Chapter 1: Meeting Lillian

The seminar room was decorated haphazardly with a few paper lanterns and a mangy, fake christmas tree that carried the dust of untold years spent stowed away in broom closets. The room was far too small anyway for the over fifty people who had assembled for the lab christmas party.

I wiggled my way through the crowd and to the tables that served as buffet for our contributions. With not a little pride I placed my homemade salad on one of them and pulled off the Saran wrap. It was an East-Prussian herring salad, a family recipe from my grandmother who had been a native of Konigsberg.

This was my first Christmas in the US, in fact my first Christmas away from my hometown in Southern Germany and I still felt awkward and lost. During the last summer I had completed my Doctor rerum naturalium, the German equivalent to a Ph.D., and I had come to Bethesda, MD, for a post-doctoral stint at the National Cancer Institute. I was still suffering from culture shock and I was not fluent in English either, at least not in colloquial, American English.

This was offset by the friendly, open atmosphere in our laboratory. I had colleagues from India, Taiwan, Italy, Scotland, and Canada (the French-speaking part). None of us spoke perfect English, least of all our Scotsman (just kidding, Angus!), which lowered the pressure for the individual.

I had poured myself a glass of California red wine and had just selected a spicy pastry that my pal Shyam from Mumbai had contributed when the Big Man entered. Max Rosenzweig was our Lab Chief, a salt-and-pepper haired, distinguished gentleman. Only six months into my post-doc time I already tried to model my conduct after him. He maintained the same friendly distance from every member of his team, regardless of their individual achievements. He was encouraging and always able to help you with advice. Did I mention that I admire the man?

In his wake walked, no, glided two gorgeous specimen of the female gender. On second look I saw that they were mother and daughter, not sisters. Both were rather petite at 5'5" and lithe yet undeniably female in spite of their short, black hair. Obviously they were Max' family, a hypothesis that Shyam, a two-year veteran in the lab, confirmed.

"Ruth is a Section Chief in Building 10," he told me, pointing out the older woman. "She's a clinical oncologist. Lillian is a college senior at the University of Virginia."

"She's very pretty," I blurted.

"She is," Shyam sighed spontaneously and reverently. Then he shrugged. "What the hell, she's way out of our league."

I took a second or two to process the idiom. When I understood Shyam I grated a bit.

"She's something better she thinks?" I asked a little nettled. I didn't think of myself as chopped liver after all.

"No, she's a nice girl but get real! Do you know what a Lab Chief takes home? At least 120 grand a year. What do you have? Twenty grand and a one-year fellowship."

He had a point there and it was a moot point anyway. The lab rumor had it that Max' father was a holocaust survivor, the only survivor of his entire family. Well, I am German. Go figure! Max never let me feel any reservation – he was too good a person for that – but there is a difference between accepting a post-doc and letting him date his daughter.

Nevertheless, I repeatedly caught myself stealing glances at the black haired pixy and twice she looked back at me with a mischievous smile. Fate struck when I reloaded my plate at the buffet.

Suddenly, a throaty voice at my side made my hair stand on end. "This is so good!"

I looked right and there she was, Lillian Rosenzweig, loading another ladle of herring salad onto her plate. She looked up at me – I'm 6'3" – and smiled.

"This salad is great. It's like my grandmother's. You have to try it!" she enthused.

I think I blushed, but the opportunity was too good to pass. "Thank you, Miss Rosenzweig! I like that you like my salad." Did I mention that my English sucked?

"You made that? Get outta here! You must give me the recipe! Mom!" she waved her free hand desperately until her slightly older looking mirror image appeared beside us. "He made the salad!"

Ruth Rosenzweig came over. "You must be Rudolf Bernreiter," she smiled. "Max talks at lot about you."

I was worried immediately, and it showed.

"Only good things," Ruth smiled. "He was so happy to snag you away from Stanford."

"Oooh, the wunderkind," Lillian giggled. "And he can cook, too." Seeing my embarrassment, she was contrite, but a little devil danced in her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Rudy," she smiled. Whatever embarrassment I felt was of no consequence because she put her hand on my arm in a friendly gesture. "I'm a tease, I know, but Father has been singing your praise for almost five months and I never had a face for the name. Still, I won't let you go without getting the recipe out of you."

"I can't help you here," Ruth grinned. "Better give her the recipe. I know her: she won't give up."

"Yes, I can give you the recipe," I managed to say, inwardly kicking myself for my clumsy English. In my native tongue I could dazzle her, I could be witty and make a good impression. In English I sounded like a veritable idiot even to my own ears.

