Pascal's Wager

by Nancy Rue

  “He’s just finishing up,” she whispered back. “To what do we owe the honor of your presence?”

  There was a sudden spattering of applause, and several people got up and scurried out the door as if they heard their pagers beeping. Rashad looked at the rest of us with raised eyebrows.

  “Feedback?” he said.

  Jacoboni sprang up from the nap he’d fallen into in the corner and said, “Hey, what do you say we give you feedback at Antonio’s, eh, Rashad? It’s Friday afternoon!”

  “I love that idea,” Deb said.

  “Hey, is that Jill?” Jacoboni said.

  “Yes, it’s Jill,” I said. “I still work here.”

  “But the question is, do you still party here?”

  “Come to Antonio’s with us,” Peter said.

  I agreed to go—but only because being alone suddenly felt threatening.

  A dart game ensued almost the minute we arrived, and within about five minutes, Jacoboni had downed his first Heineken. I sat at the bar on a stool and ordered a club soda and wondered who I was supposed to reach out to in love.

  It obviously wasn’t this crowd. I’d been exchanging barbs with them for almost five years now, and I knew virtually nothing about any of them. Tabitha’s advice notwithstanding, I didn’t really want to know any more about them than I already did.

  But that wasn’t a satisfying realization. It was a lonely one. I was developing a cold ache I wasn’t accustomed to.

  I was already trying to figure out a graceful way to leave when my cell phone rang. It was Freda III, yelling into the phone.

  “I think you’d better come home, hon!”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  Her voice was breathless. “I just found Liz in the study. I don’t know how she got in there—whether you left it unlocked or what. But I was fixing lunch and suddenly I heard all this noise—”

  “What noise?”

  “The paper shredder.”

  “Paper shre— What was she shredding?”

  “I don’t know,” Freda said. “When I got in there, she was taking something off the desk and sticking it into the machine.”

  “Get her out of there!” I said. “I’ll be right home.”

  I flung the phone into my bag, snatched out a handful of bills and slapped them onto the bar.

  “Hey, Jill!” Jacoboni called to me. “Where you goin, darlin? You just got here!”

  “Party’s over,” I said and bolted for the door.

  When I got home, Freda had Mother at the kitchen table with a sandwich in front of her, and she was standing over her with her arms folded.

  “She hasn’t moved since I called you, hon,” she said. “But I don’t know how much she destroyed before I caught her. I hope it wasn’t anything important of yours.”

  I know it was important! I thought frantically as I hoofed it down the hall to the study. There wasn’t anything on that desk that wasn’t important!

  Silently cursing Nigel for ever suggesting I work on my dissertation at home—and myself for listening to him—I got to the desk and froze. My binder was open, the one I used to do all my computations for my research. I turned pages like the Tasmanian Devil, first in one direction, then in the other. There was no way to know until I sat down and went through it step by step, but it appeared that everything was still there.

  I lifted the top off the shredder and pawed through the confetti. That told me nothing, except that the stuff on the top all seemed to have been typed. There was nothing with pencil in any sizeable piece.

  I put the lid back on and sank into the chair.

  “Everything all right, hon?” Freda III said from the doorway.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think so.”

  But I didn’t. I didn’t think so at all. It was the most—what was it Sam had called it?—passionate I had felt all day. It wasn’t rage; it was fear that something I’d cared about for two years had almost become packing material. I hadn’t been able to think of anyone to put on my “people-to-love” list, but I’d go to the guillotine for my work. I leaned down and yanked out the shredder’s plug from the socket and then picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Sam Bakalis.”

  “I have no passion for people.”

  “Hi, Jill. I’m fine, thanks.”

  “I’m serious, Blaze. Why do I have absolutely no passion for anything but this dissertation?”

  “Personally, I think you do, but since we’re sticking to options, here’s the deal.” I could picture him shifting in his seat, ready to weave the tale. “To be human is to worship. We do it whether we mean to or not, because that’s what people do.”

  “You’re saying I worship my work.”

  “I haven’t finished yet.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Go on.”

  “If human beings don’t worship the true God of love, sooner or later they’ll find some false god to worship.”

  “Where’s the option?” I said.

  I could almost hear him grinning. “This might get a little heavy for the phone. You want to meet me somewhere?”

  “No, I’m at Mother’s house, and I’m going to let Freda go home soon. I need to stay here.”

  “I can come there.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but no spiked belts, all right, Blaze?”

  I spent the next half hour alternating between brushing my hair and putting on lip gloss, and chastising myself for feeling better because I’d heard Sam’s voice, and for feeling even better than that because he was coming over.

  By the time he got there, however, I had chewed off enough of the lip gloss not to look too terribly inviting, and I’d talked myself into believing that anybody’s voice would have sounded good to me at this point.

  Mother was sitting at the kitchen table when I let Sam in. When I introduced her to him, she covered her mouth with her hand and ran giggling from the room. I heard her slippers hit the floor in the guest room.

  “She’s going to take a nap. Probably number six of the day.”

