still for a long moment, a groan trapped in his throat, remembering the banal words of his little poem.
That was the genius insight of this dark morning, the conclusion he had evaded every day since he was brought back from the dead: I've lost the music in the words .
Every day he was awash with ideas for new poetry, but not the smallest piece of concrete verse. He had told himself that his genius was coming back with his other faculties, that it was coming back slowly, in his little poems. All that was a mirage. And now he knew it for a mirage. He was dead inside, his gifts turned into vaporous nothingness and random mechanical curiosity.
You can't know that ! He rolled out of bed and went into the bathroom. The air was cool and still. He stared out the half-open bathroom window at the little gardens and twisted conifers, the empty street. Bob and Alice had given him an upstairs room. It had been fun to be able to run up and down stairs again.
In truth nothing had changed about his problems. He had no new evidence that he was permanently maimed. It was just that suddenly — with the full authority of a Morning Insight — he was certain of it. But hell. For once this could be just panic without substance ! Maybe obsessing on Lena's death was spilling over, making him see death in all directions.