The Touch (7 page)

She watched him, and the longer he hesitated, the better she felt.

“Can I take a shower first?” he asked.

Lara smiled—and it was the happiest smile that had played across her face since she was a child, before she knew her mother was dying, before she knew anyone, anywhere, ever had to die at all.

7

Lara had already picked the place and made a reservation for a quiet table for two in the restaurant of the Jeffersonian Hotel, Charlottesville's finest. Starched white tablecloths and six wineglasses were already on the tables when she scouted the setup that afternoon, and she pointed out to the maitre d' an area close enough to the fireplace to be cozy and not so close as to feel intentionally romantic. Lara had spent every day of her business life threading the needle through an ever-narrowing space between drawing men close enough to negotiate and keeping them far enough away to remain professional.

She had also booked a room for herself in the Jeffersonian and had her flight crew staying at the much more modern hotel out near the airport; they were always prepared to take off within an hour if Lara's plans should change. Now her schedule was uncertain, but her plan was not: she was there to recruit Dr. Andrew Jones into her company, regardless of the effort, regardless of the cost, and her determination to succeed had grown with every minute she had been around him. She admired his focus, almost fierce in its intensity; yet he had a playful balance, and his grace under fire was downright inspiring. Her scouts had searched the world for a person who could do what she needed done, and here he was, just a short plane ride from Chicago—if only she could find a way to overcome whatever the demons were that had kept him from applying his great skill on living patients.

Lara was not prepared to take no for an answer. But there was something else she was not prepared for, and that was the effect Jones had on her secret self. Lara considered herself the ultimate pragmatist; she did not believe in a soul. She understood the word as a poetic concept, of course, a metaphor for the quiet and pleasant emotions she allowed herself to indulge in at the rarest of moments. She considered these lapses into peace and awe and a sense of being a part of something beyond the capacities of her intellect to be dangerous. Whenever she experienced such moments—a brush with unexpected beauty, a sense of a message of love coming to her when she heard no voice and believed in no Speaker—she accepted them absolutely, during the very moment when she felt them. But afterwards she always told herself she had felt nothing except her own longings, and those longings she considered pitiful at best and dangerous at worst. She tried to keep such longings—for connection, for union, for peace, and . . . yes, for love—out of her mind and out of her life. That's why they were her secret self.

Something about Jones spoke to that secret self. And while Lara had always been careful to keep men far enough from her own attractiveness so that she could do business with them, she now felt she must keep herself far enough from Jones so that she would not do something stupid and even potentially disastrous, something like falling in love.

So she showered and washed her hair and brushed it back simply and kept the makeup to a minimum and wore a navy blue jacket with slacks and low heels and only a strand of pearls, the ones her father had brought back to her from a trip to Japan, and she told herself she was dressed in a thoroughly businesslike way; but she did look at herself in the mirror for a long time, and used a fingernail to perfect the lipstick at the corner of her mouth, and brushed her hair again and checked herself in the full-length mirror beside the door of her room before she headed downstairs.

When she stepped into the lobby, Jones surprised her by being there already, standing by the windows, looking out into the night. As he saw her reflection he turned to her and smiled. He had showered too—his hair still looked a bit damp—and now sporting a coat and tie, he looked great. “Hi. I . . .” she began, and for the first time since they met, she seemed unsure what to say next. But indecision never lasted long with Lara; she told him, “We have a few minutes before our reservation and I've been sitting most of the day. Do you mind if we walk around the block before dinner?”

“Not at all,” he said. “I could use some fresh air myself.”

They turned to the door and bumped into each other as he moved to hold it open for her. They both laughed.

* * *

The sharp cold of a cloudless November night in Virginia stung their faces and the air prickled as it filled their lungs; the temptation to turn right around and go back inside could have been strong, but both Lara and Jones were smiling as they breathed deep and took in the black sky blazing with billions of stars. Lara could not remember ever having seen so many, and silently she told herself,
Don't start doing that, Lara; don't be looking at the stars and thinking you've never seen them so bright.
They strolled along the sidewalk of Charlottesville's central street, and Lara said, “The Jeffersonian Hotel, Jefferson Restaurant, Jefferson Muffler-and-Mule Feed. . . . Does this town have a fetish?”

“Jefferson set the tone for Virginia with designs he built here. Monticello, the University . . .”

“Did you carve him too?”

“He's my favorite. ‘I have sworn, upon the altar of God, eternal enmity—'”

She finished the quote: “‘—against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.'”

He looked at her in surprise. She smiled.

“You like Virginia?” she asked.

“I love Virginia. Especially this part, the Piedmont, the ‘foot of the mountains,' where the coastal plain collides with the Blue Ridge. Virginia has such rich history—the first permanent colony of Europeans landed at Jamestown in 1607; the Pilgrims in Massachusetts had better publicists, but Virginia was first. So many of the great men of America's past were Virginians—Jefferson, Washington, James Madison, Patrick Henry, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson—they were all Virginians. But it's the common people I really love, the ones that came over as indentured servants and pushed their way into those mountains when there were no roads, no towns, nothing to depend on except themselves and God, and they did it because they were determined to choose their own path and not be ruled by someone else.” Jones paused, saw that she was listening eagerly, and went on. “During the Revolutionary War, when Washington was losing every battle, he said, ‘If this war continues to go badly I will withdraw into the Blue Ridge Mountains and plant my flag among the Scots-Irish, who will not submit to tyranny as long as there is a man alive to pull a trigger.'”

Lara saw the energy alive in Jones, the passion burning so brightly that it seemed for a moment to blot out the stars. She watched him in fascination; she had never met any man like him. But the moment she realized that, another voice inside her told her to be careful; men, especially the ones who had intrigued her, had always disappointed her in the end.

