I took a sip of my soda. “Are you saying you prefer to work alone?”
“Not necessarily,” Yulia said. “Much of botany takes place in the field, where patience and attentiveness are required. This man you imagine — he would not begin as a partner. Starting as an assistant, he would have to listen and take direction. He would need to trust my judgment. In the hothouse is steam and convection. Bright flowers distract and delight, pollens intoxicate the senses, and botanical emanations prevent clear thinking. This man would have to know that, inside the hothouse, there can be only one boss.”
Yulia looked me in the eye. I was imagining the dank work of germination. On my hands I felt the nectar of hybrid breeding. I downed my soda — I had to chew some ice!
She continued: “Scientists like us, Dr. Hannah, we wish to engage the world beyond observation and participation. We wish to make meaning of life, which takes time, discipline, and sacrifice. Certainly, when the Beatificius gentillia drip their once-a-decade pollen from the hothouse rafters, it is only human to strip the clothes. For the most part, however, this man you speak of would have to follow orders. He would have to find satisfaction in learning the ways of another, and when he finally wanted to become a partner, he would have learned when the time was right. By then, he would know how to ask.”
Yulia looked to me for a reaction. I chewed my stupid ice and stood there stunned. Then she turned to speak to someone else. I took a step backward. I took another, until it felt as if I was watching the events before me like a movie. Yulia had told me the man I needed to become in order to be with her. And I froze.
That old sense of detachment came over me again. A few feet away, people drank sodas and ate chips. Conversations were made. Eggers put a skillet on the stovetop and sparked the burner. He poured a puddle of cooking oil in the pan and began making some sort of a speech that everyone in the room could hear but me. An invisible membrane separated myself from the others. Yulia was right in front of me, but unless I found the guts to become the man she needed, she might as well have been in godforsaken North Dakota.
Manning the stove, Eggers gestured largely, explaining his theory of why the Clovis, nomads who founded an empire of meat, might value corn. As the oil began to smoke and spit in the pan, he postulated that the Clovis would have popped their corn, rather than baking it and so on. He cited a few examples of corn popping in early petroglyphs. He listed the tribes who still popped corn in hot sand, and as he ran through the history of corn popping in the oral tradition, he began to remind me of myself at his age.
When hot oil formed golden waves along the bottom of the pan, Eggers hefted Keno’s ball.
I knew Eggers could have offered a lecture. He could have explained that corn found in eighth-century Anasazi ruins had been successfully popped. So, too, had corn discovered at a Peruvian site dating to before Christ. He could have explained how kernels were designed to store moisture, and how moisture then turned to steam and caused the kernel to explode. Without moisture, the corn would’ve turned to dust ages ago. Eggers could even have confessed what I knew to be true, that his tenure as a Clovis had ended a few days ago, that his nontechnology pact was complete.
Instead, Eggers poured the corn into the hissing pan and placed a lid on top. That shut people up. The room fell silent enough to hear the muted sizzle of the oil inside, and when Eggers shook the pan over the burner, everybody flinched but me.
Everyone stood there, staring at the pan, waiting for the first ping of fluffy white to strike the lid. I stood there with them, at the edge of the world they lived in. I could smell Farley’s bacon bits through the oven door. I could hear Gerry and his ex — old lady’s kids coming down the stairs before they even reached our floor. I could feel the radiating body heat of Yulia beside me. I was among this group of people, and yet I didn’t believe something essential that all of them did: that people could simply come together and stay together. It seemed to me that what Eggers was really demonstrating was that it was easier to put your faith in the possibility that twelve-thousand-year-old corn could pop than in the hope that the person you needed also needed you.
The first ping of popcorn came as Gerry and his crew tromped into the common area, each kid holding a pillow half again his size. The kernel rang loud and clear; then the pan fell silent again. Was it a fluke? Had we imagined it?
The kids claimed the sofa and cued up Impossible Journey on the television as Gerry headed my way, casting an unsure glance toward my new coat.
“I got a bone to pick with you, Hanky,” he said.
I stared at him, detached.
“Right now I’ve got a video to watch,” he said. “But mark my words — you and I will have a little mano-mano before this evening is out. And this is not about skipping morning orientation or neglecting coffee-cleanup detail, both major demerits. This is about one of my boys getting it in his head that his mom isn’t at the dude ranch. This is about someone telling him his mama’s in a hospital. You have any clue who might’ve done that?”
Gerry went off to join the kids in watching that Pomeranian movie no one would shut up about. As the opening credits began to roll, the soundtrack swelled with some inspired French horns — sonorous, foreboding, yet somehow uplifting. This was the accompaniment we heard as Eggers’ popcorn came to life, first crackling with the occasional volley, then bursting into salvos of Black Cats and repeating rifles.
Eggers turned off the heat when the old maids began to smoke. Opening the lid sent a cloud of steam to the ceiling, and we beheld a mass of grayish popcorn, the pieces smaller, fatter than I’d expected.
Farley spoke first. He studied that pan the same way he looked into the ice when we fished. “I’ll give it a go, then,” he said, grabbing a few kernels.
Farley chewed for a bit. There was a distracted look on his face. Eggers waited for him to say something, to give some sort of response, but after a while Farley only gave a simple affirmative nod.
Trudy tasted the popcorn next.
Eggers snarfed a little, then passed the bowl to my father, who refused.
“It always gets stuck in my teeth,” he said. “I’ll be flossing all night.”
“Just taste it,” Lorraine told him. “I will if you will.”
Dad shook his head no.
Lorraine flashed her eyes toward me. “This is what your son does for a living,” she told Dad. “This stuff is important to him. You want him to think you don’t admire what he does?”
“I admire plenty of stuff about him,” Dad said.
“Like what?” Lorraine asked.
Dad looked over at me. “Oh, all right,” he said, and ate a couple of kernels.
When he tried to make Lorraine eat some, she laughed.
“No, thank you,” she said. “My work is done here.”
My father looked at me. “See what I put up with,” he said.
When the bowl came to Vadim, he shook his head with some disgust and stood with his arms folded. Of course, he then looked around to make sure everyone noticed his aloof pose. “I see little science here,” Vadim said.
I folded my arms as well. “I concur,” I said. “Still, a scientist must gather data to truly analyze a situation.” I grabbed a handful of popcorn and made a show of studying the kernels appraisingly, thoughtfully. I ate a few pieces. “Edible,” I said to Vadim, offering him some from my hand.
He shot me a suspicious look, then glanced at the movie Gerry and the kids were watching. On the screen was an old cargo plane, flying high over snowy Canada. In the hold were a bunch of circus people and lots of animals. Pomeranians were frolicking, chasing each other around the seats. Suddenly a red light flashes, an engine flames out, and black oil begins streaking down the fuselage. It was the same old story of life. We’d seen it all a hundred times: things are going along fine, and then, for no reason at all, the unforeseen strikes and everything falls apart.