AN ACCIDENTAL INTERCEPTION
Of Fate:  Turn, and Turn, and Turn Again
Minisinoo

October 10, 2000, 2:21pm PDT...

bonedigger:  Hello!  Do you like my hat?
jeangrey:  Yes, I like your hat.  Of COURSE I like your hat!
bonedigger:  No, no, no . . . you're supposed to say, "I do not like it. I do not like that hat."
jeangrey:  WHAT are you talking about?
bonedigger:  GO DOG GO.  Didn't you read that book?
jeangrey:  ???
bonedigger:  GO, DOG, GO . . . as a kid.
jeangrey:  OH!  A kid's book.
bonedigger:  well, duh!
jeangrey:  LOL!  And aren't you supposed to be in class?
bonedigger:  nah -- I'm hanging around the computer lab. Bored.
jeangrey:  Gee, thanks.  I'm your cure for boredom?
bonedigger:  yup
bonedigger:  more seriously -- how are you?
jeangrey:  Fine, busy, as always
bonedigger:  I don't mean in general.  It was four months ago today.
. . . .
jeangrey:  I know.  I'll manage.
bonedigger:  call me, if you want just to talk.  Whenever.  Even 2am.
jeangrey:  :-)  You're sweet.
bonedigger:  I worry about you
jeangrey:  I'm fine.  I'll manage.

Sudden glare from the overhead light punctuated the little attic like an exclamation point, and Jean blinked involuntarily.  No room for shadows here, no room for softness, for denials formed from the failure to find a body.  Everything was cast in sharp relief . . . the untouched desk with its Sun station and papers strewn randomly around it, three walls of shelves packed with books and more books wedged in along the top -- it was a room that had been left in mid-sentence, yet dust touched everything.  The owner wasn't coming back to finish the conversation.  

No body was ever recovered, part of her mind whispered.  

It's been four months, replied the other part, the rational part.  Time to move on.  Betty was trying.  That's why Jean was here.  

"I think he'd want you and Henry to have first choice.  Take whatever you wish.  I have lots of boxes."  She pointed to a pile of cardboard flats in one corner.  "If you can't take them with you today, you can just leave them in a corner with your name on top."  Betty's voice was as expressionless as her face; she stood to one side, her back pressed up against a bookshelf like she might meld with it.  "Don't be shy.  I'm just going to box up whatever books his students don't want and sell them.  I have no use for them.  It's not even about the money."  

Abruptly, her voice broke and she put the back of her hand up to her mouth, swallowed, then went on.  "I'm tired of carrying these around.  When we were students, every time we moved, there were more books than furniture.  So I want these gone before we move again."  That they were going to move again, Jean had heard secondhand, but she couldn't blame Betty for wanting to leave.  The first step was the dismemberment of Bruce's library.  

She felt like a cannibal.  

"I'll put these to good use," she promised, avoiding 'thank you' or 'I really appreciate this,' as both sounded trite in the extreme, as if the cost of the opportunity were meaningless. 

"I know you will," Betty replied, glancing down at the hardwood floor, then out the door, her hand back in front of her mouth.  "Come down when you're ready."  And she disappeared.  

For a long time, Jean drifted from shelf to shelf, checking this title or that, or looking through heaps of journals.  Some books she had; many she didn't.  But she touched none of them.  She wasn't ready yet to touch them.  Instead, she sat down in the middle of the floor and cried.  Finally, with the sun going down, she rose up again and began putting together boxes.  As Betty had said, this was what Bruce would have wanted.  He'd always hated waste.

By the time she was done, she had six boxes.  Warren came to help her take them away.  He carried them himself, though he could have called for hired help.  But this was a rite not to be profaned by the touch of strangers, and Jean appreciated that Warren understood as much.  Afterwards, he took her out for ice cream, and let her borrow his handkerchief when she wept again.  
 
 

November 13, 2000, 6:37pm PST...  

jeangrey:  So you're going?
bonedigger:  kinda gotta
jeangrey:  Nonsense
bonedigger:  they came to my party
jeangrey:  That doesn't put you under an obligation, Scott.
bonedigger:  didn't say it did.  But Dad came to BERKELEY, Jean.  My father, the 'Nam vet. 
jeangrey:  And?
bonedigger:  he did it for me
jeangrey:  And?
bonedigger:  you don't get it
jeangrey:  No, sorry.  I don't.
 jeangrey:  It upsets me, the way he treated you.  You're his *son*.  But he didn't say a damn word to you for THREE YEARS?
jeangrey:  And you owe him something?  *Explain* that.
bonedigger:  Yeah, it was 3 years.  But I didn't talk to him, either.  Besides, it's just 4 days. 
bonedigger:  I'm sitting here watching the Jim Lehrer NewsHour.  The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Bush request to stop the hand recounts in Florida.  That's something.  But I swear, this election has been SUCH a load of Grade-A shit. 
jeangrey:  And thus, he changes the subject . . .  How many times have we been over the election, Scott?  It's BORING.
bonedigger:  who we send to Washington is a hell of a lot more important than where I'm going for Thanksgiving
bonedigger:  I cannot BELIEVE we're about to put a SHRUB in the White House.  A yucca plant, no less.  yuc, yuc, yuc...
jeangrey:  Very funny. 
bonedigger:  why, thank you
jeangrey:  You don't have to go, y'know.  To San Diego.
bonedigger:  yes, I do -- 4 days
jeangrey:  You better call me.
bonedigger:  I'm taking my laptop

1569 Maple Lane.  Three and a half years before, Scott had walked out the front teal door certain that he'd never walk back in -- the perfect assurance of seventeen that foretold the future with insular precision and a limited horizon.  He wasn't so much older now but he'd added, "I just don't know," to his vocabulary.  It was drizzling when he pulled his rental up behind the Cougar under the carport, and climbed out of the driver's seat to fetch his computer and a suitcase from the trunk.  Then, head down and trying to shield his glasses, he approached the side door rather than the front.  He'd slide back into family life from the borderland called clemency.  It was a little after two in the afternoon.  He'd gotten up before dawn to make the almost-eight-hour trip from Berkeley to Linda Vista, outside San Diego.  

His mother was in the kitchen when he entered, working on the meal.  The place smelt of hot ham and sharp cranberries and onions for the stuffing.  Fluorescent light glared overhead on black and white kitchen tiles, or black and pink to him now, but he remembered.  How strange, he thought, to see this house in dual tones, as peculiar as it would be to see Westchester in color.

"Hey, Mom."  

Kate Summers glanced around, then smiled -- and it was real, not forced, not put on.  She was happy to see him.  Leaving the mixing bowl of whatever she'd been making, she crossed to give him a hug.  "I'm glad you came."

He let her go.  "Yeah, but is anyone else?"

Lips thin, she turned back to the array of bowls strung out along the kitchen counter, their contents in various states of food preparation,.  "Don't start that, Michael."

Sighing, he flopped down in one of the kitchen chairs, setting his bags in another.  "Where is everybody?"

"Your father's in the den.  Alex is upstairs, I think."

"Is anyone else coming to dinner?"  It looked as if she were preparing to feed a small army.

"No, I thought it'd be nice just to have just the four of us."  She turned on the water and began rinsing potatoes. 

And, Scott added to himself, with just the four of us, any volcanic explosions'll be self-contained. 

But the eruption he expected didn't materialize.  With the election in vitriolic dispute, he'd assumed that politics would be the taboo topic of the holiday.  It wasn't, yet what his father had to say left him open-mouthed with shock.