Then she noticed that Jones had stopped as if he too had caught himself and was turning inward. Maybe he thought he was talking too much. Maybe he thought he was enjoying himself too much. Lara wasn't sure. “Please don't stop talking,” she pleaded. “This is the first interesting conversation I've had in five years.” As she said this she patted his shoulder and was surprised that it was hard as a bowling ball; most doctors, if they exercised at all, jogged or swam to keep their hearts healthy; Jones felt like a boxer.

Jones smiled—he seemed to Lara to be enjoying himself—but he did stop talking for a moment, and led her across the quiet street, and they strolled in the opposite direction, past more antique shops and hardware stores and small businesses that sold drapery and wallpaper. Then Lara looked up again and halted; one of the streetlamps was out, and in that deeper darkness the stars showed in even greater numbers. Jones gazed up too and said, “Yeah. That's another thing about Virginia: we have great stars, especially this time of year.”

“I don't look at them enough,” Lara said and immediately regretted it because she was being too personal, opening up too much. For two days she had been excited in anticipation of meeting him, excited for reasons that were anything but professional. Over and over she had reminded herself that this evening was all about Dr. Jones and getting him to do what she needed him to do.

But she kept having the feeling that he was as isolated in his life as she was in hers, and as hungry to talk about the wonders that lay beyond the boundaries of work and career. As they strolled back toward the restaurant he said, “I heard something recently about the Hubble Telescope.” He paused, as if unsure about letting the conversation wander.

“The Hubble? What about it?” Lara asked. “I'm like every girl; I love the stars.”

“The director of the Hubble project, as one of the perks of being director, gets a little time each month to point the telescope anywhere he chooses. So one month he decided he wanted to explore a tiny piece of the cosmos that was totally black. I believe it was somewhere within the Big Dipper but I'm not sure; wherever it was, it had been the accepted wisdom of every astronomer in the world that there was nothing there. And his fellow scientists in the project all urged him not to waste his time, because they'd pointed many telescopes at that spot before, and they'd found nothing but black emptiness. But the director said he wanted to hold the Hubble on the spot and do a long time exposure and see what they came up with. And he was the director and it was his privilege so they did it. And they discovered that empty hole in the heavens had—are you listening?—
two thousand galaxies.
Not two thousand stars—two thousand galaxies! And get this: the size of the spot we're talking about is the area you'd cover if you took a grain of sand and held it at arm's length against the night sky. That small. Two thousand galaxies. Billions and billions of stars. That's how much our science had missed.”

Jones paused again and thought of his grandmother. He could hear her voice, reading from the Bible she kept tucked along with the pistol in the table beside her bed: “
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him
?
” He looked up, surveying the stars. “My grandmother loved the stars,” he said quietly.

“Tell me about your grandmother,” Lara asked.

“I don't know you well enough,” Jones said. And they strolled back toward the restaurant.

* * *

Lara knew they would have a nice table—she planned for good results, and expected them—but she was both surprised and delighted when the maitre d' showed them to a nook near a window looking out toward the mountains, blue in the light of the rising moon. As they settled into their chairs—Jones held hers for her, like a gentleman, and she thanked him, like a lady—she said, “When did you start writing poetry?”

“You know an awful lot about me.”

“We have a lot at stake in whom we choose to work with. Not many doctors are literary, but those who are tend to be extraordinary.”

“Chekhov said, ‘Medicine is my wife and literature is my mistress. When I—'”

“‘—When I grow tired of one, I spend time with the other.'”

“You know Russian writers too?”

Lara already knew that Jones was smart enough to see through any manipulation; she desperately needed to recruit him, but something about Jones made Lara want to be completely honest with him. “I know a few. And I have a good memory,” she said. And then she confessed, “We found out that you love them, so I read up a little.” She noticed the reaction in his eyes, the defensive withdrawal there, and she added, “I'm sorry. I see you feel we've been prying. But talent like yours is more than rare. So let me get this out of the way. I've come to offer you a million dollars. And I'll write the check tonight.”

Jones was studying her, his gaze penetrating, his smile gone.

Lara went on, “We'll fund the development of any new instruments you might invent and give you half the proceeds from their sale. There are no strings attached—except that you pursue your surgical specialty.” She stopped and let that sink in.

He was staring at the tablecloth between them, and now it seemed like a vast field of snow.

She leaned forward slightly, slowly, taking care to keep her voice even. “We're aware there is a complicating issue.”

“And you know the issue.”

“Only that it's personal. It has to be; you loved being a surgeon, as every true master loves his art. Whatever stopped you didn't take your ability, otherwise you couldn't be making sculptures with emotion and beauty and character, all small enough to fit inside the eye of a needle. You can do what we need done.”

“I'm not a surgeon anymore,” Jones said quietly. “Now I teach other doctors to operate.”

“What about teaching them to do what no one else has ever done?”

Jones looked away, his eyes and his thoughts wandering across the distant mountains. Lara knew she had already pushed too hard, had already violated an internal space, perhaps a sacred one; but she could not give up. She added quickly, “I have a colleague—a friend—who works for my company. She's a psychologist, she's excellent. Maybe if you and she sat down together and talked about the issues that—”

Jones pushed back from the table, with icy calm.

Lara spoke hurriedly. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that.”

“No, it's fine.”

“No, please, it's not fine.”

“I'm sorry I've wasted your time, and I don't want to waste your dinner. It's been . . .” Without another word he stood and walked out.

* * *

Jones was striding quickly along the sidewalk when Lara broke from the restaurant doors and rushed to catch him. “Dr. Jones! Please—I'm sorry! Your life is your life, and I don't mean to violate your privacy. I know I've done that already, it's just . . . this project means a lot to me, personally, and . . . I just don't know when to quit.”