The God Particle (12 page)

“. . . teasing you, forcing you to suffer the way I suffer every day, as you sit in your office, just steps away from me.”

She’s whispering into his ear now; he doesn’t know when it started because it’s all a blur to him now, the entire saturated notion of his vengeance.

“Serena.”

“Shh,” she says. “Don’t say a word. Just enjoy yourself. Just relax. I can see it in your eyes, the tension. Just relax and let me make you feel good.”

Her hand is on his pants, playfully squeezing. The field and its conductors fervently respond. She kisses his neck, his ear, her lips full and soft and warm, and then she’s on top of him, tasting his lips, tongue darting against his own, playing with his teeth, licking the textured roof of his mouth.

And the noise. The voices. No longer bothering to whisper, but speaking directly to him now. Chanting. His name. The name of her father.

Do you like me am I pretty do you think I’m pretty Steve?

And murky, misshapen noise. Disorder.

Do you love me?

Blinding joy. Ecstasy.

I love you love you love you Steve.

Confusion.

Her skirt hikes itself as she straddles his legs, and his hands go to her thighs.

Love me hold me touch me Steve.

She moves against him, rubbing dryly against his fire as he unfastens the silvery buttons of her blouse. And here are her breasts, pale and soft and held in place by a black, vinyl bra. His hands find her back, the clasp, and he buries himself in the warm fat of her.

“Eat them, Steve,” she says.

Love me hold me touch me Steve.

Lust flows over him like warm water. He releases his attention, trying to let go of the delusion. It must be a delusion. He is not hearing Serena’s thoughts. It’s just guilt. It’s Janine. It’s his injured mind. Delusions of revenge.

Serena slides off his lap. Pushes the cocktail table out of the way. Kneels before him. Unzips him. Pulls him free. Into her mouth.

Give me love me nurse me Steve.

Nurse me.

He leans back, relaxing further, and it’s working somehow, the noise seems to be fading as she bobs, as she takes him in further and further, working him. Needing him. Milking him. And then shaking, and moisture dripping into his pubic hair, onto his thighs. The wet sound of her sniffles. Shallow breaths that he doesn’t realize are sobs until she is running away, her sounds muted suddenly by the slam of a door.

Steve looks down at himself, wet and shrinking, and the absurdity of it all overwhelms him with resentment. He puts everything back where it belongs and goes to find her. The noise is back already, like the hiss a cassette makes when you play it in a sound system, like the snowy screen of a mistuned television set. Except that he can’t hear it or see it. It’s just there. She’s just there.

“Serena?”

“I’m sorry,” she calls between sobs. “I’m so sorry.”

He finds her door around a corner and knocks lightly. “Are you okay? Can I come in?”

“I just want you to like me.”

Love me love me please
please
—

“Serena, I do—”

“I don’t mean like that,” she cries. “I mean
like
me.”

It would be wrong to lie, even to console her.

“And all you do is look at my body. That’s all you want.”

Nothing. He can say nothing.

I am so stupid I am so stupid I am such a stupid fucking stupid!

“You were going to fuck me, and you don’t even
know
me. Why don’t you want to
know
me?”

“Serena, what am I supposed to say?”

Stupid little girl such a stupid fucking stupid—

The door flies open, and her unsexy, naked breasts sway as if blown by a strong wind.

“I want you to tell me the truth. Why don’t you want to know me?”

From a distance he senses the field’s amplification, rushing and unwelcome in his head. He’s helpless to stop it. He doesn’t know how to tell Serena the truth without unleashing its wrath upon her.

“I
do
know you, Serena. I know you and . . . I’m sorry . . . I just don’t feel that way.”

Her tears spill through the field, conductors surrounding and influencing their saline journey toward the Earth’s gravitational center.

Oh my God oh my God what’s
wrong
with me what’s the
matter
with me no one likes me no one
loves
me—

“But
why
? I invited you here, I
cooked
for you, I would do
anything
for you, Steve.”

“Serena,” he says. “You started eating before I even had spaghetti on my plate. You changed the channel without bothering to ask. You pretend to be selfless, but every single nice thing you ever do is to get something in return. That’s not how love works.”

“And you think you’re so good at it? You think you and Janine have the perfect relationship?”

“No, we don’t. She cheated on me. I left her.”

What? She
cheated
on him? He
left
her he’s
free
!

