The God Particle (23 page)

“Have we met?” she asks him again. “You seem familiar to me somehow.”

Larry spends a moment attempting to discern whether or not Kelly Smith actually spoke those words or whether he imagined them. The interval lengthens into awkwardness.

“I don’t think so,” he finally says.

“Oh.” She breaks eye contact and looks around the smoky barroom. “Well, is Mike around? I dropped by your office and someone said I could find him here.”

“Yeah, he’s here. I can take you to him, but first I need to get a couple of drinks. Do you want something?”

They’re only a few feet from the bar, and he heads toward it so that she doesn’t have much choice but to follow him. Eva nods as he approaches—she’s at the other end mixing a cocktail—but then her eyes widen, and it’s obvious she recognizes Kelly. In less than thirty seconds, she has found her way to this end of the bar.

“Hi, Larry,” she says. “Another Crown and Coke?”

“Along with a Captain for Mike. And whatever Kelly would like.”

Eva reaches across the bar and the two women shake hands. “I’m Eva. I went to ASU. I used to watch you on Channel Three in Phoenix.”

“Nice to meet you,” Kelly says, smiling. “Small world.”

“Yeah,” Eva laughs. “You here to see Mike?”

“I am. That press release today, from what I understand it could turn out to be really big news.”

“The press release.” Eva smiles. “Of course.”

Kelly returns the smile, and it seems to Larry that he just missed some unspoken communication between the two women.

“Well,” Eva continues. “Mike is your guy, then. I’m sure Larry will take you to him. Right, Larry?”

“Definitely.”

Kelly orders a chocolate martini, and after it comes she and Larry pick their way through the crowd toward Mike’s table. Something slick and hot worms its way into his stomach, his stomach and then farther north, into his neck, into his throat. The table is only a few feet away. Mike is speaking to Gerald Miles now, and Larry considers walking in a different direction. It would be nice if he could lead Kelly somewhere else. Anywhere but here. Maybe all the way to the back of the bar, where there is a somewhat-hidden and rarely used exit that he could push her through and—

Mike looks up as he sees Larry approaching, grinning thanks at the arrival of another freshly poured drink. His boss is obviously in a better mood than when they first showed up here, and Larry smiles back, not to be polite but at the absurdity of this entire situation. Because it’s Carrie all over again, Mike once again stepping between Larry and the girl he has fallen in love with. Kelly, Carrie, Jillian—they’re all the same. Larry loathes them all. He wants no part of this reunion between the two airplane lovebirds. And still he is forced to watch as Mike’s leisurely grin becomes a brilliant, beaming smile, as the man steps down from his bar stool, edges past Larry, and addresses Kelly Smith.

“Kelly!” he cries, and this booming voice is more evidence of consumed alcohol, because Mike never allows himself to be this jovial in public. “What are you doing here?”

“I heard the best team of physicists in the world was celebrating, so I figured I’d stop by to see if you guys know how to party.”

The bar patrons at their table and two others nearby explode with approval, determined to demonstrate to this unknown and beautiful woman that they do, in fact, know how to party. Larry stands back and absorbs the scene and somehow finds, drifting on the surface of disappointment and self-loathing, strength to maintain his plastic smile.

“I assume you already met Larry,” Mike says.

“I did.”

“Well, let me introduce you to everyone else.”

Larry turns away then, scanning the bar for a more agreeable place to endure the balance of this evening, but there is no place he can go and nothing he can do to make this pain disappear. So he decides it’s impossible for him to remain in this establishment for another minute. Enduring even sixty more seconds of this shame is asking too much of his already-taxed operating system. If he doesn’t want to crash, Larry must get the hell out of this bar.

He doesn’t say good-bye to Mike or Kelly or anyone else at the table. Instead he simply puts down his drink and disappears into the exultant field of drunken partiers, weaves his way toward the door, and escapes into the oppressive Texas night.

5

Mike pulls a bar stool between his and Gerald’s and motions for Kelly to sit. His mind is a swirl of rum and excitement as she climbs into the stool and faces him. He isn’t sure exactly why she is here or what he should say. Obviously the timing of her visit means she wants to ask about Higgs, but he’s shocked that she would drive all the way to Olney unannounced.

