Chapter 2: Orbit

Eric felt like cursing the people who had come in behind him. It would have been more rational to bless them. He couldn’t tell what he would have done if they hadn’t come in. Diane would have had to knee him to escape his clutches.

It was still early for him. He realized that it probably wasn’t early for Diane. He savored that name. He watched the TV news. At least he sat in front of the set while the news was on. His attention was entirely on the evening gone by. The high point had definitely been the kiss, but he shouldn’t forget the time when she said that it was a date. She hadn’t been afraid of the concept of dating him. Of course, he shouldn’t let her know that he hadn’t dated anyone since Laura had died.

That led to memories definitely less pleasant. The screech of brakes and noisy horn to his right. Stepping on the brakes, the skid, pumping the brakes and steering into the skid. Slowing as he went into the intersection. Then the crash from the right and having Laura, or parts of Laura, tossed into him with incredible force. Her funeral had been closed-casket. He had escaped with breaks in two bones in his right arm, one in his right leg, and several broken ribs.

That had been the end of his last date. Diane probably wouldn’t think of that as a date, but, when you’re married you know that time with your spouse away from the kid and celebrating is a date. Well, now he’d had another date, and the end had been quite different. He turned off the TV and went up to bed.

In the money flood after DSI went public, he had designed the house. He had an architect to do the final plan, and he had incorporated everything that Laura wanted. Still, it was his design according to his tendencies. The master bedroom was techno-sybaritic, with controls for everything in the headboard. In his dressing room, he changed into pajamas and put his clothes in the closet and the hamper. He hadn’t used pajamas until Valerie was old enough that he suspected that she would notice that he was appearing in her room wearing only a robe.

A touch to the panel at the door from his dressing room into the bedroom turned the light on. There were three more touch panels for on-off, and there was a dimmer at the headboard. The air in the bedroom was brisk, somewhat cooler than the dressing room. He slept under only a sheet, though. The radiant heaters focused on his side of the queen-sized mattress -- firm since he and Laura had considered that gave them more support for sex -- kept his body warm. He kept the radiant heaters which focused on Laura’s side off.

They’d planned for every contingency that they could imagine. There were three rooms for children. These would be suitable up through the teen years. They had planned what they would do if the third pregnancy resulted in twins. They had not planned what they would do if Laura were killed. Eric privately thought that the Barnes house was really the “bigger barns” house.

He went to bed and touched the button to shut off the light. There was a bedside lamp and a high-intensity light so he could read a book or company document without bothering Laura. There was one of each on her side, too. Tonight, he didn’t want to read, he wanted to remember. He started remembering everything he could about the kiss. Considering how intense the sensations had been, it was strange that the actions he could remember were so few. They had stood there hugging; his tongue had explored her mouth while every other part of his body had been frozen in place. Then the outsiders had come bursting in. All right, they had seemed to be tenants rather than outsiders to the building. At least one of them had a key to the doors. Still, they had been outsiders to that moment who had no right to disturb that delight.

While the kiss had been the climax of the evening, it had been a fine evening before that, too. So he went back reliving the entire time and teasing himself with the knowledge that he would relive the kiss at the end. When he had, he fell asleep content if aroused. When he awoke to the alarm, he discovered that he had had a wet dream. Remembering before the day erased the memory of his dream, he realized that it had featured Diane. Diane’s dress had been lovely, but without it she had been lovelier. That was, however, a wet dream without Laura.

For a time after the accident, his erotic feelings had been as broken as his ribs. He had been shocked, a month afterwards, when he found that his libido awoke when his body was asleep. The dream was of Laura, understandably enough. The memories that followed waking, though, were so tragic that they tore him apart. After the second such incident, he had gone out to buy his stash of photographs. That had been one purchase which he couldn’t delegate to Murphy. Still, they hadn’t been hard to find in San Francisco.

