I wrapped my arms around Charlie, careful not to touch his sore places, and rocked him back and forth. The feeling of newness, of giving comfort, was as strong as the weeks we’d spent learning the pleasures of sex. I had not yet declared it, but I was not done falling in love with Charlie Fish.
“I’ve always been interested in acoustics,” he blurted out into my belly, before burying his face there again.
I nearly laughed. Instead I said, “Then it’s settled.”
The superior girl still had not learned. I thought I was saving him. I was wrong.
50.
The lecture hall was only half-filled, as the semester began with many men still on active duty. Not everyone was eager to return to a classroom.
“In the course catalog you will see curriculum modifications,” said Richard Zeno, world-class particle physicist and physics department chairman. He had bushy eyebrows, hair in his ears, hair in his nose. Behind him sat other professors, plus postdoc fellows, observing with undisguised boredom.
“I can’t believe it,” a boy to the left whispered. “The same room as Richard Zeno.”
Charlie nodded, but he was paying attention to the speech. The demands for some faculty members to aid in the war effort, low enrollment, availability of research funding—all of these forces “may require an adjustment of expectations,” Zeno said. “It could be some time before we are at full throttle. But I assure you, we will have no deficit of excellent instruction, no shortage of work.”
Charlie’s curiosity overcame his desire to make a good impression by listening closely. He pulled out the course listings. There were three optics courses on the list, but in reading the descriptions he realized they were about focusing techniques for aircraft bombing runs. He searched further, finding one course in his area of interest—“Foundational Principles of Acoustics”—and it was not offered until spring semester.
Zeno invited the new students to ask questions. A student to Charlie’s right raised his hand. “Will Stanford be helping to develop the hydrogen bomb?”
Several of the professors in back roused themselves at that question. Zeno pointed to a long-bearded fellow who, as he spoke, held his jacket by the lapels. “We intend to play a leadership role,” the professor said. “There will be course offerings, lab work, postdoc and field opportunities, and presumably, jobs for those who excel.”
Charlie saw heads nodding all around the lecture hall.
Another hand rose. “Will we be working on atomic electricity? Or just weapons?”
Zeno answered that one himself. “Funding at present is weapon-centric. But I fully expect that other applications of fission and fusion will gradually come to the fore.”
He scanned the room. “One more?”
Charlie found his hand in the air. “What about acoustics?”
Zeno chuckled. “What about acoustics?”
“I’m only seeing one course in the catalog.”
“Professor Fusco, yes. We expect him to return from Oak Ridge this fall.”
“But that’s the only offering in that discipline?”
Zeno turned to the professors, none of whom seemed interested. He smirked at Charlie. “That field will return to prominence the moment we find a way to win a war through the application of acoustics.”
People laughed here and there in the audience, after which a department administrator came forward and described the registration process. After him, lunch.
Charlie took his tray across the cafeteria to a crowded table, an empty seat at the far end. The fellows nodded hello, while one at the head of the table was saying something. “I didn’t hear one concrete example of how we’ll work on the H-bomb. And who was that guy asking about acoustics? I mean, let’s be deliberately irrelevant.”
Charlie waved his fork in the air. “That was me.”
“Well, then.” The boy seemed not at all abashed. “How does that contribute to the betterment of America?”
Charlie scooped mashed potatoes with his fork. “Personally, I feel like I’ve done quite enough national betterment lately. Now I want to enlarge my mind.” And he shoveled the food into his mouth.
“I knew it,” a boy across the table said. “You’re him, aren’t you?”
“Him who?” said the loudmouth at the head of the table.
“Trigger. I heard he was in our program. You’re him.”
Charlie spoke with his mouth full. “I don’t like that nickname.”
“But you’re a hero,” the boy said. “You made thirty-two things happen at once.”
“Actually it was sixteen. Two arrays and a doubler.” He scooped more potatoes.
“I thought you’d be taller.”
Charlie held his hands wide. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Still,” the boy said. “This is the detonator genius of Los Alamos, guys. Trigger.”
Charlie stood, picking up his tray. “I don’t like that name.”
That night Brenda had dinner waiting, and she was wearing a snug red dress. They had rented a three-room bungalow with a tiny front porch a dozen blocks from campus. By then they had woken in the same bed for eight consecutive mornings, and the pleasure of it was so acute, Charlie lingered. Each day he’d had to run to campus to meet his first commitments.
“How’s it going so far?” she asked, while they sipped iced tea on the porch.
“Not what I expected.”
“In a good way?”
“Someone called me Trigger.”
“Oh, Charlie.”
“No acoustics till spring. But there’s an electronics course that might be fun. A little soldering, perhaps.”
She laughed. “I pity anyone who tries to compete with you.”
Charlie put his glass down on the table. “I think I’m going to bed.”
“Are you all right?”
He paused at the door. “I am the tiredest man on earth.”
And he left his wife on the porch alone, dusk coming on like a premonition.
The next morning he was at the kitchen table, writing, when she came in. “Sorry I overslept.” Brenda bent and kissed the side of his neck. “How did you sleep?”
“Next to you,” he said, flipping the papers over into a folder, then hugging her waist. Brenda stood as still as a tree, not moving until he let go. He pressed his head against her belly, and she had to shift her hips—still tender. She grabbed a fistful of his hair, then released it and went to pour herself a mug of coffee. “Still healing, I guess.”
“I know how you feel.”
“Oh, but look at the time,” she added, and when Charlie glanced at the stove clock, he jumped up and ran for the door.
By lunchtime that day, nearly all the students were calling him Trigger. Charlie went to electronics early, set himself up with a soldering bench, and amused himself with components until the room was full and the professor arrived. Papers and books tucked under one arm, he glanced at Charlie’s work area and stopped cold.
“Gentlemen, there will be no use of the irons except under my supervision.” He said it loudly, for the whole room to hear. “Is that understood?”