"It's money.  Pure and simple," Chris Summers complained as he picked up a pipe from the rack beside his armchair and set about packing it.  Kinnikinick.  It smelled of red cedar and black tobacco, pungent, and sharp like Scott's sight now.  When he lit it, smoke curled up to be caught in the light from the end table.  It danced like visions.  "Oil money buys a lot, in Washington, including the Republican nomination.  You wait and see.  The Bush baby'll go to the White House, but what this damn country needs is a little reform.  Not that Gore's much better, but at least he's got two brain cells to rub together -- and he can keep it in his pants."

Sitting on the old corduroy sofa -- chocolate brown that looked black to him now -- Scott blinked, then blinked again.  "Wait a minute.  You voted for Gore?"

"No, I voted against Bush.  I'll be damned if I support that Catholic-hating, coattail-riding rich Texas boy."

Ah.  Scott understood finally.  "You wanted John McCain."

"Course I did.  He's a vet.  And he's got common sense."

Scott smiled to himself and returned his attention to the ball game on the TV.  Last quarter, with the Patriots in purple versus the Detroit Lions.  The Patriots were winning. 
 
 

November, 23, 2000, 9:34pm PST...  

bonedigger:  He voted for GORE
jeangrey:  Who?
bonedigger:  Dad -- he voted for Gore.  Can you believe it?
jeangrey:  I thought you said your father was a dyed-in-the-wool elephant?
bonedigger:  yeah, but he's CATHOLIC, and Bush did that campaign speech at Bob Jones University.   Besides Dad likes McCain.
bonedigger:  I found McCain campaign posters in the garage.  Dad's never campaigned for anybody before, but he's retired now.
 jeangrey:  Time on his hands.
bonedigger:  no, not that . . .  he couldn't
jeangrey:  Couldn't what?  Campaign?
bonedigger:  yeah
jeangrey:  Why?
bonedigger:  military personnel can't be listed as a sponsor for a 'partisan political club' even in a private capacity.  So vote, yeah; campaign, no.
bonedigger:  still -- I think hell just froze over
jeangrey:  LOL!
jeangrey:  So it went okay?
bonedigger:  yeah, we didn't have a major blow-up.  That's pretty damn good.
bonedigger:  now -- when are you coming out to visit me?  Huh, huh?
jeangrey:  Would you let up with that?
bonedigger:  no, I won't.  You need a vacation.  Beach.  No snow.  San Francisco trolleys.  Hunky college boys . . .
jeangrey:  LOL!  Trying to lure me?
bonedigger:  whatever it takes, babe
jeangrey:  You're awful.  I'll think about it.  Are you coming back for Christmas?
bonedigger:  of course

"I cannot fucking believe this!" Scott had come slamming into the apartment, angrier than EJ had seen him in a good long while.  "God-fucking-damn!" He threw his book bag halfway across the room onto the couch, which skidded back an inch or two under the force of impact.  

EJ had been sitting at the kitchen table with three different books spread out around him.  Now, he stood up.  "Whoa -- what gives, man?"

"They denied him tenure.  Those good-for-nothing, arrogant, prissy sons of bitches!  They denied him fucking tenure!  He's on his sixth year!"

"Who?"

"Fred!"

EJ blinked.  "That totally sucks eggs.  What's he gonna do?"

"I have no idea."  Scott slumped down in an armchair.  "He's contracted through next year, if he wants to stay, but this place is a dead-end to him now."  

Walking over, EJ moved the book bag and sat down on the sofa, hands clasped between his knees.  "So what are you gonna do?"

"I don't know."  Scott had become interested in archaeology in the first place due to Fred Hand, and had applied to the anthropology department so he could work with him on Classical Mesoamerican technology.  Without him there, Scott would become a graduate stepchild.  "I suppose I could do ethnoarchaeology and settlement.  But . . ."  He trailed off and shrugged.  "I want to do technology and Mesoamerica, dammit." 

"I thought you were interested in the Mediterranean, too.  Could you do technology there?"

"It's a different department, believe it or not, and I can't just jump from one to the other.  Their application requirements are stricter.  Anthro's so flexible because it's diverse.  But AHMA wants an ancient language at the very least, and preferably an undergrad major in a related discipline -- and I'm afraid math and Italian just don't cut it."  

Scott put his face in his hands for a moment -- careful of the glasses -- then looked up again.  "I am so screwed, man.  But I'm not half as screwed as Fred.  Why am I even thinking about going into academics?  They're like a bunch of fucking sharks."  

EJ didn't reply immediately as he had nothing useful to say, having no interest in an academic career in the first place.  Despite his philosophical streak, he was a pragmatist who preferred the solidity of a cutting board and a sharp knife.  He kept people healthy and well-fed -- concrete results.  And he thought the same was true of Scott.  He doubted Summers would be happy in an academic career for the rest of his life, but didn't figure it his place to say so.  "I know you don't believe in fate, and neither do I, really.  But sometimes doors close because you're not meant to go through 'em.  Or maybe you just need to try it from a different angle."  

"Maybe I do."  Sighing, Scott got up from the chair.  "I'm going to call Jean, then finish working on that damn paper."  

EJ watched his friend head to his bedroom, his telephone, and his lady back in New York.  Shaking his head, he returned to his own study.  Scott Summers talked to Jean Grey almost as often as EJ talked to DeeDee, but EJ and Diane resided in the same town.  
 

"Hey!"

"Hey," Scott called back, dragging his suitcase across the tarmac to where Warren waited by his plane.  "I see you brought the Jetstar this time."  

Warren just grinned as he popped the cargo hold so Scott could store his luggage.  "Flip you for the pilot seat," he said.  

Scott pulled out a quarter from his pocket and flicked it into the air.  "Call."  

"Heads."  

Catching the coin, Scott slapped it on the back of his wrist and lifted his hand.  

Heads.  
 

"So."  

Nineteen-thousand feet, somewhere over a rolling prairie of western Iowa.  

"So?"

"You don't still have a thing for Jean, do you?"

"Huh?"

"Jean.  You call her a lot.  I wondered if, you know, you still carried a torch, even after Clarice."  

Scott frowned and turned his head away a little, glaring out at the patchwork quilt of winter-fallow fields pockmarked by silos and homesteads like stitched embroidery.  Good fences made good neighbors.  A wariness slipped down between them.  "We're just friends, War."  

Warren nodded.  A beat-pause, then Scott asked, "Why?"

"There's a party for New Years, at the house."  The Worthington estate on Long Island.  Only Warren would call it 'the house.'  "I thought I'd ask Jean.  Residency doesn't leave her much social life.  I wanted to get her out of the hospital, if she can get the night off."  

Scott's frown deepened.  "Yeah.  It might be good for her to go to a party."  

 

There was no snow this year.  The lawn stretched crackled and brown, but in the midst of the dead-dun of December, eight reindeer shone pure white and a ninth had a red nose.  Scott laughed upon seeing them, and as soon as the car crawled up the drive, Jean was out the front door, waving, dressed in a bright red coat.  He waved back and opened the door even as Warren took the car around the side drive towards the garage.  Centrifugal force tumbled Scott out on gravel and grass, and Warren yelled, "You idiot!" The passenger door hung open as the car slowed to a crawl, and Scott rolled to his feet, running over to slam it shut.  Then he trotted back across the lawn towards Jean, enveloping her in a bear hug.  "Merry Christmas!"

"Got tickets," she replied.  

Baffled, he pulled back to look at her.  "Tickets?"

"Plane tickets to Berkeley.  I'm flying in on Saturday, February tenth, and flying back on Sunday, February eighteenth.  That was the only time I could get off -- it's between my Ob-Gyn and ER rotations.  Is that okay?"

