Fifty Degrees Below (4 page)

The irrepressible sociobiologist that was always theorizing inside Frank wondered if he was experiencing some bias here, given that she was a powerful alpha female, and his boss. Perhaps all alpha females were somehow physically impressive, and this part of their alpha-ness; it was generally true of males.

They sat, ate, spoke of other things. Frank asked about her kids.

“Grown up and moved out. It’s easier now.” She spoke offhandedly, as if talking about a matter that did not really concern her. “How could it not be.”

“For a while it must have been busy.”

“Oh yes.”

“Where were you before NSF?”

“University of Washington. Biophysics. Then I got into administration there, then at triple A S, then NIH. Now here.” She shrugged, as if to admit that she might have gone down a wrong path somewhere. “What about you? What brought you to NSF?”

Well, I gambled with equity that wasn’t entirely mine, lost it, went through a break-up, needed to get away. . . .

It wasn’t a story he wanted to tell. Maybe no one’s story could really be told. She had not mentioned her late husband, for instance. She would understand if he only spoke of his scientific reasons for coming to NSF: new work in bioalgorithms, needed a wider perspective to see what was out there, a year visiting NSF good for that—and so on.

She nodded, watching him with that amused expression, as if to say, I know this is only part of the story but it’s still interesting. He liked that. No wonder she had risen so high. Alpha females pursued different strategies than alpha males to achieve their goals; their alpha-ness derived from different social qualities.

“What about your living situation?” she asked. “Were you able to stay in the place you had?”

Startled, Frank said, “No. I was renting from a State Department guy who came back.”

“So you managed to find another place?”

“Yes. . . . For the moment I’m in a temporary place, and I’ve got some leads for a permanent one.”

“That’s good. It must be tough right now, with the flood.”

“That’s for sure. It’s gotten very expensive.”

“I bet. Let me know if we can help with that.”

“Thanks, I will.”

He wondered what she meant, but did not want to ask. “One thing I’m looking into is joining an exercise club around here, and Anna mentioned that you went to one?”

“Yes, I go to the Optimodal.”

“Do you like it?”

“Sure, it’s okay. It’s not too expensive, and it has all the usual stuff. And it’s not just kids showing off. Most days I just get on a treadmill and go.” She laughed. “Like a rat on a wheel.”

Just like at work, Frank didn’t say.

“Actually I’ve been trying more of the machines,” she added. “It’s fun.”

Frank got the address from her, and they went back to the serving area for pie and ice cream (her portion small), and talked a bit more about work. She never made even the slightest hint of reference to his letter of resignation. That was strange enough to disturb his sense of being in a normal professional relationship. It was as if she were in some way holding it over him.

Then, walking in the covered walkway above the street to the NSF building, she said, “Let’s set up a regular meeting between us for every two weeks, and add more if you need to. I want to be kept up on what you’re thinking.”

Quickly he glanced down at her. She kept looking at the glass doors they were approaching.

“That’s the best way to avoid any misunderstandings,” she went on, still not looking at him. Then, as they reached the doors to their building, she said, “I want something to come of this.”

“Me too,” he assured her. “Believe me.”

They approached the security desk. “So what will you do first?” she asked, as if something had been settled between them.

“To tell the truth, I think I’ll go see about joining that health club.”

She grinned. “Good idea. I’ll see you there sometimes.”

He nodded. “And, as far as the working committee, I’ll start making calls and setting it up. I’d like to get Edgardo on it too, if you think that would be okay.”

She laughed. “If you can talk him into it.”

So. Frank returned to his office, collecting his thoughts. A workman was there installing a power strip on the newly exposed wall behind his desk, and he waited patiently until the man left. He sat at the desk, swiveled and looked out the window at the mobile in the atrium.

He had spent the night in his car and then lunched with the director of the National Science Foundation, and no one was the wiser. He did feel a little spacy. But when appearances were maintained, no one could tell. Nothing obvious gave it away. One retained a certain privacy.

Remembering a resolution he had made that morning, he picked up the phone and called the National Zoo.

“Hi, I’m calling to ask about zoo animals that might still be at large?”

“Sure, let me pass you to Nancy.”

