He paused again, and the two of them sat staring at the mirror behind the bar. She saw their faces between the shelved bottles, somehow both animated and stunned. The Italian was elfin with a long nose, and his hairline receded almost to the crown of his head.
— … I would think it was punishment.
—Ridiculous, said the Italian. He had a heavy accent.
—But that’s when your recollection ends too, isn’t it. After the flash.
—Yes.
—And this, he lifted the book. —Have you read your own biographies?
—I just read a book by my wife.
—Laura wrote a book?
—Several. One of them was about me.
—And what did it say?
—The bomb ended the war, et cetera. It was published in the year that I died. You know, if I believe these books, I only had nine more years to live?
—It’s like a bad joke, isn’t it.
—You lived until ’67. But the government turned against you.
—The ungrateful bastards.
—Let us get out of here, yes? I need a good walk. And I always hated that smell.
He gestured toward the ashtray.
—Well, I will concede, said the first man slowly, —these cigarettes taste terrible.
There was a pause. The Italian relaxed briefly and smiled.
—You shouldn’t smoke anyway, he said. —I read it in a book: you’re going to come down with cancer.
They laughed.
The first man stubbed out his cigarette, put some money down on the bar, tucked his book under his arm and clapped the Italian on the shoulder.
—Whatever it is, is it just us, or are there others here too? he asked, and they moved past her and out the door, into the rain.
When they were gone she turned to John, who picked up the first man’s ashtray and began to wipe it.
—Did you hear what they were saying? she asked him, incredulous.
—Nah, game’s on.
—Do you—did you know those men?
—Nah, not really, he said. His eyes were small. His puffy lips and cheeks gleamed and from under his pink Oxford cloth collar wafted a detergent smell, Tide, thought Ann, or Era, stiff, strong and white. —The tall one started coming in here last Friday and he’s been here every single day since. Pain in the ass. Guy smokes like a chimney. I told him it was against the law to light up in the restaurant and he laughed his head off! Thought I was joking. Then he offered to pay the fine himself if we got one. He asked me how much it would be and said he was good for it. Finally I had to pull out this thing for him. Afraid he was going to ash on the mahogany. The guy’s Eurotrash or something.
—I don’t think so, said Ann. —I mean he speaks English with an American—
John’s girlfriend, sitting two stools down with a beer in hand, leaned over and confided in her.
—That guy had a completely dark aura. I swear. It was practically a smog.
—Oh.
—Browns, grays, blacks. The only positive color I saw was yellow, light yellow. The color of intellect.
—Wasn’t he reading—
—But the browns are very murky: selfishness. And the gray symbolizes, like, narrow focus. He’s cold and he’s got this kind of like, real anal retentive thing going on, but like he tries to hide it? And like the black in the aura’s just the absence of color. Probably depression. He’s totally depressed and under this big like weight of something. He’s got work to do. Healing work.
—The poor man.
—There’s a lot of negativity there.
—Oh. You know I should probably—
—Whereas your aura is very positive. I see a lot of pale blue, and even some gold. That’s so special! Gold is rare.
—Oh, she said again.
But her voice trailed off. She was looking out the window past John and his girlfriend, wishing the men had not disappeared so soon. She was gazing at where they were not.
Already then, she was wishing she had followed them.
Ben cherished arrangement over lighting. A simple rectangle containing small, neat squares, distinct from each other by texture or color, could actually evoke in him a sense of sudden and overwhelming fullness.
Enclosed and separated fields that lay beside each other perfectly, shapes that fit together, these were something at once unbearably contained and triumphantly uncontainable. He often thought he might have found another outlet for the expression of this had he been born wealthy, or even middle-class, to a family with bourgeois aspirations. But he had always had to work, even before it was legal. When he was ten he had apprenticed to a carpenter and by the time he was twelve he was already working on custom furniture, sculpting and sanding the details on desks and tables. The work was hard for his thin, small hands, and at night the fingers, the wrists and even the elbows would ache. Several cuts with saws had reshaped the ends of his fingers, giving the pads a rippled texture, deep lengthwise rifts even thirty years later.
So he was still young when he discovered shapes and the satisfaction to be gained from them. Arrangement in a confined space, say a garden bordered by road, brought with it a sad thrill, because as soon as he saw the beginning of the perfect he could always also see the end. The perfect was never even perfect at all, but invaded by its opposite.
Szilard embarked on the long journey west and south by bus. He had wished to take the train, but was shocked to discover it too expensive. Though far from sentimental and even further from emotional, he had always trusted his instincts. In the midwest he was alone, and though alone did not bother him it had strategic limitations.
He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would find others where he was going.
Leaving the bar, wondering as she walked whether she would see the two men again, it occurred to Ann that an idea could not always be packaged in words, but that did not make it less true. What puzzled her was how ideas that vibrate with life, with beauty and with
