From the beginning, p.3
From the Beginning, page 3
“Incredible! That’s so exciting. Did you find anything?”
“No, not really,” he glumly replied.
They’d sent the results back to Berlin for AI scrutiny, and the Sarteano samples had come up negative. Even more disappointing was that the data from the river Lotte had quietly slipped to her friend Jürgen for some surreptitious after-hours analysis had also produced nothing. The site had clearly been occupied. There was evidence of a narrow road or path leading up the hill on the north side, and the WHG had detected some small items buried in the soil. But if Vanth had an underground portal chamber like Charun’s, its location would remain a mystery for now.
“It’s okay, though. She still had plenty to talk about in terms of the process of data collection and technical analytics. That’s what the lecture was really about.”
Gloria seemed impressed. “I’ll bet she did. I’ll bet they’re all buzzing about the big robbery too.”
“What are you talking about? I haven’t had the TV on this morning.”
“Oh, my, there was a big robbery at the Louvre in Paris. Actually, it seems like they did more damage than steal things. Somebody broke a display case, and it looks like they only took one thing, some kind of old stone mace.”
Eric shuddered slightly, thinking of Charun’s hammer. But Charun is gone... right?
“The incredible thing, though,” Gloria continued, “was that they somehow got out through a glass ceiling in some covered courtyard. Nobody knows how they got up there, or why they chose that way to get out, but there was broken glass everywhere. Apparently, they used some kind of electrical pulse that disabled all the power and security cameras in that wing of the building, so there’s no video. I guess a guard heard the noise and triggered something manually in another part of the building. The whole complex was going off like a thousand car alarms for two hours.”
“When did this happen?” he asked, utterly amazed and secretly somewhat concerned about what it might mean.
“It would have been about three a.m. their time, so about nine last night ours.”
“Wow. I was in bed finishing that Amy Chua book, then I went to sleep. I’ll bet the WIA is going nuts over this.”
“Sorry, WIA?”
“Oh, my bad.” He chuckled. “Everybody has an acronym these days, don’t they? WIA stands for ‘Women in Archaeology.’ That’s the conference Lotte’s attending.”
She gave a somewhat skeptical look. “Aren’t there already a lot of women in archaeology? Do they really need a conference?”
“Yeah, there are, but they started this up a few years ago to try to address gaps in publication rates and tenure positions between women and men. Also, with more and more reliance on technology, you’re seeing the same thing that happens with a lot of STEM programs. Women get discouraged and don’t stick with it for the same reasons they leave science and tech. So, among other things, WIA are doing a lot of mentoring. In fact, the whole afternoon today is geared toward that, which is why Lotte is leaving early and I have to get her tonight.”
“Doesn’t she want to be a mentor? She’d be fantastic.”
Eric smiled knowingly. “Fantastic doesn’t even cover it, believe me. She’s a great teacher and would be a perfect mentor for undergrads. She’s just really busy and overextended, so she’s trying not to get sucked into any more commitments just now. She just finished her Master’s. Maybe once she has some traction with the PhD, she’ll feel differently.”
In truth, Lotte had some reservations about the whole concept of the WIA. Mentoring was one thing, but having a conference with programming and a small awards ceremony geared only at women sort of rubbed her the wrong way. She felt men and women should be seen as equals, and that having a conference for women might have the unintended consequence of creating an even greater divide between genders than currently existed. Eric didn’t really see a big problem, but if the Werner Institut hadn’t sponsored her to present on their technology, she’d have never gone. Ironically, Werner chose her because she was the only female involved in the institute who had enough knowledge of the technology to represent them. To Eric, this was exactly the point of WIA.
Gloria nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense. George tended to go overboard too. He just loved what he did, and he had that kind of voracious curiosity about... well, everything! He was involved in so many things—committees, curriculum development, writing articles—and so much work with his students, trying to help them see that an English degree wasn’t an economic death sentence. He tried to get students to understand that people who could think and write could do so many things, and that the money would come in the end. He was always running off to something, doing all kinds of projects with all sorts of people, but he didn’t look after his health. At least it was fast, no suffering, unlike my poor mother.”
