Osmosis

by Susan X Meagher

  Catherine nodded. “I’m with you.”

  Smiling, Ryan went on. “And the organs organize as systems … like the endocrine system or the alimentary track and so on…”

  “Got it,” Catherine said.

  “And those systems make up the human body. So a gene is a small building block of the body, but it’s not the smallest one by far.”

  “It sounds so simple when you describe it,” Catherine said. “But I think I’ve had you describe it many times. It just doesn’t stick.”

  “It would if you took the basic classes,” Ryan said. “It’s hard to jump in at the biophysics level and expect to get much out of it.”

  “Isn’t the atom the smallest thing?” Jim asked, looking a little embarrassed at his lack of knowledge.

  “In a way,” Ryan said. “Unless you want to talk about sub-atomic particles and things like that.”

  “Do we have to?” Mia asked, folding her hands in prayer.

  “No, we don’t need to,” Ryan said. She turned to Jim. “Right now, both chemists and physicists study the atom, but chemists stick to the electrons and physicists stick to the nucleus. To me, that’s like trying to understand a car by having one set of guys look at the transmission, another look only at the engine, and another look only at the cooling system.”

  “But that’s what mechanics do,” Conor said, suddenly interested. “They’re all specialists now.”

  “Right, right,” Ryan said, glad to see some spark of interest in the room. “But you need a generalist … someone who understands the whole system … to design the car. A designer has to be an engineer who can get all of those systems, and more, to work together. A biophysicist looks at the bigger picture … by looking at the small picture.”

  Conor threw up his hands. “You had me, but you lost me.”

  “That’s because the analogy isn’t perfect, but it’s the only one that comes to mind. Biophysicists focus on particle science. They study atoms—both the nucleus and the electrons. They also study molecules and genes and cells and organs and systems—just the way an automotive engineer looks at everything from a drop of oil to an engine when designing a car.”

  “Okay, I think I understand that a biophysicist tries to understand all of the three major branches of science,” Catherine said, “but why isn’t that enough for you?”

  “Oh, right! That’s where we started, isn’t it?” Ryan chuckled. “I’d like to be a biophysicist who also made math and computer science part of my discipline. But math people are uncomfortable with hard science, and hard science people think math is too simple to bother with. They’re really antagonistic to math, which I just don’t get, since math is required in almost every scientific study at some level.”

  “Maybe they don’t understand it,” Mia said, her voice a monotone as she acted like she was fashioning a noose and hanging herself with it.

  Ryan’s face lit up. ‘You know, you’re probably right. Most scientists are pretty narrow and most mathematicians are, too. Maybe it’s just a turf war!”

  Jamie got up and sat on the arm of Ryan’s chair, and ran her hand along her partner’s face, brushing some stray hair from her cheek. “I wish I understood more of what you love, but that was a really good explanation. Now let’s see if I can repeat any of it tomorrow.”

  “Don’t bother asking me,” Mia said, blowing Ryan a kiss. “It’s all gone already.”

  Marta called them to dinner and Jim pointedly sat in the chair Catherine had occupied during their marriage. She was taken aback, but didn’t move to his old place at the head of the table. Instead, she sat opposite him, and everyone else sat on the sides of the table as well, leaving the head vacant. Jim gave her a sly smile as she sat and she returned it, adding a wink.

  Helena started service by placing bowls of a rich, caramel-colored soup in front of each of them. “Mmm … chestnut puree,” Jamie said, nearly squealing in delight.

  “I think I have a better chance of understanding your career plans,” Jim said, addressing his daughter. “Cooking school?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I don’t want to work in a restaurant, so it would be kind of a waste.”

  “Do you have any plans yet, dear?” Catherine asked.

  “Well …” Jamie pursed her lips in thought. “I wanna do something fun and pretty easy … I was considering making trivets out of Popsicle sticks.” Ryan reached under the table and pinched her. “Ow!” she said, scowling at Ryan. “I really don’t have any idea, Mom. I’m not like the big, giant brain here who can’t find something hard enough.”

