Learning to Swear in America (13 page)

“You’ll have to pick me up. Is that okay?”

“Sure. Eight o’clock in the parking lot,” Lennon said.

Dovie nodded, still blushing.

No one said anything for a moment.

“Um … is there possibly computer I could borrow for moment? To look something up?”

“Yes!” Dovie said, relieved. “Back here!”

She grabbed his hand and led him down the hall, to a little desk wedged next to a stacked washer and dryer. One edge of the monitor touched the washer, and the other touched the wall.

“I’m so sorry about that,” she said. “You don’t have to take me.”

“Will be fun, and I’ll learn some things about America. And
about you.” She turned pink. “But I’ll probably embarrass you, because of my accent. Also, I can’t dance.”

“You can’t dance?”

“No. I’ve never been to dance.”

“Never?”

“I started college when I had twelve years. So, no.”

She smiled. Yuri wanted to tell her that when the light danced in her dark eyes it was both particle and ray. Would she think that was poetic? He decided not to take the chance.

He booted up the computer and brought up a map of the United States, staring intently at its outlines, all thoughts of poetry gone.

“See, in middle? Piece of Canada sticks down here. Is farther south than United States around it.”

“Yeah. That’s the most heavily populated part of Canada.”

He clicked to zoom in, adjusted the screen, and zoomed again.

“Detroit in Michigan shares bridge with Canada. I could ask, after asteroid is over, to live there. Then I just cross bridge.”

“Detroit in Michigan is a horrible place to live,” Dovie said. “They’d never believe you want to be there. They’d smell something fishy.”

“Fish? Pardon?”

“It wouldn’t work.” She curled her tongue up toward her nose, and he saw a slit in her tongue where she must sometimes wear a stud. He stared at it. “Unless there was some reason to go there. Hey, see if there are any conferences or anything.” Then she
leaned past him and typed in the search box herself, her rings hovering over the keyboard.

“You found one.” He leaned forward, took the mouse from her hand, felt his finger brush against hers. “But it’s in two weeks,” he said, disappointed. “I need to get back sooner.”

“What about in Ann Arbor? The University of Michigan is there. Would it be close enough for you to get across the bridge?”

He leaned in to the map and traced a finger west of Detroit to Ann Arbor, away from the bridge.

“No. Not if they’re keeping watch at all. Would be couple hour taxi ride first. I’d have to be very near bridge before they realize, to have chance to get across.”

She sighed. “What would you do if you got into Canada? Since you don’t have your passport?”

“Call Russian embassy, probably. They could get me home.”

Dovie was silent for a moment.

“Do you know things that would hurt this country? Get us bombed?”

“No! No. Is just … like how many missiles of this type, or how far can this airplane really fly. Like that. And
I don’t remember any of it
. I only looked at it for maybe one minute. It’ll all be outdated in five years anyway, but by then I’ll have lost everything. My apartment, my job.”
My research.

“You have an apartment?”

He nodded.

“But I go to restaurants. I’m terrible cook.”

“Maybe my mom could give you some pointers.”

They laughed and then were quiet for a moment.

“Will this be what you tell your grandkids about someday?” Dovie said. “Going to America and destroying an asteroid?”

“No,” Yuri said. “I’ll tell them about winning Nobel.”

Dovie snorted, then saw that he was serious and stared. “Could you win one? Seriously?”

He nodded. “I have excellent chance.”

“Is that what you want?” she asked.

It was his turn to stare. “Nobel in physics is greatest honor in world! I’ve worked toward it my whole life.”

“To get the Nobel, or to do the work?”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean if you could only do one—if it came down to it—would you rather have made a great contribution without recognition, or get a great honor for work that didn’t help anybody that much?”

He hesitated.

“Ah,” she said.

She didn’t understand, but that was okay. The Nobel was the ultimate Band-Aid—winning it would fix anything.

Yuri stood, and Dovie led him back to the front rooms. They passed the little porch she used as a studio, and he saw that she’d framed his painting. He flushed with pleasure. In the kitchen, Mrs. Collum was putting the remains of the cake in the refrigerator. Mr. Collum was lying on the sofa reading, and Lennon was playing the space game. He held a control out toward Yuri and
jacked an eyebrow, but Yuri shook his head. Bob Dylan sang as though he were filing keys with his voice box.

Yuri shifted his weight.

“Um, in America,” he said, looking at no one in particular, “does guy pay for girl’s dress for dance?” He pulled out his wallet.

“No,” Dovie said. “Of course not.”

“Yes,” Lennon said, “unless he’s a huge jackass. And he gets her flowers.”

“You should get her flowers,” Mrs. Collum said. “But, Dovie, you could wear that yellow print. It’s not formal, but it would pass.”

Dovie’s fingers curled at her thighs.

“Or you could borrow one from that girl in your art class,” Mr. Collum said.

Dovie stiffened.

“Carlie Sinclair?” Lennon said. “Are you … Carlie Sinclair? That whole family is jerks.”

“They’re jerks with a lot of clothes,” Mr. Collum said.

Yuri rolled four one-hundred dollar bills inside a fifty. He figured it looked like two fifties, maybe three, the way he held it.

“My government gave me money when I left. I’m not sure what am I supposed to do with it, because NASA provides food and housing. I really don’t need it for anything,” he said, shrugging.