  Sam looked at the doorway she’d just vacated. His eyes were sad.

  “That isn’t the same woman you saw speaking at that dinner, is it?” I said. “I thought she was acting strangely that night. I had no idea what she was about to turn into.”

  “She doesn’t act like the same woman,” Sam said. “But I’m still holding out for you to agree that she is.”

  “You want something? Tea? Soda?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. I think we’ve evolved far enough that we can just sit here and talk. Unless you feel better pacing?”

  “I’m not pacing,” I said.

  I stopped in the middle of the kitchen floor, and he grinned at me.

  “I’m sitting,” I said, and I dropped into the chair across from him.

  He leaned toward me, eyes intent. “I knew you’d move fast, but I didn’t think it would be this fast. You’re already licking the earth.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what Pascal called it. He said something like, ‘I conceive it to be the glory and the greatness of mankind to be able to look upwards from licking the earth to survey the destiny that awaits him beyond time.’ Something like that.”

  “Nothing like that.” I got back up out of the chair and opened the refrigerator and stood there looking sightlessly at Max’s collection of Tupperware containers. “It took me twenty-four hours to figure out that I have no real friends. I don’t call that ‘licking the earth.’”

  “You already said you feel wretched and miserable and that the only passion you see in yourself is what you have for your work.”

  “My little idol, as you called it.” I picked up a container of ravioli, opened it, then sealed it back up and returned it to the shelf.

  “You’re not going to find what you’re looking for in there,” Sam said.

  I closed the door and faced him. “Where are all these options you’re supposed to be giving me?”

  “That is your option. You eit
her admit you’re licking the earth—”

  “Could you please choose another image?” I said.

  “It’s a riddle, or so Pascal says.” Sam got up and hoisted himself onto the counter, where he sat swinging his legs. “You can either try to unravel it using human reason…”

  “Or?”

  “Or not.”

  “What do you mean, ‘or not’? What’s the alternative?”

  “Silence.”

  “I tried that. Look where it got me.”

  “Pretty far, from what I can tell.”

  “Far?” My voice was rising to fever pitch, and no amount of hair-raking or furniture-clutching was bringing it down. I just stood there, hands gripping the back of a kitchen chair. “I’m in a worse mess than ever. I’m friendless, loveless, sarcastic—”

  “And passionate. And real. And genuine.” Sam stopped bumping his heels against the cabinets and slid down to come to the chair next to mine and lean on it. He looked at me with soft eyes. “This woman I’m seeing now is the real thing.”

  “If that’s true, I’m not liking it.”

  “I am.”

  He tilted my chin up with the tips of his fingers. I didn’t stop him, not until he had kissed me with a softness I didn’t know a man was capable of, a softness that ached down into the very hollow of myself.

  I think he pulled away before I did, and he was already rubbing the back of his neck.

  “I knew I should have brought that spiked belt,” he said. His grin was sheepish. “What were we talking about?”

  “Me acting like there’s a God,” I said.

  “And already being more real.”

  We were both talking too fast and avoiding each other’s eyes.

  “Believe that if you want to,” I said, eyes focused on a splotch of tomato sauce on the table. “But so far, I can’t see what difference it makes.”

  “Don’t worry.” He tilted my chin up again. “It’ll happen.”

  FIFTEEN

  I called Dr. McDonald’s office again on Monday and asked for another social worker’s name. I didn’t have time to wait for Paige Hill to come back from Maui or wherever she was. I needed options now, and I asked for a list of good assisted-living facilities. The secretary said she’d fax one over to me where I worked.

  That gave me pause. I thought I should probably just go over and pick it up rather than run the risk of somebody in the math department seeing it and wondering why Jill McGavock needed assisted living. And then I stopped pausing.

  Who cares what they wonder? I thought. The separation lines have gotten way too fuzzy to be worrying about that.

  “Do you have access to a fax machine?” the secretary said.

  “Yeah,” I said. And I gave her the number.

  Of course, I hung around the math department office for the next twenty minutes waiting for it to come in, which caused a few puzzled looks among the secretaries, and I snatched it out of the machine almost before it was finished printing. Then I scurried to my office with it like I’d just staged a bank heist. I was poring over it—a thermos of coffee beside me—when my cell phone rang.

  “Have I got a deal for you,” Sam’s voice said.

  “I’m sure,” I said. “So far your deals have done nothing but complicate my life.”

  “I’m about to uncomplicate it,” he said. “You want to go to dinner tomorrow night?”

  That didn’t qualify as uncomplicating as far as I was concerned. Sam must have heard that in my silence, because he said, “You don’t want to miss this. It promises to be upscale. My father is buying.”

  His father? Meet a parent? Good grief.

  “He’s going to be breezing through the Bay Area and wants to take me to dinner.” It was Sam’s turn to pause. “If you have any pity for me in your heart at all, you won’t make me do this alone.”

  “He’s that bad, huh?” I said.

  He chuckled. “I don’t want to give you any preconceived notions.”

  “If there’s one thing I have for you, Blaze, it’s pity. What time?”

