by David Heddle

© 2005 Whortleberry Press

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CHAPTER 1

Friday, August 25, 1989

Acetone.

Aaron hated that sickening, fruity smell. And even if he didn’t, he’d have grown sick of it by now.

He took one last look around the lab, to make sure he hadn’t left anything plugged in that might cause a fire over the weekend. Satisfied, he shut off the lights and stepped into the seventh floor hallway, letting the door close behind him. He waited to hear the telltale sound of the lock engaging. Good. Now it’s off to his room down in Oakland, where cold beer sat in his fridge and a half finished Clive Barker novel waited for him like a loyal bloodhound.

He had endured a summer of working for Professor Rusk, drilling pin holes in two meter long aluminum strips that would form the frames of charged-particle detectors. After drilling the holes, he sanded the pieces to remove any burrs. As a final step, he wiped them clean with cheesecloth soaked in acetone, the solvent of choice. Over three months, he had completed more than a hundred strips. The boredom was palpable, but at least this was his last day. If he never saw another strip of aluminum, he’d die happy.

Heading toward the bank of elevators, he brought his hands to his nose and sniffed. Not good. In spite of scrubbing them with Lava soap in the lab sink, to the point where his knuckles felt raw, they still had a chemical reek.

Forget about it. After today, he’d no longer have to deal with acetone.

He dropped his hands from his nose and looked up, just in time to avoid colliding with Becky Lindstrom. Great. She must have seen what he was doing. Should he bother explaining why he was sniffing his hands?

Lindstrom didn’t give him the chance.

“Did you get my email about the reception for the new grad students?”

The fall semester, his first semester as a grad student, would start on Monday. Tomorrow, on Saturday, the department would hold a get-acquainted luncheon for the newcomers. Lindstrom had emailed him, asking him to attend, but he had decided to skip it. He liked parties and lunches, but with people he knew. Meeting a group of new students, most of them foreigners, made him nervous. He preferred to spend the last carefree, summer weekend with his returning undergrad buddies. By tomorrow afternoon they would be arriving on campus in droves, carting cardboard boxes full of clothes, CDs, and snack food up to their dorm rooms. And they would relieve the late August Pittsburgh heat with cold suds.

It was all a question of being himself, which was easy, compared to acting like himself, which he felt like he had to do around strangers. That he found almost impossible.

Rather than email Lindstrom an excuse, he had chosen to snub the request. But he hadn’t counted on Lindstrom cornering him in the hallway. He should’ve worked later or left earlier.

“Yeah, I got it. I just haven’t had a chance to respond.”

“I see. Well I hope you’ll stop by. Most of these kids are taking their first trip abroad. You’ll be on terra cognita, a twofer, not just an American, but a hometowner. You’ll make them feel welcome.”

“Actually, I did have something else planned. What about Ken? Is he around?”

Lindstrom scowled.

“Look, we both know that Ken Dolittle isn’t the first American classmate that the foreign students should meet. I need you there; I hope you can get out of your other commitment.”

Lindstrom, the chair of the department, was the only woman on the physics faculty. She was in her mid forties, short and husky. She had curly brown hair with golden highlights, hazel eyes and a wide nose. She folded her arms across her belly as she spoke, and her emotionless expression and unwavering gaze made it clear that she had made a request in name only. He knew that she could see through him, knew that he just wanted to blow it off, and that his other so-called plans were a fiction.

“I’ll be there,” he said. As if he had a choice. Man, she was one imperious broad.

“Good,” Lindstrom said, with a victorious nod. She shifted gears into mop-up mode. “I especially want you to meet Hiroshi. Hiroshi Yoto. He’s the new Japanese student. I put him in an office with you up on the eighth floor, the one next to Suskind. His English isn’t too good, so I’m hoping you’ll help him out.”

Wonderful. Who elected him as Lindstrom’s guy Friday? Still, she had delivered some unexpected good news. She had assigned him the student office next to Professor Suskind, primo real estate on the eighth floor, complete with windows. New grad students usually got the interior dungeons.

