Tizita Read online

  I ended up spending every weekend I could at his apartment. Even when he dragged himself off to study all day at UCLA’s Biomedical Library, I preferred curling up in his bed with a pile of physics papers to venturing out. The bed smelled of him. I brought Jillily with me most times in her dented old cage of a cat carrier, sliding her traveling litter box out from under Assefa’s bathroom sink and pouring in just enough Jonny Cat to do the job. At eighteen, Jillily was a lot skinnier than she’d once been, but just as likely to stretch across the bed in her Charlotte the Harlot pose, flat on her back with her white apron exposed, giving me the look that said, “Well, don’t you want to stroke my silky belly and sniff my perfect fish breath?”

  But on the morning of my birthday, it wasn’t UCLA that Assefa left our bed for but a series of last-minute errands to prepare for his trip. Asking myself for the hundredth time where in the world Achamyalesh and Zalelew could have disappeared to and not getting any reassuring answers, I drove Jillily back home to the Fiskes’ before my planned day at Caltech. As I launched myself up the path on Rose Villa Street, I saw Gwennie look out the kitchen window and wave. But before I could wave back, I was accosted by our next-door neighbor Fidel Marquetti. I’d always assumed Fidel to be a harmless sort of man until this past summer, when he’d taken a fierce dislike to the Korean family who’d just moved in at his other side. Well, to be fair, it wasn’t the Kangs who’d offended Fidel’s tender sensibilities, but their Jindo named Chin-Hwa, whose name, as Mrs. Kang had proudly informed me the first time the dog exuberantly sniffed my crotch, meant, “The Most Wealthy.” Which made a kind of sense, given the fact that the success of the Kang’s liquor store in South Pasadena was undoubtedly due less to the sweet potato vodka they prided themselves on purveying than the fact that they’d actually sold two winning SuperLotto Plus tickets over the past year and a half.

  It was probably because of the mysterious skin condition that had Fidel feeling in flames most of the time that he developed an inordinate irritability toward Chin-Hwa. From the beginning, I couldn’t help but notice that Fidel demonstrated less than an average Pasadena neighbor’s tolerance for the dog’s frequent escapes from the leash in Mr. Kang’s frantic hand to howl at the borders of Fidel’s unusual variant of a SoCal front lawn.

  There was a story behind Chin-Hwa’s antagonism toward Fidel’s garden. In defiance of Southern California’s current drought, Fidel had planted rows of tall, exotic grasses separated by neat squares of annuals, which he liked to water with one of those revolving lawn sprinklers. The thing was, the generally impeccable Jindo breed of dog had one (in this case fatal) flaw: an aversion to water and a desperate desire to avoid getting wet. Mr. Kang had attempted to resolve the situation by taking Chin-Hwa out for his walks only when Fidel’s sprinkler wasn’t running, but it turned out that Chin-Hwa had a second character flaw less endemic to his breed. He held a grudge. Anytime he could slip his handsome white head under the backyard fence that a desperate Mr. Kang kept unsuccessfully reinforcing, he’d make a beeline for some tidy gathering of multicolored pansies, planting a crushing dump over as many of Fidel’s flowers as he could before slinking back to his own yard.

  After three months of Fidel banging on the Kang door, Mr. Kang bowing his head and muttering apologies, and Mrs. Kang standing in the background wringing her hands, Fidel had finally gone over the edge, festooning his front yard with printed signs with admonitions ranging from “I Know What You’re Doing” to “Curb your Dog.” Though the former was the most provocative of the bunch, it was the latter that had gotten to me, only because I misread it the first time I passed by as “Curb Your God.”

  Which had taken me on no end of void-vanquishing mental excursions. How many world crises would simply dry up if the world’s zealots would only curb their gods? Lord knew, I might have been able to make peace with my own father had he gotten past the certainty of possessing the one and only spiritual truth before he died.

  But this morning it was Fidel himself, and not one of his signs, that had me nearly bursting into untimely laughter. His brown face was mottled with patches of undoubtedly painful crimson as he pointed wordlessly to what I had to admit was a pretty exuberant splash of doggie diarrhea over a plot of pink impatiens. But he found his voice in no time. “Those damn Chinks. I thought those people ate their dogs. These ones’ve gotta be spending too much time praying to that Buddha-head in their living room to even notice what that frickin’ animal of theirs is doing. If I were them, I’d be spending half my days in confession. You’d think they were the ones who won the war.”