Nancy came on and said hi in a friendly voice, and Frank told her about hearing what seemed like a big animal, near the edge of the park at night. “Do you have a list of zoo animals still on the loose?”

“Sure, it’s on our website. Do you want to join our group?”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a committee of the volunteer group, FONZ? Friends of the National Zoo. You can join that, it’s called the Feral Observation Group.”

“The FOG?”

“Yes. We’re all in the FOG now, right?”

“Yes.”

She gave him the website address, and he checked it out. It turned out to be a good one. Some 1500 FONZies already. There was a page devoted to the Khembalis’ swimming tigers, and on the FOG page, a list of the animals that had been spotted, as well as a separate list for animals missing since the flood and not yet seen. There was a jaguar on this list. And gibbons had been seen, eight of them, white-cheeked gibbons, along with three siamangs. Almost always in Rock Creek Park.

“Hmmm.” Frank recalled the cry he had heard at dawn, pursued the creatures through the web pages. Gibbons and siamangs both hooted in a regular dawn chorus; siamangs were even louder than gibbons, being larger. Could be heard six miles rather than one.

It looked like being in FOG might confer permission to go into Rock Creek Park. You couldn’t observe animals in a park you were forbidden to enter. He called Nancy back. “Do FOG members get to go into Rock Creek Park?”

“Some do. We usually go in groups, but we have some individual permits you can check out.”

“Cool. Tell me how I do that.”

He left the building and walked down Wilson and up a side street, to the Optimodal Health Club. Diane had said it was within easy walking distance, and it was. That was good; and the place looked okay. Actually he had always preferred getting his “exercise” outdoors, by doing something challenging. Up until now he had felt that clubs like these were mostly just another way to commodify leisure time, in this case changing things people used to do outdoors, for free, into things they paid to do inside. Silly as such.

But if you needed to rent a bathroom, they were great.

So he did his best to remain expressionless (resulting in a visage unusually grim) while he gave the young woman at the desk a credit card, and signed the forms. Full membership, no. Personal trainer ready to take over his thinking about his body but without incurring any legal liability, no way. He did pay extra for a permanent locker in which to store some of his stuff. Another bathroom kit there, another change of clothes; it would all come in useful.

He followed his guide around the rooms of the place, keeping his expressionless expression firmly in place. By the time he was done, the poor girl looked thoroughly unsettled.

Back at NSF he went into the basement to his Honda.

A great little car. But now it did not serve the purpose. He drove west on Wilson for a long time, until he came to the Honda/Ford/Lexus dealer where he had leased this car a year before. In this one aspect of the fiasco that was remaining in D.C., his timing was good; he needed to re-up, and the eager salesman handling him was happy to hear that this time he wanted to lease an Odyssey van. One of the best vans on the road, as the man told him as they walked out to view one. Also one of the smallest, Frank didn’t say.

Dull silver, the most anonymous color around, like a cloak of invisibility. Rear seat removal, yes; therefore room in back for his single mattress, now in storage. Tinted windows all around the back, creating a pretty high degree of privacy. It was almost as good as the VW van he had lived in for a couple of Yosemite summers, parked in the Camp Four parking lot enjoying the stove and refrigerator and pop-top in his tiny motor home. Culturally the notion of small vehicle as home had crashed since then, having been based on a beat/hippie idea of frugality that had lost out to the usual American excess, to the point of being made illegal by a Congress bought by the auto industry. No stoves allowed in little vans, of course not! Had to house them in giant RVs.

But this Odyssey would serve the purpose. Frank skimmed the lease terms, signed the forms. He saw that he might need to rent a post office box. But maybe the NSF address would do.

Walking back out to take possession of his new bedroom, he and the salesman passed a line of parked SUVs—tall fat station wagons, in effect, called Expedition or Explorer, absurdities for the generations to come to shake their heads at in the way they once marveled at the finned cars of the fifties. “Do people still buy these?” Frank asked despite himself.

“Sure, what do you mean? Although now you mention it, there is some surplus here at the end of the year.” It was May. “Long story short, gas is getting too expensive. I drive one of these,” tapping a Lincoln Navigator. “They’re great. They’ve got a couple of TVs in the back.”