“It’s great to see you,” he says, aware that everyone at the table is pretending to carry on their previous conversations when in reality they’re all curious to find out more about this striking new woman.

“It’s great to be here,” Kelly returns. “I’m sorry to show up unannounced, but you said you wanted to give me a tour.”

“Of course,” Mike says, laughing. “Maybe later, though. Right?”

“Right.”

She sits just inches away, one hand on her thigh and another around the martini glass. She’s wearing a black blazer, cargo jeans, and thong sandals with chunky heels. He remembers the first time he saw her, on the plane, how stunned he was by her exquisite features, her champagne smile. It’s probably a good thing he had a few drinks before this unexpected meeting. He leans closer and touches the hand on her leg.

“I’m really glad you came,” he tells her.

“Me, too,” she says. Squeezes his hand back.

He’s forgotten what this feels like. The noise of the bar seems far away, as if it’s on television in another room.

“Besides,” she adds, “I figured I would come out here and use the opportunity to scoop our competing stations.”

“So you’re just here to pump me for information, then,” Mike says, and takes a drink.

“Yeah, that’s it. I just drove straight in, all the way from Huntsville, where I was on another assignment, just to ask you a couple of questions.” She looks at her watch. “In fact, could we get started? I’ve got to get back to Dallas in time to log this story tonight.”

Mike laughs.

“I’m not kidding,” Kelly says, and brings the martini glass to her lips. But she laughs as she takes a drink and sprays a quick jet of chocolate on Mike’s white shirt.

“Hey!” he cries, laughing again.

“Oh, I am so sorry,” Kelly says. She stands and steps close to his chair. “I am so sorry. Let’s go get that out.”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I never liked this shirt anyway.”

“Come on,” Kelly says and takes him by the hand. “We’re going to rinse that off. I’m not driving all the way over here and ruining your shirt in the first five minutes.”

The improbability of this moment is not lost on Mike. The lottery-winning seat assignment, the long plane conversation, a couple of e-mails—and now Kelly is leading him to the bathroom of Eva’s, where she wants to clean off the chocolate martini that she just spit on him. In his wildest dreams he would not have scripted such a silly and intimate moment. The stress of the last few days—the indecision about how to handle Larry’s sabotage, the struggle over whether to generate the press release or come clean with Donovan, what to do about Samantha—tonight he’d partially blotted these things out with alcohol, but now they disappear completely as the two of them reach the bathroom. A bathroom that is surprisingly and mercifully empty, where Kelly wets a paper towel and tries to rub out the chocolate stain. Mike stands there watching her for a moment of stretched spacetime, the alcohol barking instructions at him, imploring him to seize the moment, hammering him with the well-known axiom that women love spontaneity, that they admire courage, that they lust for confidence, and finally he takes her face into his hands and pulls her mouth to his and is not surprised at all when she lets him.

6

Larry, sitting in his car outside Eva’s. Listening to the
thump-thump-thump
of the jukebox. Thinking he should go back inside and tell everyone what a big fraud Mike is, thinking how stupid that would be, because it wouldn’t ruin Mike’s life, it would ruin
his
life.

Ha ha ha, what fucking life?

Wondering what the hell happened to Samantha. Mike says she hasn’t been to the office since he told Donovan about the Higgs “discovery.” She can’t be happy, this whole turn of events, but what’s she going to do? Tell everyone that she’d planned to hijack Larry’s sequestered Higgs events and claim them as her own? What was she thinking, anyway? Who in the hell gave her the fucking balls to think she could come in here and lay waste to everything they had worked for?

Larry’s been thinking more about what Mike said. About how it went down with Carrie. About who had sex with her, about who watched the tape. He thought about it all day today, as a matter of fact. Decided there is a chance, albeit small, that Mike is right. Larry would be the first to admit that his memory isn’t what it once was. Especially with all the Crown he’s been drinking. These days whole evenings are lost in the file system of his mind—orphaned bits and bytes of memory that are floating around in there somewhere, but with no organized way to find them. Yeah, maybe he was wrong about who met Carrie, but that doesn’t change the essential truth of the situation—that the Jillians of the world will let someone like Mike into their clique but not Larry. That’s what can’t be ignored.

