The crazy lady was quick. She called out, “Yaaaaaaaah!” and ran at me. Maybe she had the hammer still in her hand; I couldn’t see. I just turned and ran. There was a large wooden fence between her land and Nick’s, so I had to head back toward the pond for an opening to his family’s well-kept grass. She stopped pursuing as soon as I crossed over, but I kept running until I got to the driveway. I stood there, hands on my knees, breathing hard.
Alexandra opened the front door, just the same amount as before: about eight inches. “I told you I thought they belonged to the neighbor.”
I got on my bike and across the road to the campus of science labs. I was shaking. I rode just to clear my head. The streets and buildings here are named after Cambridge greats: Thomson, Maxwell, Bragg. Thomson discovered electrons and his street always makes me think of Seurat and pointillism: Aren’t we all just made of little dots?
The reason Seurat painted like that, by the way, was to give viewers the ingredients of a color-say, yellow and blue, in tiny bits close together-to be mixed fresh in their eyes each time they look. Instead of some stale old green cooked up ages ago. Isn’t that generous?
That’s the exact conversation I had with Juergen once. He studies explosives in the Bragg Building. He’s nice and kind of geeky. He tried to kiss me once and I avoided it. We haven’t really hung out since then but we say hi. And I thought, Why not see if he wants to do something? Just hang out and maybe bullshit about art and science and all that undergraduate stay-up-all-night kind of talk. Because I really didn’t feel like running into Therese or Polly or anyone else.
I found a bench that had less dried goose shit on it than the others and sat by the pond. I know he cycles by the pond to the bike path to get back to his place. He shares a flat on Fitzwilliam Street. Next to Darwin ’s old flat, no joke. He tells me stuff about Darwin and other scientists, and I tell him stuff about art.
That’s what I love about Cambridge. The smartest people don’t think someone is stupid just because they don’t know some fact or really specific thing. Specialists understand from experience that you can be deeply brilliant at one kind of thing and completely ignorant of something else. Because you’ve focused. Really smart people focus. Nick didn’t mind explaining things to me. Juergen didn’t mind explaining things to me. Rocket science, actual rocket science. And he didn’t think I was stupid for not knowing already-he thought I was smart for being interested and able to follow his explanations. He thought we were equals.
Back home everyone always acted like I was so smart. They meant it nicely, but it was isolating, you know? They said I was special. But “special” means “by yourself.” That’s what it means; “better” than everyone else means “not the same” as everyone else. I love Cambridge, because being smart means fitting in.
Those thoughts and others filled two hours. Juergen never came by on the path lit by knee-high bollards. It was Saturday; what was I thinking? Full term was just ended. There was no guarantee he’d be here. He might have been out with friends. He might be flying home. He might be here, but working all night.
The big, boxy, quickly constructed warehouse-type buildings populating the West Cambridge site had the benefit of dozens of window offices. In the dark, the ones that were lit looked suspended. I knew Juergen worked in the Bragg Building; I didn’t know which window was his.
I walked around Bragg, rolling my bike along beside me. Unattended bikes disappear quickly. Four window offices were lit. I saw Juergen at his desk.
I threw a pebble at his window. I felt like such a geek. He looked down and I waved at him. He met me at the entrance. It has scripture quoted above it. That’s the way it is when a country still has a monarch whose role is head of the Church.
“Hi,” I said. “Look, I feel really stupid, but I’ve just had a run-in with a crazy person and I’ve had a fight with this girl in my college and I just don’t feel like being there right now. Do you want to go out to a pub or something?” I must have expected Juergen to be eager for an invitation. I was surprised when he hesitated.
“Uh, look, I’ve got to finish this up. But, uh, you can hang out if you want…” I locked my bike up outside. He waited at the door and then led me upstairs. We passed a model of the double helix. Watson and Crick had been Cambridge boys. Their favorite pub had a plaque on it about them. The ceiling of it is covered by graffiti from World War II airmen.
The biggest tourist attraction near my hometown is a massive house so poorly designed by the crazy rich lady who built it that it’s marketed as a “mystery.”
I had books in my backpack, so there was stuff to read. There was a beanbag chair, so I wasn’t uncomfortable. Juergen was doing something at the computer, something involving models and scenarios. He was into it, so I didn’t talk. We passed the whole evening like that. I think he stayed up all night. I eventually fell asleep.
Do you know how I think people become sluts? It’s like, pay attention to me. He wasn’t even looking at me. There was no conversation. No sharing something from a vending machine, or talking sticky problems through aloud. There was nothing.
The Centre for Mathematics, which is new, is very “wow” on the outside. But I’ve heard from someone who works there that it’s disconnected inside. No feeling of being part of the whole; your office is just this isolated little cave. I told that to someone else, and Nick, overhearing, had said, “Isn’t that what a researcher needs at work?” He said it like, Of course we want to be unconnected. Of course. And this with Juergen was like that. It was like I wasn’t even there. I think that’s what makes someone into a slut. Because I don’t even like Juergen that way, but I fell asleep thinking, Pay attention to me, asshole. I thought, All right, I’ll do it, whatever. Just notice that I’m here.
CHAPTER 11
It was Sunday, Day Eleven: The Day After the Dredging. The morning after I’d slept on a beanbag chair in Juergen’s office.
Term was just done. Dr. Keene was getting married. Nick wasn’t dead in the Cam, but was still gone. The bells in Great St. Mary’s played a quarter-peal at nine. Churches filled up, after which shops opened, which I hear is new. Everything, I’m told, used to be closed on Sundays not so long ago.
There is a pair of shows on the BBC called Spring Watch and Autumn Watch, made of footage of the effects of changing seasons on the natural world: deer mating, swallows nesting, that sort of thing. I think Cambridge should have its own show, Term Watch, where you can see footage of the sudden deflation in the bicycle population whenever students go home for break; the bloom of tourists at Christmas and summer; the after-Easter switch of season in school uniforms, from navy blazers to school-color gingham dresses on girls all over the city. Juggling buskers materialize on the corner by Holy Trinity Church whenever children have days off school. It’s all as cyclical and inevitable as any pattern of mating and migration.
Early December sees Christmas lights and banners advertising garish pantomimes dominate downtown. No snow, but deep, damp cold.
Harry’s told me that this is the time of year for the best canary feathers. Because they finish their molt, I think. He goes to bird shows most weekends this month. I’d know him gone or not by the car.
The only obstacle would be Gretchen. She wouldn’t have lights on to warn me that she’s home, so I had to keep an eye out for other hints. I got there early enough to assume that she’d be in: robe, coffee, whatever she does instead of reading the newspaper. Maybe listening to something on the radio. I wasn’t near the house, of course; I stayed by the end of the street, where it hits Barton Road. There’s a bench there. It isn’t a bus stop, just a gift to tired walkers and cyclists coming from Lammas Land or the Grantchester footpath. That sidewalk is so full of both pedestrians and bikes that it’s been split into lanes.