“You’ve already talked to him?”

“No, but I know it’s bad. He scored four-twenty on the TOEFL.”

Aaron squinted. “Four-twenty? How’d he get in? I thought we had a five-fifty minimum.”

She turned her head and looked to the side, at nothing in particular. Then she turned back once again to stare at Aaron.

“For one thing, he smoked the physics achievement test. And he got a strong recommendation from Arima, who called from Tokyo to talk to me. So we decided to waive the requirement.”

That would do it, Aaron knew. A phone call from a world-class physicist halfway around the globe carried a lot of weight.

“Why’s he coming here?” As soon as he said it, he wished that he could take it back. He didn’t mean to insult his own department right to the chair’s face. “I mean, Japan’s grad schools are as good as ours. It’s not like he’s from China or India.” Most countries used America to train their graduate students. Japan was an exception.

“That’s true. But you have to remember, no graduate department smaller than ours is rated higher.”

Aaron had heard Lindstrom’s slogan many times before. He hated it. Someone should tell her it doesn’t work. You have to think about it too much. No way would a top Japanese student come to CMU just because of our reputation. This guy must have pissed someone off to get himself banished.

“Right,” he said, just to say something.

“Okay then, that’s that, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Lindstrom turned and headed back to her office. Along the way, she looked over her shoulder. “Oh, and Aaron, go wash your hands.”

The next day, Aaron arrived at the reception a few minutes late, pretending not to notice Lindstrom’s icy gaze. Looking around, he decided that she didn’t need him. She had invited some of the senior foreign grad students, and the newcomers had gravitated to their older countrymen. The new Chinese students had gathered around Kevin Chang, a second year student from Taiwan. Prabakhar Misra, a third year student, held court with the new Indian students. Go for it. Maybe there’d be nothing here for him to do.

The department held the get-together in the undergraduate lab. Someone, probably the lab supervisor, had stowed the equipment that usually sat out-oscilloscopes, balances, and power supplies-into huge tan and gray metal lockers. A wall-sized periodic table, with a corner torn off, and a poster from San Francisco’s Exploratorium describing the four fundamental forces of nature served as the only adornments on the drab olive walls.

Maria had put out a spread of cheese, veggies, and crackers on a large, silver faux-aluminum tray, which she placed on the dark granite countertop. She also filled the deep double-sink with crushed ice and buried a variety of sodas and bottled water.

Two Caucasians stood talking over in the far corner by a rack of obsolete electronic equipment. Aaron fished a bottle of water out of the sink and headed over in their direction. He hoped they were Americans and not Europeans.

Their conversation stopped when they noticed him approaching. They both sat their paper plates down on the countertop and started wiping their hands on paper napkins.

“How’s it going? Aaron Dern,” he said. He extended his hand first to a huge bearded fellow in a blue blazer, and then to a fit, muscular, but unhappy looking guy with longish hair, between light brown and blond. The muscular guy didn’t have a beard, but he could have used a shave.

“Patrick O’Neill. Nice to meet you,” the big guy said. He had a pleasant expression, almost parental in its concern.

The other student chimed in. “Bernie Roche,” he said. He seemed reluctant, or maybe suspicious. He looked tense in an aggressive way, like a coiled spring, or one who expected a fight.

What’s up with that?

An awkward moment of silence followed: a subconscious probing of one another through body language and flitting eye contact. “Where’re you guys from?” Aaron asked. Even that simple question took effort. Nobody, except maybe Lindstrom, mistook Aaron for a people person. Never good at making small talk with strangers, he’d rather be over at Donner drinking a cold brew, even an Iron City.

“I’m from Penn,” O’Neill said. He had understood that, in this situation, the question meant where did you go for undergrad? not where were you born?

University of Pennsylvania. That’s trouble for sure. Penn is a damn good school.