A merry Christmas indeed.  He hugged her once more.  "You bet."  Then his arm around her shoulders and hers around his waist, they headed into the mansion.  "I'll be in class, but we can work around that.  You've never been to California, have you?"

"Nope."  

"Man, this is going to be such fun . . . ."  
 
 

January 4, 2001, 9:41am PST

jeangrey:  Why did you bug out on me?
bonedigger:  ????
jeangrey:  You could have come to Warren's party.
bonedigger:  he didn't invite me.  And no, that's not being resentful.  He needed a date for the evening.  I'd have been a third wheel.
jeangrey:  No, you wouldn't!
bonedigger:  yes, I would
jeangrey:  It wasn't a date.
bonedigger:  ??!  guy asks you out to a nice party, fancy dress -- sounds like a date to me
jeangrey:  Well, then, you taking me to see the Phantom way back when was a date. 
bonedigger:  nah
jeangrey:  Why not?  By your definitions, that was a date, too.
bonedigger:  that was different
jeangrey:  How?
bonedigger:  it just was
jeangrey:  How?
bonedigger:  Don't be dense -- it was an apology.  I wrecked your car.  Besides, I was just a kid.  
jeangrey:  And you're SO much older now.  :):):)
bonedigger:  I didn't say that.  I know you're a lot older than me.
jeangrey:  I'm just *teasing*, Scott.  And I'm only trying to make a point -- it *wasn't* a date.  
jeangrey:  You -- my friend -- took me to Broadway.  Warren -- my friend -- took me to a party at his house.  No date.

Jean's general medicine rotation through Ob-Gyn put her under the direction of chief resident, Barb Clark -- the woman of the cats and baby and Stain Guard carpet.  And younger husband.  Barb spoke of Randy in passing sometimes, but it wasn't until the end of Jean's eight-week rotation that she finally mustered the courage to ask Barb about that relationship.  "Did you know from the outset?  How you felt about him?"

"Hell, no.  He was just a kid."  They spoke over lunch in the cafeteria.  Jean ate her salad and yogurt like a good girl who wanted to get into a bikini if it was warm enough in February.  Barb ate a fish sandwich and fries.  It was past the usual hour, and the tables around them had been vacated already.  Bits of lettuce, and crumbs from bread littered white Formica tops; someone had left a glass with melted ice diluting the caramel color of tea or soda.  "Randy was barely twenty when I met him."  

"What changed?"

"Dunno.  I just looked up one day and realized he was it.  We had fun together.  He kept me sane during med school.  And we just . . . had this thing we shared."  

"The cats."  

"Yup.  The cats."  She eyed Jean, who picked at limp salad and played with a cherry tomato.  "I don't suppose these questions have to do with that pretty blond boy who picked you up the other night?"

And Jean blushed, just a stain high on her cheekbones but enough to tell a story.  "That's Warren.  And . . . I don't know."  She didn't, either.  She'd been thinking about it ever since Scott's comments to her regarding the New Year's party.  It hadn't been a date, had it, she wondered?  Did she want it to be a date?

Barb was grinning.  "Nice looking fella."  

Well, that was certainly true, Jean thought.  "Yes, he is."  

"How much younger'n you is he?"

"Five years."  

"Ah."  It was the same difference between Barb and Randy.  "Five years isn't that much, after a certain point," Barb said.  "I don't really think about it any more.  Randy's Randy."  She shook her head.  "It's the rest of the world that sees these labels and categories -- white, black, yellow; Jew, Catholic, protestant; rich, poor; Yankee, Rebel; old . . . young.  You can let those things get in the way -- or not."  

"But they do matter."  

"They shape us, darlin'.  They don't define us.  Most people have a lot more to 'em than their age, or color, or religion, or bank account."  

Jean nodded; Barb had leaned back in her chair to crunch ice as she studied the other woman.  Her expression was thoughtful.  After working under her for seven of eight scheduled weeks, Jean knew better than to mistake her casual posture and Southern-molasses charm for a lack of perception.  Barb was chief resident for a reason.  "Equality.  It's all about equality, and I don't mean ERA.  There are women -- and men -- who expect their spouses to take care of them like there were little kids, even if they're the exact same age.  That's not a good relationship, and I don't care how many social mores it meets.  Marriage is all about partnership.  I'm nobody's baby but my Daddy's, and nobody's Mama but Becky's.  

"Randy's dad died when he was sixteen and he helped his mom run the house his last year of high school.  And he was ready for it.  He had good parents who raised him right; he got his childhood, but he grew up when he had to.  He was a lot more mature than most boys his age, even when I first met him.  At the time, I was going out with a guy two years older than me but a bigger baby than Randy ever was.  When it finally dawned on me what an idiot I was being about things that didn't really matter, I dropped that a-hole for my white knight, and I've never looked back since."  

Standing, Barb picked up her tray.  "Come on, we should get back."  

Jean followed, musing over what Barb had said.  Warren was mature for his age.  Like Randy, his home life had demanded it.  What was five years?  But later on the floor, when she had a spare minute and sat down in the break room for some coffee and to play on her laptop, it wasn't Warren Worthington she emailed.  
 
 

February 9, 2001, 9:28pm PST

bonedigger:  so what are you doing right now?
jeangrey:  Packing.  Well, I *was* packing until you blinged me.
bonedigger:  PACKING?  Isn't it a little LATE out there, your time?
jeangrey:  Why, yes.  But they don't let you off so you can go pack for vacation, Scott.  This was my last day on Ob-Gyn.  I had things to do.
bonedigger:  tetchy, tetchy!
jeangrey:  Sorry.  :-{  Long day.  Long tomorrow, too.  Six hours on a plane, and that doesn't count flight changes.
bonedigger:  Ah!  But then you're out here and I'll take care of you for a week. 
jeangrey:  My own personal slave and masseuse?
bonedigger:  something like that
jeangrey:  I may hold you to that, Mr. Summers.  The masseuse part anyway.
bonedigger:  I got great hands, baby.
 jeangrey:  LOL!  You are so bad.  Or so cheesy.  I'm not sure which.
bonedigger:  There's a difference?
jeangrey:  Let me go pack in peace, lounge lizard.  I'll see you in less than twenty-four hours anyway.
bonedigger:  <grand sigh> K

It'd been a while since Scott had been to the Oakland International Airport.  These days, if he weren't flying somewhere himself, Warren took him, and he wondered idly why Jean hadn't just asked Warren to bring her.  But if he'd asked her why, Jean couldn't have answered.  She hadn't meant her decision to be clandestine, but she'd preferred to present Warren with a fait accompli, and when Warren finally did discover where she was going on vacation, he was both surprised and slightly jealous, even as he wondered at the sentiment.  Hadn't Scott said he was no longer romantically interested in Jean, and Jean had never been romantically interested in Scott so far as Warren knew.  They were just friends, the same as each was his friend -- and perhaps that was why he felt jealous.  Why, he asked himself, hadn't Jean invited him along on her vacation to see their mutual friend?  Instead, she'd gone to California alone.  

Scott had borrowed EJ's car to meet her at Gate 15, Terminal One.  With only two terminals and twenty-seven gates, Oakland was middling-size, and Jean's plane, a United flight out of Chicago, ran twenty-five minutes late.  Scott drank coffee and tried to read Crawford's The Origins of Native Americans, but the chapter on electrophoretic genetic markers made his eyes cross.  Jean would probably love it, and he hoped he could quiz her about the material later.  (And maybe, just possibly, he'd picked it to bring in order to impress her with his choice in 'light reading.')

