"It's dangerous. I'm not sure... People could get hurt. A lot of things could go wrong."
"A little free advice: if this is just a way to get my attention, you're hitting the 'dangerous' a little too hard."
"It's not, I—" Jonah stammered.
"And this dangerous thing, do you think it's worth it?"
"Yes." His lack of hesitation surprised even him.
"Gonna help a lot of people? Change the world?"
"I think so."
"No, you're not."
"Huhn?"
"Every kid who walks through our lab doors thinks they're going to change the world. Me included. But the world's not going to let that happen." She took a long drag on the cigarette. "Right now there’s a huge recession. The government’s corrupt, not to mention the cops and the courts. People are homeless, my sister can’t afford to buy her kids clothes. I can barely afford to live in this city and I'm staying with two roommates. All that shit is by design. And people aren't going to the polls and voting for it. But that's still the way it is."
Jonah's brow furrowed. This wasn't the way he was expecting this conversation to go.
"You're going to do what all of us are going to do: Make a modest contribution to science that's going to make some rich asshole another million dollars when he buys the patent rights from the university."
"It's not—" Jonah tried to steer the conversation away from where she was taking it.
"So, my advice is: grow up, don't try to change the world just get paid up front."
Dumbstruck, Jonah leaned back against the railing of the terrace.
"And the next time you're trying to get a girl's attention maybe try something a little less creepy than 'I'm working on something... dangerous.'"
"But, I—"
She turned around and walked toward the group of people chattering their teeth on the far side of the balcony, arms hugged tightly around her.
"Wait, I didn't—" he stammered, but she was already out of earshot and starting up a conversation with the group, who greeted her warmly. They closed protectively around her, creating a barrier he didn't feel like he could breach.
Jonah looked after her for a moment with a sorrow that bordered on hellish and then slid open the glass door to return indoors, grab his things and leave.
The coldness forced Jonah to close his coat around his body tightly. It was not as cold as it had been over the past few weeks, but it was enough for him to pull his hat out of his pocket and pull it down snugly over his ears. It was late in the night and if he had any sense at all he would be back inside his temporary lodgings at the hotel, sleeping fitfully on the hard mattress and the wafer-thin pillow, but as things stood his mind was far too occupied to sleep and even too occupied to sit in that party and pretend to enjoy his drink. There were questions to answer and options to weigh.
People are homeless, my sister can’t afford to buy her kids clothes.
Her words hung in his head as he kicked a block of ice that had come loose from under someone’s car down the street. It struck one of the dirty brick buildings that loomed up over him and then skittered off into the street.
From out of the darkness of an adjoining alleyway a shape lurched out toward him, a mass of stained, nearly rancid old cloth and whitened stubbly face. Jonah pulled away, at first out of fear and then out of revulsion. The vagrant yelled something at him and then hobbled off into the freezing night. Jonah stared down the alleyway the man had come out of, not daring to investigate the other dark shapes moving in the alley, with their terrifying eyes staring back at him.
He pulled one of the twenties he had forgotten to give to Amanda or Amy or whatever her name was for his place in the back of the room sipping on a drink he didn’t like and stared at it. How willing he had been to let it go when he thought that there was a girl at the other end. It had seemed like such a good deal. And of course it had a good deal. He could make as much money as he wanted.
But he was still out here in an alley alone.
Suddenly up in a rage, he crushed the twenty dollars in his fist and threw the tattered wad into the alley where the eyes glared at it hungrily.
And he had shut himself away in that cursed apartment with his misplaced zeal to placate his own damned avarice. It was little wonder that no one wanted anything to do with him!
With his foot he overturned a nearby trashcan with a bang and the hungry faces returned into the shadows for just a brief instant. His breath became heavy and clouds of steam spilled into the air around as he kicked the thing again and then a third time. Despite the freezing temperatures he felt dangerously close to spontaneously bursting into flames.
In the middle of his frenzy he got the feeling that, besides the hungry eyes that kept track of the twisted bill he had thrown on the ground, there was something else in the alleyway that was watching him. It fell into step behind him as he paced up and down the icy concrete, his new boots scuffed and marked from kicking the walls and the trashcan.
It bore down with him and as it bade him he unleashed the words in a torrent. Before he knew what he was doing a long, grizzly, smoldering scar had been cut down the length of the nearby wall. This time the hungry eyes disappeared down into the unfathomable darkness and they did not return.
Jonah slumped down against the cold wall,