He noticed that O’Neill wore a silver necklace with a nicked and tarnished cross. Too cheap to be jewelry, it must represent a commitment. He’s a real Catholic. Odd. How could someone aspire to be a serious scientist and be religious at the same time?

Aaron turned to Roche.

“Pitt,” he said.

That explained the belligerence. Most Pitt students were defensive regarding their alma mater. Just a stone’s throw west of CMU, The University of Pittsburgh’s credentials as a party school exceeded its academic reputation. This Roche was a real piece of work, but at least he’d be no threat. CMU students referred to Pitt as U. Pitiful and mocked Pitt’s gothic, forty-story Cathedral of Learning, the tallest academic building in the world, as the Tower of Ignorance, all of which was unfair. Although it enjoyed a better reputation than Pitt, CMU wasn’t Ivy League; it was nothing more than the top-dog in Pittsburgh. But the CMU students loved to make fun of their neighbor. Just like in high school, when the sophomores lorded it over the freshman, as long as no upperclassmen were around.

“I went here,” Aaron said.

“You went to Carnegie Mellon undergrad?” Roche asked.

Roche pronounced it car-NAY-gie. That’s a dead giveaway. He’s a native. The rest of the world, taking its cue from New York, mispronounced it as CAR-neh-gie.

“Yeah. Hey, so you’re from the Burgh?” Aaron didn’t expect to find another Pittsburgher in his grad class. Then he took a closer look at Roche and saw that he shouldn’t have been surprised. Tall and thick, with a five o’clock shadow four hours early, Roche looked truer to the Pittsburgh blue collar image than Aaron, who was fit but short and baby-faced, and shaved only once a week. He could imagine Roche, no farther back in time than the previous generation, emerging from a steel mill, black-faced with soot, a maul slung over his sleeveless sweat shirt. What was “Roche” before his grandfather shortened it? Rochakowski? Must have been something like that.

“Well, Greentree,” Roche answered, naming a suburb just west of the city.

“Nice, me too.”

“From Pittsburgh? What part?”

“Northside, just by the stadiums.”

Aaron identified his neighborhood, part of the inner city just north of the Allegheny River, known for decrepit streets and violent crime. Like the other kids growing up there, Aaron had to know which streets were safe and at what part of the day; where you could go alone, and where you needed backup.

Roche’s head kind of bounced upward, in a whoa, that’s surprising gesture.

“Northside? Cool.” He nodded and seemed to relax, his features softening. Aaron had seen similar reactions many times before, when people granted him a kind of urban respect.

“I grew up just outside Philly,” O’Neill said. So Penn was a hometown school for him. None of the three had ventured far from home for college.

Roche needled him a bit. “Oh, you mean the side of the state that doesn’t win super bowls.”

Pittsburghers still try to milk civic bragging rights from those fading Steelers glory days. It’s getting harder all the time.

“I’m from Seattle. University of Washington.”

The three men turned in the direction of the scratchy but identifiably feminine voice. That’s odd, she stood no more than five feet away, but somehow she had hovered there unnoticed. How long was she there? She was ghostly pale and rail thin. In every way straight lined and right angled, with scraggly, colorless hair, and thick, round glasses. She wore a red tee shirt, denim shorts, and leather sandals. Aaron suppressed a shudder when he noticed that her knobby-kneed legs needed a shaving.

So she’s from Washington. Good grad school, but lousy undergrad. Almost open enrollment. Just like Pitt. She’s no threat.

“Sorry. You guys were about to get into, you know, a pissing contest about sports teams. Just wanted to save you from embarrassing yourselves. I’m Maya, by the way. Maya Dupree. I know your names. I heard you talking.” She held a clear plastic glass full of coke and ice and lifted it in a casual, halfhearted salute.

“So why’d you stay here for grad school?” she asked, looking at Aaron.

A fair question. Most students go somewhere different for grad school. But he didn’t want to get into that discussion.

