The God Patent (29 page)

After a few minutes, Emmy said, “This is why I don’t need superstition to be impressed.”

“What do you mean?”

Speaking in a soft voice full of wonder, Emmy said, “People always want more. They want haunted houses and ghosts, ESP and horoscopes, gods and martyrs; they want to jump off the diving board of faith. But look, look at this galaxy where we live. Why would anyone want more than this?”

Ryan wrapped his coat around her when she shivered, and she giggled when he kissed the back of her ear. When he moved his lips to hers, she pushed him back and said, “Let me look at you in the starlight. Ryan, why do you need more?”

Ryan said, “You mean God? A soul?”

Emmy didn’t say anything.

Ryan said, “Haven’t you ever felt it?”

“Felt what?”

“Well, love, I guess,” Ryan said. “When I was little and we went to church, there were always a few seconds when I could feel
God’s presence. I guess that’s what I mean. Doesn’t there have to be something? Something else? Something more?”

“Yes and no, respectively.”

“What?” Ryan asked.

“Yes, I feel love,” Emmy said. “And no, there doesn’t have to be something else. The physical universe is plenty.”

“Then what is love? Where does it come from? And what was that little boy feeling?”

“Ryan, listen carefully.” She sat up straight and spoke in her lecturing voice. “Love is a verb. It’s something that we
do
, and when it becomes a noun, it dies. Feelings, like wanting to curl up in your arms and never look away from you, are acts of love. But when we stop loving, then it’s a noun and it’s over.” She tapped his nose with the nail of one finger. “Is the significance of these feelings changed by the realization that they arise from an incredibly complex combination of chemical reactions that evolved to encourage people to make love and reproduce and do what all the other mammals do? Isn’t that mysterious enough?”

Ryan sighed, nodding to her and then to the stars. “A verb, yeah. Love is an action. You’re a pretty smart chick.” He lifted her onto his lap and, with his hands tight on her hips, gave her a deep vigorous kiss and said, “I can think of a few more chemical reactions we might enjoy.”

Emmy slid her hands under his shirt, kissed him on the neck, and said, “It’s time for you to go home.”

“But I don’t want to go home.”

“That’s just evolution talking.”

“No—it’s magic!”

“That might work on some girls…”

She untangled herself from him. They got in the car, and she drove him out to the parking lot where, in the dark, his old Probe
looked like the sports car it had once pretended to be. He prayed that it would start.

He asked, “If consciousness isn’t something like a metaphysical spark, if everything is purely physical, if there’s nothing
in here
, if it’s all
out there
, then what happens when we die?”

“Would you rather live with certain knowledge that you’d never die? Isn’t it precisely the threat of having it all end that makes life sweet? Ryan, part of what feels so warm and wonderful when I inhale the smell of your neck—”

“I knew I should have put on some cologne!”

Emmy reached up and held his chin. “Part of what feels so good is the lack of control, the threat that I could be wrong, the risk that it’s all a lie, that all you want is for me to meet with those idiots and get you your money and, what the hell, you get a piece of ass too.”

“You don’t think that, do you?”

“Risk and uncertainty are the thrill of being alive. The knowledge, every day, every instant, that this breath might be our last is what makes life full of wonder. Having a ghost who keeps score and assigns reason to our existence makes it
less
wonderful. Religion decreases significance.”

Ryan rested his chin on her head and stared across the horizon. “Hmmm, I believe in something more, something special. I think that love and emotion have something like an energy of their own. Something that connects us to whatever it is that made something from nothing. Something that can violate that rule of yours: neither created nor destroyed.”

Emmy pried herself away, reached up, and brushed his lips with her fingers. “Good night, Ryan.”

R
yan set the pizza box on a patch of well-manicured grass under a marine-blue sky—the perfect spot for a picnic. On one side, a cool breeze blew through majestic redwood trees that grew from the banks of a creek, and on the other, a wide stretch of concrete guided students and faculty between buildings on the UC Berkeley campus. Emmy handed Ryan a tiny cup of espresso and sat next to him. They were both wearing jeans and T-shirts. Their crossed legs overlapped, and they leaned close together. A group of young men kicked a hacky sack on the grass a few yards away, and a street musician sat on a bench picking melodies about twenty yards up the path, his open guitar case inviting tips.

Ryan took a sip. “How many packets of honey did you get?”

“Three.”

“Well, I get them all,” Ryan said.

Emmy nudged him with her elbow. “Silly man.”

Ryan squeezed the honey into his cup. When he finished, Emmy took his hand and kissed the last drop of honey from his fingers. She looked up at him as her tongue lingered on his finger.

He put his other hand on her neck and pulled her toward him for a kiss.

“Ryan!” she said, pushing away with her forearm. “What if my students see me? I can’t just make out in public like a drunk freshman.”

He bit his lip. “You started it.”

She leaned in close, her breasts rubbing his arm. “And I’ll finish it.” Then she sat up straight, wiped her mouth with a napkin, and added, “But please, Mr. McNear, I have a reputation to maintain.”

Ryan sipped his espresso. How long had it been? He fell in love with Linda seventeen years ago. Then he fell in love with her all over again when Sean was born, and again and again.

Emmy was looking at him, waiting, blue eyes twinkling. For an instant, Ryan felt like he was cheating on a memory. And then he surrendered. He felt his eyes go soft and he inhaled Emmy, not just the light flowery smell of her perfume, no, her warmth, her Emmy-ness—he felt like he was melting. It was a little bit scary.

