Green Earth

And yet why did things live? What got them through it, really? What made them make all these efforts, when death lay in wait at the end for every one of them? This was what these Buddhists had dared to ask.

He was walking toward the Potomac now, along Fairfax Drive, a huge commercial street rumbling with traffic. Long lines of vehicles, with most of the occupants in them talking on phones. A strange sight when you looked at it!

Reason had never explained the existence of life. Life was a mystery; reason had tried and failed to explain it, and science could not start it from scratch in a lab. Little localized eddies of anti-entropy, briefly popping into being and then spinning out, with bits of them carried elsewhere in long invisible chains of code that spun up yet more eddies. A succession of pattern dust devils. A mystery, a kind of miracle—a miracle succeeding only where it found water, which gathered in droplets in the universe just as it did on a windowpane, and gave life sustenance. Water of life. A miracle.

He felt the sweat breaking out all over his skin. Tall trees, many species of trees and bushes; it could have been a botanical garden with a city laid into it, the plants a hundred shades of green. People walking by in small groups. Only runners were alone, and even they usually ran in pairs or larger groups. A social species, like bees or ants, with social rules that were invariant to the point of invisibility, people did not notice them. A species operating on pheromones, lucky in its adaptability, unstable in the environment. Knowledge of the existence of the future. A cosmic history read out of signs so subtle and mathematical that only the effort of a huge transtemporal group of powerful minds could ever have teased it out; but then those who came later could be given the whole story, with its unexplored edges there to take off into. This was the human project, this was science, this was what science was. This was what life was.

He stood there thrumming with thought, queasy, anxious, frightened. He was a confused man. Free-floating anxiety, he thought anxiously; except it had clear causes. People said that paradigm shifts only occurred when the old scientists died, that people individually did not have them, being too stubborn, too set in their ways, it was a more social process, a diachronic matter of successive generations.

Occasionally, however, it must be otherwise. Individual scientists, more open-minded or less certain than most, must have lived through one. Frank almost ran into a woman walking the other direction, almost said, “Sorry ma’am, I’m in the midst of a paradigm shift.” He was disoriented. He saw that moving from one paradigm to the next was not like moving from one skyscraper to another, as in the diagrams he had once seen in a philosophy of science book. It was more like being inside a kaleidoscope, where he had gotten used to the pattern, and now the tube was twisting and he was falling and every aspect of what he saw was clicking to something different, click after click; colors, patterns, everything awash. Like dying and being reborn. Altruism, compassion, simple goddamned foolishness, loyalty to people who were not loyal to you, playing the sap for the defectors to take advantage of, competition, adaptation, displaced self-interest—or else something real, a real force in the world, a kind of physical constant, like gravity, or a basic attribute of life, like the drive to propagate one’s DNA to subsequent generations. A reason for being. Something beyond DNA. A rage to live, an urge to goodness. Love. A green force, élan vital, that was a metaphysics, that was bad, but how else were you going to explain the data?

An excess of reason wasn’t going to do it.

Genes, however, were very reasonable. They followed their directive, they reproduced. They were a living algorithm, creatures of four elements. Strings of binaries, codes of enormous length, codes that spoke bodies. It was a kind of reason that did that. Even a kind of monomania—an excess of reason, as the koan suggested. So that perhaps they were all mad, not just socially and individually, but genomically too. Molecular obsessive-compulsives. And then up from there, in stacked emergent insanities. Unless it was infused with some other quality that was not rational, some late emergent property like altruism, or compassion, or love—something that was not a code—then it was all for naught.

He felt sick. It could have just been the heat and humidity, the speed of his walking, something he ate, a bug that he had caught or that had bit him. It felt like all those, even though he suspected it was all starting in his mind, a kind of idea infection or moral fever. He needed to talk to someone.

But it had to be with someone he trusted. That made for a very short list. A very, very, very short list. In fact, my God, who exactly would be on that list, now that he came to think of it?