“Complicated,” he said, and then tightened his lips.

“I hope she’s worth it,” Roche said, showing good but unwelcome insight.

Aaron shrugged. “As it turns out, she’s not.”

He knew they wanted some details, but for once Becky Lindstrom helped him out by interrupting the awkward conversation. She called for everyone’s attention, only to give a vapid, forgettable welcome to the new students. It will be hard work, but I promise it will be fun too, and you’ll make many new friends. You’ll never again learn so much in such a short time. After Lindstrom’s speech, Aaron avoided the previous topic by using the excuse that Lindstrom wanted him to mingle with some of the new foreign students. He walked over to the Chinese group. They looked the least intimidating, having dwindled down to Kevin Chang and two new students, an impressive looking guy with a wrestler’s physique wearing a green sweat suit, and a cute, petite young woman dressed in peach capris and a sleeveless black blouse.

As he approached, he could hear Kevin Chang speaking Chinese, although he could make out some English words and names sprinkled in the otherwise impenetrable sounds.

“Bu shi. Tim Krabb yo Wisconsin shi-ze bei-che…solid state experimentalist... Ta mei-yo na-dao research grant … Mike Jacob, yo Cal Tech…particle theory… Jacob, zemme hao tzo-ming.” When Kevin saw Aaron approach, his conversation shifted to English.

“Oh hello, this is Aaron Dern. He’ll be your classmate. He was an undergraduate here.”

Aaron was surprised that Kevin Chang even knew his name; he couldn’t recall their ever being introduced. All he knew of Kevin came from his polaroid on display, along with pictures of the other grad students, in a case mounted on the wall across from the fishbowl. Soon Maria would have more mug shots to add to the array, including his.

“Aaron, this is Grace Chen from China, and this is Yen from Taiwan.” After making the switch to English, Kevin Chang spoke so quietly that Aaron found himself leaning in so that he could hear him.

Grace was chomping on a Triscuit, topped with a square of cheese: Havarti with dill.

“Nice to meet you,” Aaron said, shaking Grace’s tiny hand. She barely reached five feet in height and must have weighed all of ninety pounds, sopping wet.

Then he turned to Yen, whose crushing grip did justice to his fearsome appearance. “Yen, is that your first name?”

“Just call me Yen. Just Yen.”

Okay, that worked for him.

“He likes to play the inscrutable Chinese,” Grace said, and then she wiped her mouth of a few stray crumbs. Was she making a joke? She had just the mildest accent. If Kevin hadn’t introduced her as hailing from China, he would have pegged her as American, an ABC from California.

“What means by inscrutable?” Yen asked. Aaron was thinking how to reply when Grace supplied the answer.

“Mysterious. Difficult to comprehend. It’s how the Americans used to portray us in the movies before transforming us into Gong-Fu champion drug lords. At least now they use Asian actors.” Then she added, as if in way of an explanation for Aaron’s benefit, “My father teaches American Literature and Film at Beijing University.”

It surprised Aaron that Beijing University offered such a field of study.

Kevin Chang shifted his weight from foot to foot and looked at the ground. Aaron guessed that Grace’s style made him uncomfortable.

“What means by drug lords?” Yen asked.

“You know, people who smuggle and sell illegal drugs. Think opium and gunboats. Think the British,” Grace said.

“Ehh-heh-heh.” Yen laughed by inhaling rather than exhaling. It sounded throaty and almost lascivious.

Grace bit into another hors d'oeuvre. “Mmm, fantastic. These are the best crackers in the history of crackers.”

After some more chitchat with the three Chinese, Aaron made ready to leave the party, having, in his mind, fulfilled his obligation. Then he noticed another Asian, who must have arrived late, standing by himself over by the veggie tray. Instinct caused Aaron to look for Lindstrom, and he found her engaged in a discussion with a couple of Indian students. She caught his eye, and then she pointed with her head in the newcomer’s direction.