  “Hercules Bakalis always dines fashionably late. Will you be starved if we make it 7:30?”

  “No way! Your father’s first name is not Hercules.”

  “It is. I swear it.”

  “I’m going to want to see a driver’s license.”

  “You know what?” Sam said, laughter weaving itself in. “If you meet my father and ask for his driver’s license, I will lick the earth.”

  “That’s really okay,” I said. “Where am I meeting you?”

  “The Iberia Restaurant in Menlo Park, right across from the train station.”

  “Swanky,” I said.

  I had to admit that conjuring up images of what Sam’s father was going to be like provided the best distraction yet. By the time I parked near the Iberia the next evening—after leaving Mother under Max’s watchful eye—I was convinced he was either going to be a paragon of the church with a heavily hair-sprayed do and the Ten Commandments engraved on his cuff links, in which case he would embarrass Sam right under the table with his clichés, or he’d be a long-faced Latin scholar of the old school, who would himself be driven under the table by his son’s unseemly jocularity.

  I was wrong on both counts.

  In the first place, the man who stood up as I approached the table was the absolute spitting image of Sam, except that there were a few streaks of gray in his dark, curly hair, and he had a better haircut. In fact, his haircut probably cost him what I earned per quarter. Like Sam, he had thick eyebrows that were already expressing approval of the fact that I wasn’t drop-dead ugly. His olive skin was only slightly lined with age, and a strong chin gave him a look of power, even though he had the Bakalis narrow shoulders and wiry build. He even wore glasses with frames similar to Sam’s.

  When Sam stood up, too, I was surprised to see that he was actually taller than his father. Hercules appeared bigger. It was probably the take-charge way he put out both hands, grabbed mine, and pulled me within inches of his face.

  “She’s incredible!” he said. “Marry her quick, son, before I take her for myself.”

  I turned to stare at Sam. His facial expression was a mixture of utter mortification and extreme delight. It was obvious he was enjoying my current state of speechlessness more than he was suffering from embarrassment. I turned back to his father.

  “You’re both out of luck,” I said. “I’m not up for grabs.”

  I knew it was a poor choice of words before the sentence was even out of my mouth, but I didn’t expect the leer that formed itself on the man’s face.

  “Now, that’s really too bad,” he said.

  “So, uh, Jill—have a seat!” Sam said.

  I practically dove for the one across the table from Hercules, but he was too fast for me and tucked me into the chair between himself and Sam with such deftness, I would have had to knock him, the table, and a nearby waiter down to avoid it.

  “What does this gorgeous creature drink?” Hercules said.

  Sam blinked at me. “I have no idea.”

  “I can see your social prowess hasn’t improved any. What will you have, honey?”

  “Club soda,” I said.

  “That’s it? Are you a teetotaler like my son?”

  “Something like that.”

  He gave an exaggerated sigh. “It’s a shame when a beautiful woman like yourself falls into the clutches of the church.”

  “Dad—”

  I put my hand up to Sam. “I have fallen into no one’s clutches,” I said to his father. “Least of all the church’s.”

  A grin spread slowly across his face. “Well, then, this could turn out to be a very interesting evening after all.”

  While he ordered Scotch on the rocks—at least his second from what I could smell—I exchanged glances with Sam. I think he would have been savoring my annoyance more if there hadn’t been something else going on with him. I could see it in the way he was running his hand up and down his
water glass.

  Interesting, I thought. Sam in the hot seat instead of me.

  With drink orders taken and an appetizer both Sam and I had declined on the way, Hercules turned back to me and launched into a series of questions. They were the usual getting-to-know-you queries, but I had the sense that although I was grudgingly giving him information about the status of my dissertation and my plans for the future, he was reading my measurements into my answers. It was all I could do not to ask the waiter for a barf bag.

  Sam only let that go on for a few minutes before he said, “So, Dad, what’s on your plate these days?”

  Hercules’s eyebrows lifted. “You mean, besides trying to entice this woman away from you?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said.

  “I’m trying to sell off those condos down in West Palm Beach,” Hercules said. “Too much of a hassle. Interest rates are down right now—or did you notice?”

  “I heard something about that, yeah,” Sam said.

  “You heard something about it,” Hercules snickered. “You better get your head out of that ostrich hole, son. It’s time for you to invest in a little real estate. You still living in a rented room?”

  “I haven’t changed my address, if that’s what you mean,” Sam said.

  I looked at him. He was grinning. There was no gritting of teeth, no tightening of the jaw. If that had been my mother and me having that conversation—and it could have been a year ago—I’d have been clawing the tablecloth.

  “My son has more money than he knows what to do with,” Hercules said to me. “Did you know that?”

  “I had no idea,” I said.

  “Now you do. Does that change your mind about being up for grabs? Because if it does, let me tell you about my financial status!”

  He winked and took a swallow of his Scotch. I kicked Sam under the table.

  “Jill grew up on a college campus,” Sam said. “She knows non-tenured professors don’t make a lot of money.”

  Hercules pretended to choke on his drink. “You’re still not tenured?”