“Stop! I get it!” He pulled her toward him and tickled her.
“No tickling!”
He stopped.
“Hold on.” Carefully she put her guitar away, and then she turned to him, and he did kiss her, softly, on the lips.
“Sorry,” he said immediately.
“What do you mean?”
“If I surprised you,” he said.
“It’s all right.” She spoke as though she weren’t the most lovely girl he’d ever seen. Sensibly, she said, “It’s just a kiss.”
That was when he began to fall in love with her. He felt a wave of sleepiness, or possibly just contentment, hearing her calm voice, sitting there with her, sharing the illusion that they would remain nothing more than friends.
“What do you really think of ISIS?” Sorel asked him.
“I don’t like it as much as I did.”
“Just because you were fighting with Jonathan?”
He didn’t answer.
“I saw you through the glass,” she said. “And I could hear you too.”
“Useless conference room.”
“I heard you defending the Free Software Foundation and all that.”
“I happen to believe in the free exchange of ideas,” Orion said. “And the individual’s right to privacy and self-expression …”
“You can afford to,” Sorel pointed out.
“It’s not a question of affording to believe something,” Orion said.
“Well,” said Sorel, “I can’t afford to believe quite so
“What were you studying? Computer science?”
“Physics.”
“Oh, physics. Molly’s father would like you then,” he mused.
“Who’s Molly’s father?”
“Carl Eisenstat.”
She sat up straight. “You know Carl Eisenstat?”
There was Molly’s father again with Orion in his sights. There was Carl, sometimes disdainful, sometimes delighted, always examining Orion with his quick hawk’s eye.
“The Eisenstat Principle of Viscosity,” said Sorel.
“So that’s what it’s a principle of. I always forget.”
“You didn’t know?” she asked him, and then, “Who’s Molly?”
“My girlfriend.” He darted a look at her. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, the space between them had grown. “I guess I should have mentioned her earlier.”
“But she didn’t come up,” Sorel said.
“No.”
She smiled and said, “Right. I should get breakfast.”
“I’ll go with you,” he told her.
She shook her head. “Not this time.” He thought she was talking about breakfast, but she explained, “I can’t see someone who’s involved with someone else. I’ve done that.”
“I’m really sorry,” Orion said again.
“I was too,” she said. “Thanks for all your help. Good-bye, good morning, and all that. You’ll have to explain about the rubber chicken.”
“It was your idea to drown it,” he called after her as she hurried away. “You should be the one to tell them.”
She turned and smiled. “I’ll say you donated it to the Free Software Foundation. Everyone will understand.”
13
“Where’s the milk?” Molly asked as soon as Orion arrived home.
“Oh,” Orion said.
“I tried to call you.”
“I was working all night.”
“And what do you think I was doing?”
Coming in from that gold morning, he felt as though he were returning from Italy—from some far country filled with art. The apartment looked sad, neglected. Dark. He yanked on the shade in the bedroom and light poured in to reveal the pile of clean laundry on the bed.
“That’s depressing,” Molly said.
“I just got home,” Orion protested.
“So did I!”
This was their competition—to see who could stay out working longer.
“All I asked you to do was buy milk,” Molly said.
“I know. I’ll get it.”
“And when you go down you could take out the recycling,” she said.
“Okay.” He settled on the futon in the living room and opened his laptop.
“Now.”
“I said I will.”
Then she shook her head at him, snatched the recycling bin and carried it downstairs, magazines and plastic bottles trailing behind her.
“I said I’d do it.” He followed, picking up after her.
“I’m not interested in waiting until you feel like doing it.”
“Molly.” He opened the door at the bottom of the stairs, and she ran down the cracked cement steps in front of their building and heaved the bin onto the curb. Too late. The orange Cambridge Public Works recycling truck was driving away.
She didn’t say a word, but turned back, tromping the stairs to their apartment with heavy dejected feet. Orion followed her inside with the recycling bin. The city would fine them if they left it out.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he called up to her on the stairs.
“Don’t talk to me.”
“I did the laundry like you asked,” he said as they reentered the apartment.
She looked through the open door at the pile of clean rumpled clothes. “Half the laundry.”
“All of it!”
She turned on him. “If you don’t put it away, that’s half the laundry.”
There was something grand and ridiculous in this argument, but he knew better than to say so. “We need a wife,” he said lightly.
“Good idea. You can give her options.” Molly strode into their bedroom, tore off her scrubs, and went to bed. He had never imagined that pulling up the sheets could be so much like slamming a door.
Later, much later, she woke and showered and they ordered pizza and picnicked in the living room, and they talked about hiring Merry Maids to come once a week to clean the apartment, and they agreed to send out their laundry and have it all washed and folded, and they decided to buy a car for Molly to drive to the hospital so that
