Page 49 - WTP VOl. X #3

know you. My friend was in your class, she told me about you. Emily Nagada.”
“Sure, I remember her.” He has a bright-eyed expres- sion and clean-shaven cheeks; shoulder-length hair, blond and curly. He looks almost exactly like the young Robert Plant, confident and rock-star pretty.
“Emily liked that class a lot. It had a funny name....” “Artificial Intelligence is Real.”
“You should write a book like that.”
“Thanks, I might.”
As we chat, I keep the car moving slowly forward with the traffic while the student, Eric, walks or trots alongside. An escort, one hand placed on the window frame while moving, both hands when he leans down to talk. He has such an innocent manner that this is not intrusive but companionable. Emily has told him that I work on robots, and he’s curious to hear more. I wonder what would happen if I asked him to go for a drink. I can’t believe I’m thinking this. At least I’m just thinking it. Would he? Or maybe he’ll ask me. I would say no, but it would make me happy. There isn’t much time: the traffic ahead is opening up, I’m about to lose him. He’s looking down the street with the intent, slightly anxious expression of wanting to speak but not knowing what to say.
“Well,” I try.
“Yeah,” he says, nodding in agreement. “See ya.”
My heart is pounding. The car rolls another half block and dozens of faces stream by, young and love- ly to watch. Dreadlocks, gypsy clothes, nose rings, black leather, blue hair, cut-off jeans, tattoos. Half my age, and a different species.
~
At Jacob’s, dinner is just ending, various pizzas. I choose leftover slices of pesto-red onion-blue cheese and olive-artichoke-sundried tomato-goat cheese. I’m relieved to have arrived late enough to avoid ques- tions about Alex. He is in Italy and I was supposed to be with him, I’m on leave this semester. But no one seems to remember this.
Jacob’s living room is large and bare, with white walls and polished wood floors, a heavy beamed ceiling. Instead of couches and chairs there are richly colored old rugs and dozens of pillows made from scraps of carpet. Jacob’s family lived in Afghanistan when he was a boy, and he has kept their habit of sitting on the floor.
The conversation, as I join the others, is on the mat- ing habits of apes. Dan, a mathematician, has been reading a book on this. His claim is that the sexual development and behavior of certain populations
of great apes are far more complex than previously understood, perhaps even as sophisticated as those of humans. Dan says this earnestly, citing facts from the book about the onset of menses and gaps in fertil- ity. He is tall but with shoulders so slumped from shyness that he gives the impression of peering up rather than down at the others. It is odd to hear this shy man talk so matter-of-factly about sex.
No one has accepted his argument, for reasons that seem too obvious to elaborate. This further frustrates Dan, that he is losing the argument though no one has offered a better defense of the other side. When Anna insists that the love lives of humans are immensely complicated, Dan asks, in all seriousness, “How? What do you mean?”
“Romeo and Juliet,” Anna says. (Jacob interrupts, “Bonzo and Juliet!”) “Gone with the Wind. Anna Kar- enina. Right? But for apes, it’s the same story over and over, essentially.”
Dan remains stubbornly serious. “But wouldn’t it be interesting to know what a love story was for an ape? If you think about it...”
“Only humans talk about sex.” “Only humans tell stories.”
“Is that true?”
Bees give directions to flowering meadows. Are direc- tions stories? And then there are whale songs. Koko the chimp...
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