Now this dream evoked much happier memories. He indulged in a few in the shower. He dressed and came down to breakfast with Madeleine and Sparky. Though Sparky was going to spend the day here, she was fully dressed in what were normally school clothes. Madeleine was skipping church so he could go. Eric went to church most weeks, and he certainly thought it would be ungrateful to skip this one.

“Where were you last night?” Sparky asked.

“Well, I was grateful to Dr. Thibault for the treatment you got at the hospital. So I took her out to dinner to thank her.”

“Doctor?” Sparky had decided that there was only one doctor in the hospital or, for that matter, in the universe. “Was she with you when I called?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I wanted to talk to her.” Actually, Sparky would have wanted to talk to Diane if she had known. That was too complex a thought for a first grader to express.

“Well,” he said. “You were being unpleasant. Why should I have subjected her to your unpleasantness?”

“I would have been nice to her.” Probably Sparky wouldn’t have at that particular moment. She clearly, however, had good feelings toward the good doctor.

“Your tummy doesn’t hurt any more?”

“Only a little bit.”

“I’ll tell Dr. Thibault that when I speak to her again,” he said.

Sparky was in a good mood if a bit stir crazy. She gave him an enthusiastic kiss good bye when he left for church. Sparky was still in a good mood at lunch. She conned him into some games of Uno afterwards, and he went back to letting her win, which he’d abandoned for months before her hospitalization. The next morning, she kissed him sweetly before he left for work.

That work went as usual. If the Faustian bargain he had made was that he couldn’t do any programming in turn for getting megabucks, he could use his power to keep customers from bugging real programmers. He got home well before dinner time. Sparky was back in a good humor, and he got warm hug around his legs when he got home. Conscious of her incision, he didn’t pick her up. Instead, when his coat was hung up, he got both of them on the couch for a long hug and a welcome-home kiss. Then, dinner time not scheduled for ten minutes yet, he escaped into the computer room to make a call.

Diane was eating supper in the hospital cafeteria when her cell rang. She cursed. She was on call, and, if this call required her actual presence, she would have to leave her meal. Instead it was Eric.

“Is this a good time?” he asked.

“If another call comes in, I’ll have to deal with it. I’m on call. Otherwise I was just eating supper. That’s as good a time as I’ll get tonight.”

“Well, continue eating while listening. I gather that meals are sort of hit-or-miss on your schedule. Before I forget, Valerie said that her tummy only hurts a little. I told her I’d report that to you. She still remembers you fondly. So does her dad. Which was the real reason for my call. I wanted to thank you for a delightful evening.” Despite what he’d said, she would have to keep her mouth empty to answer. She could talk on the phone to nurses with her mouth full; any nurse had missed her own lunch often enough to sympathize with an eating resident. She wanted Eric to think of her as having her mouth empty. He just might want to kiss it again.

“I enjoyed it myself.” She wasn’t going to say how much she had enjoyed the kiss at the end. He probably knew that; he’d been there.

“Well, in that case, maybe we could repeat it. Like, tomorrow.”

“Definitely not tomorrow. The hospital gives me the time off that they consider the minimum necessary to sustain life, and they don’t mean social life.”

“Well, I’m assuming that you’re on call day after tomorrow. How about the evening after that?”

“I’d be delighted.”

“Six at the hospital or seven at your place? Or some other arrangement? I’m not trying to limit you; I’m trying to guess your pre-existent limits.”

“Seven at my place. I don’t think you’re trying to limit me. You just don’t guess the limits I already have too well.” She wasn’t going to try for ‘pre-existent.’ If I walk out of the hospital, it’s in my uniform.” And with her hospital face, though she supposed she could put on some makeup in a public ladies’ room.

“Well, I think you look wonderful in your uniform, but I understand why you might like to wear something else occasionally. You know, that’s one psychological distinction between the sexes. I wear a white shirt, khakis, and black shoes to the office every day. I could wear anything, but I don’t.”

“Dr. Kleinfeld told me that being a CEO meant that you could wear anything you wanted,” she said.

