She
crossed the parking lot and walked over to the quad, which was
surrounded by faculty buildings. A large group of people gathered
there, listening to someone speak from a podium. She pushed her way
through the crowd to the front, but couldn't see who she was looking
for.
"...
give a warm welcome to all those who are enrolled, and also ...."
a bald man in a linen suit and blue shirt (no doubt the dean) was
saying. He had the self-assured air of a man who knows that people
have to listen to him.
Suddenly,
someone beside her whispered, "Excuse me, are you Elisa
Robledo?"
She
turned and saw John Lennon. Or one of the thousands of Lennons always
milling around universities the world over. This particular clone
wore the de rigueur wire-rimmed spectacles and had a mop of curls. He
stared at Elisa intensely. His face was so red that his head looked
like his neck had produced one giant pimple. When she nodded, the boy
seemed to relax slightly and his wide, fleshy lips made a shy attempt
at a smile.
"Congratulations.
You got the highest score of all the people accepted to Blanes's
course." Elisa thanked him, despite the fact that—obviously—she
already knew she'd come in first. "I was fifth. My name is
Victor Lopera. I just graduated from the Complutense. You went to the
Autonomous University, right?"
"Yeah."
Elisa was no longer surprised when strangers recognized her. Her name
and picture were in college papers regularly. But she wasn't proud of
her reputation as a studious intellectual. In fact, it got on her
nerves, especially because it seemed to be the only thing her mother
liked about her. "Is Blanes here?" she asked.
"Looks
like he couldn't make it."
Elisa
frowned, irritated. The only reason she'd come to this stupid
orientation was to catch a glimpse of the physicist she admired most
in the world (well, along with Stephen Hawking). Now she'd have to
wait until the next day, when Blanes himself began teaching. She
debated whether to stay or not when Lennon-Lopera piped up again.
"I'm
glad we'll be classmates." He sank back into silence. He seemed
to think a long time before he got up the nerve to say anything.
Elisa assumed he was shy, or worse. She knew that almost all good
physics students were weird, herself included. She politely replied
that she was glad, too, and waited.
After
another pause, Lopera said, "See that guy in the purple shirt?
That's Ricardo Valente Sharpe, but everyone calls him Ric. He came in
second. We used to... We're friends."
"Mmm."
Elisa
remembered his name perfectly, because she'd seen it immediately
after her own on the list of test scores, and because it was such a
strange last name. "Valente Sharpe, Ricardo: 9.85." Elisa
had scored 9.89 out of 10, which meant that this kid had come in only
four one-hundredths of a point below her. That had caught her
attention, too, of course.
"So
that's Ricardo Valente Sharpe."
He
was skinny, with short, straw-colored hair and an aquiline profile.
Just then, he seemed to be concentrating as hard as everyone else on
the speaker's words, but there was no doubt that he had an air about
him, something that made him seem different from everyone else. Elisa
picked up on it instantly. He wore (in addition to the purple shirt)
a vest and black trousers, which in and of itself was enough to make
him stand out in a sea of jeans and T-shirts. And he certainly seemed
to think he was special.
Welcome
to the club, Ric Valente Sharpe,
she
thought brazenly.
Right
at that moment, he turned and looked at her. He had incredible
blue-green eyes, but they were somehow cold and disconcerting. If he
noticed Elisa in any way, he gave no sign of it.
"Are
you staying for the party?" Lopera asked, when Elisa made as if
to leave.
"I
haven't decided yet."
"OK.
Well... see you."
"Yeah,
sure."
Actually,
she was planning to get out of there as fast as possible, but a
feeling of tedium made her dawdle when the brief applause died down
after the speech. The music came on and the students began to make
their way toward a makeshift bar where drinks were being served,
below the dais. She told herself that after having made that much
effort to get there, taking that awful bus ride, it might actually be
a good idea to hang out for a little while, although she suspected it
would be the average dull party with no atmosphere.
She
had no idea that that particular evening would turn out to be the
beginning of her living nightmare.
THERE
were
jokey signs taped to the bar, the kind that science students find so
hilarious. The one for physics was a few sentences long and bore no
graphics:
THEORY
MEANS KNOWING WHY THINGS WORK EVEN IF THEY DON'T WORK. PRACTICE MEANS
THINGS WORK EVEN IF NOBODY KNOWS WHY. IN THIS PHYSICS DEPARTMENT,
THEORY AND PRACTICE GO HAND IN HAND, BECAUSE NOTHING WORKS AND NOBODY
KNOWS WHY.
Elisa
was amused. She ordered a Diet Coke and held the napkin-wrapped
plastic cup, looking for a quiet place to have her drink and then
leave. In the distance, she saw Victor Lopera chatting with his
friend, the ineffable Valente Sharpe, and some other oddballs. She
didn't feel like joining the Round Table of Geniuses just then, so
she decided to leave it for another time and instead walked down the
embankment and found a spot to sit on the grass. She leaned back
against the trunk of a pine tree.