  “You can do anything you want, Jamie Evans,” Ryan said. “You’re as bright as a shiny, new dime.”

  “I know I have a lot of options,” she said. “I just haven’t settled on anything that speaks to me.”

  “Having time off will help,” Ryan said. “I’m looking forward to this summer as much as I did when I was a kid. Graduation can’t come soon enough for me!”

  At around 10:00, Mia looked at her watch and said, “I need to get going to meet my friends. Does anyone mind if I take off?”

  “We’d love to have you stay over,” Catherine said, “but we understand you have a busy social life while you’re here.”

  “Still okay if I drive your car, James?”

  Jim looked up, then laughed. “I forgot you call Jamie that. But you can have my car if you want it, Mia.”

  “You guys are easy,” she said.

  “Sure. You can drive my car. But will you be sober enough to drive home? That’s the critical question.” Jamie gazed intently at her friend, knowing Mia would be honest with her.

  “Eww.” Mia’s sweet-looking mouth turned down in a grimace. “I guess I’ll have to go to Berkeley anyway to ride with Leighton. He’s allergic to alcohol.”

  Conor’s eyes had been darting back and forth between Mia and Jamie. He cleared his throat and said, “We’re ready to leave. Want a ride?”

  Jamie raised her hand. “Hey! Don’t forget about me! You brought my car down here, Mia, and it’s gotta get home. I can’t drive it yet, and Ryan’s is down here so she can’t do it.”

  Conor chuckled softly. “Oh, right. I forgot you’re not like Ryan. She drove her motorcycle with a broken wrist.”

  “Don’t tell her that!” Ryan whispered menacingly.

  “Sorry,” Conor said, “I thought she knew all of your secrets.”

  “Not half of them,” Jamie said, making a face at her partner.

  “That estimate is a little high,” Ryan teased.

  “How do you drive a bike with one hand?” Jim asked.

  “My throttle hand was fine, so I just drove slowly since I couldn’t change gears.”

  “I could imagine myself doing something like that when I was in college,” Jim said.

  Catherine laughed. “Not after I got my hands on you!”

  “True,” he said, smiling fondly at her. “I had to grow up. Finally.”

  “Ryan doesn’t realize that yet,” Jamie said. “But she’s trying.”

  “I’m gonna go change into my clubbing clothes,” Mia said. “I’ll take the car back to Berkeley.” She headed for the doorway, but stopped when she reached it and turned back to the group. “Why don’t you guys go with me?”

  “I don’t wanna go back to the city tonight,” Jamie said.

  “I was talking to Conor and Rory, James. I don’t wanna take a good-looking woman clubbing. Too much competition.”

  “Where are you going?” Conor asked, frowning slightly.

  “Not sure. But it’ll be fun.”

  “Will there be girls there? Besides you, that is.”

  “Yeah. The guys I’m going with are gay, but there are always a lot of straight chicks at the clubs. I’m not sure why they go, but they’re always there. The odds are fantastic,” Mia added, smiling wickedly.

  “I’m in,” Conor said.

  “Ehh … I don’t know.” Rory looked very hesitant.

  “Come on,” Conor said.
“I don’t wanna be the only straight guy.”

  “Okay. But I’ll only promise to stay for an hour. If there aren’t girls there—I’m out.”

  Conor looked at him blankly for a few seconds. “If there aren’t girls there, I’m out in 10 minutes. I don’t mind hanging out with gay guys, but I don’t wanna dance with ’em.”

  “Argue amongst yourselves,” Mia said. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

  “You ride with Mia and meet me at home,” Conor suggested to Rory. “Then we can all ride in my truck. Mia can get a ride home from one of her sober friends.”

  “The world has changed,” Jim mused. “When I was in college no one considered whether he was sober enough to drive. It’s amazing all of my fraternity brothers reached adulthood.”

  “Thank God it’s changed,” Jamie said. “But that’s one of the best things about living within walking distance of bars.”

  Mia got ready in a flash and she returned to appreciative murmurs from all of the men and Ryan. “Thank you,” she said, bowing. “Jamie lent me this dress.”