“Maybe. Then, too, that’s about what I wore as a programmer. Maybe I’m pretending that I’m still a programmer. I used to be one, and -- if I say so myself -- a good one. Now, I’m just an executive.” She had to think about that. She’d been raised around executives who thought that they were the acme of civilization. Rentiers might have more money, but they were somewhat degenerate. Eric clearly thought that becoming an executive was a step down from being a programmer.

“Well, I bet that nobody comes up to a programmer on a social occasion and tells them his symptoms.”

“Not even his crashed computer’s symptoms. Well, you’re multitasking -- on call and eating dinner. I’ll stop asking you to carry on a phone conversation, too.”

“Really, it’s been fun. Call any time.”

“You don’t really mean any time. When are you on duty as opposed to merely being on call -- merely?”

“Pretty much six to six.”

“Good bye.”

“Good bye.” She shut her phone. Somebody had to end the conversation. She went back to a fairly-cold dinner, but the talk had been worth it. She liked Eric, and he seemed to like her, too. She was in serious lust with the guy. That might not be mutual, but it might. He was male, after all.

When her love for Vaughan had been about to take the ultimate step, she had gone to student health for the Pill. She had been shocked to learn that it would take a month to become effective. Her affair with Ted later hadn’t had that danger because she had stayed on the Pill throughout her college years. She had stayed on it through med school, too, although that hadn’t been needed.

With her residency, and the hours it took, she had stopped the Pill. Now, she probably wouldn’t need it, but ... At the end of the kiss the previous night, she would have gone with Eric anywhere he had asked her to. In the middle of the kiss, she might have let him take her there in the entryway. That wasn’t going to happen, but something less public would be more possible. She should have one fewer worries if it did. The problem was scheduling a gynecologist’s appointment on her down time. No! She could now prescribe, and she would prescribe for herself. That was something she would buy the next night, and she would write the prescription the next day.

She had finished her meal and gone upstairs to her room when the phone rang. She had to get down to the floor, but, at least, she was still dressed.

Eric was remarkably cheerful the next morning at work. Murphy asked him if Sparky was feeing better.

“A sore belly and a bit stir-crazy,” he replied. “Other than that, she’s fine.”

He had a second date with a girl. She was a nice girl being social with a used-up old man. It wouldn’t go very far, certainly not far enough for him to need condoms. His having thought that, however, was reason enough to buy a pack. He went out for lunch and bought twelve Trojans on his way back to the office. That night, after dinner, he took them up to the bedroom. When he put them in the drawer of his night stand, he found the box that he had used until Laura had told him that her pills were effective again after she’d weaned Val. That made them about five years old, and he threw them out.

His cell rang when he was still in the bedroom. It was Diane’s ring, and he grabbed it and dropped down on the bed.

“Is this the wrong time?” she asked.

“Never. You have to understand that you have wrong times, and that I understand that you do. I don’t have many wrong times. In the middle of the day, I may be dealing with somebody, but I can put them off. If you had called much earlier, Sparky would have been around and wanted to talk to you. That’s not like your situation. If I’m driving, I’ll wait for a stopping point before answering.”

“And then say, ‘Daddy was driving’?”

He laughed. “Well that is the basic idea. Sometime, she’ll have a license. It’ll only be a decade. Sorry! Time gets compressed for parents. Anyway, when she drives herself, she will be conscious that one doesn’t drive and talk on the phone. More likely, she’ll be conscious that old stodgy folk like her dad don’t talk and drive. But you do what you can, and then sweat bullets. But don’t let me dump my worries on you. Where are you?”

“Back in my apartment. I’ve done my Christmas shopping.”

“You’re early,” he said.

“I have to send all of it out of state. My family is splintered hither and yon, mostly yon. And where are you?”

“I’m lying in my bed.”

“I did call too late?” Diane asked. Heavens no! Not everybody went to work at the crack of dawn. Actually, six in the morning was earlier than dawn at this time of year.

“Nah! I’m lying, fully dressed including shoes, on top of my bed. I was just in the room when you called. Is lying on top of the bedspread in your shoes degenerate?”