She
could see the sky starting to dim and caught sight of the moon rising
on the horizon. She watched it as she sipped her soda. She'd loved
the night sky ever since she was a little girl. At first she'd wanted
to become an astronomer, but then she'd discovered that simple
mathematics were infinitely more wonderful. Math was something
nearby, something she could manipulate. Not so the moon. The only
thing the moon could do was mesmerize her.
"The
ancients used to think she was a goddess. Scientists are less
flattering."
As
she heard the voice, she thought, surprised, that this was the second
time this evening that a stranger had decided to strike up a
conversation with her. She turned to face the person speaking, her
brain emitting a lightning-speed report on the most likely (most
desirable?)
possibility.
She was wrong. It wasn't Four-One-Hundredths-Less Ric Valente Sharpe
(how could she even have thought?), but another young man, tall and
attractive, with dark hair and light eyes. He wore a T-shirt and
khaki Bermuda shorts.
"The
moon, I mean. You were staring at it very curiously." He had a
backpack, which he dropped on the grass to hold out his hand. "I'm
Javier Maldonado. That's the moon. And you, must be Elisa Robledo. I
saw your picture in the school paper, and here you are. Lucky me. Do
you mind if I sit down?"
She
did mind, especially because he'd already sat down, invading her
personal space and forcing her to scoot over in order to avoid his
huge, flip-flopped feet touching hers. Elisa, however, told him to go
ahead. She was intrigued. She watched the guy take some papers from
his backpack. At least he had an original pickup line.
"I
snuck in through the back door," Maldonado confessed
conspiratorially. "I'm not even a science major. I'm doing
journalism at Alighieri, and for our final project we have to write a
special report. I'm supposed to interview graduating physics majors.
You know, talk to them, ask little questions about their lives, their
studies, what they do in their free time, their favorite sexual
position." Maybe he picked up on the calm seriousness with which
Elisa was staring at him, because suddenly he stopped. "OK, I'm
an asshole. But the interview is serious, I swear." He showed
her his papers. "I chose you guys because you're famous."
"Us?"
"The
students doing Blanes's course. I mean, my God, they say he's the
biggest hotshot there is in physics. Would you mind answering a few
questions for an aspiring journalist?"
"Actually,
I was just getting ready to go."
All
of a sudden, Maldonado leaped comically to his knees.
"I'm
begging you... I haven't gotten a single person to accept yet... I
have to finish this project or I'll never even get hired as a
copywriter for
Soap
Opera Digest.
Worse,
they'll make me go interview a politician at parliament. Have mercy.
It won't take much time, I promise..."
Smiling,
Elisa looked at her watch and got up.
"I'm
sorry. The last bus back to Madrid leaves in ten minutes and I can't
miss it."
Maldonado
stood, too. A malicious expression danced on his face, and Elisa
admitted to herself that she found it slightly alluring. She was
amused.
Probably
thinks he's gorgeous.
"Well,
look, I'll make you a deal. You answer a few questions, and I'll
drive you home. All the way to your front door. Word of honor."
"Thanks,
but..."
"You
don't want to. Of course. I understand. After all, we just met. OK,
what about this? Today, I ask you a few questions, and only if you
want to, we finish up another day. How's that? Five minutes. That way
you'll make your bus."
Elisa
was still smiling, both amused and intrigued. She was about to relent
when Maldonado spoke again.
"You
liked that one, right? OK, come on."
He
gestured to the very spot they'd just stood up from.
I
can
listen to him ask questions for five minutes,
she
thought.
ACTUALLY,
she
listened to him for longer than that and spoke for even longer. But
she couldn't blame Maldonado, who, far from playing dirty, was
friendly and attentive. He even went so far as to remind her, at just
the right time, that her five minutes were up.
"Should
we leave it here?" he asked.
Elisa
stopped to consider the other alternative. She hated the idea of
leaving this little Eden to get back on that awful bus. Besides, over
the past few months she'd been living in her own world, and now that
she was finally talking to someone (someone who respected her as a
person and didn't just think she was a brilliant student or a cute
girl), she realized that she actually needed the company. "I
still have a little time," she said. A few minutes later,
Maldonado interrupted once more to warn her that she was going to
miss her bus. She appreciated his polite concern. And told him to
continue. He didn't remind her again.
Elisa
felt totally at ease chatting away with him. She answered questions
about why she studied physics, what the department was like, whether
it was a friendly atmosphere, and about her infinite passion for the
natural world. Maldonado let her blather on, jotting down a few
things here and there as she spoke. At one point, he said, "You
know, you don't really fit my image of a scientist. Not at all."
"Oh?
And what's your image of a scientist?"