In the meantime, she would say every once and a while, “Oh! There’s one!” and he’d stop talking for a moment to say, “Where?” and she’d point and say, “It’s gone now,” and he’d say, “Was it a good one?”
He reached the end of the Encyclopedia Galactica entry on the Lyrids, and the night got colder and they sat up to have more hot chocolate.
“There’s one,” she said.
“Where?”
“Have you seen a single one tonight?”
“I’ve seen three. But you’re right, I seem to be missing a lot of them.”
They sipped for a while in silence. Then she said, “I had glow-in-the-dark stars on my bedroom ceiling when I was a kid. I actually used a star chart to place them.”
“Is that what got you interested in astronomy?”
“No. Maybe. Well . . . I was already interested. Anything related to wandering appealed to me. I’d read that seafarers used to navigate by the stars, so I’d lie in bed and pretend I was steering my boat to some far island or undiscovered continent. Anywhere but here, that sort of thing.” She hadn’t yet told him anything about her childhood.
“You weren’t happy?” he asked after a few moments.
She felt a surprising stab. “I don’t know. Not miserable. I sometimes felt lonely, that’s all. Like a lot of kids.”
He seemed to be waiting for her to go on. No fucking way was she going to talk about her family right now. “How about you?” she asked. “Happy childhood?”
“I was lucky. My parents loved me. I mean—not to suggest that your—”
“That is lucky. There’s one!”
“Where?”
“Jesus, you’re terrible at this.”
“I’m usually better.”
“I’ll bet.”
He flopped onto his back. “I’ll be the first to see another.”
She lay down again, closer to him. “No way.”
Then, of course, several minutes went by during which neither of them saw anything. Touch me, kiss me, tell me I’m lovable.
Finally he said, “So yes, I was a happy kid. But there’s something about nighttime and stars, isn’t there? I used to lie out in my parents’ yard at night and wish that one of the stars would turn out to be a spaceship, and it would come down and land in the yard, and a door would pop open and this bright light would spill out, and a friendly alien would say hello and they’d whisk me away and I’d learn everything about the universe. No matter how good we have it, we always want more. At least, I think so. Don’t you think?”
She thought, Of course, you dolt. Is that a new idea for you?
Suddenly, she was fed up with waiting. And besides, if she thought it was too old-school to let him pick her up in his car, why the fuck was she lying here with expectant doe eyes like mermaid Ariel waiting for Prince Eric to kiss de girl? “Well by golly, Mark, now that you mention it, I think you’re right!” And she grabbed his hand and rolled over on top of him.
• • •
It took him another two weeks before they had sex, and right after that it started to go south. Not that the sex was bad. She’d give the first time a five. He did seem to understand that heterosexual congress wasn’t all about the human male’s temperamental—a girl is tempted to call it hysterical—plumbing, so good for him. And he was teachable. They had sex half a dozen times and by the end the judges were awarding solid 6.5s.
But she had imagined that once they became physically intimate, some species of emotional intimacy would also appear, or at least poke its topgallants over the horizon and crave parley. She kind of thought that all the opaque logician needed was to have his ashes skillfully hauled and he’d turn into something like her best girlfriend with balls. (“Oh, oh! Doctor! Now I can see!”)
Well, no, she’s being hard on herself. But her expectations were unreasonable. Of course, if he was in some way a father-substitute, then in some way she wanted to convert him from the absent hero into the available homebody. And naturally, that didn’t happen. Who knows, there might have been progress after a few years, but they dated for only two months. (Six dates in nine weeks: yes, he worked all the fucking time.)
He had a blank way of staring at her just after she said something that looked an awful lot like he was trying to decide whether or not she was spouting nonsense. His expressions in general were hard to read. She thought at first she’d be able to see more in his eyes when he took his glasses off, but instead that somehow made them look even emptier. Not always—they grew animated when he was talking about ideas or facts. At those times he looked to the side, or down, and his eyes darted and sometimes filled with joy. But when he looked at her, they seemed to go dead. She looked for, and could never find . . . what? Affection, maybe; appreciation, fellow feeling. Just the tiniest hint of, you know, Hey, nice to have you around, whatever your name is.
Her response was to storm the Bastille. She jumped on him, tickled him, teased him, poked him. None of it offended him, and some of it he even seemed to like. But he had no physical playfulness of his own. The moment she stopped, he retreated into his fortress. On the last couple of dates, she admits, she resorted to trying to piss him off. She criticized some habit of his (she can’t remember what it was, something trivial, a weapon to hand) and later made a mean comment about his hair. But that didn’t work, either. He only looked surprised, and a touch disappointed in her. The only way she could get a rise out of him was by putting forward an idea he disagreed with. She said once, toward the end, that he lived only in his head.