“I have to go,” he told her matter-of-factly, one night, five weeks after he had arrived.
“But I thought you didn’t have to go for another month.”
“I have to complete my research.”
Her lush lips curved into a tentative smile and she said, in what she thought was her most seductive voice, “Maybe I can help? I have the time!”
“No.” His reply was curt and she was stung. He spoke again, softly. “You have helped. Very much. But I cannot take you with me.”
Kara was silent for a long time, chewing on her bottom lip and studying her fingers.
“Will you be back?”
“I do not think so.”
“Well… I guess there’s always online. Right?” Her voice became fearful.
“The Internet,” he said, “is an amazing tool. Perhaps the greatest thing humankind has yet achieved. It cannot, however, connect us this time.” He never took his eyes off her.
“I see. Did I do something wrong? If I did I’m sorry and—”
“No, Kara, you did nothing wrong. You have aided me in ways I cannot explain and you have been a good student as well. It is simply time for me to move on.”
“When are you leaving?”
“I am leaving now.”
After she locked the door behind him, she pressed herself against it for support and her tears streaked its unyielding surface all the way to the floor.
Time passed, and no amount of physics could stop it from happening.
It was almost two years later when she got a call from an unfamiliar number.
“Hello? Is this Kara?”
“Yes.” She recognized the voice, but it was different somehow. Stunned, she just listened.
“Uh hi. Listen, I’m not sure where I know you from but umm, well apparently we know each other really well, like, we talked about physics all the time.” There was no trace of his former accent.
“Physics? You want to talk about physics now? Are you fucking kidding me? You up and vanish one day and now…” She was near tears. “I don’t know what your deal is but I’m in school now for physics so I don’t need your lessons anymore.”
He attempted to speak but she cut him off, viciously laying two years of frustration on him in one breath.
“If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t give a damn about physics. Even though everything you taught me is theoretically impossible and gets me nothing but crazy looks and — and what the fuck happened to your accent anyway? What, did you join witness protection or something?”
“Look, K-Kara. Just hear me out, okay? I don’t know who you are but you say I taught you ‘impossible’ physics. I…this sounds crazy but I lost my memory. Or something. Look, can we meet? I’m assuming we’ve met already but I don’t remember it.”
Kara burst into tears and screamed into the phone “Look, we are over, okay? I don’t care about your lost memories. I fucking quit my stupid job to hang out with you and talk about physics.” She spat the words out. “Leave me alone. Go find some other girl to play games with.”
She hung up, threw the phone down, and stormed into the kitchen to pour a drink. On second thought, she took the bottle into her bedroom. Three calls later she turned off the phone.
She awoke groggily to the blare of a horn, stumbled across the room to her desk and plopped down onto the chair, too awake to go back to sleep.
“Eight damn emails?” Aggravated, she was preparing to delete them when she noticed the subject line “I have compromising photos of you.” She paused, then cursed.
Days later she found herself sitting outside of a coffee shop, smoking a cigarette and waiting for Jake. He walked up. His dark hair was wild and overgrown. He was a gaunt, empty-eyed shadow of his former self. He wasn’t the same man at all but she didn’t care. She leapt up.
“You asshole, you better have deleted those pictures!” Her mouth wore a rabid snarl.
“I deleted them alright? I wouldn’t really have sent them to anyone. I just didn’t know how else to get you to listen to me.”
“Bullshit. I don’t believe anything you say.”
“I really did.” For the next several minutes he begged her to believe him.
“Not another word. I trusted you and you screwed me, big time. This time I’ll do the leaving.” She grabbed her purse and rose.
He clasped her wrist and growled at her, “Sit down, damn it. Look at me! I’m a fucking wreck! Just listen!”
Kara sat silently and turned her face away but thought better of it and blew a lungful of smoke right at Jake.
He fidgeted uncomfortably. “Can I have one of those?”
She tossed the box at him. “Sure, just make sure you use them all up before you toss aside that box too, you bastard.”
“That’s not fair. At least hear me out.”
“Fine. Whatever you want. And you look like shit.”
He hacked out a mirthless laugh. “I feel like shit.”
Kara pierced him with a gaze, sighed, and finally gave in. “Let’s go somewhere private.”
They found a motel room nearby.
“So far this is what I’ve pieced together. We met online. You asked me some physics questions and we ended up talking about it all the time. Then we met and hung out for five weeks until I left abruptly. Right?”
“Yes.” She wasn’t angry anymore. Jake was, she now believed, genuinely confused and frightened.
He rubbed the stubble on his cheek. “I keep having these nightmares, like I’ve been somewhere else. I’ve seen crazy, horrible things. I know something now that I can’t reach or comprehend and it’s driving me crazy. I have memories of building some device and I don’t know where it is now. I don’t even know what I was studying—”
“Was it High Temperature Super-conductivity?”
His eyes lit up. “Yes! But I know that’s impossible. The math just doesn’t work.”
Kara smiled ruefully. “Yeah, that’s what I keep hearing.”
“And you got into physics because of me?”
“Well, yes. I got so hooked on the learning — the knowledge itself. Once you were gone, I…” she trailed off.
“You what?” His voice was gentle, like it was before, when they were past making love, past theories, and almost into sleep.
“I had to get it from somewhere. I couldn’t- can’t stop. But nothing is like what I was getting from you. It was so… intoxicating.”
“Yeah well it seems that whatever I knew is no longer with me.” He smiled sadly.
Kara took in the tired look on his face. “Oh Jake, I can’t imagine how horrible this has been for you.”
Jake’s lips began to tremble and Kara wrapped her arms around him. Tears welled in his eyes. She held him for a while and he cried. In a whisper he told her everything he’d lost. His graduate career was over. He’d walked away from his family with no more reason than he had research to do, and they weren’t anxious to have him back. He had no one left, he said as he buried his face against her shoulder. Tenderly, she stroked the back of his neck and kissed the top of his head. She said nothing, chest constricting with restrained tears.
“Please stay with me tonight. I don’t know you but you’re the only person who knows me. I feel like I’m a stranger everywhere I go.” His voice was full of the terror he felt, haunted by nightmares and scraps of memories and desperate for some refuge.
Her heart ached. She’d loved him. Kara bowed her head. “I won’t leave you.” As soon as she spoke her voice gave way and she, too, was crying. In the fading afternoon light they shared their sorrows until, drained of tears and words, they slept.
Kara awoke to the warmth of Jake’s arms around her and his face pressed into her hair. Gently, she attempted to extricate herself without waking him.