And the field, ringing in his ears, obscuring his vision. His hands go to his temples. He falls to his knees.

Serena leans down and puts her hands on his shoulders. “Steve! Are you okay?”

Through watery eyes he sees her breasts, big and blurry, inches from his face. Perhaps he could induce the field to retreat again by rekindling his lust. But no, he—

“I think I should leave,” he says.

Stay here Steve stay with me.

“But what’s wrong with you? Is it your head? Is it because of the fall?”

He stumbles to the door and pulls on his shoes.

“Are you sure you should drive?”

Don’t go Steve don’t go—

“I’ll be fine.”

“Are you—”

He leaves the noisy apartment and shuts the door behind him.

12

Crawling again down the far right lane of the 405, wary of a bored CHP officer who might decide to pull him over, Steve somehow finds his way out of L.A. proper, miraculously negotiates the interchange at the 5, and makes it back to Valencia. He creeps through neighborhoods and finally stops in front of his house, unwilling to direct his car into the garage lest he rip a side mirror off the Infiniti or crush his mountain bike.

Once inside he heads straight for his room and collapses into bed. Now, finally, he can succumb to it again, the field, the presence, whatever delusion keeps trying to claw its way into his brain. He closes his eyes and welcomes it. Absolves himself of responsibility. Accepts fate.

The blinds are shut and no lights are on, but the room seems to brighten somehow, gradually, until it appears completely saturated with white light. He must have fallen immediately asleep, his taxed mind succumbing at once to REM, because here is the presence again, manipulating the field to take on physical form, assuming the identity of Svetlana.

“Hello, Steve.”

She hovers over him as if propped up by her arms, but he doesn’t feel her mass pressing against the bed.

“Go away, Svetlana.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s
not.
It’s
not
okay. You are a figment of my imagination. This whole fucking hallucination, this obsession with fields and conductors, I’m making it all up because . . . because I don’t know why. And I want out. I want it to go away. So
you
have to go away.”

“I am sorry for what happened, Steve. If you need me, I am here.”

How can he turn away from those luminous eyes, how can he reject the kindness in her angelic face? But he must. The interview. He needs sleep. Dreamless sleep. Not infinite, white-field nightmares. Not his imagination, not this betrayal.

Not this pain.

13

At 4:30 in the morning Steve calls an executive cab for pickup an hour later. Then he steps into the shower and stands beneath a searing waterfall, wondering how he ever fell asleep last night. He can’t remember anything after the Svetlana hallucination, so obviously it happened then, and somehow he made it all the way to the siren of his alarm clock at 4:15. And now here he is, somewhat recharged, thinking about the interview.

He did virtually nothing yesterday to prepare. Luckily interviews at this level—especially when you know the men who will be evaluating you—aren’t the same as those for entry-level positions. Mostly they’ll discuss Steve’s ideas for the position, for specific and new initiatives to increase sales for lagging product lines and to further AE’s brand-awareness campaign. They’ll talk about mobility, his desire for an international position, about his general philosophy regarding leadership and teamwork. So all he really needs to do is put together a few hours of undisturbed reflection, organize his thoughts, and then calm himself enough to appear coherent in the presence of Mannheim, Rix, and Fairchild. Because that’s what they’ll really be evaluating, after all—his continued status as a sane, rational member of the corporate team.

The cab is a tactical precaution. It’s become obvious to him over the past couple of days that the stress of concentration (like navigating L.A. traffic) increases his susceptibility to the delusion (field). And once the fucking thing gets into his head, getting it out again is not so easy.

The cab arrives on time, a navy blue Lincoln Town Car, and Steve climbs into the back seat. The Town Car rides like a yacht on ten-foot seas as it devours freeway at ninety miles an hour, but he arrives in front of AE’s building at ten minutes after six bothered by only the faintest hint of the field.

At this early hour Steve is alone in the office, and he makes use of the time by imagining the interview and how it will transpire. A warm, artificial welcome from the three men, words masking their attempt to determine how sturdy and dependable he still is by just looking, which is certainly an innate but impossible exercise. And then polite questions about his mother and father. About Janine. AE prefers stable relationships for their truly strategic team members, especially those who might eventually relocate permanently to Zurich. And of course he isn’t what they want, he isn’t stable, he’s just as single as he’s always been. Except that when solitude was a chosen condition, he reveled in its noncommittal freedom, and now, instead, he is quietly and desperately lonely. Lonely but not alone. With the relentless company of the field, with the flickering and mystical presence, with the hallucinogenic effects of it all, he is never alone.

