The Price of Innocence by Lisa Black

believe human beings are limited only by themselves, so it may be just as well that I didn’t become a physician like my mother wanted. People refer to me as an inventor. If they want me to pick up the check, they’ll refer to me as a genius inventor, but I’ll tell you the truth – I have never invented a thing in my life.
    ‘What I do is take something that someone
else
invented, look at its end point, and say, why did you stop there? Completely electric cars come with too many limits. I took another look at the situation. What are we really trying to do? Electric cars might be better for the environment but they’re still not great for it since that electricity has to come from somewhere. What we need is gasoline without the side effects.’
    The group began to move again. The climate control, Theresa had to admit, seemed flawless. Not freeze-dried, but not too warm even with the crowd of people. Good for Theresa as she tried to remember how to make polite conversation with someone who did not work in law enforcement. She kept her voice low though she couldn’t even see Lambert from their position at the back of the line. Happily, Madison helped out, asking for her connection to the association and what the Futures Committee had been up to lately. The group shuffled past Lambert’s office, furnished with a massive cherry desk; its owner joked that he never sat there, merely kept the room set up to convince his mother he had a real job. On the wall behind it spread a window which overlooked Cleveland from the east bank of the river to Tower City. A large print of the Vitruvian man hung on the wall. At least Theresa assumed it to be a print; with Lambert’s money she couldn’t be sure.
    ‘I believe I’ve found that substitute in the much more convenient form of dry crystals,’ the man was saying.
    ‘What is it you do again?’ Madison asked. ‘The papers said you weren’t a cop.’
    Theresa said she worked as a forensic scientist and then explained how her job in no way resembled the glamorous activities seen on popular TV shows.
    ‘I don’t have that problem,’ David said. ‘Hollywood has yet to glamorize accountants.’
    ‘Give them time. So, how do you really feel about electric cars?’
    Ambient light bounced off every surface in the white hallways and intensified the blue in his eyes. ‘When they have a recharging station on every corner, then I’ll consider it.’
    ‘If the price of gas gets high enough, I’ll consider anything,’ she said. The woman in front of them turned around again, this time with an actual frown, which only made Theresa drop back a few more feet. As the alumni strolled through the ergonomics section, she and Madison compared notes about their time spent at Cleveland State and how steadily college tuitions had risen across the country. She whined about the fees she had to pay for Rachael and he said he had two to go yet. Gazing at an automobile seat in some early stage of construction or assault – it was difficult to tell which – Madison complained, ‘My older boy is fourteen and has already picked his place: the esteemed University of Hawaii.’
    ‘Hawaii?’
    ‘He doesn’t believe in thinking small, and regards shoveling snow as equivalent to waterboarding.’
    Bruce Lambert guided the quivering Ginny into the prototype car seat, calling the inch-thick foam covering something that sounded like ‘eva’. It didn’t look too cushy to Theresa but Lambert sounded convincing as he made eye contact with every person in the crowd. He even caught Theresa’s gaze at one point, the warm color of his brown eyes evident from across the room. It silenced her until he finished and the tour group moved on.
    ‘Has he picked a major too?’ she asked David Madison.
    ‘Bovine science. Since they have all those ranches in Hawaii. That way he’ll have a job there as well, and need never return to the forty-eight contiguous. He did graciously agree to call me on my