'But who knows,' Jonathan said, returning to his typical banter. 'Maybe you'll find your soul mate somewhere out there in cyber. Or, more precisely I guess, he'll find you some lonely evening while browsing about the Web.'
'Jonathan, I'm not in the mood for this right now, okay?'
'Really? I thought you'd be tickled pink. You really should look your scopes up. They're pretty good, actually. But I'm still somewhat conflicted about the name I used for you—'Blond Bomber.' What do you think? I thought about 'Skinny Minnie,' but I decided to emphasize your hair instead, since some straight guys still seem to be hung up on the whole breast thing. Personally, of course, I don't get it. A large bosom makes a woman look so matronly.'
Laura looked up from the letter, but not at Jonathan.
'… but when I put in your particulars — five seven slim and athletic, blond hair, blue eyes, perfect complexion, et cetera — the program rated you in the very top category. 'Most Excellent Babe, I believe it was. If only your personality wasn't so scary — your academic credentials, turn-ons and turnoffs, things like that — and perhaps slightly larger breasts, I'm sure you'd have beaten out that cosmetician from Brookline for the top score.'
'Jonathan! This isn't a good time.'
'Look, I just filled out your profile! And I thought the 'Personality' thing would come out better than it did. I said you were 'nurturing,' and when it asked what type of man you wanted, I picked 'lost soul.''
Laura glared at him. 'I had nothing to do with the 'castrating bitch' part, Laura! I just input the data! I didn't program it to draw conclusions!' She heaved a sigh of frustration.
What Jonathan didn't know is that the previous Friday after he'd told her about filling out the electronic questionnaire she closed her office door and found her profile on the network. Over the weekend, thousands of E- mails had poured into her computer mailbox. Some large percentage of the sample she'd reviewed before deleting them en masse had graphically detailed sexual acts ranging from the harmlessly disgusting to the truly pathetic. Some had even attached pictures or movies and a plea that she return the favor with a nude photo or video clip of her own.
The whole episode had unsettled Laura, and as the weekend wore on she'd tried but failed to shake the mood. She had thought at first it was simply the unclean feeling of being the target of so much smut, of brushing so close by the sick, groping hands of the on-line. On Sunday night, however, as she deleted hundreds of new E-mails that had come in during the day, she returned to the profile Jonathan had composed and realized the true cause of her upset.
Everything he'd said about her was true. Tears had welled up as she sat at the computer in her home. One of the things that had drawn Laura into her friendship with Jonathan was his prodigious power of perception and understanding. It was that same power, however, that had painfully dissected her soul for all the world to see. She didn't care that a program written by some pimply-faced grad student had declared her a 'castrating bitch.' What bothered Laura was that, when she read Jonathan's description of who Laura really was, she liked the person she saw in the profile. It was exactly who Laura wanted to be — who in fact she was. The problem was there seemed to be no one else out there — in her life or in any of the hundreds of E-mails through which she had waded with an ever growing sense of despair — who seemed to like the person they saw.
'I'm sorry?' Jonathan finally said plaintively, and Laura returned to the present her vision blurred by teary eyes.
'You put in my Web address, Jonathan! I've gotten thousands of messages from all over the world, some of them totally obscene.'
'O-o-u. Can I read those?'
'If you were gonna pull a stunt like that for cheap sexual titillation, why didn't you just profile yourself, for God's sake?'
He made a face. 'Who wants to send pornographic messages to a potbellied, middle-aged, gay professor?'
'Jonathan, please. I have a lot on my mind.' She tossed the letter across the desk to him. 'Here. Read that.'
'I thought you'd never ask,' he said, eagerly picking it up.
'Do you know anything about that letter?'
'I know that a perfectly gorgeous young man delivered it. He stopped to ask where you were, and I…' Jonathan fell silent, his eyebrows arching high as he read. 'Well, well, well. I do believe we have the makings of a true moral dilemma here.'
Laura slumped in her chair. 'What're you talking about?'
'H-m-m, let see.' Jonathan looked up at the ceiling. 'Evil rich recluse,' he said thoughtfully, his finger pointing as if at the words he spoke, 'hovers on brink of abnormal behavior.' His finger returned to his mouth. 'Knowing he's in need of psychotherapy, his 'people' check out the Harvard psychology department. Eager aides find a beautiful, young psychologist to fly down to Gray's South Pacific island for a week of fun and analysis. Little do they know, however, that there's a world of difference between psychiatry and psychology, and that the lovely young lass they have chosen specializes not in the real world of healing but in the nether regions of arcane research about 'consciousness' and 'selfhood' and other such imaginary creations of animal brains.'
Laura rubbed her eyes. 'You know, you're really turning into an old bitch in your waning days, Jonathan.'
'But a million dollars,' he said dreamily, undeterred. 'What one could do with a million dollars. Why, one could fund research to determine whether aphids are capable of developing a true human-like attachment to Coca-Cola. Or perhaps… whether a toaster oven feels 'shame' when it repeatedly singes the waffles.'
'I'm not going to take that offer,' Laura said, incredulous that he would even suggest such a thing.
'But why not? A week or so in your tender care — those warm island breezes,' he threw his head back and flicked his fingers through his thinning and graying hair, 'and your patient'll be chipper as a schoolboy! Just ask a few questions about his childhood, mouth some psychiatric mumbo jumbo, then get his doctor to prescribe Prozac.'
With her arms resting heavily on her desk, Laura shot Jonathan a dirty look and then pressed her face down into the crook of her elbow — groaning.
'No, really,' he said — his tone slightly less playful. 'I'm not kidding.'
'You really think I might take that job?' she said, looking up in astonishment.
'Why not? He doesn't need the money. He's the richest man in the world! Hell, I'd hold out for ten million. What's it to him? They say he may be worth seventy, eighty billion now that he's cornered the high-definition television market. Besides' — Jonathan leaned forward and spoke with mock sincerity—'it's a cry for help. He's a person too, after all.'
'I can't go work for somebody like Joseph Gray.'
'A-a-ah,' Jonathan said, nodding and sinking back into the sofa. 'Tenure, huh?' She looked up at him. His mouth was smiling, but his eyes were sad. 'Look, Laura,' he said, glancing at the door, 'I don't know quite how to say this, but not getting tenure isn't the end of the world.'
She held Jonathan's gaze until his expression began to look vaguely sympathetic, then looked down at her cluttered desk. The emotions poured in, and Laura fought hard to keep her eyes from filling with moisture again. Her lip quivered and she bit down on it, determined not to humiliate herself. 'Do you know something?' she asked, the high pitch of her voice strained and unnatural.
Jonathan was shaking his head. 'No.' He hesitated. 'Nothing definite.' He looked pained — at a loss. 'But… look, Laura, after the Houston thing there's been a lot of talk about Paul.' Laura felt her face flush with anger as the carousel of emotions took a turn, and she ground her teeth together. Paul Burns was the other candidate.
'You took a gamble with that paper. I told you that was what it was. If it'd taken, you'd be a star. Book deals, speaking circuit, the works. But you ran it up the flagpole and nobody saluted.'
'So, what should I have done? More lab rats in mazes like Burns, for Christ's sake?' It was so unfair. Paul Burns didn't have an original thought in his head, but every year like clockwork he'd touched another base of publishing success. Journal after journal, obscure university press texts that were forgotten within weeks, nowhere a single notable achievement. But he was going to make it, she could tell. She could tell it from the body language of the people she passed in the hall.
She could tell it from Burns's blossoming self-confidence. And now she could tell it from Jonathan, who had