Anna. Anna Quibler, his colleague. The passionate scientist. A rock, in fact. A rock in the tide. Who could you trust after all? A good scientist. A scientist willing to take that best scientific attitude toward all of reality. Maybe that’s what the old lama had been talking about. If too much reason was a form of madness, then perhaps passionate reason was what was called for. Passionate scientist, compassionate scientist, could analysis parse out which was which there? It could be a religion, some kind of humanism or biocentrism, philabios, philocosmos. Or simply Buddhism, if he had understood the old man correctly.

Suddenly he remembered that Anna and Charlie were hosting a party, and Anna had invited him. To help celebrate the day’s lecture, ironically enough. The Khembalis would be there.

He walked, sweating, looking at street signs, figuring out where he was. Ah. Almost to Washington Boulevard. He could continue to the Clarendon Metro station. He did that, descended the Metro escalator into the ground. A weird action for a hominid to take—a religious experience. Following the shaman into the cave. We’ve never lost any of that.

He sat zoned until the change of lines at Metro Center. The interior there looked weirder than ever, like a shopping mall in hell. A Red Line Shady Grove train pulled in, and he got on and stood with the multitude. It was late in the day, he had wandered a long time. It was near the end of the rush hour.

The travelers at this hour were almost all professionally dressed. They were headed home, out to the prosperous parts of Northwest and Chevy Chase and Bethesda and Rockville and Gaithersburg. At each stop the train got emptier, until he could sit down on one of the garish orange seats.

Sitting there, he began to feel calmer. The coolness of the air, the sassy but soothing orange and pink, the people’s faces, all contributed to this feeling. Even the driver of the train contributed, with a stop in each station that was as smooth as any Frank had ever felt, a beautiful touch on the big brakes that most drivers could not help but jerk to one degree or another. It was like a musical performance. The concrete caves changed their nameplates, otherwise each cave was almost the same.

Across from him sat a woman wearing a black skirt and white blouse. Hair short and curly, glasses, almost invisible touch of makeup. Bra strap showing at her collarbone. A professional of some sort, going home. Face intelligent and friendly-seeming, not pretty but attractive. Legs crossed, one running-shoed foot sticking into the aisle. Her skirt had ridden up her leg and Frank could see the side of one thigh, made slightly convex from her position and the mass of solid quadriceps muscles. No stockings, skin smooth, a few freckles. She looked strong.

Like Frank, she stood to get out at the Bethesda stop. Frank followed her out of the train. It was interesting the way dresses and skirts all were different, and framed or uniquely featured the bodies they covered. Height of bottom, width of hips, length and shape of legs, of back and shoulders, proportions of the whole, movement: the compounded variations were infinite, so that no two women looked the same to Frank. And he looked all the time.

This one was businesslike and moved fast. Her legs were longer than the usual proportion, which discrepancy drew the eye, as always. It was discrepancy from the norm that drew the eye. She looked like she was wearing high heels even though she wasn’t. That was attractive, indeed women wore high heels to look like her. Another savannah judgment, no doubt—the ability to outrun predators as part of the potential for reproductive success. Whatever. She looked good. It was like a kind of balm, after what he had gone through. Back to basics.

Frank stood below her as they rose up the first escalator from trackside to the turnstiles, enjoying that view, which exaggerated the length of her legs and the size of her bottom. At that point he was hooked, and would therefore, as was his custom, follow her until their paths diverged, just to prolong the pleasure of watching her walk. This happened to him all the time, it was one of the habits one fell into, living in a city of such beautiful women.

Through the turnstiles, then, and along the tunnel toward the big escalator up and out. Then to his surprise she turned left, into the nook that held the station’s elevators.

He followed her without thinking. He never took the Metro system’s elevators, they were extremely slow. And yet there he was, standing beside her waiting for this one to arrive, feeling conspicuous but unable to do anything about it, except look up at the display lights over the elevator doors. Although he could just walk away.

The light lit. The doors opened on an empty car. Frank followed the woman in and turned and stared at the closing doors, feeling red-faced.

