“Exactly what I said to a gal at the last dance,” Monroe whispered.
Giles chuckled but Charlie shook his head. He turned to whisper. “Sometimes you act like a six-year-old.”
“Proud of it,” Monroe said.
“First,” Sebring said, “we have what its inventors are calling ‘the nut.’”
He turned to a fresh page on the flip chart, which showed a sphere with a barrier through the middle. “Slightly larger than a golf ball, with a dividing membrane in the middle. In each half, we pack elements that generate free neutrons—on one side, polonium, and on the other, beryllium.”
Charlie glanced back at Monroe, who winked.
Sebring flipped the page. Now a larger sphere surrounded the nut. “This vessel contains plutonium, which is much harder to make and handle, but is potentially far stronger than uranium. The sphere is roughly the size of a beach ball, to keep the plutonium dispersed so it won’t spontaneously go critical. Therefore we need an implosion, to compress the plutonium into great density, at the same time the inward pressure will break the nut’s membrane and release a barrage of neutrons.”
A man on the far side of the room raised his hand. “May I ask a question?”
Sebring stepped away from the chart. “Of course.”
“The plutonium in the beach ball. How much of a pop will it make?”
Sebring raised his voice for the rest of the room. “The gentleman’s question is about yield. We estimate that four ounces of plutonium, via implosion, might equal the yield of twenty thousand pounds of TNT.”
A murmur passed through the crowd.
“Four ounces makes twenty thousand pounds?” Monroe whistled. “Woo-eee.”
“Oh, excuse me.” Sebring held up one finger. “I misspoke, pardon me. I meant twenty thousand tons of TNT. Not pounds, tons.”
Now the murmur rose into a hundred conversations, in every corner of the room.
“Are you sure you don’t want to leave?” Giles asked.
“Are you nuts?” Charlie replied. “This is fascinating.”
“All right, then. Here we go.” Giles raised his hand. “Professor Sebring?”
“Yes, another one.” He pointed at Giles. “If we could have quiet please?”
It took half a minute for people to settle themselves.
“Yes?” Sebring nodded at Giles. “What is your question?”
He gave Charlie a pained look, then turned forward. “How do you plan to accomplish this implosion?”
“I prepared for that one.” He marched back to his easel, flipping to a page with an even larger sphere, with dotted lines inside indicating the nut and beach ball, and with nodes sticking up here and there on its surface like prongs. “In our current design, implosion will occur when traditional explosives, in twenty-four detonators equidistant around the sphere, provide uniform contraction and pressurization.”
For the first time, Sebring smiled. “It’s rather elegant, really. Twenty-four conventional devices fire at precisely the same time, the plutonium compresses, the nut bursts . . . pop.”
This time though, as Sebring said the word “pop,” he made a sphere with his fingers, then slowly opened his arms as wide as they would go.
“Hey.” Monroe tapped Charlie’s shoulder. “Ain’t that what you been working on?”
But he did not reply.
Giles leaned closer. “Are you all right?”
“Good God in heaven,” Charlie said at last. “It starts with me.”
25.
The fastest I ever became an expert in anything was lying. It happened overnight. Unlike the organ, which even the basics of take years to learn, in the few hours between saying good night to Chris and waking the next morning, I acquired the skill of deceit.
In childhood, I might have tried the rare fib to avoid punishment, but it had never worked. In adolescence, I was capable of no worse than exaggerating a sore throat, to gain an extra day for writing my book report on A Tale of Two Cities.
Starting that night though, and for a time long enough that it pains me to admit, I became an artist of dishonesty. It worked two ways: deceiving my mother, who I kept in the dark about all things Chris, and lying to my friends, as I invented excuses for my sudden social unavailability.
My mother made it easy. She left for the armory before nine, and until then I hid in the newspaper. An attempt to assassinate Hitler failed. The US sank the Yoshino Maru, drowning 2,495. Oh, Charlie.
She wouldn’t reach the store till one and I opened at noon, which left my mornings free. Once the front door closed behind her, I made myself count to two hundred before calling Chris. He always had some fun idea. The Lincoln Park Zoo, where we visited the monkey house, and Chris mimicked the lazy orangutan until the ape became angry. Wrigley Field, which was exciting even without a game under way. The only idea I rejected was the Great Hall of Union Station. Instead we went to Dearborn Station, where I made a big noise about the tall clock tower and Chris suspected nothing.
One telltale sign my mother might have noticed was my playing. The organ held no interest for me. Sure, I wanted to keep my chops sharp for conservatory after the war, and not lose the progress I’d made. But for months, every new piece I’d learned had been for Charlie. I dug out the old books of études, and during any lull in customers, I’d turn on the church model. But the exercises were dull as a sermon, and painfully repetitive. What was the point?
My mother poked her head out of the office. “What about that Bach toccata you were working on?”
“I don’t know.” I flipped through sheet music. “I guess I’m bored with it.”
“You seemed pretty interested last week.”
“Yawn yawn yawn,” I said.
“You know what I say about boredom.” And she went back to work.
What my mother said was that boredom is a self-inflicted wound. She was wrong this time, I thought. This time it was a Chris-inflicted wound.
Or maybe even Charlie inflicted, because any time I swapped the études for my newer repertoire, I couldn’t complete two measures without seeing his sweet, unsuspecting face. One day I ran across the sheet music for Chopin’s Nocturne no. 2, the first sonorous piece I’d played for him, and the notes read like an accusation.
But Chris had a magnetic pull on me. The next day we wandered through the main branch of the Chicago Public Library, holding hands in the grand building—though the high-domed skylight reminded me of Union Station—and between chatting and smooching in the stacks, we lost track of time. When the clock in the stately reading room rang twelve times, I realized I was late. It was pouring rain, too, no cabs available. My mother might arrive at the store before I did, and how would I explain that?
Finally a nice older gentleman let me have his taxi, and I tumbled into the back without a good-bye for Chris. When I reached the store at twelve forty, Mr. Kulak from the high school was standing outside. He saw me climb out of the cab and held his umbrella over my head.
“I hope I haven’t kept you long,” I said, fumbling with the key chain.
“Fifteen minutes, I’d say.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” I said. “I dashed out for lunch and everything took longer than I’d expected.”