The Eighth Day (8 page)

“You disappeared last night,” he said nonchalantly.

“Oh, were you there?” she said in a lame attempt to appear aloof.

“Yeah, as unreasonable as it may seem, they kind of make you go to the football rally when you’re the starting quarterback. Nice shoes, I remember thinking.”

“You noticed my shoes?”

“Hey, if I can see a receiver’s hands 75 yards downfield, you bet I won’t miss your, “catch-me-kiss-me” pumps from across a gym!”

“They weren’t “catch-me-kiss-me” pumps, and that’s not even the right terminology, Mr. Football.”

“I know, but I didn’t figure you for the other terminology type,” he said as the whistle blew summoning him back to his team to watch the ball get kicked through the goal post.

She didn’t know whether to be insulted or complimented
. Did he just scratch me off his list, or decide to take me home to mother?

The crowd went crazy; fans and security people swallowed up Bill and his teammates as they hustled off to their locker rooms.

One of the reasons Janice had been awarded the grant for her research was her sense of commitment. She gave her all to the subject. That was especially hard to do here in California. The entire state was almost one giant distraction for anyone under 30. If you were looking for a reason not to do anything, California delivered it. So her dogmatic approach to further her studies stood out amongst those who allowed the Golden State to modulate their biorhythms.

It was Monday night, the day after the big game. Janice hadn’t seen or heard from Bill, not that she should have. He had been assigned from Tuesday night to Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings only on the weekends when he had a home game. He, otherwise, had to fit his classes and commitments around her project. It was working out well. His job was to make sure the scientific accuracy of her study remained beyond reproach. Far too many scientists, who had actually done good work, were frustrated in the end by some scientific committee or board finding a non-scientific method used in either the accumulation or handling of data. For her it was like being handed a winning lottery ticket, living like a millionaire, then finding out there was an audit at the end where every cent and every reason for spending the money was scrutinized under penalty of having to pay it back. So there she was, well past 7 p.m., in her office reviewing the questionnaires the volunteer students from five participating universities had mailed in. She was surprised when Hillary, eyes swollen and bloodshot, entered her office. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Why are men so childish?” she said with a slightly quivering bottom lip.

“Because they think it will increase their chances of us nursing them.”

“Be serious.”

How come everyone comes to me with their man problems? Hello, do you see a ring on my finger?

“Want to tell me about it?”

“It’s Brad.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Last night after the game, we spent the whole night together.”

“Oh, I see. And he hasn’t called you yet today?”

“No, that’s the problem. He
did
call and told me he was going to Santa Clara, tonight.”

“What’s in Santa Clara?”

“Some sluts from Santa Clara lost a bet on the game and are throwing an orgy to have sex with all the players,” she said starting to hyperventilate.

“Wow, their parents must be so proud, a whole football team. Why don’t you tell the dean? I’m sure that would get the whole team expelled. They’d certainly think twice about going…”

“Are you crazy? Then Brad would hate me forever!”

Janice was dumbfounded. She immediately foresaw all kinds of problems for Hillary. The poor girl was conflicted and had esteem issues in proportions usually found in Greek tragedy.

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you then, except Brad is a dick head and you better get your head out from between his legs or you are going to get pissed on!”

Mascara was running down her cheeks as Hillary laughed and looked at Janice in a sisterly way. “I know I am being silly and unreasonable; it’s just that I love him so.”

Janice grabbed Hillary by the shoulders. “Hillary, listen to me. While you were making love last night, he was getting laid. Got that? You: love; him: sex. Why do you think they call it getting fucked! You had sex with the guy. That’s all! Love comes from somewhere else. Don’t ask me where, …damned if I know.”

“But I
know
Brad loves me.” She protested through heaving breaths.

“Listen to me! Oxytosin.”

“What?”

“Oxytosin. It is an enzyme that is released in a female during sex affecting her brain. Its purpose is to produce a nesting urge. Prehistorically speaking it was ‘necessary’ to keep women in the dark cave while the men went out in the sunshine, to hunt and kill food. Get it. You don’t love him. You are just being drugged by a million years of non-evolution.”

