birthday.’
‘Don’t despair. Rachael insisted on the Sorbonne until she got a D on her first French test. What about your other son?’
‘I get a break with him. He won’t need a degree to go directly on to the NASCAR circuit.’
‘Good to know.’
They paused as those ahead stopped to watch two men molding plastic headlights and taillights into the shapes they desired. The plastic pieces were held by clamps as the men applied heated pliers equipped with their own fan. Madison faced her over the gleaming linoleum, all smiles having left the smooth skin over his cheeks. ‘Theresa … my boys have been through a lot.’
Why is he telling me this? Because he’s interested in me and, in the interests of honesty, wants to get the baggage out right up front? To explain why he can’t be interested because he’s too traumatized ever to trust again? To show how he doesn’t have time to be interested because his boys are a full-time concern? Because whenever he does talk about it, women start falling over themselves with sympathy? Because he’d rather talk about
anything
other than electric cars? She kept her voice low, but the noise from the fan helped cover their conversation anyway. ‘My cousin told me about your wife.’
‘So you know. My life has been a little – unusual.’
‘I can imagine. No, actually I can’t. Rachael’s father cheated on me, but at least it wasn’t with—’
A child
. He gave that same sad, gentle smile she’d seen at the funeral. She resisted the urge to put her hand on his arm as they wound past the overpowering smell of melted plastic. ‘It’s the boys I worry about. It was bad enough at the time, but the older they get, the more those hormones start pushing, the more questions they have. I considered moving but I knew I’d need help with the boys, and I have a mother and two siblings here.’
They followed the other alumni back into the hallway, pausing outside a set of windows as the plastic smell receded. The windows turned out to be an observation spot, looking down on a two-story-high room about thirty by fifty feet, as brilliantly lit as an operating room even without the skylight windows in the opposite wall. A suspended track bisected the length, and Theresa saw the shell of an automobile dangling from its pulley. In the center of the room, mobile robots surrounded another frame, also resembling a small vehicle, with all its parts scattered about it on the floor like an unmade jigsaw puzzle: wheels, seats, axle, engine.
Rimmed with workbenches, cabinets, the walls and floors of the fishbowl-like room were white but everything else stood out in color: books, models, drawing boards with sketches, phones, even a leftover bowl of popcorn. One desk held both a collection of fluorescent Post-it notes and a four-foot-long pipe cutter that looked too heavy to lift, much less use. Abandoned Tyvek jumpsuits had been thrown over chairs and desks like shed skins. It reminded her of an amusement park tour ride. It only needed a caption: ‘Genius at work’.
They watched the slightly hypnotic process as a crane on a suspended track ushered the shell across the room to be lowered on to a waiting chassis, tended by the waiting robots. Lambert explained that the process could be reversed as well; anything that didn’t work would be disassembled down to the problem, or down to its bolts if necessary. A man in the audience asked if he’d be opening any future assembly plants in Cleveland. Lambert’s reply was lost to her as Madison leaned down to speak quietly in her ear, ‘Look, the reason I’m dumping all this on you is … I wanted to explain …’
‘Why you hide from the crowd?’
‘Yeah, well. I don’t hide, exactly, more like avoid. But I also wanted to be straight about it, in case we … run into each other again.’
‘I’d love to run into you again.’ She choked, coughed, and added, ‘Wait – did I say that out loud?’
He laughed.
‘Really, this
‘Don’t despair. Rachael insisted on the Sorbonne until she got a D on her first French test. What about your other son?’
‘I get a break with him. He won’t need a degree to go directly on to the NASCAR circuit.’
‘Good to know.’
They paused as those ahead stopped to watch two men molding plastic headlights and taillights into the shapes they desired. The plastic pieces were held by clamps as the men applied heated pliers equipped with their own fan. Madison faced her over the gleaming linoleum, all smiles having left the smooth skin over his cheeks. ‘Theresa … my boys have been through a lot.’
Why is he telling me this? Because he’s interested in me and, in the interests of honesty, wants to get the baggage out right up front? To explain why he can’t be interested because he’s too traumatized ever to trust again? To show how he doesn’t have time to be interested because his boys are a full-time concern? Because whenever he does talk about it, women start falling over themselves with sympathy? Because he’d rather talk about
anything
other than electric cars? She kept her voice low, but the noise from the fan helped cover their conversation anyway. ‘My cousin told me about your wife.’
‘So you know. My life has been a little – unusual.’
‘I can imagine. No, actually I can’t. Rachael’s father cheated on me, but at least it wasn’t with—’
A child
. He gave that same sad, gentle smile she’d seen at the funeral. She resisted the urge to put her hand on his arm as they wound past the overpowering smell of melted plastic. ‘It’s the boys I worry about. It was bad enough at the time, but the older they get, the more those hormones start pushing, the more questions they have. I considered moving but I knew I’d need help with the boys, and I have a mother and two siblings here.’
They followed the other alumni back into the hallway, pausing outside a set of windows as the plastic smell receded. The windows turned out to be an observation spot, looking down on a two-story-high room about thirty by fifty feet, as brilliantly lit as an operating room even without the skylight windows in the opposite wall. A suspended track bisected the length, and Theresa saw the shell of an automobile dangling from its pulley. In the center of the room, mobile robots surrounded another frame, also resembling a small vehicle, with all its parts scattered about it on the floor like an unmade jigsaw puzzle: wheels, seats, axle, engine.
Rimmed with workbenches, cabinets, the walls and floors of the fishbowl-like room were white but everything else stood out in color: books, models, drawing boards with sketches, phones, even a leftover bowl of popcorn. One desk held both a collection of fluorescent Post-it notes and a four-foot-long pipe cutter that looked too heavy to lift, much less use. Abandoned Tyvek jumpsuits had been thrown over chairs and desks like shed skins. It reminded her of an amusement park tour ride. It only needed a caption: ‘Genius at work’.
They watched the slightly hypnotic process as a crane on a suspended track ushered the shell across the room to be lowered on to a waiting chassis, tended by the waiting robots. Lambert explained that the process could be reversed as well; anything that didn’t work would be disassembled down to the problem, or down to its bolts if necessary. A man in the audience asked if he’d be opening any future assembly plants in Cleveland. Lambert’s reply was lost to her as Madison leaned down to speak quietly in her ear, ‘Look, the reason I’m dumping all this on you is … I wanted to explain …’
‘Why you hide from the crowd?’
‘Yeah, well. I don’t hide, exactly, more like avoid. But I also wanted to be straight about it, in case we … run into each other again.’
‘I’d love to run into you again.’ She choked, coughed, and added, ‘Wait – did I say that out loud?’
He laughed.
‘Really, this
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