The God Particle (2 page)

“I don’t hate you.”

“Yes, you do.” She’s crying hard now, shivering, and though Steve’s instinct is to reach for her, comfort her, he holds his ground.

“Serena—”

She runs.

“Serena!”

The street bends a few feet ahead, and she quickly disappears. Steve knows he should run after her, but Jesus Christ, this isn’t high school. Even drunk, Serena had to know the odds of seducing her boss were against her.

He stands in the rain. He knows he should take his own advice and head back to the hotel, but he can’t stop thinking about Serena’s kiss. About what she said.

Are you happy?

You’re always so serious.

You live life like you have a plan.

As a matter of fact, he does have a plan. A
written
plan. Because he knows that people who don’t have plans don’t succeed.

He’s sure Serena will find a cab and go back to the hotel. She’s afraid of Europe and doesn’t know the city well enough to do anything else. And her kiss, her hands on him—the desire for more sings unexpectedly inside him, electrifies him. Right now, he wants her. Right now, he would have no problem at all accepting her offer.

Which means he can’t go back to the hotel. Not yet. There’s a decent bar about a half block away, a small place with tropical décor. Maybe he’ll have a couple of drinks, wait out the itch, and then return to the hotel. For the sake of his engagement.

He leans into the rain and starts walking.

2

Inside the bar, an eclectic assembly of patrons sits at tall, round tables, exhorting each other in German and French and English. Isolated molecules of fresh air choke their way through rivers of cigarette smoke. He approaches the bar and orders in German a Red Bull and vodka from a dark brunette with brown eyes and silver earrings.

In his limited European experience, the women of Zurich are the most like the women of America, in both appearance and personality. Like Iris, for example, a blonde he once met here at the end of two weeks of budget meetings. He remembers her sparkling eyes, her penchant for sarcasm, her perfect breasts shaped by a Jewish plastic surgeon in Miami. In her black BMW, she assaulted his ears with Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock; back in her apartment, she very nearly wore him out.

The interlude with Iris came just over a year ago, back when Janine was still the cute blonde who sometimes wore glittery eye shadow and always showed up at Bobby’s Tap with the six-foot-four behemoth that Steve and his friends named Cro-Mag. Janine had seemed so different to him, so mercifully different—her infectious laugh, her obvious confidence, the way Cro-Mag followed her around like a puppy. Steve wanted to date a woman like that, a woman who could perhaps pry his fingers loose, interrupt his fierce grip on life. A few weeks later, he got his chance. Janine showed up without Cro-Mag and Steve left with her phone number. She was a real estate agent, she told him, the top closer in her office three years running, with designs on opening her own firm. Never married and few relationships because most men couldn’t match her thirst for success.

Steve said he understood what she meant.

The date ended with sex, sex that quickly became a habit. She liked to talk and made squeaking sounds when it was particularly good. But over time the animality gave way to something more human, and he watched, fascinated, as Janine changed and enriched his life. When he decided to refurnish his living and dining rooms, he enlisted her help—not because he couldn’t decide for himself, but because he realized her opinion was important to him. One morning, he awoke from a dream of her in a hospital room, legs in stirrups, giving birth to their first child. A boy, to be sure. Steve Jr. He had nearly laughed out loud with joy.

And though the last few months had been hectic as they gathered the assets and information required to launch her real estate firm, his mind had grown calm the way it always did when a watershed event was imminent. One of the major goals of his life—#4, actually—was in his grasp: Marry a grounded woman with whom he could forge a new and fruitful life. And achieving #4 meant that #5—fathering four wonderful and well-adjusted children—would become a real possibility.

So he decided to propose. And since his visit to Switzerland was only a few weeks away, he figured he could wait to find a spectacular and unique ring that would properly dazzle her. But tonight, when Serena asked to try it on, something snapped in him. Something powerful and alien made him want to slap her when she fingered the ring and smiled that faraway smile. How dare she, even for a moment, assume the identity of the woman he planned to spend the rest of his life with? How dare she suggest that he loved her?

He loves Janine.