“I’m so sorry,” Eric said, sensing all of this still hovered awfully near the surface for Gloria, even after several years of losing both the people she had lived with and loved. “You’ve never mentioned what happened with your mother.”
“It was cancer. We took care of her as long as we could here, but in the end, she had to go into a nursing home for continuous monitoring. She hated it, and I think that broke what little spirit she had left to fight. Then it was just a slow process of watching her waste away in hospice. She died about six months before George did. Such a good person. I wish she could have just gone quietly and peacefully, avoided all that suffering, but I guess we don’t get to make that choice for people, do we?”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he kept his mouth shut. It was true. Even people suffering didn’t appear to have the choice to end their lives when they felt they were done. That seemed silly to him, and he thought of Freud’s antipathy toward religion. Maybe there was more to his feelings than just the pessimism of a weary and sick old man. Interesting also that his final act was a finger in the eye of those who opposed doctor-assisted suicide on so called “moral” grounds. Freud was far from a perfect person, but Eric perceived that for the time in which he lived, and died, he did so by the ideals that guided his life’s work, which was ultimately geared at reducing human suffering.
Gloria sighed deeply. “In any case, that’s why George had books on so many subjects, not just his dusty old lit crit. He read about everything so he could talk to people about anything. He’d be happy somebody was getting some use out of them. Most of them are just packed up in boxes in the basement. Do you want some more?”
“Absolutely!” Eric responded with enthusiasm, trying to lift Gloria’s spirits. “You pick. I like everything, but you know I prefer non-fiction.”
“Gotcha!” she winked. “Stop back this afternoon and I’ll have some for you, or I’ll just leave them on the stairs if you’re busy. You say Lotte is coming home tonight?”
“Yeah, she leaves around three, and I’ll get her at Logan around six. She’s been super busy with school starting back, but maybe we could plan to do dinner sometime in the next couple of weeks. I’ll pry her away from the computer. She’ll hate it, but she’ll thank me in the end.”
Gloria laughed. “That’s sounds lovely. You two are so sweet. Are you ever going to get married?”
Yikes, where did that come from? “Wow, uh... gee... I honestly don’t know. We haven’t put much thought into that. Maybe, some day. I’m not sure. I’d have to ask the boss.”
“Well, that’s usually how it works, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess it is at that. I suppose I meant that at some point, she and I would need to talk about it... try to figure out what advantage marriage would bring us. I’m not sure it would change our basic commitment to one another. We have an especially strong and kind of... well... uncommon bond.”
“I can tell. You’re the poster children for ‘opposites attract.’ I think that’s so cute. I’d love to hear how you two got together.”
Yeah, that’s never gonna happen.
“All I can say is, for George and me, marriage just greased the skids. It made certain practical things easier. For better or worse, it’s what people expect. Not people, people, like your friends, but people at banks, and with the IRS, and mortgage companies... and people who aren’t your friends, who judge you only by what they see on the outside. It’s also usually the step folks take before they have children. Guess that was a factor for us, too.”
Children, yowzah! Now there’s a frightening concept. “Well, I appreciate your input. It’s definitely food for thought.”
“Yeah, something to consider,” she said, appearing to sense she’d struck a nerve. “You’ll be fine either way. Don’t worry about it.”
Yeah, right. That’s kind of like asking me not to breathe.
They bid adieu, and he scurried back upstairs. He’d need to leave to meet Margot and Jessica soon. They wanted to have lunch in the South End, and Eric was damned if he was going to drive. He’d take the T... plenty of time to sit on the train and contemplate what it might be like being married to Lotte. Or, more to the point, what it would be like for Lotte being married to him... with children.
The mind boggles.
Rather than ponder the imponderable, Eric spent most of his time on the train looking at videos from Paris on his phone. Most of it showed aerial footage of the glass canopy of the Cour Marly, the enclosed courtyard of the Louvre that now housed a magnificent collection of sculptures.