  I stopped myself from trying to correct him. Where would I even begin? I shrugged with what I hoped at least looked like sympathy and ran toward Gwennie, who was thankfully beckoning now from our front door. As I submitted to a giant hug, I couldn’t help but think about poor Fidel, and I must have muttered out loud, “Well, somebody’s God certainly needs a little curbing,” because Gwen pushed me away and said defensively, “Huh?”

  I quickly reassured Gwennie that I didn’t mean her, but she was already walking away from me, throwing over her shoulder, “Listen, I’ve got some news for you. C’mon into the kitchen.” I nearly laughed at how my thrifty metabolism led middle-aged women—well, middle-aged women except for my mother—to want to feed me first and talk later. Gwennie set down a plate and gestured for me to sit at the kitchen table while she sliced off a slab of banana bread, but I just stared at her. Sensing my unease, she relented. “Okay, kiddo. I got a call from your mother a few minutes ago. Abeba showed up and told her that Zalelew’s daughter phoned this morning. She got a postcard from her father, postmarked Gondar.” Dropping into my chair, I anxiously shoved a hunk of banana bread into my mouth. Gwennie continued, “Zalelew wrote that he and Achamyalesh bumped into a young woman from their old village when they arrived at the airport. She was accompanying three small children and the Spanish parents who were adopting them. Zalelew said she was a girl Assefa had gone to school with.” I stopped chewing, but Gwennie seemed not to notice. She added, “They were going to visit the orphanage where she worked on their way to Aksum.” She cocked her head hopefully. “So maybe Assefa won’t have to go now?”

  Reaching for my cell, I realized I hadn’t turned it on yet this morning. As soon as I did, the haunting melody of the ringtone I’d assigned to Assefa, Teddy Afro’s “Aydenegetim Lebie,” filled the room.

  Assefa’s voice was trembling. “Fleur? Thank God you finally picked up. Have you heard the news?”

  I began to burble about how we’d celebrate, when Assefa broke in, clearly thinking aloud, “The thing is, though, why didn’t they call? Abat promised us he’d call when he landed in Gondar. Don’t you think it’s odd that all anyone got was a postcard? My family always phones when we arrive at our destination. It’s what we do. And why haven’t they called since?”

  “Gondar’s a pretty small city. Maybe the phone service has been down,” I ventured hopefully. “Maybe the cellphone he rented was a dud. Maybe he figured a postcard would do the trick.”

  “And make us wait for two weeks? The postcard wasn’t even from him.”

  “Maybe you’ll get one tomorrow. Sometimes mail travels at different rates. It is Ethiopia, after all.”

  He snapped, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I got a little short myself. “Oh, come on, it’s an underdeveloped country. For God’s sake, even the U.S. Postal Service screws up half the time.”

  Assefa paused, then conceded grudgingly, “Yes, of course, of course, you’re right.”

  Gwennie shot me a look and crossed the room to load the dishwasher, flinging in plates and cups a bit more forcefully than usual.

  I knew my argument made sense, but Assefa’s voice, though calmer now, was no less determined. “Nothing has changed, really. Something’s not right.”

  “So ...?”

  Assefa asked defensively, “What can I do? What if it were your father?”

  I felt like I’d been struck
. I could hear the stiffness in my voice as I reminded him, “If it were my father, things like phone calls wouldn’t have been an issue.”

  Gwennie twisted around to frown meaningfully at me, anxiously stroking her Physicists are Spacier apron, the one with the “a” in Spacier x-ed out and replaced by an “i.”

  Assefa was contrite now. “Ah, dukula. I have been insensitive. And on your birthday, too. But you do see, don’t you, that I must go? My mother is still very worried.”

  “I suppose,” I muttered ungraciously.

  But just as I ventured the question that was niggling at me, “Oh, by the way, who’s the girl they bumped into,” Assefa said, “Damn. My cell’s breaking up. I’ll see you tonight at—”

  That was it. We’d lost the connection.