Steve loves Janine.

For a moment he is overcome with an impulse to grab the stinking fellow next to him and reveal what is obviously life’s elusive and essential truth. Or perhaps the female bartender would be interested to know. To know that it isn’t the ring that matters, it isn’t that Janine can help him fulfill goal #4 (and #5), but that he is in love with her. That he wants to spend the rest of his life with her because he cannot imagine continuing otherwise. In this moment he realizes that Serena is right, that life isn’t about making two hundred thousand dollars a year before his thirty-fifth birthday (goal #3), it isn’t about the VP position that will be his by the end of the month, it isn’t about any of those things. He realizes that his numerous disposable sexual relationships have amounted to nothing, have in fact pushed him away from this fundamental truth, the search for someone to love, someone for whom he would sacrifice his life, someone with whom he could set about the quest for—

His cell phone rattles against his chest, jerking his attention back to the smoky Zurich bar. When he pulls it from his pocket, the phone glows phosphorescent in the dark and announces:
CALLER ID UNAVAILABLE
. For some reason, telephone numbers from the States never display properly. He answers and then presses the phone hard against his ear.

“This is Steve.”

No one seems to speak on the other end.

“Hello?”

He thinks he hears something this time, but can’t be sure, not with electronic music obliterating his ears. His options: Disconnect and wait for the caller to try again later or head outside and get wet all over again. Steve stuffs the ring into his pants pocket and decides to brave the rain. After all, it might be Janine.

The door is twenty or so feet away, and he weaves toward it through a dense crowd of velvety women and serious-looking Swiss men. Steps out into the sprinkling silence.

“Hello?” Steve says.

He can hear something now, a muffled voice perhaps. Mostly what he hears is shuffling sounds. Rustling. As if a cell phone in someone’s pocket has inadvertently called him. This sort of thing has happened before—the accidental bump of a friend’s cell phone calling him with the one-touch function—and the first time or two he listened closely, for some reason certain he would hear a scandalous tidbit of information unintended for public consumption. But of course he hadn’t. Life, after all, isn’t a soap opera.

The rain plays with his hair, soaking into his turtleneck, and Steve is about to give up on the call when he hears the voice again. This time it’s louder and a little clearer. A woman’s voice, perhaps. He pushes the phone harder against his ear and closes off the other one with his index finger. The female voice rises and falls between intermittent bursts of static. Then another sound—another voice—eclipses the first. This one is most certainly male. The guy is cheering . . . cheering or grunting. Now the female joins him, yelping with predictable and hurried regularity. But she isn’t cheering.

She’s squeaking.

Now Steve maneuvers his finger over the volume control on his phone and turns it up. Three girls exit the bar, laughing and berating each other in French, but Steve barely notices. He doesn’t understand the phone call. Who would be stupid enough to have sex so close to a cell phone and not lock the buttons? Not turn it off? Who would—

“That’s it, Barry,” the female urges. “Fuck me.”

Steve drops the phone. It clatters against the wet cobblestones and lands face down. When he picks it up, he is sure the phone will have powered off, jarred by the impact. But no, it’s still on. He presses the phone against his ear again.

And, yes: His girlfriend is still having sex with someone who isn’t Steve.

His hands begin to shake, badly, and he nearly drops the phone again. His stomach seems to fill with helium—expanding, defying gravity, rising toward his chest, his throat, where the sour remains of his Pizza Dante make an encore performance. He stumbles in erratic patterns. Nearly falls down. Decides to sit despite the rain.

This must be some kind of mistake. Janine is not having sex with someone else. He’s going to propose to her. He’s got the fucking ring in his fucking
pocket.

But still Janine continues to moan. There isn’t any question that it’s her. He’d recognize that hiccupy desire anywhere.

What the hell is she doing? She’s ruining everything.

“Janine!” he yells into the phone.
“Janine!”

She answers with more squeaking. Then some kind of popping sound. Like a slap. Steve can hear much more clearly now.

“Move your ass, bitch,” the man says. With authority he says it, as if perhaps he’s forcing himself upon her. But she isn’t being raped. You don’t invite someone named Barry to fuck you when you’re being held against your will.