When he'd read, "Group-specific component, also known as the vitamin D-binding protein (DBP) is located on the long arm of chromosome 4 (4q12) . . ."  five times and still didn't understand it, he shut the book and stared off into space, his focus turned inward.  Passers by assumed him blind.  Finally her plane touched down and he rose to make his way to the gate doors, checking his appearance reflexively in a bit of shiny decor as he passed.  Hair combed, chinos not too rumpled, no coffee stains.  Little nervous tremors shook his hands as he popped a mint Life Savers in his mouth; his knees felt weak.  He wondered if he were being ridiculous.  But then the gate opened and the passengers began to exit, and he forgot about it.  

She wasn't the first off, or even the twentieth and he bounced impatiently on the balls of his feet.  Had something happened?  Had he written down the wrong flight number?  The wrong gate?  But finally she came straggling down the ramp, trailing a suitcase stacked with a heavy jacket, her laptop and purse bumping her hip.  She wore a flower-print skirt and low heels, and only Jean would dress up for a cross-country plane flight.  "Jean!"

Startled, she looked around, then smiled to see him and threaded through the crowd in his direction.  People parted, a few wore smiles as he enveloped her in a hug.  "I was starting to wonder if I had the time wrong," he said, then added, "You cut your hair!" It barely brushed the back of her neck.  

"It's easier to take care of.  I'll be on-call next rotation in the ER."  

He thought the shorter cut flattering.  "Do you have any more luggage?" he asked.  

"One suitcase I checked."  

"Okay; baggage claim is this way."  And they headed off, her hand resting inside his elbow.  

"What are you reading?" she asked, grabbing the book in his hand and turning it to see the title.  "Wow.  'Anthropological genetics,' huh?"

He shrugged nonchalantly.  "Class, y'know."  

"Ah."  She smiled and squeezed his arm, just a little.  He took it for approval.  

When they got outside, headed for short-term parking, Jean paused, startled.  "It's warm!"

"The high today was about sixty-two," Scott replied, grinning over his shoulder as he dragged both her suitcases.  "Welcome to the Bay Area."  

She hurried to catch up, pushing the sleeves of her pretty, loose-knit sweater above her elbows.  He couldn't tell the exact color, but it was some shade of pastel and had a scalloped neckline that dipped lower than anything she usually wore, showing a hint of cleavage.  He tore his eyes away and looked for the car.  

They took the scenic route back, along the bay.  The sun had gone down already but only just, and the sky remained light.  Gulls shrieked and Jean had opened the window, sticking her head out to enjoy the wind.  He laughed at her.  

"So what, exactly, is going on with the department, and your degree program?"

"Hell if I know," Scott replied, handing Jean a cup of chai before retaking his place on the opposite end of the old velour couch.  After a full shift at the hospital the day before, and a long flight that day, Jean hadn't felt like touring the town, and instead had dressed in a loose sweatshirt, leggings and leather moccasins, to lounge on Scott's couch.  EJ wasn't around, rather conveniently having arranged to be out with Diane that evening.  Why, Scott wasn't sure.  "Don't you want to meet her?"

"I'll meet her tomorrow."

"You don't have to make yourself scarce."  But EJ had simply shrugged and walked out the door, headed for Diane's.  

If pushed, EJ would have been forced to admit that he had mixed feelings about Jean Grey, unsure what motivations lay behind her solo visit.  From his perspective, she was just getting up Scott's hopes and that angered him.  He wondered if Jean were really that stone-blind, or if she had some other, selfish reason for misusing Scott.  The idiot would try to walk on water for her, and sink.  

But it meant that for the evening, Scott and Jean had the garage apartment to themselves, and Jean wanted to hear about the difficulties he'd been facing in the anthropology department.  Her own troubles with McMasters had made her concerned.  Scott, however, felt reluctant to discuss it.  When she asked, he shrugged and replied, "It's a little tense."  

Tense like the muscles of his face, and Jean glared over the top of her chai mug.  "It's not flying, Summers.  You've been giving me the same line in chats for the past month -- ever since the semester started.  Now spill."  

"Like I told you at Christmas, they sacked Fred, or at least denied him tenure, which is the same thing.  That means I have limited options if I still want to work in Mesoamerica, and I do."  

"And?"

"And what?"

"And so what are your options?"

Frustrated, he sighed.  She wasn't going to let it go, but it seemed esoteric; too trivial to have become such a thorn in his side when compared to some of the other problems they'd faced lately.  "It's a scholar's debate.  There's these two documents, the Popol Vuh and the Annals of the Cakchiquels, that talk about migrations of people down from Teotihuacan.  The new people supposedly became the ruling class in Tikal and other cities -- but no mention of migrations appears on our monument inscriptions.  So were the migrations a 'charter myth,' a story that justified the status quo?  Or did they really happen?  That's the debate.  We have no direct evidence for them, but we do have indirect evidence like foreign iconography in the artwork, and new technology and modes of dress that pop up, all of which looks suspiciously like Teotihuacan.  

"Fred believes the migrations happened, at least in part, but King -- the only other person in the department dealing in Mesoamerica -- doesn't.  Fred thinks there was more trade and intergroup contact in Mesoamerica than we've previously thought, while King follows a more isolationist approach.  But he's no expert on Mayan epigraphy, doesn't read Nahuatl, and doesn't know shit about technology.  I'd planned to do my thesis on possible changes in Mayan military methods resulting from Teotihuacan influences -- but that's kinda hard if the only person left to direct my thesis thinks it's a cock and bull story.  Plus, who's going to teach me to read the language?  Fred is the only one in the department who can read Nahuatl fluently.  A lot of Mesoamericanists only have Spanish, but how can you understand a people if you can't read their language?"

Scott was obviously passionate about the matter, and if Jean couldn't follow all the details -- what was a 'Teotihuacan'?   -- the crux of it she understood all too well:  an interdepartmental debate hamstringing students.  "Could you pick another thesis?"

"Sure, but King isn't a Mayan expert.  He does the ethnography of Spanish colonization, and interracial conflict in Mexico."  Sighing, Scott picked lint off the couch blanket, then looked up.  "I'm not sure I can work with him.  He says stuff in class and I have to bite my tongue.  I'm doing a paper for him that I hate because it was the only thing I could think of that wasn't likely to rub him completely wrong.  That's not a good recipe for getting my degree finished."  

He hesitated, then blurted out what he hadn't yet vocalized even to EJ.  "I'm kinda thinking about transferring."  

Sipping her chai, Jean absorbed that fireshell quietly.  "Where would you transfer to?"

"Somewhere I'm not going to have a methodological argument with the department chair."  

"You didn't say he was the department chair."  

"Yeah, well."  He eyed her.  "Now you know the real reason I think Fred didn't get tenure."  

"Does Fred think that?"

"He's not saying."  

"Of course he's not," she replied and looked down into her mug.  The reflective opaque surface glittered back. 
 
 

California was a concert in adagio for Jean, who, accustomed to the brasher manners and faster pace of New York City, found the Bay Area both idiosyncratic and casual -- but also charming in a completely different way from the boroughs.  New York was the Old World transplanted to the New, but San Francisco embodied the thrill of American promise -- the west coast, the gold rush, the spirit of exploration, all overlooking a pacific sea instead of the tumult of the Atlantic.  This was the road's end, whereas New York had been where it had started for European immigrants.  And she'd made the trek in a little over six hours, total flight time.  

On Sunday, Scott drove her south to see the beaches.  "I brought my swimsuit," she said.  

"You can't wear a swimsuit on the beach in February!  Even in California."  