  “Give it back in a hurry,” Ryan said huskily, her eyes looking Mia over slowly.

  Jamie elbowed her, whispering, “Don’t ogle girls in front of my parents.”

  “Oh! Sorry,” Ryan whispered back. “I just saw the dress and imagined how fantastic you’d look in it. I was really ogling you.”

  Slipping her hand under the table, Jamie squeezed her partner’s upper thigh. “Good save.”

  Ryan’s cheeks were rapidly coloring and she whispered intently. “I’m being serious. You’d look much better in that dress than Mia does. I took her out of it and put you in it. Really!”

  Turning, Jamie saw that Ryan was agitated as well as embarrassed. She started to stand up, whispering, “It’s okay, honey. It’s no big deal. Forget it. Everybody’s leaving now. We’ve got to say goodbye.”

  Everyone else was already standing, and Ryan hurriedly got to her feet. Everyone was talking at once, spending at least 10 minutes in a flurry of goodbyes. After they left, Jim said, “I suppose I shouldn’t be one of those guests you have to throw out.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Catherine said. “Let’s all go into the living room and have some brandy.” She slipped her hand around his arm and led him out of the room, as Jamie gave her partner a puzzled shrug.

  “Jamie’s been telling me about this big project you’re working on, Ryan. Is it something a political science major can understand?” Jim asked.

  Ryan took a sip of her brandy, a spirit she’d decided she rather liked. “Uhm … the science of it is pretty far out there, but you might be interested in the results.”

  “Hit me. I’m willing to show my ignorance.”

  “I get this one, Dad. It’s a snap.”

  “Even better.”

  “Like I said,” Ryan began, “the science is pretty difficult, but what I’m trying to do is use a formula to predict the stock market.”

  “Hasn’t that been done before?” Jim asked. “A thousand times?”

  “Yeah, sure. But this theory is based on physics and math and—”

  “Don’t tell me,” he said, “Biology?”

  “No.” She laughed. “Computer science.”

  He snapped his fingers. “Should have guessed that one.”

  “The point was to show I knew enough physics and math to work out the formulas,” she said. “It’s almost incidental whether or not it works. But I sure as heck thought it was gonna work.”

  “And it hasn’t?” Catherine asked.

  “Not as accurately as it should. If my work was correct, the market would have started to tank about two months ago.”

  “Things have slowed down a little,” Jim said. “And Alan Greenspan has been urging caution for what … two years?”

  “I don’t know,” Ryan said. “The stock market isn’t my thing … at least until I started working on this. Now it’s holding my interest.”

  “It’s like gambling,” Jamie said, gazing fondly at her partner. “Ryan loves to gamble.”

  “Me too,” Jim said. “We’ll have to go to Las Vegas some time.”

  “I don’t have enough money to throw away,” she said. “Let me get a job first.”

  He gave Jamie a quick look, but didn’t follow up. He was sure the girls were sharing money, so it didn’t make sense that Ryan felt she had none. But Ryan was speaking again, and he knew he had to listen to not be left behind. “Even though Greenspan has been bearish, I talk to a lot of economists,” Jim said. “A lot of them think there might not be a limit to how high the market can go. They think the equilibrium of the past might really be over.”

  “Because of technology?” Ryan asked.

  “Yes. Technological innovations might have created a whole new ballgame.”

  “I could buy that if this boom was based on manufacturing or services, but it seems more like the tulip frenzy in Amsterdam.”

  “I knew the Dutch loved tulips, but I hadn’t realized it was a frenzy,” Jim said.

  “Oh, not now. This was in the seventeen hundreds. In the space of a month, the price of a single tulip bulb went from a relatively consistent price to an astronomical one,” Ryan said. “Like from $1 to $200.”

  “For one bulb?” Catherine asked in disbelief.

  “Yep. And there was nothing special about the bulbs. These were the same old tulips they’d always had.”

  “Why the rise?” Catherine asked.