  I tried talking it over with Gwennie, she sitting on my left so she could hear me with her good ear. “You’re being ridiculous, child. I don’t know what I was thinking. Of course, he has to go. It’s not like his father to skip the call. He would have found a pay phone or called from the hotel. Something.”

  I was too ashamed to share the real source of my disquiet, telling myself not to be an idiot. Besides, Gwennie—ever the political animal—was already taking the conversation in a new direction. Muttering something about orphans, she pulled her eyeglasses down from the top of her head and wandered over to the wicker basket of the week’s worth of newspapers she kept at the corner of the kitchen. Pushing aside my plate, she spread a marmalade-stained page across the table.

  “Look at this,” she said, pointing to a headline that announced, “Ethiopian Ministry of Health Acknowledges More than a Million AIDS Orphans.’”

  She flung out her arms for emphasis. “One fucking million!” The last time I’d seen her like this was when Father’s Cacklers—otherwise known as Campaign America to Crush C-Voids—had joined with Big Oil to mount their campaign against my research. Pulling up a chair, she began reading aloud. “‘UNICEF predicts that the number of street children will only increase, with teenage girls ending up as prostitutes. The number of orphans may top two million by 2015.’” Gwennie pounded the table hard enough for my plate to jump. “Who’s going to care for all those children?”

  Her face had gone red enough to make me worry about her blood pressure. She wasn’t getting any younger, and after Nana’s sudden death last year, I couldn’t afford losing anyone else I loved. In an attempt at diversion, I broke in with my Fidel story, ticking off on my fingers his multiple feats of historical revisionism.

  At first, she looked annoyed. Nobody likes to be interrupted in the middle of a political rant. But when I got to the part about the “Chinks” thinking they’d won the war, she was bending over with laughter. Then the hiccups began. They were the worst kind, climaxing in wet burps that ominously suggested something worse might not be far behind.

  Laughing apologetically, she hurriedly grabbed a glass from the cupboard, filled it with filtered water, and drank it upside down over the sink. She wiped the drool from her chin, waited a moment, then pronounced, “There. That’s better.” Trying to control her tittering this time, she shook her head. “Poor man.” Then she proceeded to pack up the rest of the banana bread for me to take to school.

  As it turned out, wild bathroom sex wasn’t my only overindulgence that morning. In my nervousness, I’d pigged out on more banana bread than I’d realized—there was only half a loaf left to bring to my team at Caltech. Thrusting the tin-foiled care package into my book bag, I squinted out the living room window to make sure Fidel had gone in. Dashing outside, I started up the dented green Prius I’d inherited from Gwennie. As I glided past Fidel’s yard, I saw that he’d tacked up one more sign. This one was clearly an impromptu job. You had to give Fidel credit for pride of place; all the others had been made up professionally at the local stationer’s. This newest effort was hand lettered in a downward slant, and despite being brief had a couple of misspellings: “Buda Hades go home.” Given that Fidel’s whole family had taken advantage of one of the surges of amnesty following their emigration from Cuba on an illegal fishing boat, the message packed more than a little irony.

  My short drive to school was filled with long thoughts, including the AIDS crisis in Africa, which I generally managed to shove into a dusty storage cupboard at the back of my mind. Normally, any mention that the cradle of our species had two out of every ten people prematurely dying was as unbearable as pictures of polar bears and penguins stranded by melting ice caps. I tried remembering who it was who’d said that the loss of one human being was the loss of a whole universe. If that were the case, how could we even fathom the loss of a million? If it were a question of a million pet dogs or cats being felled by a preventable disease, red states and blue states would come together at last and the whole country would be clamoring to send in the marines.

  Still fuming, I pulled into the parking lot, slid out, and slammed the car door. Despite its impact on the world of science, I was thankful Caltech wasn’t a huge campus. I got halfway to Lauritsen before realizing that I might have my purse and laptop with me, but I’d forgotten the banana bread and had to leg it all the way back again.

  When I finally entered the lab, the whole team—except, of course, Adam—was there. Stanley stood at the blackboard, while Gunther leaned his tall-glass-of-milk body against the back wall, thoughtfully rubbing his blond-stubbled chin. Amir, Tom, and Katrina were huddled together, doing some computations at a long table. Adam’s replacement, Bob Ballantine, sat at a student’s desk in the middle of the room, turning quickly when I opened the door. Bob was becoming something of a problem. From the moment we’d met, it was clear he was going to have a crush on me, while all I could think of was Uncle Bob, the imaginary shrinking relative who spent half his time in my pocket and the other half skipping by my side during some of my more memorable childhood adventures.

