body laterally like a darting bull and crushed Pete in the doorframe. They never made it outside. Pete staggered, out of breath before he’d even begun.
“They broke at the gate,” her father said as he returned to his stool, heat radiating visibly off his naked skin, a slight glower to him, a hint of violence in his eyes, the pride of a clan chieftain in his heavy step. She watched his friends retrieve their money and felt their eyes on her long, lean body, which her work suit clung to in the summer evening heat. They regarded her appreciatively, with a slightly wistful longing. She was the chieftain’s daughter, and she’d married outside the clan.
They hadn’t won anything, but they hadn’t lost anything either—neither money nor their idea of Big Mike. Her father had played Pete’s game, but by his own rules. It was a Solomonic solution, and she thought sadly of the difference he would have made with his gift for inspiring men if he’d been born into another life.
10
E d was an expert on the brain. His subspecialty within the field of neuroscience was psychopharmacology, specifically the effects of psychotropic drugs on neural functioning. While doing his dissertation research, he ran an experiment in the aquaria of the Department of Animal Behavior at the American Museum of Natural History, studying the relationship between the neurotransmitter norepinephrine and learning in the black-chinned West African mouthbrooder fish, whose female laid eggs and whose male spat sperm at them and gathered them, then heated them under its tongue. Ed housed them individually in small aquaria in a greenhouse whose temperature was maintained at 26°C, and performed experimental tests in a separate room at the same temperature, injecting them with drugs that either enhanced or depressed action. The fish saw a red light, and if they didn’t jump over a barrier in five seconds, they received a shock. He was testing the effects of drugs on an organism’s ability to augment its decision-making abilities—in short, to learn.
The subject of learning fascinated him. He told Eileen it was because it had happened almost by accident in his own life. “If I hadn’t run into that chemist at Kohnstamm’s,” he said, “I don’t know what would have become of me. I think about that narrow escape.”
He experimented on the fish faithfully six days a week for almost a year, going in even when it was supremely inconvenient to do so, missing family functions and dinners with friends, leaning on colleagues for favors when she put her foot down and demanded a sliver of his time. He never slept enough, he seldom ate enough, and his back always hurt because he sat too long at his desk, but the way the work was coming together gave himso much energy that he glowed as he neared the end, so much so that she went shopping without him and put a coffee table, two couches, a pair of end tables, and some lamps on the American Express, thinking he’d be too happy to complain. Still, she was so nervous about the cost that a few weeks later, on the Saturday when the furniture was supposed to be delivered, she still hadn’t told him it was coming. She was relieved when he left early for his lab to gather data, and after the men delivered the pieces and hauled the old couch to the backyard until the Monday pickup, she sat on one of the couches, fretting over what she’d say. When the front door finally opened, she leapt to her feet, ready to spar, but Ed stepped in from the vestibule wearing that tranquil expression he wore when he was deep in his work, that made it look as if he’d just come from meditating. As he took in the room, she waited to see his face fall and readied to say she’d send it all back, but all he did was sit on the couch and say how nice and firm the pillows were compared to the lumpy ones they’d been living with. She’d never even thought he’d registered the lumps.
He was about two weeks shy of having gathered all
“They broke at the gate,” her father said as he returned to his stool, heat radiating visibly off his naked skin, a slight glower to him, a hint of violence in his eyes, the pride of a clan chieftain in his heavy step. She watched his friends retrieve their money and felt their eyes on her long, lean body, which her work suit clung to in the summer evening heat. They regarded her appreciatively, with a slightly wistful longing. She was the chieftain’s daughter, and she’d married outside the clan.
They hadn’t won anything, but they hadn’t lost anything either—neither money nor their idea of Big Mike. Her father had played Pete’s game, but by his own rules. It was a Solomonic solution, and she thought sadly of the difference he would have made with his gift for inspiring men if he’d been born into another life.
10
E d was an expert on the brain. His subspecialty within the field of neuroscience was psychopharmacology, specifically the effects of psychotropic drugs on neural functioning. While doing his dissertation research, he ran an experiment in the aquaria of the Department of Animal Behavior at the American Museum of Natural History, studying the relationship between the neurotransmitter norepinephrine and learning in the black-chinned West African mouthbrooder fish, whose female laid eggs and whose male spat sperm at them and gathered them, then heated them under its tongue. Ed housed them individually in small aquaria in a greenhouse whose temperature was maintained at 26°C, and performed experimental tests in a separate room at the same temperature, injecting them with drugs that either enhanced or depressed action. The fish saw a red light, and if they didn’t jump over a barrier in five seconds, they received a shock. He was testing the effects of drugs on an organism’s ability to augment its decision-making abilities—in short, to learn.
The subject of learning fascinated him. He told Eileen it was because it had happened almost by accident in his own life. “If I hadn’t run into that chemist at Kohnstamm’s,” he said, “I don’t know what would have become of me. I think about that narrow escape.”
He experimented on the fish faithfully six days a week for almost a year, going in even when it was supremely inconvenient to do so, missing family functions and dinners with friends, leaning on colleagues for favors when she put her foot down and demanded a sliver of his time. He never slept enough, he seldom ate enough, and his back always hurt because he sat too long at his desk, but the way the work was coming together gave himso much energy that he glowed as he neared the end, so much so that she went shopping without him and put a coffee table, two couches, a pair of end tables, and some lamps on the American Express, thinking he’d be too happy to complain. Still, she was so nervous about the cost that a few weeks later, on the Saturday when the furniture was supposed to be delivered, she still hadn’t told him it was coming. She was relieved when he left early for his lab to gather data, and after the men delivered the pieces and hauled the old couch to the backyard until the Monday pickup, she sat on one of the couches, fretting over what she’d say. When the front door finally opened, she leapt to her feet, ready to spar, but Ed stepped in from the vestibule wearing that tranquil expression he wore when he was deep in his work, that made it look as if he’d just come from meditating. As he took in the room, she waited to see his face fall and readied to say she’d send it all back, but all he did was sit on the couch and say how nice and firm the pillows were compared to the lumpy ones they’d been living with. She’d never even thought he’d registered the lumps.
He was about two weeks shy of having gathered all
Similar Books