Talking about the brain suddenly brought back the medical student inside Hillary. “You’re saying a chemical imbalance in my brain is causing feelings of need and intimacy. Where?”

“The cerebral cortex. There is a gland that…” she stopped dead in her pathology as she caught sight of Bill standing in the doorway.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I heard we got a lot of questionnaires in, and I finished my paper on chaos theory and its relevance to applied physics. Thought I’d come here and have some real fun with…” his words trailed off as he recognized the person Janice had been addressing, “Oh hi, Hill.”
Please don’t ask me where Brad is.

“Hi, Bill; surprised to see you here,” Hillary said as she dabbed at her nose with her hankie.

“Really? Oh. Anyway I didn’t mean to interrupt, just let me grab a pile of these and I’ll go down the hall…”

“No, Hillary was just leaving…”

Hillary turned to her, surprised, then catching up. “I’m going to de-tox my brain. Happy researching, you two. Thanks, Janice, for being a real friend. Bye, Bill.”

“Have you gone through these yet?” Bill said as he reached for a ream of questionnaires.

Janice stared at him with a mixture of wonder and caution. He couldn’t decide which, but it prompted him to ask, “What?”

“Nothing; it’s just that you are here.”

“Well, you know, you’ve got that whole location specific awareness thing down pretty well. I am here; you are there; we are both here. That about covers it.”

“How come you aren’t in Santa Clara?” she asked instantly making him the poster boy for irresponsible males everywhere.

“Do you know how I got to this school?”

“No, how?”

“Well it wasn’t on a subway driver’s income. I won a football scholarship. I could have gone to Notre Dame, but the science program here is the best of all the schools who wanted me.”

“Can we get back to the Santa Clara tar pits?”

“Those guys played a great game; they want to let off a little steam. Let ‘em. I’ve got work to do.”

“Oh, is that it? The work. But aren’t you their General? Shouldn’t you be
with
your men as they go into battle?”

“It’s Captain, and that’s only on the football field. Santa Clara is an extracurricular activity. Look, are you perturbed that I am here? Am I interrupting your plans for the evening?”

Just then, Janice noticed that when Bill grabbed the pile of papers, he had uncovered the book she bought that day. Suddenly feeling stupid, she wanted to hide that book from Bill’s eyes.

Bill took her temporary distraction to mean that she didn’t want to see him at that moment. “Well, I’ll go. I’ll take these back to my room and bring them back tomorrow.”

And he was off!

Janice sat stunned, as she had no idea what had just happened. She was so happy to see him. What had she done to make him angry? Why did he leave? She plopped herself in her chair and mindlessly thumbed the page edges of a new copy of
The Football Widow’s Guide to Football
.

Tonight was Hiccock’s attempt at Fettuccine Alfredo. With candles on his table and
Geraldo
on TV in the background, the former college sweethearts now sat in his “bachelor” apartment as a snapshot of what they used to be.

“This is really good,” Janice said after two mouthfuls.

“Yeah, it came out pretty good. Must be the cream cheese.”

His words stopped her cold, right in the middle of her fork twirl. She almost spit out her pasta. “Cream cheese?”

“Yeah, I went all-out and got the Philly instead of the no-frills stuff.”

“I watch a lot of those cooking shows on cable, but this sounds like a recipe from the Cartoon Channel.”

“You just said it was really good.”

“And you just told me you made it with cream cheese. Alfredo must be spinning in his grave!”

“Want more?”

“Definitely.”

Bill gave her another serving. “You know what I was just thinking about?”

“No, what?” she asked after swallowing a fork full of the Ronzoni Number 14 and cream cheese based culinary masterwork.

“When we first met.”

Janice smiled and her eyes met his the same way they had that night when he showed up in her office, “You mean our first fight?”

“No, I was wondering what ever happened to Brad?”

Janice’s mind recoiled. “Brad? What made you think of him out of the blue?”

“It wasn’t a fight. I thought you were meeting some other guy there and I was in the way.”

“You know, you didn’t know anything about women then and you don’t know anything about them now?”

“Where did that come from?”

“You were the smartest dumb jerk in the world. It took you a year to realize how crazy I was for you.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I came to you that night because I decided I had enough of the wildcatting and partying. I realized all I wanted was to see you.”