It was their third date. They had met in San Francisco on their second for dinner and the theater. The restaurant had been expensive and loud and the play political and morose. Ryan spent the night treading water in the flood of San Francisco culture. He remembered Emmy’s fingers touching his face as he kissed her good night. She had pulled him down so that she could whisper in his ear, “Be comfortable with me,” before walking through the subway gates.

With the pizza box empty, Ryan leaned back in the sun. Emmy stretched out against him, resting her head on his chest.

Emmy said, “What are you going to do next?”

He started to explain again how he needed money to pay his child support so that he could get joint custody, see his son, clear his record, and resume his life, but she interrupted him: “No, I mean after that.”

He had to think for a minute. The guitarist played a lazy chord progression. Finally, Ryan told her that he wanted to rebuild his career. “My dad used to say that a man should hang his shingle and make it on his own. I’d like to open my own software company—I’ll make a fortune in software souls.”

“Where does Kat fit?”

“Katarina?” He thought some more, listened to the guitar, and ran his fingers through Emmy’s hair.

“Maybe I’ll give her a job—McNear and Sidekick Software Incorporated.”

“Come on, I’m serious.”

“You have to understand,” he said. “Katarina makes it pretty clear that she doesn’t want me playing the role of her father.”

“Have you ever thought that maybe Kat needs you more than your son does?”

This made him sit up. He stared at the grass for a minute. “I don’t want to abandon my son.”

“Your son has a stepfather, right?”

“Yeah, Howard, ancient Howard,” Ryan growled. “Sean and I were really close until he came along. I have to fix it.”

“Katarina has only her mother and you.”

“Her mother told me that she’s going to join her husband as soon as Katarina is ready.”

Emmy sat up on her knees so that her head was level with Ryan’s. “Isn’t he dead?”

Ryan told her how Jane bicycled around Petaluma talking to herself.

“Ryan, listen to me.” Emmy’s brow furrowed. “You’re all Kat has. A girl who grows up without guidance is a time bomb.”

“Naw,” Ryan said, “Katarina is cool, a little rough around the edges, but she’s a good kid, brilliant and healthy, strong. She’s not a time bomb.”

“Katarina is lucky to have you. You’re lucky to have her.” She seemed angry. “Both of you need to realize that before it’s too late.”

“Emmy,” Ryan said and reached over to touch her cheek. “I know. Okay? I do.” Ryan rubbed the furrows out of her brow and pulled her close.

“She needs you to worry about her.”

They settled back on the grass and listened to the guitar for a few minutes. Finally, Ryan said, “Do you want to have kids?”

“I have plenty of kids.” Her fingers traced random curves around his chest and stomach. “Totally. Right now I have, like, five. One just turned twenty—an undergraduate lab rat; I have two in their early twenties, teaching assistants; a new one came in last week; he’ll be a research assistant; and, of course, you know my favorite, Tran. They’re creative, curious, intelligent, and they never need their diapers changed.”

“I don’t believe you.” Ryan reached down and rested his hand just over her belly button.

“I don’t think I’d be a very good mother. I’m kind of impatient. Do you want more children?”

“I’m Catholic.” Ryan laughed. “By rights I should have you squirting them out every other year.”

“Me?” She feigned shock, but her fingers stopped their random circles and tweaked his nipple.

Ryan rolled onto his side to face her. He noticed the students watching and buried his face in her hair, kissing her neck. She turned to face him and ran her tongue along his lips and whispered, “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time. I love how you lick your lips just before you smile. I love it.”

Ryan met her kiss and pulled her hair so that it covered their faces, forming their own little world.

From the concrete path, not ten yards away, Ryan heard a deep voice with some sort of European accent say, “Good afternoon, Dr. Nutter. We missed you at the faculty meeting. I see that you had a pressing engagement.”

Emmy rolled away from Ryan. Her hair fell away and the sun shone in. She was already flushed, but Ryan could tell that she was blushing.

“Hello, Claude,” she said. “Yes, indeed. I’m meeting with a visiting scholar. Ryan McNear, this is Claude Onet, director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.”

“Don’t get up,” Claude said. “I’m late for a meeting with the chancellor.” They could hear him laughing as he walked away.

Emmy blessed Ryan with a warm smile. “Good thing I have tenure.”

Ryan watched him go. The tall bald man in a corduroy jacket tossed a few dollars into the guitar case of the musician and spoke to him. Then the guitarist repositioned himself to face Ryan and Emmy and played the Beatles’ “Here, There and Everywhere.”

Emmy pulled herself onto her feet, dragging Ryan up by his shirt. She caught a couple of chest hairs in the process. With a steamy glare, she said, “My house is five blocks from here.”

N
ot quite two months after the complaint was filed, the defendant, Creation Energy, requested a private meeting with the plaintiff, Ryan McNear. Dodge arranged a conference room at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco.

Emmy was waiting in the lobby when they got there. Dressed in a white lacy blouse, black pants, and a herringbone waistcoat, she looked polished and professional. She greeted Ryan with a hug and complimented him on his suit—coal with salmon pinstripes.

Gripping her by the hips, Ryan held her a few inches away. “Emmy, thank you for coming, but I don’t want you to feel obligated to do this for me.” Their relationship had grown into consistent midweek visits and weekend stay-overs. Ryan had never seen Emmy dressed like this—he knew her as a jeans-and-T-shirt woman.