She pushed the street-level button, and with a slight lift they were off. The elevator hummed and vibrated as they rose. It was hot and humid, and the little room smelled faintly of machine oil, sweat, plastics, perfume, and electricity.

Frank studiously observed the display over the doors. The woman did the same. She had the strap of her armbag hooked under her thumb. Her elbow was pressed into her blouse just over the waistline of her skirt. Her hair was so curly that it was almost frizzy, but not quite; brown, and cut short, so that it curled tight as a cap on her head. A little longer in a fringe at the back of her neck, where two lines of fine blond hairs curved down toward her deltoid muscles. Wide shoulders. A very impressive animal. Even in his peripheral vision he could see all this.

The elevator whined, then shuddered and stopped. Startled, Frank refocused on the control panel, which still showed them as going up.

“Shit,” the woman muttered, and looked at her watch. She glanced at Frank.

“Looks like we’re stuck,” Frank said, pushing the UP button.

“Yeah. Damn it.”

“Unbelievable,” Frank agreed.

She grimaced. “What a day.”

A moment or two passed. Frank hit the DOWN button: nothing. He gestured at the little black phone console set in the panel above the UP and DOWN buttons.

“I guess we’re at the point this is here for.”

“I think so.”

Frank picked up the receiver, put it to his ear. The phone was ringing already, which was good, as it had no number pad. What would it have been like to pick up a phone and hear nothing?

But the ringing went on long enough to concern him.

Then it stopped, and a woman’s voice said, “Hello?”

“Hi? Hey listen, we’re in the elevator at the Bethesda Metro stop, and it’s stuck.”

“Okay. Bethesda did you say? Did you try pushing the CLOSE DOOR button then the UP button?”

“No.” Frank pushed these buttons. “I am now, but … nothing. It feels pretty stuck.”

“Try the DOWN button too, after the CLOSE DOOR.”

“Okay.” He tried it.

“Do you know how far up you are?”

“We must be near the top.” He glanced at the woman, and she nodded.

“Any smoke?”

“No!”

“Okay. There’s people on the way. Just sit tight and stay cool. Are you crowded in there?”

“No, there’s just two of us.”

“That’s okay then. They said they’ll be about half an hour to an hour, depending on traffic and the problem with the elevator. They’ll call you on your phone there when they get there.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“No problem. Pick up again if something changes. I’ll be watching.”

“I will. Thanks again.”

The woman had already hung up. Frank did also.

They stood there.

“Well,” Frank said, gesturing at the phone.

“I could hear,” the woman said. She looked around at the floor. “I guess I’ll sit down while we wait. My feet are tired.”

“Good idea.”

They sat down next to each other, backs to the back wall of the elevator.

“Tired feet?”

“Yeah. I went running today at lunch, and it was mostly on sidewalks.”

“You’re a runner?”

“No, not really. That’s why my feet hurt. I ride with a cycling club, and we’re doing a triathlon, so I’m trying to add some running and swimming. I could just do the cycling leg of a team, but I’m seeing if I can get ready to do the whole thing.”

“What are the distances?”

“A mile swim, twenty-mile bike, ten-K run.”

“Ouch.”

“It’s not so bad.”

They sat in silence.

“So are you going to be late for something here?”

“No,” Frank said. “Well, it depends, but it’s just a kind of party.”

“Too bad to miss that.”

“Maybe. It’s a work thing. There was a lunchtime lecture today, and now the organizer is having a thing for the speakers.”

“What did they talk about?”

He smiled. “A Buddhist approach to science, actually. They were the Buddhists.”

“And you were the scientists.”

“Yes.”

“That must have been interesting.”

“Well, yes. It was. It’s given me a lot to think about. More than I thought it would. I don’t exactly know what to say to them tonight though.”

“Hmm.” She appeared to consider it. “Sometimes I think about cycling as a kind of meditation. Lots of times I kind of blank out, and when I come to a lot of miles have passed.”

“That must be nice.”

“Your science isn’t psychology, is it?”

“Microbiology.”

“Good. Sorry. Anyway, I like it, yeah. I don’t think I could do it by trying for it, though. It just happens, usually late in a ride. Maybe it’s low blood sugar. Not enough energy to think.”