  “No one knows. But it lasted a long time. It was the beginning of the Dutch bulb trade, and that lasts to this day. So this bubble started a new trade, kinda like Internet stocks might be doing now.”

  “You do agree that Internet stocks have potential, don’t you?” Jim asked. “It’s not possible that they’re a total bust.”

  She chuckled. “Well, it is possible, but I think the bubble will settle down and people will start investing in things that can make money. Before this craze started, that used to matter to people.”

  “It still does,” Jim said. “But people are betting on the potential of these companies.”

  “I understand that. But there aren’t many predictors that show these companies are doing much to actually make money. They’re using venture capital that people are literally handing over without much investigation.”

  “But, as you said, there was a legitimate tulip market that was created,” Jim said.

  “Right. But tulips never reached those crazy prices again. They call that kind of speculation ‘the greater fool’ theory. You’re not crazy to buy a tulip for $1,000 if there’s a greater fool who’s willing to pay $1,010.”

  “It seems foolish not to be in that market,” Jamie said.

  “True,” Ryan said. “People were making money hand over fist. And people from all over Europe heard about this and went to Amsterdam to get in on the action. Increasing the pool of fools.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “One day — and no one knows why — a guy stood up in a tavern and offered a rare bulb for … let’s say $200. No takers. He dropped the price and kept dropping it. Everybody was frozen … like they’d all just realized they were thinking of buying a bulb for a ridiculous amount of money!”

  “Did he get a buyer?” Jamie asked.

  “I don’t know. But within two days, you couldn’t give a tulip bulb away. People lost fortunes, true fortunes. And some of these people had gone from nothing to the equivalent of millions and back down to nothing in a couple of years.”

  The room was quiet for a couple of minutes, then Catherine said, “If you were in the market, what would you do?”

  “I’d get out of tech stocks completely. That’s what I did in my play portfolio.”

  “Completely?”

  “Yeah, I would. I’d look at what I’d earned so far as a very nice profit, and then take my money and hide.” She laughed softly.

  “But if tech stocks crash, so will the whole market,” Jim said.

  “Yeah,” Ryan said, sc
ratching her head. “I guess I’d get out of the whole market and invest in bonds. Then stick my head out in a while and see if the bottom has hit.”

  “You’re alone in that prediction,” Jim said. “I know you’re a very bright woman, but economics isn’t your forte.”

  “All true. I’m not saying I’m right, just that my theory says the market’s past its zenith.”

  “It makes sense to me,” Catherine said. “I’ve made a ridiculous amount of money in the market in the last few years. Maybe it’s time to be a little more cautious.”

  Jamie looked at her mother. “What do your brokers say?”

  “Buy, buy, buy,” Catherine admitted. “I’ve had to fight them to let me be more conservative than they want me to be.”

  “I’ve been pretty conservative, too,” Jim said. “I try to invest in companies that are going to make something or sell a good service. Things like Webvan, and companies that are filling a need and have a lot of capital behind them. I’ve made a thirty-seven percent return this past year, and I’m not going to walk away from that kind of money.”

  Ryan nodded. “I’m certainly not saying I’m smarter than economists who’ve been doing this for thirty years. I guess I have a vested interest in the market crashing,” she admitted. “So maybe I’m making a bigger deal out of small signs. But I’ve seen enough signs—like the Palm/3Com spin-off—to make me think it’s time to hide. I might lose some profit—but I won’t lose what I’ve made so far.”

  Jim looked at her for a moment, his eyes slightly closed in thought. “You’ve obviously spent a lot of time on this, Ryan, but for the economy’s sake—I hope you’re wrong. I’m willing to bet you are.”

  “I did work hard,” she said, “but I kinda hope I’m wrong. San Francisco has sure benefited from all of the money people are throwing at local technology companies and start-ups.” Everyone was quiet for a minute, the topic clearly exhausted.

  “It’s late, baby,” Jamie said, scratching Ryan’s back. “You must be tired.”

  Ryan stood and stretched. “Yeah, sitting on the bench is more tiring than it looks.”