And it waxes and wanes as the interview draws closer, as the gradual arrival of AE’s staff is signaled by elevator chimes and footsteps and fingers clicking on keyboards. And Janine’s squeaking voice. And Svetlana’s red dress. And Serena’s tearful fellatio. The field binds it all together, unbroken and boundless, real time counted by nothing more than the dispersal of systems, by chaos, and Steve decides that it’s pointless, that his desire for the VP job and the Janine vacuum and his set of goals, it’s all pointless in the infinite and doomed evolution of the field. When ten o’clock rolls around he finds Mannheim standing outside his door, inquiring politely if Steve wants to join him in the staff meeting room, and Steve says, no, he’d rather not, and proceeds to stand up and walk past Mannheim’s open face and Serena’s empty cubicle and finally onto the bustling Westwood sidewalk, with no method of transportation and no destination. He navigates the field by observing its tendencies and density around areas of moving and stationary matter (and in doing so recognizes the men following him, the men who have been following him since Zurich) and goes on, navigating blindly until he is lost.

1

“Get out of the left lane, fuckface,” Larry growls.

Tuesday evening. Cruising down Kell Boulevard, one of the few controlled-access freeways in Wichita Falls, watching some old fart pilot his Crown Victoria all alone in the motherfucking
left lane,
for Christ’s sake.

He approaches the old fart from behind, about to pass on the right. Some human zeroes, he thinks, don’t bother watching for other drivers. They just toodle along and clog up the freeway like human cholesterol.

Watching it happen pours adrenaline into his bloodstream.

Accelerates his heart rate.

Fingers of pressure pushing on his temples.

“You’re not supposed to drive in the left lane, asshole,” he says as he drives by. “You leave it
open
for
passing.
”

There is plenty of room in Larry’s own lane. The freeway isn’t crowded at this time of night. But who gives a shit? The left lane is for passing, and the other lanes are for—

“Driving like a fucking slack-jawed yokel you fat gray-haired sack of donkey shit!”

Right. So he shouldn’t yell at the top of his lungs when the guy isn’t watching him and certainly can’t hear him. Unless Larry is going to follow the guy to his destination and then beat the holy shit out of him, there is no point in getting angry. He’s just raising his own blood pressure. Inflicting the damage to himself.

He takes a drink from the glass of Crown and Coke sitting between his legs. Switches on the radio. Dr. Laura is on again. Fucking bitch with her stupid advice. Why in the hell do these pitiful losers call her in the first place? Just to be berated on
national radio
? And right now she’s ranting again about homosexuality, trying to convince her listeners that gay marriage is going to tear the very fabric of our great country apart, and he just
hates
her, he doesn’t know why he listens to her because it just drives him insane, and yet he can’t turn it off. Somehow he enjoys the fury, enjoys it the way he enjoys the pain of digging wax out of his ears with a pen cap. The way he enjoys scratching the flared patch of ringworm on his thigh until it bleeds. The way he likes to scrape layers of dried snot out of his nose like mica shavings and savor their buttery taste.

So Mike thinks he spends too much time talking to Amy? That’s a fucking crock of shit if he’s ever heard one. Mike has said a thousand times that he doesn’t care how his team members spend their days, so long as the work gets done. He knows Amy is the one who complained. He knows she laughs at him when he isn’t around. He knows that she knows that he likes her, and she knows that he knows, and she obviously went crying to Mike, who conveyed the message to Larry in his condescending, offhand way.

It’s just another example of how the Jillians of the world conspire to keep him out of their pretty club. If it were Mike visiting her desk all the time, Amy surely wouldn’t care. Larry has seen how she looks at him. How she longs for him. How they all long for him, even the news chick, Kelly Smith. Even she probably turned moist for the great Mike McNair. He’s in the club, and Larry is not. Good ol’ Larry, who just keeps plugging along, doing his job. Good ol’ Larry, who doesn’t want a girlfriend because the girls he likes don’t seem to like him. Good ol’ Larry, who shouldn’t spend so much time at Amy’s desk because she’s having trouble getting her work done—

“Even though half the guys in the administrative office do the exact same thing!”