But they’re stupid, Frank didn’t say. In prisoner’s dilemma terms, they were always-defect. They were America saying Fuck Off to the rest of the world. Deliberate waste, in a kind of ritual desecration. Not just denial but defiance, a Götterdämmerung gesture that said: If we’re going down we’re going to take the whole world with us. And the roads were full of them. And the Gulf Stream had stopped.

“Amazing,” Frank said.

He drove his new Odyssey directly to the storage place in Arlington where he had rented a unit. He liked the feel of the van; it drove like a car. In front of his storage unit he took out its back seats, put them in the oversized metal-and-concrete closet, less than half full of his stuff; took his single mattress out and laid it in the back of the van. Perfect fit. He could use the same sheets and pillows he had been using in his apartment.

“Home—less, home—less. Ha ha ha, ha ha ha ho ho ho.”

He could sort through the rest of his stored stuff later on. Possibly very little of it would ever come out of boxes again.

He locked up and drove to the Beltway, around in the jam to Wisconsin Avenue, down into the city. The newly ritualized pass by the elevator kiosk at Bethesda. Now he could have dropped in on the Quiblers without feeling pitiful, even though in most respects his circumstances had not changed since the night before; but now he had a plan. And a van. And this time he didn’t want to stop. Over to Connecticut, down to the neighborhood north of the zoo, turn onto the same street he had the night before. He noted how the establishing of habits was part of the homing instinct.

Most streets in this neighborhood were permit parking by day and open parking by night, except for the one night a week they were cleaned. Once parked, the van became perfectly nondescript. Equidistant from two driveways; streetlight near but not too near. He would learn the full drill only by practicing it, but this street looked to be a good one.

Out and up Connecticut. Edward Hopper tableaux, end of the day. The streetwork waiting on the sidewalks for rush hour to be over and the night work to begin. It was mostly retail on this part of Connecticut, with upscale apartments and offices behind, then the residential neighborhood, no doubt extremely expensive even though the houses were not big. Like anywhere else in D.C., there were restaurants from all over the world. It wasn’t just that one could get Ethiopian or Azeri, but that there would be choices: Hari food from southern Ethiopia, or Sudanese style from the north? Good, bad, or superb Lebanese?

Having grown up in southern California, Frank could never get used to this array. These days he was fondest of the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisines, and this area of Northwest was rich in both, so that he had to think about which one he wanted, and whether to eat in or do take-out. Eating alone in a restaurant he would have to have something to read. Funny how reading in a restaurant was okay, while watching a laptop or talking on a cell phone was not. Actually, judging by the number of laptops visible in the taverna at the corner of Connecticut and Brandywine, that custom had already changed. Maybe they were reading from their laptops. That might be okay. He would have to try it and see how it felt.

He decided to do take-out. It was dinner time but there was still lots of light left to the day; he could take a meal out into the park and enjoy the sunset. He walked on Connecticut until he came on a Greek restaurant that would put dolmades and calamari in paper boxes, with a dill yogurt sauce in a tiny plastic container. Too bad about the ouzo and retsina, only sold in the restaurant; he liked those tastes. He ordered an ouzo to drink while waiting for his food, downing it before the ice cubes even got a chance to turn it milky.

Back on the street. The taste of licorice enveloped him like a key signature, black and sweet. Steamy dusk of spring, hazed with blossom dust. Sweatslipping past two women; something in their sudden shared laughter set him to thinking about his woman from the elevator. Would she call? And if so, when? And what would she say, and what would he say? A licorish mood, an anticipation of lust, like a wolf whistle in his mind. Vegetable smell of the flood. The two women had been so beautiful. Washington was like that.

The food in his paper sack was making him hungry, so he turned east and walked into Rock Creek Park, following a path that eventually brought him to a pair of picnic tables, bunched at one end of a small bedraggled lawn. A stone fireplace like a little charcoal oven anchored the ensemble. The muddy grass was uncut. Birch and sycamore trees overhung the area. There had been lots of picnic areas in the park, but most had been located down near the creek and so presumably had been washed away. This one was set higher, in a little hollow next to Ross Drive. All of them, Frank recalled, used to be marked by big signs saying
CLOSED AT DUSK.
Nothing like that remained now. He sat at one of the tables, opened up his food.