Chapter 6

When I checked my answering service Friday morning, there were messages from Sara’s attorney, Jeff Anderson; from Ben; from Michael; and from my sister, Elaine.
    Jeff asked me to meet with him in his office Friday afternoon. I set an appointment with his secretary.
    Ben’s message said Maria told him I was quitting. He wanted to see me before he went to San Francisco to interview for a position at The Westmont Center for Advanced Study. Ben had tickets to a university production, and we agreed to meet Friday evening at the campus theater.
    Michael wanted to discuss the possibility of my attending his ecumenical conference in New Orleans over a game of HOOPS. I promised I’d meet him at the gym Saturday afternoon.
    My sister, Elaine, was in town raising funds for her Center for the Study of Quantum Gravity in San Francisco. I left a message suggesting we have dinner Saturday evening.

Maria’s office was in One World Trade Center and she made our luncheon reservations in the restaurant on the top floor. She was seated when I arrived. The view was north toward the Empire State Building.
    I said, “Ben tells me he’s going to interview at The Westmont Center this weekend.”
    Maria said, “He has wanted to be a Westmont fellow for years.”
    “Ever since he began his teaching career in California. Of course, he’ll be on the West Coast if he accepts.” I observed Maria closely when I said that, but she showed no reaction, and I took this as a sign there was hope for me with her.
    After we ordered, she said, “Ben told me your father and Michael’s father founded an import-export company in Asia.”
    “Yes, my father was an officer in the French Foreign Legion. He was at Dien Bien Phu when the Vietminh defeated the French Army in 1954. Afterwards, he went to work for a trading company in Macao and later in Formosa. That’s where he met Michael’s father, an officer who served under Chiang Kai-shek before the Communists defeated the Nationalists in 1949. They formed a partnership and eventually moved the business to San Francisco.
    ”Maria said, “My father started our company in Puerto Rico and then relocated to New York.”“But you went into the business and I didn’t.”
    “My father wanted me in the business from the first, but I wanted to get my Ph.D. in philosophy.”
    “That’s when you met Ben?”
    “He was my dissertation advisor, but we didn’t start seeing each other socially until I joined the business faculty last fall.”
    “What was your dissertation?”
    “It would have been to show the influence of quantum theory on the deconstruction projects of Derrida and Gödel.”
    “You didn’t finish?”
    Maria shook her head. “After my father’s heart attack, I could no longer ignore his pleas for me to join the business.”
    “And now you’re a very successful executive,” I said as the waiter served lunch.
    “You must have had similar pressures from your father,” Maria said.
    “No, my father was military to the core—practical to a fault. He understood he and I were cut from different cloth and never tried to force his life on me.”
    “When did you know you wanted to be a writer?”
    “At Berkeley, after I lost my faith. I wanted to tell the Final Story—a story no one could deny. Ben has always laughed at me for trying.”
    “And now you’re going to give up that dream.”
    “My dream of a Final Story assumes the universe is rational if viewed from the whole. Yesterday, something irrational happened to destroy this assumption. My dream is finished.”
    “What did happen, Paul?”
    “I’m not sure. I do know it was irrational. Simply talking about it may confirm that I’m losing my mind.”
    “Aren’t you being melodramatic?”
    “You wouldn’t say that if I told you what happened.”
    “Have you told anyone?”
    I shook my head.
    “Unless you discuss it with someone, you’re never going to get past this.”
    I felt nauseous. “Can we get out of here? I need some air.”
    “You haven’t touched your sandwich.”
    “I’m not hungry.”
    Once we reached ground level, Maria and I walked across the plaza toward Two World Trade Center, and took the quarter-mile elevator ride to the top.
    The glassed-in observation deck was too confining. “Let’s take the stairs to the roof,” I suggested.
    A security guard cautioned us, “We’re not stopping anybody from going up, but it’s pretty raw today. Might be a good day to enjoy the view from here.”
    I acknowledged his warning with nod as I opened the door leading to the upper deck. At the top of the stairs, a couple coming in brushed by us. They were frozen. The man’s teeth chattered, “Y-you don’t w-want to go out there t-today.”
    The roof was empty. We immediately felt a blast of moist, frigid air blowing off the Lower Bay. Maria turned her collar up against the wind, but I hardly noticed. I had other things on my mind.
As we moved around the walkway, all of Manhattan, Long Island, the Statue of Liberty in the Lower Bay, the Hudson River, and the New Jersey waterfront spread in panoramic view below us.
    “Maria, I want to see you.”
    Maria pressed a gloved finger against my lips to stop me from going further.
    I took her hand in mine, pulled her to me, and kissed her. For a moment she kissed me back, then she pulled away.
    “You’re married.”
    “I feel closer to you than ever. I’m going to sign the divorce agreement this afternoon.”
    Again, Maria put her finger to my lips. “It’s the hurt talking, Paul. You’ve fallen so far so fast. You’ll feel differently when you gain your bearings.”
    “Tell me you don’t have feelings for me.”
    “I love Ben.”
    “You and I were together from the moment we met in Washington Square. Tell me I’m wrong, and I won’t say another word.”
    “You take risks with your writing that Ben only dreams about taking. But I won’t see you as long as you won’t tell me what happened to make you give up your dream.”
    I stared past the Varrazno Narrows Bridge to the Atlantic Ocean and on to the horizon beyond.
    She tried again. “You have to feel you can tell me anything, Paul.”
    “I want to tell you what happened.”
    “Don’t wait too long.”
    Another freezing gust whipped against us. This time I felt it.

Chapter 6 continued