"Let's go to the computer room," Lillian said, pulling me out of the room, not without loading another helping onto her plate and grinning smugly.

The computer room, our pride. We had a real life Sun Workstation in there running the GCG Wisconsin software package for DNA analysis. This machine kicked some serious ass! We also had two Macintosh 512k with 9" black and white screens, plus a Kodak laser printer. The Macs were maxed out at 1 megabyte of RAM with 3 1/2 inch, 400k floppy drives and they were incredibly fast with their 6 MHz Motorola 68000 processors.

Lillian sat down at one of them, pulled a floppy disk from her purse and inserted it. Then she started MacWrite and looked up at me.

"How do you call that salad?"

"East-Prussian herring salad," I answered, and she typed that as a title.

Little by little, she extracted the information she needed, translating my grams into ounces and pounds, and my quarter-litres into cups. Of course I stumbled more than once trying to find English words for ingredients and spices. Fortunately, but she had enough German to understand me and after fifteen minutes she saved the file and printed a hard copy.

That done, she began asking me questions. Where did I come from? Did I have siblings?How long did I plan to stay in the US? I answered as best I could, afraid that any lull in our conversation would break up our being together. I even asked her some questions stumbling over the words and ever so sensitive to my different background.

She took my awkwardness in stride smiling at me and touching my arm now and then. When we ran out of topics an hour later I had a monster crush on Lillian. Reluctantly we rejoined the crowd in the seminar room. I fixed her with another glass of wine and had a coffee myself. We stood together sipping our respective drinks and searching for a new topic for conversation when Lillian suddenly looked into my eyes.

"Do you have wheels?" she asked, and when I did not comprehend, "I mean, a car?"

I nodded hastily. Did I have a car! Three months ago at a neighborhood yard sale I had found a true beauty. A cream-colored 1966 Mercedes Benz 200D in mint condition and a steal at just $900. It had 120,000 miles on the clock but its Diesel engine was running like – well, an old tractor. Lillian went to where her mother was standing and said something into her ear. Her mother raised her eyebrows and looked at me but then she shrugged and smiled. Lillian came back.

"Have you ever been to Georgetown?" she asked and I nodded.

Back in 1985 there was no restaurant worth mentioning in Bethesda, quite a difference from today. If you wanted to eat well you had to drive down to Georgetown.

"Come on, let's have dinner someplace. Dutch treat!"

I shook my head, not understanding the idiom and she smiled.

"Dutch treat means we each pay for our food." She grinned ruefully. "I know what you guys get paid and it's less than my allowance."

I could hardly believe my good fortune when we located our coats and left the building heading for the park deck. I found my Benz and Lillian admired it dutifully. I made her buckle up – something that was engrained in me – and Lillian giggled.

"You're quite the worrywart," she laughed. Then seeing that I did not understand, "You worry too much."

I shook my head while I maneuvered the Benz out of the park deck. "When I studied, I worked night shifts at a morgue. I saw all those people coming in from traffic accidents. All those dead they never had bruises from safety belts; they had not buckled up."

"You worked in a morgue?" she asked incredulously.

I nodded. "Yes, it was good money. My parents could not pay for my studies, not for everything. My sisters were at university too, so the money was not enough. I worked six night shifts every month and made almost five-hundred Marks."

She looked at me dubiously. "That's, what, $200?"

I nodded. "When I did my doctorate I had a salary so I stopped working in the morgue."

Lillian stared ahead for a while as I drove south on Old Georgetown Road into Bethesda, the Diesel engine making quite a racket.

"Now I feel like shit," she admitted. "My parents pay for everything. I spend $200 just for eating out and clothes."

"Don't," I answered. "It wasn't so bad. We are not poor. My sisters and I, we came within three years and we finished school within two years because I skipped a year ... a grade, I mean. We went to university at the same time and the costs were too high all at once. My sisters worked, I worked, and we managed."

Obviously, Lillian decided to change subjects and there was a twinkle in her eyes. "You have been checking me out all afternoon," she said.

I was thawing around her and I did not feel that embarrassed anymore. "Yes, you are good to look at," I answered, giving her a short grin.

That made her giggle. "Where is the shy nerd I met two hours ago?"

"Nerd?"

"A nerd, a geek, you know. Somebody who is awkward around girls, who reads and is not an athlete."

"Oh, but I am an athlete," I protested. As a matter of fact I had won two national rowing championships in the uncoxed pairs, no mean feat at all, and I told her.