  Before I knew it, Bob rose from his chair, struggling to tuck his blue Oxford shirt into khakis that were just this side of being honest-to-God floods. Within seconds he was close enough for me to detect a hint of smoked fish and orange juice. On the whole, not an unpleasant combination. His signature eye tic more pronounced than usual, he thrust a manuscript into my hand with the air of a dog presenting his favorite throw toy to his master. Or a cat triumphantly delivering a dead hummingbird to her mistress’ bed, which Jillily had done just a few weeks before.

  “I know we’re supposed to be sticking to the supervoid,” he said, “but look at this paper. By one of my best undergrads. He’s taken an unusual twist, connecting Pribram and Bohm’s holographic models with C-Voids.”

  I wanted to push him aside and head straight for Stanley, but everything I’d read so far about the possibility of a holographic universe stopped me dead in my tracks. “Why, thank you, Bob.” He grinned broadly, and I tried not to notice what looked like a sliver of lox fat snagged between his left front tooth and lateral incisor. Running my eyes down the first page of the manuscript, I commented, “Actually, Jack Ng just published a piece suggesting that quantum foam is holographic. I think your guy might be on to something.”

  Passing him Gwennie’s banana loaf, which he eyed with the kind of suspicion one greets an unexploded bomb, I hurried up to the blackboard, waving the paper at Stanley before I was treated to one of his class-A hugs. Though age might have taken a half-inch or so off his height, Stanley was still a lot taller than I. He managed to extract a quarter from the scrunchy atop my head, which gave me as much of a thrill as the first time he’d performed that particular magic trick when I was an eleven-year-old girl. Then he croaked to the rest of the room, as if they couldn’t see for themselves, “Here’s our Fleur,” before sweeping the paper from my hand. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that, despite being a man of great distinction and unquestionably the most brilliant person I’d ever met, Stanley had the face and, well, hop-ability of a frog. His brilliant head was squished rather flatly onto his unusually long neck, and his bottle-cap glasses magnified his alr
eady buggish eyes. When excited, he was prone to jump around the room, and in our early days proved to be as skip-happy as Uncle Bob himself. And that’s just what he did: a hop and a skip in front of the blackboard for old times’ sake. I saw Gunther stifle a snort from the corner and gave him a little wave.

  I shot a conspiratorial look toward where Amir, Tom, and Katrina had been, but they’d disappeared. How had I missed that?

  Just as I was about to ask Stanley where they’d gone, he seemed to realize he was holding the manuscript. Peering down at it, he worked his rather pronounced Adam’s apple and asked, “So, what’s this when it’s at home?”

  I laughed. “I don’t know about home, but when it’s here, it’s from Bob.”

  As if on cue, up trotted Bob himself, brushing banana bread crumbs from his shirt. A brown triangle of banana bread crust had moved in next door to the lox fat, so I assumed Gwen’s package had been promoted from object of suspicious derivation to the highly valuable item it actually was.

  Bob grinned and scratched his head. I noticed that he’d actually styled his chestnut hair in spikes and put some kind of product on it that called attention to its generous dusting of dandruff. “Jaime Gomez,” he offered enthusiastically. “Great paper. ‘The Holographic Argument for C-Voids.’”

  Without a word, Stanley nodded, walked to one of the front row desks and, crouching on its chair as if it were a toadstool, lost himself in Jaime Gomez’s paper. Bob and I exchanged an unusually accordant look. With Stanley reading the paper, we knew we were invisible to him, consigned to the black hole into which all human relationships descend when even the kindliest of scientists gets grabbed by an idea.

  I bore Stanley no hard feelings for this, since I’d once been one of that law’s more egregious examples. I’d had no end of grief as a young adolescent trying to repair my relationship with Sammie after the call of C-Voids and P.D. temporarily blinded me to the justifiable demands of true friendship. Since then, I’d taken great care to let Sammie know how much she meant to me.