“Do you know I never went to a football game in all my years of high school and college because I was afraid I’d want more, want it bad! And I thought I could never get it. Maybe I wasn’t cool enough to have a guy like Brad, or you! But, I overcame that to see you play. No, that’s a lie; I came
solely
to see you. You know, I had to go out to dinner with the jerk who sold the tickets just to get close to mid-field so I could see you!”

“You never told me that!”

“It wasn’t important. We went Dutch actually; I didn’t want to owe that sleaze anything.”

“So, I guess we both sacrificed for each other,” Hiccock summed up the last few minutes and was ready to move on. Janice however, was still processing.

“Wait,” she retorted, “Are you taking the position that not going to a slut infested, mass groupie suck and fuck-fest with sexually transmitting diseased tramps was somehow a sacrifice? On second thought, don’t answer that! So, how was your day at the office, dear?”

The evening’s conversation continued, focused on his day at the office, that being the office of the president’s science advisor.

“So you think the FBI’s theory is wrong?”

“First off, they’d kill me if they knew I was discussing this with you. And, yes, when any part of an assumption doesn’t test true to the operational model of the proposition, it must be deemed false.”

“Well, that may be true in a purely scientific sense, but I know of cases where eleven-year-old boys have the intellect and adaptive skills to do great tasks.”

“Are you suggesting that I am not considering the human factor?”

“You pretty much live your whole life ignoring the human factor.” She smiled to take the point off the little dagger she just inserted, but Hiccock felt it all the same.

“Is this going to turn into the ‘soulless’ argument again?”

“Am I getting too predictable for you? Listen, artificial intelligence is half the package. Without a conscience or other mediated value structure, it has no more potential to be useful than a, a … serial killer.” She dug a little more pasta out of the serving bowl.

“AI can be the tool that helps man crack the biggest mysteries of life and the universe, unfettered by human bias. It can help us reach beyond the limits of three-dimensional thinking.”

“That’s what I am afraid of. Without all those messy, sloppy biases or without some moral or spiritual guidance package, it will never be intelligent, just belligerent.”

Hiccock was lost. Tyler seemed distracted by something on TV.

“Well, at least they can’t blame this one on hip-hop,” she said, still looking at the TV.

He looked over his shoulder to see what she was watching. Geraldo displayed a mug shot of Martha Krummel, the gardening grandmother who derailed the freight train.

“Grandma Martha didn’t hang with the homies around the beat box.”

“You know, having an ex with a Ph.D. in behavioral sciences might be an advantage after all. At least we’ll …” He stopped when he saw a video clip, taken with a telephoto lens, of himself as he had left the White House today.

“Once again, ladies and gentlemen,” Geraldo said, “I have a confirmed report from an inside White House source close to the president that this man—can we slow that tape down?” The video image on the screen strobed and flickered as it slowed down to catch Hiccock walking from the side door of the East Wing to a waiting car. Geraldo continued to speak over what in the business is called a “package,” a pre-produced piece featuring old footage and stills of Hiccock in his college days. “William Hiccock, the former Heisman Trophy–winning quarterback who abandoned what everyone agreed would have been a brilliant career in the pros to follow his love of science”—the picture switched to footage of Bill among a group of administration appointees—“has now been named as independent investigator of these same terrorist attacks. This despite the objections of the FBI and the Office of Homeland Security. It seems, ladies and gentlemen, as we sit here tonight, that a classic old-fashioned turf war is heating up within the administration.

“Forgive me for saying this, but have we not learned anything from the other attacks? As you recall, there had been ample warnings, but each held tight by various government agencies leaving us vulnerable, while bureaucrats protected their precious areas of autonomy. In this latest round of more random, more sporadic but unrelenting attacks, we still have no idea who or for what purpose Americans are losing their lives. Let’s hope the squabbling ends soon so we can catch the people who are doing these horrific deeds. I am being told right now from the control room that my producers are trying to get Dr. William Hiccock on the phone. We’ll try to get him on the air and see if he can provide further insight into this segment, which we’re calling ‘The Quarterback Gets in the Game.’ We’ll be back after this break. Stay tuned, lots of news to come.”