“No, I mean your remembering what I said about relationships at lunch. Not many people listen that closely.”
“I would have thought that's mostly what scientists do. Observe. Listen.”
She poured tea from a teapot and the fragrance of jasmine blossomed over the table.
“The ones I meet, all they want to talk about are their toys. I can tell you anything you want to know about every concept car and useless electronic gadget ever made.”
“You ought to enlarge your circle.”
“I'm trying.”
She rose to gather the dishes. When Seeley started to help, she said she was sure he had been a very dutiful husband-how did she know that he had been married? — but that he should go out on the balcony and watch the fog come in.
On the other side of the sliding doors, the night air was damp, and the ocean and the town were already lost in fog. Seeley listened for the foghorn that at lunch had sounded every fifteen minutes, but didn't hear it. The silence must have transfixed him, because at some point, without his realizing it, Lily had come onto the balcony. She slipped next to him at the rail, and Seeley was aware of a fragrance, like the gardenias in the apartment, but paler.
“It's so quiet,” he said.
“Not really. Concentrate. Listen to the ocean.”
After a long minute in which Seeley tried to block out the street sounds, she said, “What did you hear?”
“Waves splashing against rocks.”
She put her arm around his shoulder to cup a hand at his ear, making it a shell. “Listen.”
“Nothing.” Seeley shook his head.
“It takes time. With practice, you can actually hear the ocean itself, the animal life, the plants, everything.”
At that moment, Seeley wished that he could stay on the balcony with Lily at his side forever. Any hope that he had of discovering Steinhardt's secret lifted off from the balcony rail and soared like a gull out over the Pacific.
Lily said, “The fog will be like this all the way back to the city. It won't clear until just before dawn.”
“I bet you knew that when you asked me to dinner.”
“I'm a scientist. Of course I knew.”
She took his hand-her fingers were as cool, as he'd imagined they would be-and led him back to the living room, indicating the place next to her on the couch. When she drew her legs up beneath her, the magic slit in her skirt parted once more, just barely, but this time remained open.
“Would you like more tea? Anything?”
Seeley said no. “What was your name? In China.”
She smiled but shook her head. “You'd never guess.”
“Something beautiful, I'd imagine.”
“Or mysterious.”
Her hand slipped to his wrist and, unbuttoning the shirt sleeve, she let her fingertips graze his arm. The other hand rested casually on her thigh.
Watching the dark thoughtful eyes, Seeley placed a hand against Lily's cheek. She brushed it with her lips and opening his shirt, leaned into him, pressing her ear to his chest so that she could listen to his heartbeat. Eyes closed, Seeley traced in his mind the imagined arc of the seagull until it was no more than a speck against the night sky.
Seeley felt Lily draw away, and when he opened his eyes she was above him, her features in the dim light-the perfect curve of an eyebrow, the slope of a porcelain cheek-like fragments of a puzzle. She unbuttoned the top buttons of her blouse and pulled his head against her own heart. “Listen! This is how the ocean sounds.” After a time, long fingers gently pulled him upward. She touched her lips to his, and Seeley tasted some flavorful trace- tamarind? ginger? — before taking her head in his hands and kissing her.
His lips barely touching hers, Seeley said, “You didn't tell me your name.”
“You're very persistent.” Her fingers rested on his arm, as if she were waiting for something to happen.
“So are you.”
She ran her other hand through his hair. “Mi Hua.”
“Which means?”
“I knew you'd ask.”
“Which is why you wouldn't tell me.”
“Would you like to stay the night?”
“That would be nice,” Seeley said.
“Secret Flower.”
Ah.
FIFTEEN
Trials are theater, a fact that Seeley considered once again, while waiting for Judge Farnsworth to make her entrance. Palmieri was busy at his laptop and Barnum faced the empty jury box, his back to counsel's table. In the bright tiled washroom, Steinhardt preened before the mirror for a full five minutes, patting his already slicked-back hair, running a small ivory comb through the neatly trimmed beard, adjusting and readjusting his tie before finally unknotting and retying it. Coming into the courtroom, he wanted to know where the press was. Was there someone from The New York Times?
“They're in the row on your left,” Seeley said, “but, when you get on the stand, don't look at them. Look only at the jury or at me.”
Leonard was two rows back, gesturing that he needed to talk to Seeley. Seeley saw the jury filing in through the back door, and shook his head, no.
The clerk cried for all to rise, and from the same door as the jury, Judge Farnsworth swiftly ascended the bench. Even before she settled into her high-backed chair, she signaled Seeley to put on his witness.
Seeley's original plan was for Steinhardt to describe how AV/AS overcame the four hurdles that Kaplan described yesterday, having him on and off the stand in no more than half an hour. The longer his testimony went, the greater was the risk that he would antagonize the jury; and the wider it went, the greater was the risk that he would say things that Thorpe could use to destroy him on cross-examination. But Steinhardt insisted that he be able to tell the whole story, beginning with his early work at UCSF, and in a conference call Barnum ordered Seeley to go along.
Now, observing Steinhardt on the witness stand, shoulders back, gaze fixed on the row of journalists in the gallery as he answered Seeley's questions, Seeley regretted giving in to Barnum. He took Steinhardt briskly through his years at UCSF, introducing into evidence the lab notebooks that he'd kept there, directing the scientist to specific entries to quicken the pace and to give Thorpe little elbow room on cross. When Seeley introduced into evidence the two leather-bound notebooks from Steinhardt's work at Vaxtek, he slowed the pace only when the witness approached the completion of his experiments.
“And the entry in your laboratory notebook dated September twelfth, 1997, was that also made under your direct supervision?”
An eyebrow arched, Steinhardt's sign of displeasure. “I made the entry myself. You can see from the handwriting.”
“And the signature below yours, of a Daniel Turnley. Who is that?”
“One of the scientists who works for me. As at UCSF-as at any creditable research laboratory-all notebook entries must be witnessed.”
“And, through October third of 1997, when the experiments were completed, there is at least one entry for each day. Is it usual for you to work like that, to be in the lab every day, without a break?”
“When a scientist is on the brink of discovering a new vaccine, he doesn't take the weekend off for golf.”