Aaron cursed himself for his mistake.

After excusing himself, he walked across the room; this must be the new Japanese student Lindstrom had told him about. He could tell Japanese from Chinese, through some set of cues that he couldn’t put his finger on. Often they dressed more on the leading rather than the trailing edge of fashion, although that wasn’t the case here; this dude wore a plain yellow tee shirt, jeans and flip-flops. No, it was something else, a greater composure and more self confidence. Something of a who cares what you think of me? attitude.

“Hello, I’m Aaron Dern.”

The Asian bowed his head, just enough that Aaron noticed, and said, “Hiroshi Yoto arriving newly from Tokyo, Japan.” The volume of his voice increased when he spoke the word newly. He talked with a staccato cadence. Aaron half expected him to add at your service. The two shook hands.

“Hey, we’re going to share an office.”

“Arhh-wreh?”

The strange, guttural response made it clear that Hiroshi didn’t understand. No surprise there, Lindstrom had warned him about Hiroshi’s poor English. This was going to be a pain in the ass.

“Um, we’ll sit in the same office, up on the eighth floor.” Aaron slowed down his delivery, although he knew that there was no point in speaking louder.

“Very good, really good,” Hiroshi answered, smiling and nodding, causing his just-woke-up style black hair, long enough to reach his collar, to bounce up and down. The reply did not convince Aaron that Hiroshi understood. No need to press it. If he’s satisfied, that’s all that mattered.

Hiroshi shifted on his feet. “Any more extra to drink?” he asked, pointing at the sink with the soda and water. Somehow Aaron knew that what he meant to ask was: is there anything else to drink?

“I don’t know. I think that’s it,” Aaron said, transitioning from shrugging his shoulders to a sympathetic nod.

Hiroshi grunted. Then, without looking around to see if anyone was watching, he pulled a silver flask from his hip pocket. He unscrewed the top, tilted his head back, and drew a couple fingers worth of the contents.

After wiping his lips with the back of his free hand, Hiroshi offered the flask to Aaron.

Why the hell not. Aaron took the flask and drank. At first he nearly choked, but then it tasted warm and smooth. Scotch. It made Aaron think anew about his undergraduate friends, unpacking in the dorms, and no doubt already partying a bit. Not with Scotch, but with the drink of choice for American college students. He returned the flask to Hiroshi.

“Do you like beer?”

“Yeeeeesssss! Really I like beer greatly!” A speech pattern was emerging: Hiroshi cranked up the volume on certain words, adverbs mostly. No doubt but that he understood that question. Maybe he won’t be such a pain after all.

“Good. Come with me.”

They left the lab. Aaron didn’t look for Lindstrom. He was just doing his job.

CHAPTER 2

The next day, Sunday, Aaron woke up with a headache, and a dull sound, like a dial-tone, bombinating throughout his skull. Too much beer. He made his way to the bathroom. After undressing, almost as an afterthought, he stumbled into the shower. Tilting his head back, he surrendered to the rejuvenating, chilly spray hitting him directly in the face. He wondered what happened to Hiroshi. The last he saw of him, he was slamming down boilermakers in Jeffrey’s room in Donner with two guys and two gals Aaron didn’t even know. It looked as if Hiroshi had no trouble making friends.

Classes would begin the next day, but the department had one more hoop for them to jump through, the annual barbeque picnic out on the lawn between Wean and Baker. The department opened the feast to the entire physics community, from incoming freshmen to grad students, postdocs, faculty, and staff.

Aaron looked forward to this annual event. By tradition, Professors Lee and Rusk pit-roasted a huge slab of pork. The delectable aroma filled most of the campus, but posted signs announcing Physics Department Picnic kept envious interlopers at bay. The two cooks pulled the meat from the bone and piled it on to trays, one for each of the six portable tables set up for the occasion. You doused the pork with your choice of barbeque sauce from a mild Kansas City to a scorching Memphis. And you could gorge yourself on the standard sides of grilled corn, potato salad, and sweet cornbread.

