Once, when they were kids, when Sally’s breasts were just coming out, and they were still playing with Barbies, there had been a moment in Sally’s bedroom. Making two moments, in all. Two, forgetting all the girls she had drawn into her bed, all the nipples she had rolled around in her mouth, all the tit fat she had smacked with the back of her hand, all the places she had put her cheek and slept. That day, they were putting on their bathing suits. Sally was having trouble with her ties, and the triangles of her bikini were laid down on her belly as she stood there, fighting with a knot, and her new little breasts sprouting. Bernice had said, “Can I touch them?” And Sally had said, “Yeah, sure.”

Bernice, just another young girl with curiosity in the palms of her hands, put those hands over the place where the triangles would go, feeling Sally’s skin cool under her hot palms. “Weird, right?” said Sally. “Come on.” The knot was untied. They never talked about it. Never mentioned it. When they were in bed together, so many countless times, for sleepovers, for college overnights, for whatever reason, Bernice petting her endlessly on the back, never trailing her hand those two inches more down past her tailbone. Suntan lotion on the collarbones, the neck, but never inside two imaginary circles drawn around her breasts. For other girls, her hand slamming into the most unforgiving places. But for Sally, a map of forbidden zones. This body she knew so well. Better than her own.

“How dare YOU?” she demanded, shouting at Sally now. “How dare you not know? You have been my best friend for twenty years, twenty-five years, how dare you not know who I love?”

Sally hesitated, said nothing. Her face was a blank. Bernice was reminded of her expression in that moment, her hands pressing into the cool breasts before the swimming suit was applied, and it was as if Sally’s face turned to hers, her eyes suddenly aware, locked on Bernice’s eyes, saying, “It’s you.” Then Bernice swallowed.

“You knew,” Bernice said slowly. “You did know. How could you not know?”

“No, I did not know. Because you lied!” Sally growled, her teeth bared. “You lied to me. Don’t you turn this around, you liar.”

“You knew,” said Bernice. “You knew and you used me, you knew and you let me follow your bait. My breast in your mouth. You did that. On purpose. Like a prize you were giving me.”

She could feel it there still, stiff under her friend’s tongue, still feel her hands itching to crawl over Sally’s rib cage, dig into her back, draw her down on top of her, never let go.

“This is over,” Sally said. She stood up. She brushed off her shirt, pulled down her skirt.

“No,” said Bernice. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“You’re drunk, may I remind you. And you’re the one that wanted this to be over. So it is. I don’t want you in my life, and I don’t want your daughter for my son.”

Bernice felt bad. She felt drunk and bad. And sorry. And like it was all her fault.

“It’s not her fault,” said Bernice. “It’s not my baby’s fault. Please, please. What is she, if we don’t have this? What is she without him?”

“You sound like the town drunk,” said Sally. “You are out of control. Get yourself together, and go find something else to do with your life. Obsessing over me, and prepping your daughter to marry my son, that’s over now.”

“No,” Bernice begged. “Not like this.”

“What’s more,” said Sally. Bernice, in her drunkenness, couldn’t tell if her friend was angry, or tired, or excited, or dismayed. But she understood this: “What’s more, if you ever come around trying to talk to me, or if you ever send her around to talk to him, I will fucking kill you. I’ll kill you. I am not what you are. Remember that. I am not like you.”

* * *

That night, Bernice set a fire. She set a fire but she did not die.

Here’s what is known: one got pregnant and then the other. They took some herbal drugs to induce labor, and they had their babies at the same time. What else really happened? Who knows? What else can really be documented or understood? Why do some people fall in love with each other, and others don’t? What is love? It’s so, so, so stupid right up until it’s real. And then it’s the most important thing in the world, whether you believe in it or not.

* * *

Sam Beth was dressed as a Daughter of Babylon in all her ritual markings. Irene, uninitiated, was only allowed to watch and learn, but she wore a black robe with a long cowl that Sam Beth had provided. The procession started at the top of the ziggurat, at 10 P.M., when the moon was at its zenith. The dark rectangle containing the remains was draped with a black cloth, and Sam Beth carried it in her arms. She had a large diamond in her belly button, one shoved into her left nostril, and one hanging from her right ear. She had explained that the triangle created by the relationship between these three diamonds was also traced in coal around her right breast, and the parallax measurement described by the arc of the acute angle was reflected in the name of the star she claimed as her own talisman. They carried the dead woman’s rectangle of ashes from the top of the ziggurat to the bottom and into the crypt that was generally kept for dignitaries in the world of astronomy and math, and they carried her past the person who created the lens that allowed the universe to be mapped and the person who hypothesized the particle that was created when two iron ions collide, and they laid her to rest in a very modest crèche and draped the black cloth across the entrance, and no one disturbed her at all forever. She was left entirely alone.

Bernice had tried to get into her daughter’s dreams from the very beginning. From before she even gave birth she had tried to dream herself into her daughter’s reveries. Before Irene could talk, before she could walk, Bernice was reaching out, reaching in, helping her discover how to release her body from her mind, and go where she would in sleep. All the while Bernice was dreaming and building a special place for her and her daughter to reside. It was a beautiful lake island, with a clay and wattle cabin, a bean garden, and beehives. She invited, and invited, but the girl never ever came. Maybe when I am dead, Bernice had thought, this is where I will end up. Here on this lake island, with the girl I brought into the world. We’ll hear the water lapping and the linnets swooping, and we’ll drift through the rest of time this way. But if she never visits it with me now, how will she ever find me when I am gone?

