—A motel on Cerrillos. I was in Chicago, on the campus. But then—
—You came here.
—I had to come. This is why, you and Fermi. I knew I wouldn’t be the only one. I’ve always had good timing. Got me away from the Nazis. Also, there was nothing for me to do in Chicago. And it was cold.
He turned to Ann.
—But what’s your interest?
—Just, said Ann, —that I found you.
Oppenheimer glanced at her sidelong.
—Lunch please? asked Szilard. —I’m hungry.
Oppenheimer’s old summerhouse in the tropics, on the Virgin Island of St. John, is a decaying yellow bungalow in a well-hidden cove. Unlike most other houses on the island it is built directly on the sands of the beach instead of up on a hill. At the top of the driveway down to this small beach is a decrepit wrought-iron gate on top of which only the letters P HEIMER BEACH remain.
After Oppenheimer died, his ashes were scattered off a rock by his wife Kitty. Five years later Kitty herself died; another five years later their daughter killed herself. Eventually the house passed into the hands of a nearby village, which, being poor and having no convenient use for the house, neglected it. In the decades following, the ocean slowly encroached upon the house and waves began to lap against the wooden deck.
Children played on the beach. One or two of them treasured the house and the salty palm fronds that brushed across its dust-covered planks in the gentle trade winds. They assumed that the house, in all its dereliction, was a permanent fixture. One or two of them would remember the house fondly when they were grown up as that old house on the beach, never having noticed the letters on the grail gate, never knowing it had also once been known as the Oppenheimer house.
But as they played their parents knew that the house was on its last legs. Their parents knew that one day soon the house would be eaten up by the sea.
Szilard hinted at fried chicken but Oppenheimer turned him down demurely. He did not like modern fast food. It was bland. The grease did not bother him, the probability of Bovine Growth Hormone, the potential for E. coli. He had read about these but he was not particularly unnerved by them. The world had never been sterile, he said. Why should it?
No: it was the lack of seasoning that was unacceptable to him. Flavor, he rebuked Szilard in gentle tones, as though talking to a baby.
For lunch he often patronized a restaurant across town. They would be his guests, he said generously.
Ann explained her situation to them as they walked to her car to drive to the restaurant, Oppenheimer striding with his jacket flapping loosely, Szilard bustling. She felt out of place but oddly secure, more solid herself between figments.
Unlocking her car doors and ushering them in, she said to Szilard, who stood beside her apparently waiting to have the car door opened for him, —You say I’m a figment of your delusional system but that could be a part of my mental illness. All your complicated theories? Just my mind. Refusing to recognize its insanity.
—Hmm, said Oppenheimer, trying to fold his long legs into the passenger seat of her Toyota, —but haven’t you already recognized the insanity? Frankly you seem quite eager to accept it. This car was made for a midget, I think.
—You can push the seat back, said Ann, and Szilard leaned around from the back seat and raised the lever on Oppenheimer’s right.
—They don’t say “midget” anymore, said Szilard. —I saw it on the Internet. They say “little person.”
—Oh for Chrissake, said Oppenheimer. —Perfectly good word, wasn’t it? What’s wrong with “midget?”
—The midgets don’t like it.
At first she’d been panicked, she told them. —On the brink of hysteria, actually, if you want to know, she said, —which you probably don’t.
But now she was caught up in the proposition that they were real—a miracle, or a revolution. It fell to her to move with the fluid currents, observing, paying close attention. She would pretend she was in gentle waters to stay afloat, retaining her buoyancy.
But she was choking.
—Could you at least roll down the window, please? she asked Oppenheimer, who had not discarded his cigarette.
—Of course.
—Can I ask how you’re living? asked Ann. —I mean did you show up from the afterworld with a credit card?
—Personal checks, though if you’ll permit me it’s hardly your business, said Oppenheimer. —My checkbook was in the suitcase. And I can do without the sardonic inflection.
—Stop the car! yelled Szilard. —I think I see Dick Feynman!
Oppenheimer glanced out the window, mildly bored. Szilard pointed. Ann flicked her blinker on and started to pull over, but the driver of the hulking SUV behind her leaned on the horn insistently.
—I said pull over! urged Szilard. —Pull over!
—I’m doing my best, she snapped, and finally pulled in at the head of a line of parked cars as the SUV surged out from behind her, horn wailing.
Szilard jumped up and got out, moving with surprising agility. The car door stood open as he jogged back along the sidewalk.
—So, said Ann, —where’s Fermi today?
—He stayed in, said Oppenheimer. —I think he may be a little down. He was always very rational. A practical man. No time for frivolities like, say, philosophy or religion.
—This is hitting him hard, huh, said Ann.
—He used to talk about taking early retirement and going back to the land, mused Oppenheimer. —He came from peasant stock. Piacenza, in the Po River valley. He said he wanted to be a farmer when he was finished with physics. Personally I had trouble picturing it. But apparently he died before realizing the dream. At the ripe old age of fifty-three, if I’m not mistaken. He’s a first-rate mind, Fermi.
Someone rapped on Ann’s window: a cop.
—This is a no-parking zone, ma’am, he said, when she rolled down the glass.
—I’m sorry, I was just waiting—
—Fine, but