The damage was impressive. Glass and debris littered the roof. Whatever had been inside had clearly burst out, likely at great speed, almost as if they’d ridden a tiny missile from the floor below. The gaping hole was about six to eight feet wide. The authorities had no idea how the thieves got in, but this was without a doubt the method of egress.
They also seemed clueless as to why, of all the incredible treasures in the vast museum, only the one display case in room 236, Ancient Mesopotamia, had been broken into, or, according to reports, utterly destroyed. No images from inside the building had been released, and the mysterious electrical malfunction, likely initiated by the thieves themselves, had disabled all the security cameras, so they’d captured no video of the culprits or their astonishing escape. Equally puzzling was why only one item, identified simply as a “votive mace head,” had been taken. Nevertheless, French police spokespeople assured the public that the miscreants would be rapidly found and severely punished.
Eric had his doubts. It had been twenty-five years since the theft at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and they didn’t seem any closer to catching those miscreants or finding the stolen artwork than when he was a nine-month-old baby. The whole Louvre thing, however, totally creeped him out. It just didn’t seem natural. Given his experiences, that might just be paranoia creeping in—seeing monsters where none existed.
At least, I hope that’s the case.
Margot and Jessica wanted to go to a tapas place on Washington Street, so he made the change to the Orange Line at Downtown Crossing and got off at Back Bay. It wasn’t the nearest stop, but he liked walking through the South End, and since the rain had let up, he took advantage of getting a little exercise. Tapas was good because he could eat fairly light and maybe go for a bike ride in the afternoon before picking up Lotte. It felt nice not having to run around for a change.
“Hey stranger!” Margot called as Eric stepped inside the restaurant. “Long time no see. You behaving?”
He gave his friend and co-worker a big hug. “If behaving badly is behaving, then sure.” He turned to hug Margot’s partner. “Hi Jessica! How have you two been?”
“Fine, good to see you Eric,” Jessica replied. “Busy as ever. School is back in full swing, and your dad is running Margot ragged, as usual.”
“What? My dad never ran anybody ragged but me. You’re either making it up, or you’re more incompetent than I thought.”
Margot smiled and countered the joke insult. “No, things are far more efficient in the office than ever, now that you’ve been exiled to Eastern Mass!”
Eric made a play at being wounded, but he knew she was probably telling the truth. “I think they want to seat us. We’ll hash this out when we get to the table.”
After sitting down and ordering drinks and some starter tapas, Eric turned to Jessica. “So, school... how is old Southby High? Lotte and I should drop by sometime and see the place. That would bring back memories.”
“Oh, it’s fine.” Jessica sighed. “This is my third year, and I guess I’ve got the drill down. I think they’ll want me to start teaching geometry next year, which will be something new.”
He groaned. “Ugh, geometry. Kill me now.”
She laughed. “Yeah, that seems like a ‘love it or hate it’ kind of subject. I take it you were the latter. I’ve always been a math geek, so I’m excited. That’s about all I’m excited about right now, though. It just feels like the school is moving backwards.”
“How so?”
“Well, it’s not the kids. I mean, kids are kids, right? They’re an echo chamber for what their parents do and say. I guess I’ve gotten used to a certain amount of self-centered entitlement in Southby, though that’s probably true in a lot of places these days. I just can’t believe all the incidences we’ve had of bullying and hateful speech. I didn’t hear this stuff three years ago when I started, but last year, and now with the new year, it’s just seeping out of the woodwork. There seems to be so much... anger out there, and it all just seems to be bubbling to the surface. I don’t know if it’s people reacting to Obama, or fucking Facebook, or what, but it feels like people are coming unhinged. I’m really dreading next year’s election.”
Eric had voted twice, both times for Obama. He didn’t especially follow politics all that closely, but his sense was that Republicans had very much dug in their heels over his policies and things had gotten more divisive. The debate over immigration reminded him of Amy Chua’s book, and how intolerance toward minorities in your midst correlated with a hyperpower’s decline.