“It can’t be good for the bedspread.”

“Well,” he said, “they make them to protect the sheets underneath from dirt. If you don’t put any dirt on them, then they are useless.”

“Did you think up that excuse off the top of your head?”

“Guilty. Can you think of a better one?”

“I’m not sure that the contest should be figuring out an excuse for destructive behavior,” Diane said. “Maybe we should try to be less destructive.”

“I suppose.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I just realized why I’m taking it out on you. This was a bad day. Two separate admissions, two kids who fell down the stairs.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “The same stairs?”

“Not even the same neighborhoods. The thing is, the guy who looks worse was running and fell down a short flight of outside concrete stairs.”

“Ouch!” Kids take the damnedest risks, and, of course, the younger kids were more likely to lose their balances. Sparky was usually more agile than he was, but she still could trip where he wouldn’t.

“But the other, I would swear, was being punished. He is supposed to have fallen down the stairs of his house while nobody else was anywhere near. That’s what he says, what he says even when his parents aren’t within hearing distance -- and wasn’t that fun to arrange. He broke his arm and has facial contusions from the fall. The belt-shaped bruise marks on his glutes are a simple coincidence.”

“Well, I may abuse bedspreads. I don’t abuse my daughter.”

“Yeah,” she admitted. “I know that.”

“Spoil her, maybe.” To be fair he certainly spoiled her. When you could afford it, could afford it without noticing, when was it a bad idea to buy it for her?

“Tonight, spoiling kids is something I feel remarkably tolerant about.”

“I can see that. I’m not sure it’s not worse, though.”

“Sure,” Diane said. “I see beaten kids, and I see kids dying of cancer. The beaten kids are, in a sense, luckier. Still...”

“Still, there is the matter of intent.”

“And the matter of what you do. If you cut out a malignancy, you can throw it away. You are lucky if you can separate a malignant parent from the child.”

Diane ended the conversation happy about more than simply having an ear to whom she could vent her frustrations. Eric had been an overanxious parent, and those could be frustrating, too. On the other hand, as he’d said, there was the matter of intent. She decided that she liked more about Eric than his lips.

Then she went about wrapping her presents, once in Christmas paper and once for mailing. At least, she could put her presents for Karen and Norm and her presents for Anne and Greg together. She actually liked her sisters in law more than she liked her older brothers -- not a high bar. She did not, however, know them well. You didn’t need to like somebody to see what kind of gift they would enjoy.

Should, she finally wondered, she get a gift for Eric? No. In the first place, he could buy any single thing he wanted. In the second place, she didn’t know him at all.

The next day was neither particularly easy nor particularly hard. She called Eric while still sitting in the cafeteria after her supper. They had just begun when she got a call. The issue wasn’t one she could resolve without going back on the floor. She called him back when she could get privacy.

“Sorry about that,” she said from her room.

“Don’t be. If anything, I’m jealous. Somebody needs you because you’re socially useful. I’m only useful to Sparky.”

“Seems people think you’re useful. They pay you, don’t they?”

“One hell of a lot more than the hospital pays residents,” Eric said. “Does that make me useful? Actually, what I sell is programs, and other people write the programs. You can debate their utility. Some of them have great uses; others only increase the profits of greedy corporations.”

“Well, I was down yesterday.”

Eric said, “Don’t talk about my uselessness.” They had more important topics to discuss than that. “I’m not particularly down now. I made the bargain long ago, and I can’t go back. If I sold out now, nobody would hire me to write programs. Anyway, do we have a date for tomorrow night?” She had called, after all. Was it to call off the date? And, if so, was it to postpone it -- which would be disappointing -- or to end the relationship -- which would be devastating.

“I think we do.”

“Your place, seven p.m.?”

“Yeah,” Diane said.

“Just checking. It might be old news, but it’s the best news of the day. It’s even better news to me than the news that Sparky’s going back to school on Monday.”

“That does sound good.”

“I like it; Madeleine really likes it -- ‘though the woman is a saint; even Sparky likes it,” he said.