Aaron arrived at about one o’clock, just after Professor Lee had supervised the distribution of the first wave of pulled-pork. The day was warm with only a few high altitude clouds. A funnel breeze, like the kind that circulated between downtown skyscrapers, always formed on the great lawn between the two rival rows of academic buildings, Doherty and Wean to one side, Baker to the other. In late August the moving air refreshed, but by December it would brutalize.

Aaron sat down on a tan folding chair next to Grace Chen, the diminutive new student from China. His chair wobbled on the uneven grass. Grace slouched forward, over the table, eating a piece of cornbread held in her left hand while she cupped her right hand under her chin, trying to catch the inevitable wayward crumbs. Her mouth full, she acknowledged Aaron with a nod.

Two other newcomers he had met yesterday, Bernie Roche and Patrick O’Neill, shared the table. As did two CMU student veterans, Ken Dolittle, who, like Aaron, had been a CMU undergrad and was now starting grad school, and Etienne Guidal, a French grad student. Professor Mike Jacob had joined the students as well. He sat across from Aaron, next to Roche, and was typewriting his way through an ear of corn. Aaron hoped that Jacob’s wife Vivian would join the group, but he spotted her mingling at another table.

Etienne had short, curly black hair with a peroxided streak. He had round glasses with turtle-shell frames and was wearing jeans and a striped shirt that emphasized his short, thin build. He had nearly finished his thesis, under the supervision of Professor Lee, and planned to graduate in December. As it turned out, he made a typo that would distinguish his dissertation. In the acknowledgement, he expressed “tremendous gratitude to Dr. Lee for his patients” rather than “his patience.” The typo sailed through the spellchecker, and since neither Lee nor any of the proofreaders bothered to read the acknowledgement, it made it into print. Every time Aaron thought about it, he envisioned Etienne, busily working on his research, while a handful of Dr. Lee’s “patients”, wearing open-backed hospital gowns, swarmed about offering helpful advice.

Aaron soon realized that Ken and Etienne were in the midst of some inane nationalistic argument.

“Why do you Americans hate the French so much?” Etienne asked.

“I don’t hate the French,” Ken said. “I think they’re very reliable. Anytime they need us, they’ll be there.”

The tired slam elicited groans from around the table. Aaron felt some embarrassment that Ken represented the homeland in this discussion.

Aaron thought about how Ken never fit in. He tried to conjure up some gracious thought. At best, he could concede that Ken was a minor rather than a major irritant, like a mosquito bite. At least Ken didn’t want to fit in. His independence somewhat redeemed him. You didn’t have to avoid Ken. He avoided you, although once in a while he injected himself into a conversation just to make an obnoxious point, only to withdraw without waiting for a response.

Once, a couple years back, Aaron and a few classmates huddled in the lobby of the main entrance to Wean, just outside the computer lab, engaged in a heated discussion about God and science. Aaron had just parroted conventional undergraduate dogma, asserting that, “God might exist, but the Bible and science are incompatible.” Ken happened to trundle by. Assessing the topic, he stepped up to the group. Tall and gangly, he towered over the other students. With a shock of black hair, a prematurely craggy face, and a prominent, bobbing Adam’s apple, his stern features brought to mind a young Ichabod Crane. His hawk-like nose and thin lips augmented the effect. Without hesitation he interrupted the discussion and asked, “Why are you wasting time debating about a god whose existence I refuse to acknowledge?” And then he spun about and walked away.

At the moment, Etienne looked flustered. He probably thought that, as a senior graduate student, he shouldn’t have to deal with such nonsense from a first year peon like Ken, someone who hadn’t yet passed the qualifier.

“Will you Americans ever get over your World War Two Messiah complex? Merci, merci, merci, Okay? How often do we have to say it? Shit. You guys can be so stupid.”

