"When do you have to give them a decision?" Ruth asked, handing him his coffee.
"What?" He dragged his mind back.
"Whether or not you're going to accept."
"Before I leave town. In a day or two."
Ruth cupped her hands around the mug. In between sips she said, "You can stay the night if you want to." She looked at him. "I want you to."
Chase paused with the mug halfway to his lips.
"Of course we don't have to make love," Ruth said with a crooked half-smile. "There's no compulsion."
"There's no compulsion," Chase agreed. "But I'm not made of steel and you're no paper doll."
She had straightened up, still kneeling, and the heady sensuous smell of perfume and warm female filled his nostrils. The kiss lasted a long time, Chase tumbling gently into warm perfumed darkness, his senses shimmering and fully alive.
Behind them the crack in the bedroom door thinned to a black line and vanished without a sound.
"Ruth, I'm sorry."
"What's the matter?"
"I'm sorry, I can't."
"Is it because of your son?"
"No."
"Me?"
Chase shook his head. "Certainly not you." He felt tongue-tied and horribly embarrassed. "It's stupid. You wouldn't understand. Something that was done to me when I was married--years ago. I just don't like the idea of doing the same thing to someone else, someone I love."
It sounded so feeble and saintlike that he couldn't meet her eye.
"Never apologize or explain to a woman who's been rebuffed," Ruth said brightly, her face brittle as if any moment it might shatter. "Doesn't make her feel any better, you know. Only much, much worse."
A man with a reddish beard and a bald head fringed by curly ginger-ish hair strode through the crowd and stuck out his hand. Chase stared at him for a full five seconds. Then he said involuntarily, "What in hell are you doing here?"
"I'm the welcoming committee," said Nick Power with a grin, pumping his hand. "Didn't Gene mention I worked in his department? Gav, it's great to see you again!"
Nick chattered on as they walked across the concourse of the Princeton monorail terminal and down the steps into a large glass-enclosed parking lot. A winking neon sign cautioned electric vehicles only!
"Came over in '97 and spent a year with a government outfit in Washington. Bloody awful! Then I applied for a post at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab and I've been here ever since. Gene didn't know we knew each other, but I saw the program you two did together and when he told me you were coming down I volunteered to meet you. You're looking well, you old bastard!"
Chase dropped his briefcase onto the rear seat of the small battery-powered runabout. "Still working in glaciology?"
"That and fifty other things," Nick replied cheerfully, climbing in behind the wheel. "We all pitch in here. Climatology, meteorology, paleontology, Scientology--" He registered Chase's reaction. "Joke." He swung the little car around in a tight circle and coasted down the tunnel ramp to the street. "How long are you staying?"
"I have to get back to New York later today. My son's there. I want to get him away as soon as I can."
"That's a pity. If you were staying over you could have met Jen, my wife." Nick's face contorted hideously. "Can you believe it--me marrying somebody called 'Jennifer'? Shit and corruption."
"I don't know, you seem to be thriving on it," Chase said. He grinned, genuinely pleased to have run across Nick after all this time. Perhaps it was a good omen.
"She's thriving, I'm losing my hair," Nick said, patting the top of his head. "But she's a truly wunnerful person and we have a wunnerful daughter."
"Are you still smoking the Moroccan Blue?"
"Algerian Red." Nick pursed his lips in wistful remembrance. "Wow, that was prime stuff, my boy. You can't get hold of natural health-giving weed like that nowadays. Now it's all chemical shit. After a couple of trips you start to smell like a photographer's rubber apron."
Chase laughed, his spirits lifting. After New York Nick's company was as bracing as a breath of pure clean air.
The white modular construction of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory reminded Chase of a cubist painting. Nick showed his pass and they went up to Gene Lucas's office on the second floor, which, like the man, was neat and tidy to the point of prim fastidiousness. A blackboard took up all of one wall. Even the equations were written in a carefully rounded hand in chalk of different colors. Diagrams, flow charts, and memoranda were pinned in precise patterns to the cork boards along two walls. The window looked out onto a deserted campus, wraiths of mist draping the trees.
The Peterson pipe that Gene Lucas was smoking looked several sizes too big for him. He shook hands, remarking in his soft drawl that he thought Chase was way out west somewhere; he certainly hadn't expected his call.
Now that Chase had made up his mind to head the project he was anxious to get started. He told them as much as he knew, which as he spoke seemed to him to be precious damn little.