Steve realizes he should disconnect the call. Obviously he doesn’t need to hear any more of this. But is the answer just to let it go? Allow them to rut like animals while he goes back to the hotel room with his twenty-thousand-dollar ring and flushes it down the toilet? Is he really supposed to—

“What
is
that?” asks Janine.

“What is what?” asks Barry.

“What keeps bumping into my head? Stop for a second, will you? I need to . . . I . . . get the
fuck
off me for a second, Barry. What is this . . . what . . . oh . . . oh my God, it’s on—”

“
What’s
on?”

“The phone! The goddamn phone! It didn’t ring! I must have called someone!” Now into the phone directly. “Hello? Is anyone there? Hello?”

Steve says nothing.

“Hello?”

“Just disconnect,” Barry says, “and then see who you called. Check the dialed numbers.”

“Hello?”

“Good-bye, Janine,” Steve says and disconnects.

3

It’s unclear to Steve just how long he stands there, phone in hand, staring into the tear-streaked, kaleidoscopic colors of beer signs in the bar window. He’s not really crying, not in the traditional, body-shaking sense. It’s more like his eyes have developed a slow leak. He cannot return to the hotel. Steve knows himself too well, knows he will just collapse, knows he will imagine Janine in the arms of another man until he drives himself crazy.

Instead he turns left and begins walking with no particular destination in mind. After a minute or two the rain abruptly intensifies, and Steve realizes he left his overcoat back at the bar. His turtleneck lengthens, sucked toward the ground by newly added water weight, and he shoves raw hands into the pants of his slacks.

The universe is trying to force him back to the hotel. Steve can feel the eventuality of it, and this strengthens his resolve not to give in. But what else can he do? One possible option might be to just sit down, anywhere, maybe find a building with an awning so he can try to get out of the rain.

What else isn’t clear to him is why Janine hasn’t called back. Has she fallen so far out of love with him that she possesses no interest whatsoever in apologizing, in begging him to forgive her, in admitting that she made a terrible mistake but still loves him more than anything in the world? Steve supposes
he
could call
her,
that would probably be the most mature and selfless thing he could do, but somehow he can’t. He has nothing to say to her. In his heart there is a place where Janine belongs, where his love for her has slowly and deeply taken hold, but that place is hidden from him now, blotted out like ink.

He walks on, a well-dressed sponge, occasionally raising his head to read the names of businesses on either side of the narrow street. Gift shops, coffee shops, sex shops. Eventually he comes upon one of these shops with darkened windows and a blue door and a sign that says
CABARET
. There is something inviting about the saturated blue of the door—a surreal, nighttime quality of color that would surely be invisible in sunlight—and Steve wanders inside.

In the darkness he sees a long bar that stretches away from him on the left and a set of circular booths that line up against the wall on his right. At the end of the bar stands a stage; on it, a naked woman is dancing. She is tall and not particularly attractive, and for a moment Steve considers just turning around. But he is tired and wet and instead collapses into one of the booths. A red-haired waitress approaches, and he orders another Red Bull and vodka, this time a double.

The naked woman finishes her dance and disappears behind a curtain. Steve consumes his cocktail in several gulping swallows and then sits there, waiting for the next dancer to appear. Perhaps she’ll be a little more pleasing to the eye.

A few minutes go by—two or five or ten, Steve isn’t sure—and he’s about to signal the waitress for another drink when a dark-haired woman in a red dress materializes in front of him. She mumbles something in German and then slides into the booth, scooting sideways until her legs touch his.

“Hello,” he replies, also in German.

She whispers something he doesn’t understand.

“I’m sorry?”

Again she says it, a little louder this time, and he thinks she’s asking something about his comfort. Probably wondering how he can sit here, soaked to his bones.

“It’s better than staying outside in the rain,” he offers.

The girl only shakes her head. Her lipstick matches the deep red of her dress. Her heavy eye makeup and nearly visible breasts threaten to tear down his newfound maturity.