So they'd played Frisbee in blue jeans and bare feet.  

On Monday, Scott had class.  Jean walked around the campus, exploring, and in the bookstore, bought herself a little bear with a blue and gold sweater sporting a "UC" on the front.  She named it 'Sir Scott.'  Later, EJ cooked supper for them all, and she got to meet Scott's friends -- though she came away from the meal feeling as if she'd been put on trial and the jury was still out.  

On Tuesday after his morning seminar, Scott took her into San Francisco itself.  They rode clanging streetcars down steep inclines, explored Chinatown, and walked the balconies and archways of the red brick Cannery, eating a late lunch under olive trees over a hundred years old.  She made him take her picture with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.  The sea wind blew her short hair into a riot of dyed red to rival the sunset, then they leaned together on the rail of an observation deck, elbows just touching, watching pelicans dive in the choppy waters.  Suddenly, he said, "Look, look," and pointed in great excitement.  

"What?"

"Sea otters!"

And she spotted them -- a pair on the rocks, slipping into the water like children on a playground slide.  "They're cute."  

"You almost never see them in the Bay."  He grinned.  "Must be a sign."  

"Otters?"

"Sure."  

"A sign of what?"  She shoved at him lightly.  "That you're a clown?"

He laughed.  "Maybe."  They were silent then, watching the pair play.  

"Do you ever wonder where you'll be in twenty years?" she asked.  

"All the time," he replied, turning to lean back into the rail so he could watch her face.  She smiled at him, dark eyes full of mischief, like an otter's.  He could count the ticking of seconds by the hard beat of his heart.  He was all-powerful; he was as weak as a kit; words jumbled up in his throat, never making it past the dam of his teeth.  I want to be with you in twenty years.  Could someone be killed by joy?  His was big enough to break a mountain.  
 

The next day, Wednesday, was Valentines'.  When scheduling her visit, it hadn't been Jean's intention to overlap her stay with that holiday, but she had to take vacations when opportunity presented itself and fate had played a joke.  Before leaving, she'd pondered how to handle any potential awkwardness, given their personal history, and the gift she'd chosen had been generic, a CD by one of the bass players he idolized.  In contrast, she'd spent an hour canvassing card shops, seeking just the right sentiment, yet everything had been either too trite, sagging with commonness like a washer woman, or too brash, like a girl who wore her lipstick too bright.  She'd finally given up and bought a blank card sporting an antique photo of a young boy and a girl in a white Easter hat.  The picture hadn't mattered much; she'd grabbed the first likely thing to make her own Valentine.  Inside, she'd scribbled the words of Jane Kenyon....  

We lie back to back.  Curtains
lift and fall,
like the chest of someone sleeping. 
Wind moves the leaves of the box elder;
they show their light undersides,
turning all at once
like a school of fish.  
Suddenly I understand that I am happy.  
For months this feeling
has been coming closer, stopping
for short visits, like a timid suitor.

"Thank you," she'd written beneath the poem, then had paused to ponder what else to say.  'Thank you' had become such a devalued phrase, like love between friends, stepchild to relationships either familial or romantic.  And why?  She did love him -- strong and real and rich like loam, dark on the fingers and moist with spring.  Passion was watercolor, brilliant and lovely, but it ran and faded, then washed away into the earth.  Earth itself always remained.  

But how did she say that?  She didn't know, and so, in the end, she'd settled on only "Thank you," and signed her name.  

As he had early classes on Wednesday, she doubted she'd see him before he left, so she woke in the night and slipped out of his bedroom where she was staying, tiptoeing over to where he was sprawled on the cushions of the couch.  With only a faint light let in by the windows, the room had turned dim and treacherous; she had to move slowly.  Wedging the card against the couch back under his shoulder, she felt her way back to his bedroom, and shut the door.  

The next morning, he woke stiff from too many nights on lumpy cushions, and knocked the card on the floor before he realized what it was.  Then he picked it up and opened it, confused until he saw the writing inside.  He sat for a long time and read it over and over until he realized he'd be late if he didn't move.  Slipping the card into his satchel, he made for the bathroom.  

Nine times that day, he fetched out the card to read it through again, smiling like a fool.  He made her happy, and at noon, he came home with roses, one for each year they'd been friends.  He, no more than she, had known what to do about the coincidental collision of visit and holiday, so he'd done nothing, and now found himself in a busy florist shop along with seven other procrastinating gentlemen at lunchtime.  "Five yellow roses?" the shop girl had asked.  "Not a half-dozen?"

"Just five."  

"Okay."  Either overworked or numbed to peculiar requests, she'd fetched his five roses, he'd paid and then he'd hurried back to his apartment.  

Dressed in a robe, her short hair mussed, Jean had been drinking coffee in the kitchen when he entered, flower-laden.  Embarrassed to be caught so, she blushed, but to him, she looked unspeakably dear.  He laid the flowers in front of her on the dinette and she lifted them to her nose, but commercial roses didn't have much fragrance, especially yellow ones -- a bit too domesticated, perfect and inbred.  It was the small wild rose that choked one with scent.  

"Are you done for the day?" she asked, maybe a bit wistfully.  

"No, another class at two, but I wanted to bring these."  So they shared lunch, and he left.  She found water for her roses and stroked their satin petals.  Yellow, for friendship.  

Or yellow for cowardice?  And whose -- his or hers?  She went over to the couch and flung herself down, surrounded by the scent of him like that first night in his bed.  He'd forgotten to wash the sheets and she'd been glad.  They'd smelled heavy and male, not sanitized for guests and public consumption.  She'd rolled in it, reveled in it -- such a small thing, but visceral, and wild.  

You're a bad girl, Jean Grey, she thought.  

He was eight and a half years her junior.  Loving him as a friend was one thing -- charming, even indulgent.  Desiring him was something else -- staring at his full mouth and wondering how it tasted, if he were sweet, like a peach.  Or imagining the smooth skin of his cheeks under the pads of her fingers, and how it might roughen where his beard began.  Would he tremble, if she touched him?  Would his heartbeat race in the jugular under her thumb?  Your pulse is slightly elevated, Mr. Summers.  And what about yours, Dr. Grey?  

You're a bad girl, Jean, she thought.  You want to bed a boy.  

'It's the rest of the world that sees these labels and categories -- white, black, yellow; Jew, Catholic, protestant; rich, poor; Yankee, Rebel; old . . . young.  You can let those things get in the way -- or not.'  Barb's words in the cafeteria a week or two back.  Jean had been thinking about Warren.  Or had she?  

Equality.  It's all about equality, and I don't mean ERA, Barb had said.  Age didn't necessarily reflect maturity.  In some things, Jean knew more than Scott, but in others, she was a babe in the woods.  He'd had a normal life, and when it came to the social, he was more experienced.  He didn't need her to make a man of him; he'd become one all on his own.  They balanced each other like yin and yang, but what would the rest of the world say?  

Cradle-robber.  

Standing, she headed for the bathroom.  They were going out tonight.  It was a not-date date to a local bar, Wicked Jig's, where his band was playing.  Soapbox had a new guitarist.  "He's not Rick," Scott had said earlier.  "But he's good enough.  I guess we're spoiled."  But even without the legendary Rick and his Lake Placid Blue Stratocaster, she was looking forward to hearing them, to hearing Scott, and she dressed carefully in black jeans and a skin-tight black tank with lace trim along the bottom edge, eyeliner that was too dark and red lipstick to match her hair.  Tonight, she'd forget about being a double doctor, about being sanitized and domesticated and scentless.  Tonight, she'd be a little wild.  She giggled at the novelty.  Thirty years old and she was prepared to squeal like a teenaged band groupie.  

