“Wow!” Tom says. “I thought I’d managed real randomness—”
“Every fifth is a reverse,” I say.
“Damn,” Tom said. “Let’s try that again—”
This time he doesn’t reverse for nine shots, the next time seven — I notice he’s always using a reverse attack on the odd numbers. I test that through longer series, just waiting. Sure enough… nine, seven, five, then back to seven. That’s when I step past on the diagonal and get him again.
“That wasn’t five,” he says. He sounds breathless.
“No… but it was an odd number,” I say.
“I can’t think fast enough,” Tom says. “I can’t fence and think. How do you do it?”
“You move, but the pattern doesn’t,” I say. “The pattern — when I see it — is still. So it is easier to hold in mind because it doesn’t wiggle around.”
“I never thought of it that way,” Tom says. “So — how do you plan your own attacks? So they aren’t patterned?”
“They are,” I say. “But I can shift from one pattern to another…” I can tell this is not getting across to him and try to think of another way of saying it. “When you drive somewhere, there are many possible routes… many patterns you might choose. If you start off on one and a road you would use for that pattern is blocked, you take another and get onto one of your other patterns, don’t you?”
“You see routes as patterns?” Lucia says. “I see them as strings — and I have real trouble shifting from one to another unless the connection is within a block.”
“I get completely lost,” Susan says. “Mass transit’s a real boon to me — I just read the sign and get on. In the old days, if I’d had to drive everywhere, I’d have been late all the time.”
“So, you can hold different fencing patterns in your head and just… jump or something… from one to another?”
“But mostly I’m reacting to the opponent’s attacks while I analyze the pattern,” I say.
“That would explain a lot about your learning style when you started fencing,” Lucia says. She looks happy. I do not understand why that would make her happy. “Those first bouts, you did not have time to learn the pattern — and you were not skilled enough to think and fence both, right?”
“I… it’s hard to remember,” I say. I am uncomfortable with this, with other people picking apart how my brain works. Or doesn’t work.
“It doesn’t matter — you’re a good fencer now — but people do learn differently.”
The rest of the evening goes by quickly. I fence with several of the others; in between I sit beside Marjory if she is not fencing. I listen for noise from the street but hear nothing. Sometimes cars drive by, but they sound normal, at least from the backyard. When I go out to my car, the windshield is not broken and the tires are not flat. The absence of damage was there before the damage occurred — if someone came to damage my car, the damage would be subsequent… very much like dark and light. The dark is there first, and then comes light.
“Did the police ever get back to you about the windshield?” Tom asks. We are all out in the front yard together.
“No,” I say. I do not want to think about the police tonight. Marjory is next to me and I can smell her hair.
“Did you think who might have done it?” he asks.
“No,” I say. I do not want to think about that, either, not with Marjory beside me.
“Lou—” He scratches his head. “You need to think about it. How likely is it that your car was vandalized twice in a row, on fencing night, by strangers?”
“It was not anyone in our group,” I say. “You are my friends.”
Tom looks down, then back at my face. “Lou, I think you need to consider—” My ears do not want to hear what he will say next.
“Here you are,” Lucia says, interrupting. Interrupting is rude, but I am glad she interrupts. She has brought the book with her. She hands it to me when I have put my duffel back in the trunk. “Let me know how you get on with it.”
In the light from the street lamp on the corner the book’s cover is a dull gray. It feels pebbly under my fingers.
“What are you reading, Lou?” Marjory asks. My stomach tightens. I do not want to talk about the research with Marjory. I do not want to find out that she already knows about it.
“Cego and Clinton,” Lucia says, as if that is a title.
“Wow,” Marjory says. “Good for you, Lou.”
I do not understand. Does she know the book just from its authors? Did they write only one book? And why does she say the book is good for me? Or did she mean “good for you” as praise? I do not understand that meaning, either. I feel trapped in this whirlpool of questions, not-knowing swirling around me, drowning me.
Light speeds toward me from the distant specks, the oldest light taking longest to arrive.
I drive home carefully, even more aware than usual of the pools and streams of light washing over me from street lamps and lighted signs. In and out of the fast dark — and it does feel faster in the dark.
Tom shook his head as Lou drove away. “I don’t know—” he said, and paused.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Lucia asked.
“It’s the only real possibility,” Tom said. “I don’t like to think it, it’s hard to believe Don could be capable of anything this serious, but… who else could it be? He would know Lou’s name; he could find out his address; he certainly knows when fencing practice is and what Lou’s car looks like.”
“You didn’t tell the police,” Lucia said.
“No. I thought Lou would figure it out, and it’s his car, after all. I felt I shouldn’t horn in. But now… I wish I’d gone on and told Lou flat out to beware of Don. He still thinks of him as a friend.”
“I know.” Lucia shook her head. “He’s so — well, I don’t know if it’s really loyalty or just habit. Once a friend, always a friend? Besides—”
“It might not be Don. I know. He’s been a nuisance and a jerk at times, but he’s never done anything violent before. And nothing happened tonight.”
“The night’s not over,” Lucia said. “If we hear about anything else, we have to tell the police. For Lou’s sake.”
“You’re right, of course.” Tom yawned. “Let’s just hope nothing happens and it’s random coincidence.”
At the apartment, I carry the book and my duffel upstairs. I hear no sound from Danny’s apartment as I go past it. I put my fencing jacket in the dirty-clothes basket and take the book to my desk. In the light of the desk lamp, the cover is light blue, not gray.
I open it. Without Lucia to prompt me to skip them, I read all the pages carefully. On the page headed “Dedications,” Betsy R. Cego has put: “For Jerry and Bob, with thanks,” and Malcolm R. Clinton has put: “To my beloved wife, Celia, and in memory of my father, George.” The foreword, written by Peter J. Bartleman, M.D., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, includes the information that Betsy R. Cego’s R. stands for Rodham and Malcom R. Clinton’s R. stands for Richard, so the R. probably has nothing to do with their coauthorship. Peter J. Bartleman says the book is the most important compilation, of the current state of knowledge on brain function. I do not know why he wrote the foreword.