“She enjoys school then?”

“Less the lessons than the other kids. I was an only child, but it seems to be lonelier for her. And, of course, no other kids are available when school is in session. That’s part of Madeleine’s candidacy for sainthood. We have a back yard in the summer. Well, all year around, but we use it in the summer. She sort of watches when other kids come around. Makes Sparky quite popular with the moms, at least.”

“How do you get a back yard in San Francisco?” Diane asked.

“Well, we’re in Sausalito, really. And you get a back yard by buying two lots and building close to the street. Everybody else around us goes deep, but we went for wide.”

Eric belatedly noticed that he had been reporting what “we,” he and Laura had done. Did he want to bring up Laura with Diane? On the one hand, she deserved to know. On the other hand, once she knew what a mess he had made of his life, she wouldn’t want to be part of it. She didn’t seem to have caught it, though. And the conversation went on and ended pleasantly.

“Like Italian?” he asked when they were in the car.

“Yeah.”

“I only asked because you said something about calories earlier. Italian cooking is delicious, but some women can’t enjoy it because they are obsessing about their weight.”

Diane was fairly sure that his ‘some women’ included his wife. Maybe it was a euphemism for his wife. She had only mentioned a concern about weight once, and that while ignoring the concern. Somebody else had obsessed about it -- or what Eric considered obsessing -- and that was probably a wife. For a guy without sisters, it was almost certainly a wife.

“What happened to your wife anyway?” she asked. It was a delicate question, but ignoring it would be stepping around eggshells. Maybe she had been an anorexic.

“I don’t like to talk about it,” Eric said. Then he added, “I killed her.”

Diane thought “Great!” She is in a car with the sexiest man she’d ever kissed, and he admits to her that he’d killed his wife. Then she had her doubts. She didn’t doubt that a person rich enough could get away with murder. She didn’t think that he could get away with confessing to murder. Anyway, all they had was a dinner date. Probably, his confession might restrain her libido.

At the restaurant, she ordered veal scaloppini and he echoed her. He ordered a Chianti. Though she enjoyed it and it had to go with his dish as well as it went with hers -- they were the same dish -- he didn’t touch it.

“Look,” she said, “if you don’t drink, you don’t have to buy me drinks. I’m really not used to wine with my meals. You should remember that from the hospital cafeteria.”

“Oh, I drink. I hug Sparky, too. I just do neither when I’m driving. Well, I don’t drink and drive these days. If I’d followed that rule earlier, Sparky’s mother would still be alive.”

Now, she’d heard two versions -- two incompatible versions -- of his wife’s death. What was the reality?

“I’m sorry I brought it up before,” she said. “Still, with what you’re saying, I think I should have a clear statement of how your wife died.”

Eric saw that she was right. It was unfair to her to expect her to go on without knowing how he had messed up her predecessor. Then he had a shocked internal question as to when he had decided that he wanted to marry Diane. It wasn’t time to deal with that, however. This was the time to lay the truth before her.

“We were celebrating. We were eating out, and drinking. Between us, we killed a bottle of wine.” Laura had done more than her part. Soon, she would have to go dry for the new baby. “We were driving -- I was driving -- a sports car with great handling but the crash resistance of your average eggshell. We were more-or-less on the level but the hill on our right was quite steep. The roads were slick with rain. There was a sound, brakes and horn, up the hill to my right as I came towards the intersection.

“I was muzzy,” he continued. “I stood on the brake, and the car started to skid. I pumped the brakes and steered into the skid. That slowed the car and it was under control and going more slowly as it went into the intersection. Then a van plowed into it from the right. Laura was pulverized. Even I was hurt a little, and I was on the other side of the car. Laura had part of the door in her pelvis.”

“Well,” he finished, “it was plain that I should have sped up instead of slowing down. The sports car was supposed to handle beautifully. I could have gone through the intersection before the van arrived there and avoided the cars ahead of me. I’ve always thought I would have if I’d been cold sober.”