She was finishing up when Scott and his friends descended like locusts to load Lee's van.  The little space that had been quiet and empty and golden with the light of late afternoon turned hectic with seven people, at least half of whom were talking at once at any given time.  Jean stood off to the side, out of the way, and watched with bemusement.  After a bit, the three boys (Scott, EJ, and the new guitar player whose name was Andy) went down below to haul PA equipment out of garage storage, leaving Jean in the apartment with the three women, two of whom she'd met at dinner the previous Monday -- EJ's girl Diane, and EJ's sister Clarice.  The third was Lee Forrester herself, the owner of the van in question.  Jean was a little surprised that Lee hadn't followed her bandmates out, but before she could ask, Clarice had turned to face her, saying, "You do realize how he feels about you?"

And looking at the three of them -- all looking at her -- Jean understood that she was the antelope ambushed by lionesses.  Turning away, she busied herself putting on her shoes.  "If you mean Scott, yes, I know he had a crush on me once.  And yes, I realize there's a little of that crush left, but we're only friends, Clarice.  He knows that."  

The other woman sat down on the arm of the couch and folded her hands together.  She appeared uncomfortable, but determined.  "Yes, he's your friend.  But he's also in love with you, and it's not a little crush, or even the remnants of a little crush.  I don't want to see you break his heart, but that's what you're going to do if you're not careful."  

And Jean's Scottish temper, which she usually kept bound in the fine chains of social civility, burst free.  "You're lecturing me?  I find that hypocritical in the extreme.  You did break his heart, Clarice, and I've never pretended to be anything more than his friend!"

"There was never any pretense involved!" Clarice snapped before either of her shocked friends could come to her defense.  "We loved each other.  He broke my heart, too, y'know -- but we got past it, and I don't want to see him turned inside out by someone who refuses to recognize how he feels because it might inconvenience her!"

How dare you!, Jean wanted to shout, but that was her anger talking.  Clarice was adamant, and angry, but not vicious.  She loved Scott still, Jean thought, but didn't want him back.  She only wanted to be sure the woman who got him would care for him, and her cross-examination sprang from a rare generosity of spirit, not sour spitefulness.  Understanding that cooled Jean's anger, though it still ran hot enough that she didn't stop to ask herself how she knew what Clarice's motivations might be in the first place.  "I've never made any secret of the fact that I consider Scott to be a friend and only a friend," Jean said.  "Or no -- not 'only.'  That degrades it.  Scott's my best friend.  I love him, but it's not romantic and never was for me."  

Liar, liar, pants on fire, a voice whispered in the back of her head.  

Shut up, conscience, she told it.  

"He's your best friend?"  That came from Lee Forrester whose arms were still crossed, and whose mouth had turned down at the corners with disapproval.  "Where the hell were you all last year, then?  And the year before that?  You come and go when you fucking well feel like it and expect him to wait on you.  We stick around; we're his friends.  You don't treat him like a friend, you treat him like your dog."  

"And you're a bitch," Jean snapped back, rounding on her.  Lee was tall and solidly built, and pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way with freckles and curly hair.  Looking into angry gray eyes, Jean had a second insight that evening -- Jean intimidated Lee, who considered herself a second fiddle, and not a fine one, the nicked student model to Jean's Stradivarius.  But her envy had nothing to do with Jean's intelligence or education.  Lee envied Jean her looks, and that was an epiphany for the girl who'd always glowered at others for being pretty and desired.  When had she become the homecoming queen?  

"I'm sorry," Jean said to Lee, flushing.  "That was uncalled for.  But I don't know what you ladies expect me to do.  Should I tell Scott to shove off because I don't happen to return his romantic interest?"  Liar, liar, whispered through her head again.  "Since when did friendship stop being good enough?  He knows what's possible and what isn't.  And why should I give him up just because he's still got a crush on me, as if I don't think he can handle it?  That's patronizing to him.  And it's not fair to me, either."  

"So it's all about you?"

All three of them whipped heads around to the heretofore-silent Diane.  She'd barely spoken at the meal on Monday, too, and Jean had gotten the impression that she was painfully shy -- such a strange match for the vivacious EJ Haight.  But her voice now neither wavered nor shrank.  

"What do you mean by that?" Jean asked -- or snapped, really.  

"Just what I said.  It's all about you -- what's fair to you, what you need, what you want.  Not what he needs, or what he might hope for -- or how it feels from his side."  

And that observation pierced her, held up a mirror to let her see herself, and she didn't care for the reflection.  Maybe the three of them were patronizing Scott by coming to his defense behind his back, but at least that defense was about him; hers had been about her.  Insulating, isolating.  The fort of Jean Grey, and hadn't she pulled down the portcullis since she'd been ten years old?  Never let anyone get close again, measure out her sentiment like a parsimonious fishwife keeping close watch on the till.  She'd give a little, a coin here or there to keep someone interested, but hoarded the rest in the well of her heart.  Afraid, afraid, afraid of being bereft.  

Her vaunted coolness hadn't grown from childhood madness.  It had sprung from loss, and the wall around her soul that kept her safe also kept her facing inward.  One had to go outside the wall to see the world as others did.  

All these things crossed her mind in rapid flashes while the other three watched her.  Then she burst into motion, grabbing her purse and dashing out the door, stamping down the exterior stairs even as the boys were about to climb up from below.  "Are you ladies ready?" EJ called, grinning at her.  And did he know?  Had he been party to the ambush?   Probably not.  Men were more straightforward about such things -- for good or ill.  

"I'm ready," she replied and pushed past him towards his car parked on the other side of the van.  Opening a back door, she stashed herself inside, hoping the three girls would take the other vehicle -- which they, in fact, did.  Scott rode up front with EJ, and Jean in the rear.  The guitar player had his own transportation.  In the car, Scott kept glancing around at her, smiling a little.  Had he sensed her mood and was attempting to cheer her, or was he just happy to have her there?  It made her think again about Diane's question.  How did he feel, really?   Did he secretly think this might go somewhere?  Or did he know it wouldn't, and was content with friendship?  Would he be honest with her, if she asked?  

And what do you feel, Jean Grey?   she asked herself.  Could she be honest with herself?  Did she secretly think this might go somewhere, or was she content with friendship?  

Beautiful boy, she thought, staring at his profile in the twilight.  But the smoothness of left over adolescence had faded, chiseled down into the angles and lines of adulthood.  Beautiful boy no more -- beautiful man.  

He turned back and caught her staring.  She flushed and dropped her eyes, but he didn't.  She could feel them even behind those glasses, curious.  She looked up again and held his gaze until it passed from curious into uncomfortable.  This time, he looked away first, not glancing back again until they'd arrived, then he seemed uncertain, embarrassed, hurried.  Stumbling out of the car, he walked over to where the van had parked and helped unlock the back doors.  She watched, her stomach squeezed and every muscle in her body weak.  This is love, she thought with wonder.  Thirty years old and she was in love for the first time in her life, really, truly in love.  Not just friendship and not only desire, but the whole of it -- passion, adoration, affection, and painful tenderness.  And it couldn't be.  

Could it?  