Is this all symptomatic of the end of the “American era?”
Hard to tell, but it was interesting how these issues seemed to be playing out in his old high school. Southby had always been a conservative and insular place. For a while there, it seemed like things were changing, but progress is rarely linear, and it didn’t surprise him that his hometown had given back some of what he, at least, saw as the gains that had been made. He’d never felt truly at home in Southby. Cambridge and Somerville were much more to his liking, though a far more urban environment, which meant there were tradeoffs in space, noise, cost, and other factors.
“Wow,” he said, shaking his head. “I remember the day I met Lotte. There was an incident with a kid who made a Nazi salute. Lotte slapped him. I’m not joking. He was on the freaking football team, but she was fearless. It’s something I’ll never forget. It was so shocking. It’s the only time I remember anything like that happening, but I’m not gonna say there wasn’t some pretty disturbing stuff going on under the surface.”
“Yeah, well,” Jessica said with distaste, “things are changing, and not for the better. It’s gonna be a wild ride over the next few years. Whatever, I don’t mean to be a downer. Hey, speaking of Lotte, how is she? I miss seeing you two at Peaches.”
“Yeah, we’ve got to get back down there the next time Margot is playing. Lotte’s fine... super busy, but she’s killing it in her program. Surprise, surprise. I’m not sure if Margot mentioned, but she’s down in North Carolina at a conference giving a talk for the Werner Institut. In fact, it’s probably done now. Maybe she’ll call and tell us how it went.”
“And how are you?” Margot asked. The look she gave him, and the context of Lotte, gave him a clue what she was really asking.
“I’m fine. We’re fine. It’s not perfect, but what is? She’s usually really busy, and she gets kind of wound up about all the stuff she feels like she has to do, but that’s Lotte. I expected that. I’m exactly where I need to be, and deep down, I think she feels like she is too. There are things to hash through and figure out, but we have time. No panic. It’s a work in progress. Lavori in Corso, as the Italians say. There, how’d I do?”
Margot laughed. “Not bad! I almost believe you. Actually, I’m proud of you, Eric. You sort of surprised me doing what you did two years ago. It took guts. I thought it could go either way, but I kind of bet on you staying with Erica—money I happily lost.”
Eric shook his head. “Oh, God. Erica. Poor Erica. How is she?”
“She’s fine. I see her at the bank when I go. We’ve never discussed it, but I’m sure she knows I have most of the details of what happened. It’s probably hard for her, having that constant reminder, but as far as I can tell, she’s moved on. Sometimes that’s just the way it has to be.”
“Jeez!” Jessica interjected. “Is this what you two spent all your time talking about when you worked together?”
Both Eric and Margot gave a somewhat uncomfortable laugh. “Margot helped me out of a jam two years ago. We talked about stuff like this then, and if we hadn’t, I’m not really sure where I’d be today. Definitely not in as good a place. I say that with certainty. Otherwise, we were all business. Right?”
He winked, and Margot winked back. “Right, boss. Ex-boss, actually. Speaking of work, though, I’ve been wanting to talk with you about something, but I wanted to do it in person, and I knew you’d been busy with the new team, so I didn’t ask if you could come down.”
She was referring to the new flooring team for which Eric was partly responsible as Assistant Project Manager. When he’d told his dad he wanted to move to the Boston area, Mr. Schneider acted on a plan he’d had in mind for several years but never executed. From among his Central Mass flooring personnel, he formed a new group that was willing to work in the Boston area, and he drafted Eric to help with project management.
Schneider Industrial Flooring had a great reputation in Central Mass, Rhode Island, and parts of Connecticut and Western Mass, but the Boston area was a different ballgame. So far, the city itself hadn’t proven especially fruitful, but the northern part of Route 128 around Woburn and Burlington had turned out to be a goldmine. Eric could easily drive up there after rush hour to meet with the team when jobs were in progress, or help his dad with the occasional sales call.
