Chapter 16
She flipped her hair to the side so she could turn in her seat to look at the entomologist. It was not, it is worth noting, the first time she had noticed him.
"Ezra Pound." She answered, and then stopped speaking as they flew down the deepest drop of the ride. As the car leveled and passed the platform Grissom asked, "ABC's of Reading?"
She shook her head and the lights from the park caught bright highlights in her hair and made them shine. "Cantos. I'm impressed."
He shrugged away the compliment. "Is this Ph.D stuff? Cantos seems heavy even for an aspiring author."
She smiled, "For pleasure. We did 'ABC's' in class."
"So you thought you'd just pick up a little light reading on economics, government and culture." Tongue firmly in cheek. Cantos is considered formidable reading for the strongest reader. "Which section?"
"Fourteen and" she paused for a breath as they dipped and resumed smoothly, "fifteen."
A wicked grin crossed his face, "Are you afraid?"
"I am not," she countered, "as I have no intention of writing for a newspaper, nor do I pervert the language."
Butterflies moved en masse through Grissom's abdomen. She had caught his reference to Dante's hell represented in the fourteenth Cantos piece, filled with writers who were tortured for printing lies and mangling language. He was used to his amusing comments being met with the confused stares of his contemporaries. This girl was sharp.
"How do you know so much about Pound's work?" she asked him.
"My mother and I read it together when I was in high school."
"High school? You have to be kidding. Is she a lit professor?"
"Art historian, but an avid reader. I showed an early interest in T.S. Elliot and she took the opportunity to show me where he came from, in the literary sense. What about you, what drew you to him?"
"Insanity." They both laughed. "When we were reading the ABC's they told us that he had been imprisoned in a mental hospital until Robert Frost made so much noise they had to let him out and he took off for Italy. Some people said he was crazy, others said he was put there so that they could avoid trying him for treason. I thought I could find evidence, one way or the other, in his writing."
"And have you?"
"The more you think about it, the more slippery the concept of sanity becomes."
This time when the large hill passed neither the scientist in training nor the writer-to-be noticed it at all. They spent the next several hours following subjects as they came up, from literature to psychology, history, war, music and back to literature.
After the food break they had decided to share a car, saving either from impending neck pain. When day broke they took turns reading from the volume she carried and Grissom fell in love with the way she caressed the words with her voice.
At five the next afternoon she lost control of her chili dog and opted out of the contest. He offered to get off the ride with her but she refused, encouraging him to go on and win for the 'nerds' as they had affectionately been termed by the few riders left.
He asked for her number without the slightest fear. She smiled, "I'll be here when you win. You can buy me dinner with all that cash and I"ll give you my number then."
Doubt crept into his mind, was this her simple way of disappearing forever without the drama of turning him down?
His answer came 19 hours later when he was picking up the tab for her fettucini alfredo and she gave him 7 numbers in perfect penmanship on a flyer for an art exhibit including work by Pound's wife, Dorothy Shakespeare.
XXX XXX
"Either move or be moved." She stood and started for the door, jarring him back from his thoughts with a Pound quote as if she had followed him into his reverie. "I'd like to get my stuff to your place and then get back to the hospital."
"You should probably take a nap, get some rest." He followed her out the door of his office, Denali keys in hand.
Taking the keys to his personal car from him, and trying to ignore the tingle of his fingers against hers as he pressed them to her palm, she countered, "I'd be rested plenty right now if someone hadn't kept me out all night."
He pursed his lips, his eyes smiling, "I was long past due. You have the directions I wrote out for you to my place?"
"I thought I was following you."
"You are, but if we get separated…"
"Gil, you drove like a little old lady in your 20's, I'm not expecting Mario Andretti out of you now."
He simply raised his brows at her and she relented. "Yes, dad, I have the directions."