Getting out of EJ's car, she snatched her purse to check and see if she'd brought her phone.  She had.  Then passing by the unloading band members, she told Scott, "I need to go to the little girl's room.  I need to make a phone call."  He just nodded as he lifted a case free and she disappeared inside the package shop to head down to the bar below.  Wicked Jigs.  Jean had been in relatively few bars, and the atmosphere here -- rough and brash with pool tables under Tiffany lamps and a busy dart-board -- made her uncomfortable.  People glanced her way as she entered, assessing the fresh meat, and she made a beeline for the women's rest room.  It was early still, so there was no line; diuretic beer had yet to begin passing through systems.  The emptiness inside gave her some privacy and she opened her phone, dialing back to New York.  It would be late there but she badly needed to talk to one person.  "Professor," she said when he answered.  "I'm sorry to call you at this hour."  

"It's all right, Jean."  She could hear his body shift.  Had he been lying down?  Or reading in his chair by a cheerful fire in his suite's sitting room?  "Is there a problem?"

"I don't know," she blurted, then hesitated.  Admit it?  Could she admit it?  Wasn't that what she'd called to do?  Admit the truth out loud finally?  

Just do it, do it, do it, do it.  

"I'm in love with Scott," she said, speaking rapid fire.  

A pause on the other end.  "Excuse me?"

"I'm in love with Scott," she said more slowly, her heart pounding.  "I'm in love with him, professor.  Completely, totally, insanely in love with him."  And she giggled like an excited child.  

Another pause, even longer, then a cautious question, "Jean -- has something . . . happened?"  And what had he meant by that, she wondered?  But before she could ask, he went on, "Have you confessed this to Scott?  Or has he said anything to you?"

"No, no," she said.  "Not yet."  

And that was it, wasn't it?  she thought.  Not yet.  

"I want to.  I should.  I was thinking about telling him tonight."  

And over two thousand miles away, in New York, Charles Xavier let out the breath he'd been holding, relieved that nothing had happened yet, alarmed that something might . . . but not surprised at all.  This had been coming, inexorable, for months -- like a great train wreck.  He rubbed his forehead.  How to explain, how to phrase this, how to turn her back gently from disaster when the fire of ardor was hot in the blood?  But he knew, he knew how terrible it was to fall in love with the wrong person, how it could savage the heart and the soul when -- inevitably -- it didn't work out.  

"Jean, my dear," he said softly, "I want you to think about this very carefully.  Scott is twenty-two years old -- "

"I know," she interrupted.  "I've thought about it.  I've thought and thought and thought, but I love him."  

"I know you do."  He neither denied nor qualified her statement with 'you think you do.'  He was certain she loved Scott, and that Scott loved her; he was also quite certain it was fundamentally unhealthy.  Jean was Scott's dream girl -- dream woman, rather -- and that was the point.  She was a woman and a fantasy, and Xavier knew that at some subconscious level, Scott believed winning her would make him a man.  He didn't see her as she was -- fragile and uncertain and insecure, and in desperate need of acceptance.  And Jean?  Scott was what she'd never had in high school.  The popular boy, attractive and urbane, who was utterly fixated on her.  

As friends, they were splendid for each other.  But as lovers . . . ?  Scott would never feel wholly adequate, and Jean would always fear being usurped, because those deep down fears would be exacerbated by such a pairing, not alleviated by it.  She was interested in him now only because she was socially immature herself.  Had she been able to pursue a normal life, he'd strike her as exactly what he was -- a boy on the edge of manhood.  But emotionally, Jean was about twenty-two herself . . . even while in other ways, she certainly was not.  And that could cause serious problems.  Charles had to look no further than his own parents for an example of a match with a substantial age gap that had turned out disastrous.  

He wished this might have come up safely in Westchester where he'd have had more leisure to deal with it instead of speaking across the miles on a cell phone.  Yet he wasn't surprised that Jean's epiphany had happened there in a college town; it only reaffirmed what he already knew:  Jean sought in Scott the normalcy she'd never had.  

"Jean," he said, "I must be frank with you.  A relationship with Scott would be inappropriate."  Blunt, painful -- but necessary like surgery.  "While I have no doubt that the affection you and Scott both feel for one another is quite real, and quite intense, it springs from needs that are not healthy."  He could hear soft noises on the other end, and knew she was crying.  It broke his heart, but he pressed on.  "He's a boy, Jean.  He needs to grow up, and with you, he'd never be able to do that.  He would always be your boyfriend.  And you would always fear that his eyes would wander to younger women.  Perhaps if you both were some years older . . . but you aren't."  

The sound of her crying was louder, mostly because she was trying to hide it.  "Jean, I'm glad that you are finding these emotions in yourself.  You've been repressing intense feeling for years, and Scott's friendship has been excellent for you -- but his friendship only.  I cannot, of course, make your choices for you.  These are your choices.  But I'd be a terrible mentor if I told you that a romantic relationship with him was a good idea.  

"I'm sorry," he ended.  

"I know," she sobbed, then a nearly incomprehensible, "Thank you."  And the connection closed before he could protest.  Almost, he called her back, but suspected that she'd only hang up again.  Sighing, and more deeply troubled than he cared to admit, Charles laid the ear-piece back in its cradle and frowned into the fireplace, watching the flames dance.  In the long run, it would be better.  

On the other end of the line, Jean leaned her head back against cold metal.  Halfway through the brief conversation, she'd fled into a stall in case she were walked in on.  Now, she let herself sob quietly.  The professor was right.  What she felt for Scott was wrong, inappropriate, unhealthy (sick).  You're a bad girl, Jean Grey, echoed in her head again.  Then the inevitable happened.  The door opened and in came two people, Clarice and Diane by their voices, discussing something mundane.  Jean sucked in breath and tried to keep her crying quiet -- unsuccessfully.  The other two fell abruptly silent.  Half a minute passed.  Jean struggled to stay mute.  Finally, Clarice said, "Jean?  Is that you?"

And now what did she say?  Her sorrow turned to frustration turned to anger.  "Go away," she snarled.  

A pause, then, "Jean, I'm sorry."  It was the same thing the professor had said, but they weren't really sorry.  None of them was sorry.  "We didn't want to hurt you -- but we didn't want Scott to be hurt, either.  We felt like we had to say something."  

Simmering anger boiled again into out-and-out fury and Jean fumbled with the stall-door lock, yanking it open to hiss.  "Sorry?  I don't think so.  You just wanted to meddle in my business.  You have no idea what I feel for Scott.  No idea!" Grabbing her purse, Jean pushed past both of them and ran out the door, then glanced about almost wildly for the exit.  The band was up on the stage, busy for the moment (for which she was grateful) and Clarice and Diane had just come out of the bathroom, faces concerned, Clarice's mouth open, ready to say something further.  

Jean couldn't stand it.  She fled back up the stairs, through the package shop and out into the early evening dark on Telegraph Avenue.  Trying to wipe her face, she wandered aimlessly down the little streets south of campus.  Between the heavy makeup she'd put on earlier, and the heavy crying in the bathroom a few minutes before, she knew she looked rather pathetic, black-eyed and wrung out.  Her hair, never her best feature even on a good day, lay flat and limp.  The wind of her own passing blew it back a little from her face.  She ignored the others she passed on the sidewalk.  They were mostly young -- younger than her.  

You're a sick girl, Jean Grey.  Sick, sick, sick.  It made a mantra in her head as she walked.  

Passing a Starbuck's on the corner of Center and Oxford, she decided to go inside and get cleaned up in a bathroom where she wasn't likely to be barged in on by well-meaning busybodies who were Scott's friends, not hers.  Inhabited mostly by college students, the restaurant was comfortingly generic, and she wove between people dressed in upscale winter grunge from Abercrombie and Fitch or The Gap, and one bright splash of commercial tie-die so very different from the handmade originals that might have been seen in Berkeley thirty years before.  