No, he shouldn’t yell at the top of his lungs when no one is there to hear him. And yes, it’s time to throw Mike another wild goose. He takes another drink.

And up ahead, someone else is crawling down the highway in the left lane.

2

“People admire you,” Samantha Aizen shouts.

She and Mike are standing together at the bar, sipping on experimental cocktails that Eva offered free in exchange for their honest evaluation. The drink is sweet and interesting, but not as interesting as Eva standing behind the bar in her low-rise jeans. Mike tries to keep his attention on the woman in front of him, but it isn’t easy, not when she insists on talking shop instead of relaxing after a tough first week.

It’s been four days since Landon introduced Samantha to the team. This morning was Mike’s first official meeting with her. To his surprise (and dismay, if he wants to be honest with himself) her suggestions to improve beam luminosity were novel and seem likely to provide significant benefit with very little time and cost.

“Admire me?” he says. “I don’t know about that.”

“No, really. Of course people talk about how young you are, how you haven’t published enough, that there are dozens of physicists more qualified for the job—but what you won’t hear is that most of the older guys are surprised that you’ve lasted as long as you have. That you’ve been able to hold up under Donovan’s pressure and his profit-driven science.”

Smoke floats in the air, wispy like cirrus clouds, and the bar resonates with jukebox-driven, hundred-decibel sound waves taking the form of “Sweet Home Alabama.” It’s not quite four o’clock on Friday afternoon, and aside from his administrative staff, the bar is mostly empty.

“I know there are plenty of physicists out there with more experience than me, who have paid more dues than me,” Mike says. “Sometimes I wonder how I ever got the job. Landon keeps telling me that he refuses to observe the hierarchical structure of the physics community. He says he got a ‘feeling’ about me. Whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

Samantha takes another sip, and in the intervening nanoseconds Mike’s eyes shift to Eva again. This time it’s her T-shirt, skin-tight and way too short.

“I think he made a good decision,” Samantha says. “Despite what other jealous physicists might think.”

“That’s nice of you to say.”

“I call ’em like I see ’em.”

“So how did Landon approach you? When he recruited me, he went through this whole theatrical bit about how we were going to use the NTSSC to make discoveries that would change the world.”

“Sure, he did that with me, too. But I cut him off pretty quickly. My work at CERN speaks for itself, and when he called I knew exactly what he wanted. So I told him what
I
wanted if I was going to come work for him.”

“Went straight to remuneration,” Mike observes. “Very nice.”

“No, salary negotiations came later. That’s not what I cared about the most.”

“What was it then?”

“I told him that if I improved beam luminosity enough to resolve Higgs, I wanted to share the Nobel with you.”

Mike is startled silent for a moment. And then, “But he doesn’t decide who—”

“He decides how the announcement is made. He decides how to position the work and the scientists here doing it. You’re the spokesperson for the research, but he still gets more camera time.”

With no answer for this, Mike elects not to speak.

“You would have found Higgs already if it was possible at present luminosity,” Samantha prods. “If you find it after my adjustments, is it not fair that I share the spotlight?”

“My goal is to find Higgs. For the sake of science. I welcome any assistance you can provide.”

“Good answer, but not for the question I asked.”

He averts his eyes, looks around to see who might be listening. Eva is at the far end of the bar, serving an entry-level physicist whose name he can’t remember. Farther away he sees Larry talking to Amy Cantrell, who, judging by her body language, would rather be streaking across the field at Texas Stadium.

“Samantha—”

“Please, call me Sam.”

“Look, I’m not. . . . Of course I want to win the Nobel Prize. We all do. But I’m not trying to prove the existence of the Higgs field just to put a trophy on my mantel.”

“But that trophy could be a consequence of finding Higgs, right? So I’m asking now if you’re willing to share the Nobel.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not going to answer that. If Donovan is going to decide, then you should go talk to him.”

He turns around and leans against the bar, propping himself on his elbows. Eva sees him and heads over.

“I already did,” Samantha admits, “and he agreed.”

“Then there you have it,” Mike says. And then to Eva, who’s waiting for his order, “Can I get another of these?”

Eva beams. “You like it?”

“I do.”

“I don’t,” Samantha says and slides her glass across the bar. “Too sweet for me.”