“Stupid? How come we win most of the Nobel prizes?” Another first year student, Maya Dupree, had joined in. Aaron didn’t know where she had come from. Just like the day before, at the reception in the lab, she had snuck up with the skill of a cat burglar.

He saw again that Maya Dupree was a severe, unattractive, and bookish woman with huge, thick glasses, a bad complexion, and a curveless figure. She had long, stringy hair of an indescribable hue, like gasoline, and it looked at least a week overdue for a shampooing. She had tiny eyes, almost black. A long aquiline nose dominated her chalky face. She wouldn’t exactly turn heads in the department.

She had made a foolish remark about Americans dominating the Nobel Prizes, and Etienne knew how to respond.

“I guess you mean like T.D. Lee, C. N. Yang, and Hans Bethe?” He then continued, rattling off ten or twelve more physics Nobel laureates. “Yeah, okay, America gets credit for winning all those prizes, but none of those guys were born in the U.S. They all immigrated here, like most of the American Nobel Prize winners.”

Etienne looked pretty smug. For good reason, Aaron thought, because he made a fair point. And neither Ken nor Maya had a comeback. Game over, man.

But not quite. Professor Mike Jacob had a follow-up question.

“And tell me, what does that say about this country, that all these geniuses, these Nobel laureates from all over the world, they all come here to live?”

Etienne looked shocked; no doubt he had not expected a professor to join in such a juvenile debate. And in truth, Jacob hadn’t. Aaron knew him well, and he could see that Jacob just enjoyed toying with Etienne. He was certain that Jacob had no intention of aligning himself with Ken and Maya.

Jacob chuckled a bit, relieving some of the tension. “Don’t look so pissed,” he said to Etienne. “I’m just busting your balls.”

A brilliant high energy theorist, Professor Mike Jacob held a Ph.D. from Cal Tech. But he talked like a longshoreman. He used the same irreverent manner of speaking to both colleagues and students. Aaron loved the guy. Almost everyone did, unless his gruff mannerisms or his unkempt mane of wild chestnut hair just didn’t fit your image of what a professor should be.

The conversation paused for a moment, waiting for a new topic. If Jacob’s blue-collar style offended any of the new students, they didn’t show it.

Bernie Roche put the finishing touches on turning a styrofoam cup inside out. Aaron had watched him during the conversation, gently massaging and pressing the cup inward starting at the base, and skillfully working over the lip that protruded at the top. Whenever Aaron tried that little exercise, the cup would split at that point.

Roche set the cup down and took a deep breath.

“What kind of name is O’Neill for a Jew?” he asked.

Patrick O’Neill carried over 300 pounds, fat not muscle. He was already balding but with a full black beard, with a little gray starting to creep in. Aaron saw that he had the unconscious habit of pulling on his facial hair. He wore gold, horn-rimmed glasses, cheap frames, though more stylish than Maya’s binoculars. The tufts of hair that remained on his head were black and curly with the same feint hints of premature gray.

He did look like a rabbi. He would make the perfect Tevye in the unlikely event that the physics department put on a production of Fiddler on the Roof. As his name suggested, however, he was Roman Catholic through-and-through. His easy going and pleasant persona made Aaron suspect that he’d be a friend, although he remembered that O’Neill’s undergrad degree came from Penn, which meant that he could cause serious trouble, competition wise.

“I’m not Jewish, I’m Catholic. We’ve already been through this. Just because I have dark, curly hair and a beard, you assume I’m Jewish?”

“Sorry dude, no offense.”

“Well just because your name is Patrick O’Neill, it doesn’t mean you’re a Catholic. The heretics and schismatics, you know, the Protestants, they might have gotten to you.”

That observation came from the most unlikely of sources, Grace Chen. Aaron could not tell whether Grace meant her comment as humor. Regardless of her intent, she set everyone laughing, none more so than Professor Mike Jacob, who leaned so far back while convulsing in his amusement that he almost tipped over his chair.

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