“Could be,” Frank said. “Thinking does burn some sugars.”

“There you go.”

They sat there burning sugars.

“So what about you, are you going to be late for something?”

“I was going to go for a ride, actually. My legs would be less sore tomorrow if I did. But after this, who knows what I’ll feel like … maybe I still will. If we get out of here pretty soon.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“Yeah.”

The trapped air was stifling. They sat there sweating. There was some quality to it, some combination of comfort and tension, their bodies simply breathing together, resting, almost touching, ever so slightly incandescent to each other … it was nice. Two animals resting side by side, one male one female. A lot of talk goes on below the radar. And indeed somehow it had come to pass that as they relaxed their legs had drifted outward, and met each other, so that now they were just very slightly touching, at the outsides of the knees, kind of resting against each other in a carefully natural way, her leg bare (her skirt had fallen down into her lap) and his covered by light cotton pants. Touching. Now the talk under the radar was filling Frank’s whole bandwidth, and though he continued his part of the conversation, he could not have immediately said what they were talking about.

“So you must ride quite a lot?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

She was in a cycling club, she told him. “It’s like any other club.” Except this one went out on long bike rides. Weekends, smaller groups more often than that. She too was making talk. “Like a social club really. Like the Elks Club or something, only with bikes.”

“Good for you.”

“Yes, it’s fun. A good workout.”

“It makes you strong.”

“Well, the legs anyway. It’s good for legs.”

“Yes,” Frank agreed, and took the invitation to glance down at hers. She did as well, tucking her chin and looking as if inspecting something outside of herself. Her skirt had fallen so that the whole side of her left leg was exposed.

She said, “It bulks up the quads.”

Frank intended to agree by saying “Uh-huh,” but somehow the sound got interrupted, as if he had been tapped lightly on the solar plexus while making it, so that it came out “nnnnn,” like a short hum or purr. A little moan of longing, in fact, at the sight of such long strong legs, all that smooth skin, the sweet curve of the under-thigh. Her knees stood distinctly higher than his.

He looked up to find her grinning at him. He hunched his shoulders and looked away just a touch, yes, guilty as charged, feeling the corners of his mouth tug up in the helpless smile of someone caught in the act. What could he say, she had great legs.

Now she was watching him with an interrogatory gaze, searching his face for something specific, it seemed, her eyes alight with mischief, amused. It was a look that had a whole person in it.

And she must have liked something about what she saw, because she leaned his way, into his shoulder, and then pressed further in and stretched her head toward his and kissed him.

“Mmm,” he purred, kissing back. He shifted around the better to face her, his body moving without volition. She was shifting too. She pulled back briefly to look again in his eyes, then she smiled broadly and shifted into his arms. Their kiss grew more and more passionate, they were like teenagers making out. They flew off into that pocket universe of bliss. Time passed, Frank’s thoughts scattered, he was absorbed in the feel of her mouth, her lips on his, her tongue, the awkwardness of their embrace. It was very hot. They were both literally dripping with sweat; their kisses tasted salty. Frank slid a hand under her skirt. She hummed and then shifted onto one knee and over onto him, straddling him. They kissed harder than ever.

The elevator phone rang.

She sat up. “Oops,” she said, catching her breath. Her face was flushed and she looked gorgeous. She reached up and behind her and grabbed the receiver, staying solidly on him.

“Hello?” she said into the phone. Frank flexed under her and she put a hand to his chest to stop him.

“Oh yeah, we’re here,” she said. “You guys got here fast.” She listened and quickly laughed: “No, I don’t suppose you do hear that very often.” She glanced down at Frank to share a complicit smile, and it was in that moment that Frank felt the strongest bond of all with her. They were a pair in the world, and no one else knew it but them.

“Yeah sure—we’ll be here!”

She rolled off him as she hung up. “They say they’ve got it fixed and we’re on our way up.”

“Damn it.”

“I know.”

They stood. She brushed down her skirt. They felt a few jerks as the elevator started up again.