Mike watches Samantha walk away. He supposes he just made a mistake, missed a political opportunity. If Samantha wants his job—if Donovan perhaps even told her the door to it was open—Mike has just given her a reason to pursue it with even more tenacity.

He turns back to the bar, where Eva is waiting, amused.

“I don’t think her problem was your drink,” he says.

“Still, she was kind of a bitch about it, huh?”

“She really pissed me off.”

“But she’s the perfect type for you,” Eva says.

“What do you mean?”

“Aggressive.”

“The woman is trying to get between me and my boss. Is that aggressive or poisonous?”

“What is she doing, exactly?”

“She wants to win the Nobel Prize. She knows that in a large facility like ours, the scientist in charge of the project would get the award. It’s something you earn based on what you contribute to physics, to the world, but apparently all she cares about is the prize itself. And she’s got it all mapped out exactly how she’s going to do it.”

“And you don’t?”

“I—”

“Because I don’t know a whole lot about physics, but I read the articles in the
Enterprise
and the Wichita paper. They’re always talking about how the NTSSC was designed to win the Nobel and that it’s only a matter of time before it happens. They always say you’re the one who’s going to win it on account of you being the main physicist on the project, the coordinator or senior team leader or whatever.”

“Well, right, that’s what I was—”

“So you’re saying you haven’t thought about it? About what you’re going to do and what you’re going to say when you find this God particle?”

“Of course I’ve thought about it.”

“Well, from where I sit it sounds like that Japanese chick is just doing the same thing.”

“Okay,” Mike says. “Sure. But to be so obvious about it . . . it seems tacky.”

“Maybe what seems tacky to you is another person’s honesty.”

“I guess it’s a fine line.”

“Sometimes it’s okay to tell people who you are,” Eva says. “Or what you want.”

Mike knocks back a couple of swallows of his experimental cocktail. Eva always talks to him when he comes in—nearly every weekend since she opened—but most of the time she simply points out women in the bar that he should approach. And now, when he should be thinking about Samantha and Donovan, preparing a defense for what could ultimately be an assault on his job, he is instead sitting at a bar talking relationships.

“Are you trying to tell me something, Eva?”

“Let me give you an example,” she says. “You’ve been coming in here since I opened, right? That’s a little more than six months.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, so in all this time, did you know you never once told me that you were the head physicist at the super collider?”

“Well, I—”

“I had to find out from Larry,” Eva says.

“If you wanted to know, you could have—”

“I
did
ask! Word for word I said, ‘So, Mike, what do you do?’ And you said, ‘I work at the NTSSC. I’m a physicist.’ ”

“You expect me to say that I’m the chief physicist and director?”

“Yes!”

A customer approaches the bar, a tall fellow with forearms as big around as Mike’s calves.

“Hey, Brandon,” Eva says. “Bud Light?”

“Two, please.”

Eva, in fact, has already reached for them. She opens both and hands them to him.

“Brandon,” she says. “What kind of work do you do?”

“You know what kind of work I do.”

“Just humor me. What’s your job?”

“I’m an HVAC supervisor over at the GEM. I oversee the maintenance team to make sure guys like Mr. McNair don’t get too hot or too cold. Didn’t we already talk about this?”

“We did. I’m just trying to prove a point to my friend here.”

“Hi, Mr. McNair,” the fellow says, extending his formidable hand. “I’m Brandon Tate.”

Mike shakes with him. “Nice to meet you.”

“I heard Donovan hired some new woman to help us find Higgs. What’s up with that?”

“Everyone on the project is part of the effort, Brandon. The new woman included.”

“Right on,” Brandon says. “Well, see you guys later. I’m trying to work my magic on this Wichita girl who came down to see what all the fuss is with the super collider.”

“See there,” Eva says, as Brandon moseys away. “Not only does he tell me exactly what he does, but he also isn’t embarrassed to admit that he’s trying to mac with some girl.”

Mike grunts agreement.

“You would
never
tell me that,” she says.

“I know I’m a little shy with women, but—”

“A
little
?”

“But that’s not the main problem. The main problem is that there isn’t any reason . . . there isn’t any premise for it. Say a girl is just sitting there drinking. She’s no different than the other fifty girls except that I think she’s attractive. I can’t just go up to her and say, ‘Hey, you’re the best-looking girl here in the bar. Can I sit down?’ ”