He tucked the money half under the empty cake stand.

“I don’t know what dress costs in America …”

“You know how much a dress costs in Russia?” Lennon said. “Kinky.”

“Um …”

“Lennon, if Yuri is a cross-dresser, we don’t like him any less,” Mrs. Collum said, removing the bills and pushing them back in Yuri’s hand. “We celebrate his unique individuality.”

“You should see the pants he was wearing earlier,” Lennon said. “Baggy things that showed his underwears.”

“I’ll get you out of here,” Dovie said, hooking Yuri’s arm and leading him to the door.

“Thank you.”

Yuri waved good night to the Collums. Lennon grinned and jerked his head.

Passing the mail table by the door, Yuri tucked the bills under a letter opener. Dovie would find them later.

As they walked to the green-and-yellow car, Dovie slipped her fingers down his forearm and into his hand.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry about my family—everything about them.”

“I like them,” Yuri said. “I like them very much.”

“I couldn’t take your money, though. It’s not right.”

“Why not? I don’t need it, and anyway I have more. Besides, it’s my way of being freewheelin’. You have to let me celebrate this important holiday.”

She laughed.

“What did you think of Bob Dylan?”

“He sounds like goat caught in hailstorm.”

She laughed again, but not for very long, because when they reached the car, he bent down and kissed her. The second time in his life he’d kissed a girl—twice in two days. It was as though the sky was falling.

Dovie let him out in front of the restaurant, so that the building blocked the sight line from the hotel. She waved and clattered off, and Yuri walked back to the hotel, head down, no thought to anyone watching from the shadows. He was thinking about how women’s bodies have a lower percentage of water, and wondering if that’s what makes their lips soft and resistant at the same time. He decided it probably had to do with connective tissue.

He showered, then went to sleep, and in the morning dreamed of Dovie in a yellow print dress, holding a bouquet of flowers, smiling at him. Then tiny asteroids began to hurtle out of the flowers, like weaponized bees, shooting all over a dance floor and hitting dancers like hail while Bob Dylan sang “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” The dancers turned into mice, fell and lay still, paws curled. And Dovie looked at him, a trickle of
blood running down the side of her face, and she said, “You didn’t save us.”

He woke up screaming.

At JPL the next morning Fletcher looked at him when he walked in, but didn’t say anything. Yuri went to his office and reviewed the work he’d done the day before. It was good. He knew it was good. The calculations were complex, and he was double-checking himself as he went along. Another day and he’d have his answer. Then he’d explain it to Simons and Pirkola.

It occurred to him that one of the other astrophysicists might be of some help, might have some influence over his team members. He walked down to the cafeteria, trying to think who he might talk to, wishing he’d paid attention to social interactions between the NEO Program employees. Who ate with whom, who chatted with whom. Where people stood at sunset, watching another day dissolve into the contrail of time, streaming behind them as they hurtled into the future. But that wasn’t the kind of thing he knew.

He passed one of the American security guys in the hall, nodded vacantly as he went by, and entered the cafeteria on the floor below. It was nearly deserted. He took an orange juice and swiped his name tag, then walked over to a couple of planetary dynamicists talking at a table. One of them pushed out a chair as he approached.

“Yuri Strelnikov! Russia’s boy genius. What brings you down here?”

“Orange juice,” Yuri said with a smile, lifting the bottle so they could see.

The guard he had seen upstairs walked past the entrance to the cafeteria, not breaking stride, but sweeping it with his eyes as he went by.

The men introduced themselves, although Yuri already knew both by reputation. He perched on the edge of the chair. The man had pushed it out for him, but Yuri was no longer sure of the rules for when one could sit.

“I was wondering, um, are you familiar at all with antimatter?”

The men glanced at each other.

“Sure,” one of the men said. “Just the basics. The math to contain it is incredibly complex.”

“I did some theoretical work in Moscow earlier this year …”

“Theoretical?”

“Well, yes, is unpublished …”

“This year?” the other man said. “It’s the end of May.”

“My work has bearing on what we’re doing. I can’t get Zach Simons to listen about it,” he said, and instantly regretted dumping that out.

The men exchanged a look.

“Simons knows what he’s doing.”

“Sure, but …”

“You don’t agree with his approach, you need to take it up with him.”

“Right,” Yuri said, nodding to them and trying to smile.

He left, threading through empty tables, making his way past the glass wall and up the stairs. As he turned, he caught the reflection of the same security guard walking down the hall from the cafeteria.

Three times. Not a coincidence. He was being watched.

Yuri stayed in his office the rest of the day, working and making real progress. He only went downstairs for a late lunch and dinner, and managed to avoid crowds, conversations, and eye contact. Triple score. At the hotel that night he flipped on the television and found an NHL play-off game in the second period. He hung up his suit and stretched out on the bed to watch. When the room phone rang he jumped, and wrapped the bedspread around his waist to answer it.

“Did your day go okay?” Dovie asked. “Because mine didn’t, and if I start complaining and it turns out you had a bad day, too, I’ll look like a jerk.”

He smiled. “I had little bit of frustration, but nothing big, and I got very much done.” He sat on the bed. “I want to hear about your day.”

“Excellent.” She took a breath. “So I already told you my math teacher’s an a-hole, right?” She paused. “I’ll get to that. But there’s this girl who’s a jerk …”

“There are very many jerks in your school.”