And still the
thump-thump-thump
of the jukebox subwoofer. Mike in there, smiling his cheesy smile at her, and pretty soon they’ll go back to his place, because where else are they going to go? And while Larry won’t be there to peek through the open door this time, there are other ways to see. Even in a place like north Texas, you can find the supplies you need, if you know where to—

A knock on the glass scares the shit out of him. He looks over and sees Samantha standing outside the passenger side window.

“Larry?” she asks. “Are you okay?”

He considers just driving away, but instead reaches over and unlocks the door. Samantha climbs in beside him.

“Hey there,” she says. “What are you doing out here?”

“Hanging out,” Larry answers. “Feeling groovy.”

“I came to this place looking for you, but I didn’t expect to find you sitting in the car. You look awfully lonely out here.”

“Right, like you give a shit. I know you’re pissed because I went to Mike. What do you want from me?”

“Hey,” she says, and touches his arm.

Larry jerks away, as if bitten. “Don’t ‘hey’ me. What did you think, that I was just going to let you steal it from us?”

Samantha smiles. “From
him,
don’t you mean?”

“My issues with Mike have nothing to do with you.”

“In any case,” she says, “it’s all right. I would have liked the Nobel, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter.”

Larry looks at her. The way she’s smiling, you’d think she was the crazy one. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it. You want to get out of here?”

“Get out of where?”

“I mean do you want to go back to your place?”

Larry shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean, you don’t think so?”

“I mean I have better things to do.” He nods in the direction of the passenger door. “So if you don’t mind, I need to get going.”

“Better things, do you?”

“Look,” he says. “I—”

But Samantha is already reaching for the door. “That’s fine. Suit yourself. But don’t forget that I tried. Don’t come to me later when you change your mind.”

She slams the door and leaves him alone in the car. Implying there is more to her than she let on. The offhand way she dismissed the chance to claim Higgs.

Whatever.

Larry indeed has better things to do.

Starts his car and puts it in gear.

7

To his own house first for supplies. Then over to Mike’s neighborhood.

He leaves his car a couple of streets away, in the lot of a recently completed city park, and then strides out into the dark. The night is humid and moonless. The houses here are less than five years old and typical mid-priced suburban Texas fare. Roofs of shallow pitch, facades of uninteresting design, floor plans with small footprints on treeless, quarter-acre lots. Mike’s salary would allow him to purchase more luxurious accommodations, but apparently he didn’t see the point of opulence in a dusty science town like Olney. Or perhaps he felt his mark on physics would be made in sufficient time to earn the Nobel and subsequent fame, at which point he could move on to a sumptuous job in the computer industry, where real money would finally begin to roll in. But he’s not doing that badly now—Larry knows his boss’s salary reaches into six figures—and still he lives in this unglamorous neighborhood. It’s almost as if Mike is throwing his success in Larry’s face, so confident is he with his place in the world that showy possessions just aren’t necessary for demonstration. And, sure, Kelly Smith will pretend to be the kind of girl who isn’t attracted to money. She will appear to love Mike in this house as passionately as she would love him in a sprawling multilevel spread somewhere north of Dallas. But in reality she is attracted to the potential earnings his scientific notoriety will bring him. Chalk up one more for the preordained stars of the world.

But now, approaching Mike’s house under the canopy of stars, Larry’s briefcase is the great equalizer. What’s inside, you ask? Why, how about a battery-powered color video camera and transmitter housed in a case half the size of a two-way pager? Powered by a nine-volt battery, the apparatus will capture images under light conditions as low as .03 lux at 470 lines of resolution, will detect sound, and will broadcast its signal at a radius of a thousand feet. Of course Larry doesn’t need a thousand feet, he barely needs a hundred feet, because he’ll be sending the audio/video signal to a tiny recorder in the study.

He marvels at the surging momentum of technology. There’s no stopping its intrusion into the shrinking privacy of your life. No way to stop the peepers of the world, like Larry and prying office managers and direct marketers with offers of cheap Viagra.