21

Irene and George stood on the porch of the country house, holding hands. In the field, the crystal maze hummed and flickered. In the well, nothing gurgled. Birds pecked at the dried remnants of summer berries, and a breeze puffed over the trees.

They had meant to go rushing inside and fall upon each other, and they were already laughing, but then Irene had put her hand up to stop. Now George paused, his hand on the doorknob, a floorboard creaking under his foot.

“Someone’s inside,” whispered Irene. “I heard—”

Then George nodded. He heard the voices, too. Still hand in hand, they tiptoed over to the window and peered inside. The big front room was empty and dark, but beyond that a light gleamed in the kitchen, and Irene heard a man’s voice say, “You can’t. I won’t let you.” Then there was a crash.

Irene felt alarmed. Had they disturbed a break-in? Way out here in the woods? But George was shaking his head. “It’s my dad,” he mouthed to her, silently.

“I can do whatever I want,” came Sally’s voice, and then Sally herself came into view in the hallway.

“And my mom, apparently,” George said.

She wore a long handkerchief dress and had no shoes on. Her hair was mussed and she had a wineglass in one hand. She raised the glass, drained it, and repeated, “I can do whatever I want. It’s my property.”

“But they were born here. This is where they played—”

Dean came into the hallway, chasing Sally, leaning into her. His shirt was open at the throat, his old painter pants rolled up to the knee and wet around the bottom, as if they had been wading. He sank his hands into her waist and pulled her to him.

“I don’t care,” Sally said. “That’s as good a reason as any.”

“They were born here?” George repeated into Irene’s ear. “They?”

“Maybe you have a sibling,” Irene wondered.

“Just wait,” said Dean. “Wait. I’m begging you.”

“I’m selling it, Dean,” Sally snapped. “I want it gone. You can go live someplace else. Maybe I’ll even let you come and live with me. If you change your pants.”

“What, these pants?” Dean laughed, and began to undo his belt. Sally laughed. She actually laughed.

George shook his head, clasping Irene’s hand tightly. He took two quick steps backward, fell into the porch swing, and then bounced backward into a bush. Both Sally and Dean snapped their heads around to stare at the window, and Irene waved feebly. Sally rushed for the door, trailing Dean behind her, and swung it open.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I could ask you the same thing,” said George from the bushes, swinging one arm up onto the porch.

“Are you alright, son?” Dean went to help George clamber back up, and when he was upright and had brushed himself off, Sally said, “I come here, sometimes.”

“She does,” said Dean. “It’s true.”

“I am the owner,” Sally pointed out. “I own this. That’s what I’m doing here.”

“Yeah, you own this,” said George, “But you haven’t been out here in forever. And now you’re here and…”

“Having sex,” prompted Irene.

“Ugh!” George protested. “I was going to say wearing hippie clothes!”

“It’s none of your concern what I’m wearing,” said Sally, drawing herself up regally, which didn’t work as well without her heels on. She turned to Irene. “And it’s no concern of yours what I’m doing.”

“Are you selling this place?” George wanted to know.

“No,” said Dean. “She’s not.”

“I am,” said Sally. “I should have done it years ago.”

She shook her head sadly and set her empty wineglass on the porch railing. “Sentiment,” she said to Irene. “It’s such a bitch.”

WARNING: Conveyor may start without warning. Moving parts can cut or crush. Keep hands and body clear of conveyor.

Irene was lying down flat inside the supercollider. Around her head, an array of trapezoids spread out in colorful arcs. She wasn’t wearing any pants. The lights were bright in the wide cavern where her experiment was being built. Out there, you could walk around with a clipboard, nod and smile at passing colleagues, learn and use science facts. But inside the tunnel, where the beam pipes themselves would be, it was pretty dim. Pretty shadowy. If you’re a pion, you don’t need a lot of light to find and smash into another pion. You just do it.

It was George’s idea to come here, after their failure to find privacy at the country house, after they’d made their embarrassed departure. “Such a college problem,” George had said. “Madly in love and nowhere to be alone.” So he had dragged a foam pad of high-density insulation into the pipe in order to lay her down on it.

“You’re a proton,” said George. “I’m a proton. Let’s go in here together.”

“Kind of a tight fit,” said Irene.

“That way there’s only room for us two,” said George.

WARNING: Beyond this point: Radio frequency fields at this site may exceed acceptable amounts for human exposure. Failure to abide by all posted signs and site guidelines for working in radio frequency environments could result in serious injury.

When the construction team at the Ur insertion point had clocked out for the night, and the engineers from the Uruk detector were safely in bed, George and Irene entered the elevator together. They put their eyes up for the retinal scan. Then they were four hundred feet below ground, alone. Irene loved being with George. There wasn’t anything going on in her mind right now except that there was no one else around. They could take their clothes off, and she could knock him to the floor, take his hip bones in her hands, and crouch over him. If she wanted to.

George climbed the bright green ladder that stood at the end of the pipe where the detector would eventually be mounted when it was built. He looked so small against the structure, against the scaffolding, so smooth against all the hard angles of the metal plates. He began to take off his shirt. They had deactivated the door. They had put a sheet of aluminum against the elevator window. The ventilation whirred and puffed, the light buzzed, the computer on the desk growled occasionally, making backups. There was no mood music. Irene imagined that George’s face was changing shape, becoming more blurry, more smoky. Turning into animal George. Irene felt her body drawn to his as if there was a gravitational event happening inside her belly, and he was a nearby star, getting drawn into her, getting closer. She kicked off her boots, yanked off her jeans, unbuttoned her lab coat, pulled her T-shirt over her head, and stood there in her socks.