Thirty years.  She was thirty years old, not a college student, not Scott's contemporary, she was a woman and she looked ridiculous dressed in her little black-lace groupie outfit like a beldame caught in a midlife crisis.  Stalking into the restroom, she stopped in front of a mirror.  

She could see that she was indeed a mess and turning on the tap, she set her purse on the counter to wash her skin free of all makeup.  Then grabbing brown paper towels, she scrubbed herself dry and stared at her face again.  Her complexion was no longer taut and smooth, and the barest hint of permanent lines bracketed her mouth.  Eyelashes that had once been thick and dark in defiance of eyeliner now needed artificial assistance.  There were bags under her eyes and creases in her cheeks when she smiled, and her face had lost all that soft smoothness of a girl's.  If the ravages weren't so terrible yet, she couldn't pass for twenty ever again, nor even for twenty-five.  The strain of her schooling had put gray under the red dye, too.  She wondered if Scott had a single gray hair on his head?  

The counter was wet, and Jean used towels to wipe it clean, then pulled herself up to sit in her black designer jeans.  Scott would surely have noticed by now that she was gone and he'd be worried -- but what could she possibly say?  She couldn't have stayed there a minute more.  She wasn't even sure she could go back; the thought made her stomach queasy.  At the base of it, Jean was an emotional coward.  If her temper were ignited, then she could stand her ground to yell at Clarice, tell off the police who'd been interviewing her about Bruce, or -- two years ago now -- break up with Ted in a Fifth Avenue garage.  But her choleric courage struck her at inopportune times when she'd been pushed to her limits.  It was out of control, bright and sharp and red, like her hair.  Except her real hair wasn't red.  It was auburn, and so was her resolution.  More often, she shrank from brutal honesty.  It wasn't, as far as she was concerned, necessary very often, causing more problems than it solved.  When did honesty become simply self-centered rudeness?  

If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.  

She'd heard that all her life, yet is wasn't entirely compassion or sensitivity that motivated her reticence.  Deep down, Jean needed to be loved -- or at least not to be hated.  Disagreements made her stomach ill, as did disapproval.  She would continue miserable in heart if it let her avoid an ugly confrontation.  In that, and looked at with detachment, Jean had to admire feisty little Clarice.  Despite her titanic height and her brontosaurus intellect, Jean was no natural crusader.  Criticism curled her in on herself, reducing her to a child once again, scolded for unladylike behavior and crying in a corner of her bedroom.  She was never enough.  In herself, she was never enough, and perhaps that was why she drove herself so hard to prove to someone, somewhere that she deserved to be taken seriously.  The Amazon wallflower from the mental ward could do something with herself.  She was Dr. Jean Grey, M.D., Ph.D. and no one was ever going to snicker at her behind hands again.  Was it such a terrible thing to want, just once, to be happy and loved?  But some taint in her always chose the impossible, or the inappropriate.  

Grabbing her purse, she dug for her phone again and slammed it open, dialed another number, waiting for an answer.  The phone rang several times before a voice said, "Pronto?"  There was a terrible racket of music in the background and she guessed he must be clubbing with Ro.  

"Frank!"

"Bella Jeannie!  Come va?"

"Terrible, Frank."  

A brief pause, then, "You wait a minute, okay?  You're on your cell?"

"Yes."  

"I'll call you back."  And the phone disconnected.  

She waited, turning the little silver phone nervously in her hands.  She was still alone in a Starbuck's bathroom and the absurdity of that amused her.  But a few minutes later, the phone rang again and she answered quickly.  "Hello?  Frank?"

"What is wrong?"

So she told him, and she wept again a little, and shook though the bathroom wasn't cold.  He listened quietly like he always did.  Scott was an active listener, nodding, slipping in a 'yeah' or 'mmm' or asking questions.  Frank simply listened, the sound of his breathing the only evidence of his attention.  When she'd finished, she ended it with, "I need to know, Frank.  Would it be such an awful mistake if we got together?  Is the professor right?"

His breath went out.  "Jean -- you know . . ."  He sighed.  "I cannot tell you the future.  There is no 'future.' We make our own futures.  People have many reasons for doing the things they do.  Some are good; some are not so good.  It is rarely so simple as 'good' or 'bad.'  Sì, sì, in some futures, you and Scott might become a couple and it would be a terrible thing.  In others, it would not be so terrible but not happy.  In others, you would live like a fairy tale, and in still others you never become a couple at all.  Which of them is the future?  All of them."  

There was a long pause.  She didn't interrupt his thinking.  "I do not need to tell you what you feel.  You know what you feel.  And I cannot tell you what to choose.  It is your life.  All I can tell you is that, whatever you choose, whether you are happy or sad will depend on why you make the choice.  If you love Scott for himself, then you will be happy.  If you love Scott for yourself, then you will be disappointed -- and that would be true no matter who it was, no?"

She laughed a little and wiped her eyes.  Here she was, being lectured about love and reality by a boy even younger than Scott, but as ageless as a god.  

"The professor, he means well, you know?  But to have a power like his, to see into the minds of people -- it is dangerous.  Easy to think you see everything.  He knows he does not, just as I know I do not.  Sometimes, though, you make choices in your arrogance . . . "  His voice trailed off and Jean wondered what choices he was thinking of.  "Things do not always turn out as you think.  The professor -- he does not want that you and Scott should hurt each other.  But you and Scott will hurt each other anyway, whether or not you mean it.  The more we love, the more we can wound.  

"Jean," he said gently, "the only way that you can avoid to be hurt is not to feel at all, not to do, not to live.  Love is risk, bella.  Life is risk, you know?  But sweeter for it.  La dolce vita."  

"Yeah," she whispered.  

"Take your time.  You are not the hare, no?  There is no rush.  The hare, he didn't win the race.  Patience, bella.  I will not tell you it will all work out -- you would know I was lying.  I will only tell you to follow your heart, not your fears, eh?"

She nodded, though he couldn't see it.  "Okay.  Thank you, Frank."  

"Prego, s'immagini.  You go enjoy your evening."  

"You enjoy yours."  

"Sempre.  Ciao, bella."  And he hung up.  

Sighing, Jean closed the phone and stared at her hands, and that's where her age showed most, wasn't it?  Lined, with rough skin and blunt nails, they were working hands.  But she minded less now.  Age brought patience, and Frank was right.  She wasn't the hare, and never had been.  Cautious Jean, she trudged along, but she reached her goals.  Hopping off the counter, she surveyed her bare face in the mirror.  Maybe it wasn't so bad.  Digging in her purse, she reapplied her make-up, but lighter, like she usually wore it, an accent, not a concealment.  Finished finally, she left the restaurant, less crowded now than it had been even thirty minutes before, and then headed back to the bar.  Scott was pacing around outside in the parking lot by the time she got there.  He yelled her name when he saw her and ran up, a little breathless, questions tumbling over themselves getting out, "Where have you been?  They said you ran out so I went after you and I've been up and down Telegraph ten times and -- !"

She put two fingers over his lips to shut him up.  "I'm sorry.  I needed to think, that's all."  

And though she couldn't see his eyes, she could sense his anxiety.  "Think about what?"

"My business, nosey."  She smiled at him and, rather to his surprise, pushed her way into his arms.  They closed around her, hesitant.  Her grip was stronger, but with affection only, and she laid her head on his shoulder.  She wasn't the hare, she was the tortoise; and if it took a little while for them to get anywhere, well, that was okay.  She let him go after a second, then clasped his hand to pull him towards the door.  "Come on.  If you have time before you have to perform, you want to teach me to play darts?"

Go on to Chapter 15: "All the King's Horses"