“Well, I don't want to be called 333.”
“Can't say as I blame you.” He grinned. “How about I call you Tre, and you can call me—oh, hell, I don't know—”
“De,” she said. 'I'll call you De.”
“Nice to meet you, Tre,” he said, holding out his hand.
She took it. His fingers were warm. “Nice to meet you, De.”
“Where do you hail from?”
“Right here,” she said.
“You're kiddin'? No travel expenses, huh?”
“And no hotel rooms.”
He grinned. “Sometimes hotel rooms can be nice, especially when you don't get to see the inside of them very often.”
“I suppose.” She smiled at him. He was making this easier than she expected. “Where're you from?”
“Originally Galveston. But I've been in L'siana a long time now.”
“New Orleans?”
“Just outside.”
“Some city you got there.”
“Yeah, but we ain't got a place like this.” He looked around. “Want to go in?”
“Now I do,” she said.
They walked side by side as if they were a couple who had been together most of their lives. Neither of them looked at the food, although he snatched two bottles of sparkling water off one of the tables, and handed one to her. She opened it, glad to have something to carry.
A few more people came in the doors. She and De went farther into the room. Bits of conversation floated by her:
“…never really got over it…”
“…worked for the past five years as a dental hygienist…”
“…my father wanted to take us out of the country, but…”
Then there was a slight bonging sound, and the conversation halted. Franke stood in the very front of the room, where the theater screen used to be. He was easy to see because the floor slanted downward slightly. He held up his hands, and in a moment there was complete silence.
“I want to thank you all for coming.” His voice was being amplified. It sounded as he were talking right next to Brooke instead of half a room away. “Your assignment today is easy. We do not want you sharing names, but you can talk about anything else. We will be providing meals later on in various restaurants—your badge ID will be listed on a door—and we will have drinks in the bar after that. We ask that no one leave before midnight, and that you all return at noon tomorrow for the second phase.”
“That's it?” someone asked.
“That's it,” Franke said. “Enjoy yourselves.”
“I have a bad feeling about this, Tre,” De said.
“Me, too,” Brooke said. “It can't be this simple.”
“I don't think it will be.”
She sighed. “Well, we signed on for this, so we may as well enjoy it.”
He looked at her sideways, his blue eyes bright. “Want to be my date for the day, darlin'?”
“It's always nice to have one friendly face,” she said, surprised at how easily she was flirting with him. She never flirted with anyone.
“That it is.” He offered her his arm. “Let's see how many of these nice folks are interested in conversation.”
“Mingle, huh?” she asked, as she put her hand in the crook of his arm.
“I think that's what we're meant to do.” He frowned. “Only god knows, I 'spect it'll all backfire 'fore the weekend's done.”
It didn't backfire that night. Brooke had a marvelous dinner in one of the small restaurants with De, a woman from Boston, and two men from California. They shared stories about their lives and their jobs, and only touched in passing on the thing that they had in common. In fact, the only time they discussed it was when De brought it up over dessert.
“What made y'all sign up for this foolishness?” he asked.
“The money,” said the man from Los Gatos. He was slender to the point of gauntness, with dark eyes and thinning hair. His shirt had wear marks around the collar and was fraying slightly on the cuffs. “I thought it'd be an easy buck. I didn't expect all the tests.”
“Me, either,” the woman from Boston said. She was tall and broadshouldered, with muscular arms. During the conversation, she mentioned that she had played professional basketball until she was sidelined with a knee injury. “I haven't had so many tests since I got out of school.”
The man from Santa Barbara said nothing, which surprised Brooke. He was a short stubby man with more charm than he had originally appeared to have. He had been the most talkative during dinner—regaling them with stories about his various jobs, and his two children.
“How about you, Tre?” De asked Brooke.
“I wouldn't have done it if I wasn't part of the university,” she said, and realized that was true. Professor Franke probably wouldn't have had the time to convince her, and she would have dismissed him out of hand.
“Me,” De said, “I jumped at it. Never been asked to do something like this before. Felt it was sort of important, you know. Anything to help the human condition.”
“You don't really believe that,” Santa Barbara said.
“If you don't believe it,” Los Gatos said to Santa Barbara, “why'd you sign up?”
“Free flight to Madison, vacationer's paradise,” Santa Barbara said, and they all laughed. But he never did answer the question.
When Brooke got home, she sat on her porch and looked at the stars. The night was warm. The crickets were chirping and she thought she heard a frog answer them from a nearby ditch.
The evening had disturbed her in its simplicity. Like everyone else, she wanted to know what Franke was looking for. The rest of the study had been so directed, and this had been so free form.
Dinner had been nice. Drinks afterward with a different group had been nice as well. But the conversation rarely got deeper than anecdotes and current history. No one discussed the study, and no one discussed the past.
She lost De after dinner, which gave her a chance to meet several other people: a woman from Chicago, twins from Akron, and three friends from Salt Lake City. She'd had a good time, and found people she could converse with—one historian, two history buffs, and a librarian who seemed to know a little bit about everything.
De joined her later in the evening, and walked her to the rail stop. He'd leaned against the plastic shelter and smiled at her. She hadn't met a man as attractive as he was in a long time. Not since college.
“I'd ask you to my hotel,” he said, “but I have a feelin' anything we do this weekend, in or out of that strange building, is going to be fodder for scientists.”
She smiled. She'd had that feeling too.
“Still,” he said, “I got to do one thing.”
He leaned in and kissed her. She froze for a moment; she hadn't been kissed in nearly ten years. Then she eased into it, putting her arms around his neck and kissing him back, not wanting to stop, even when he pulled away.
“Hmm,” he said. His eyes were closed. He opened them slowly. “I think that's titillatin' enough for the scientists, don't you?”
She almost said no. But she knew better. She didn't want to read about her sex life in Franke's next book.
The rail came down the tracks, gliding silently toward them. “See you tomorrow?” she asked.
“You can bet on it,” De said. And there had been promise in his words, promise she wasn't sure she wanted to hear.
She brought her knees onto her lawn chair, and wrapped her arms around them. Part of her wished he was here, and part of her was glad he wasn't. She never let anyone come to her house. She didn't want to share it. She had had enough invasions of privacy in her life to prevent this one.