“Wow, look at us. We are just dripping.”

“We would have been no matter what. It’s hot in here.”

“True.” She reached up to straighten his hair and then they were kissing again, banging against the wall in a sudden blaze of passion, stronger than ever. Then she pushed him away, saying breathlessly, “Okay, no more, we’re almost there. The door must be about to open.”

“True.”

Confirming the thought, the elevator began its characteristic slow-motion deceleration. Frank took a deep breath, blew it out, tried to pull himself together. He felt flushed, his skin was tingling. He looked at her. She was almost as tall as he was.

She laughed. “We are so busted.”

The elevator stopped. The doors jerked open. They were still a foot below street level, but it was easy to step up and out.

Before them stood three men, two in workers’ coveralls, one in a Metro uniform.

The one in the uniform held a clipboard. “Y’all okay?” he said to them.

“Yeah,” “We’re fine,” they said together.

Everyone stood there for a second.

“Must have been hot in there,” the uniformed one remarked.

The three black men stared at them curiously.

“It was,” Frank said.

“But not much different than out here,” his companion quickly added, and they all laughed. It was true; getting out had not made any marked change. It was like stepping from one sauna to another. Their rescuers were also sweating profusely. Yes—the open air of a Washington, D.C., evening was indistinguishable from the inside of an elevator stuck deep underground. This was their world: and so they laughed.

They were on the sidewalk flanking Wisconsin Avenue, next to the elevator box and the old post office. Passersby glanced at them. The foreman gave the woman his clipboard. “If you’d fill out and sign the report, please. Thanks. Looks like it was about half an hour from your call to when we pulled you.”

“Pretty fast,” the woman said, reading the text on her form before filling in some blanks and signing. “It didn’t even seem that long.” She looked at her watch. “All right, well—thanks very much.” She faced Frank, extended a hand. “It was nice to meet you.”

“Yes it was,” Frank said, shaking her hand, struggling for words, struggling to think. In front of these witnesses nothing came to him, and she turned and walked south on Wisconsin. Frank felt constrained by the gazes of the three men; all would be revealed if he were to run after her and ask for her name, her phone number, and besides now the foreman was holding the clipboard out to him, and it occurred to him that he could read what she had written down there.

But it was a fresh form, and he looked up to see that down the street she was turning right, onto one of the smaller streets west of Wisconsin.

The foreman watched him impassively while the technicians went back to the elevator.

Frank gestured at the clipboard. “Can I get that woman’s name, please?”

The man frowned, surprised, and shook his head. “Not allowed to,” he said. “It’s a law.”

Frank felt his stomach sink. There had to be a physiological basis for that feeling, some loosening of the gut as fear prepared the body for fight-or-flight. Flight in this case. “But I need to get in touch with her again,” he said.

The man stared at him, stone-faced. “Should have thought of that when you was stuck with her,” he said, sensibly enough. He gestured in the direction she had gone. “You could probably still catch her.”

Released by these words Frank took off, first walking fast, then, after he turned right on the street she had taken, running. He looked forward down the street for her black skirt, white blouse, short brown hair; there was no sign of her. He began sweating hard again, a kind of panic response. How far could she have gotten? What had she said she was late for? He couldn’t remember—horribly, his mind seemed to have blurred on much that she had said before they started kissing. He needed to know all that now! It was like some memory experiment foisted on undergraduates, how much could you remember of the incidents right before a shock? Not much! The experiment had worked like a charm.

But then he found the memory, and realized that it was not blurred at all, that on the contrary it was intensely detailed, at least up until the point when their legs had touched, at which point he could still remember perfectly, but only the feel on the outside of his knee, not their words. He went back before that, rehearsed it, relived it—cyclist, triathlon, one mile, twenty mile, 10K. Good for the legs, oh my God was it. He had to find her!

There was no sign of her at all. By now he was on Woodson, running left and right, looking down all the little side streets and into shop windows, feeling more and more desperate. She wasn’t anywhere to be seen. He had lost her.

It started to rain.