Chapter Nine
NINE
Fisher drops me at the front door of Saké, Ramen, and Roll and parks the car further down the street. Given the crowd, I expect to have to wait for a table, but when he appears and gives his name to the hostess, she seats us right away.
The menu is familiar but tonight I study it with one particular consideration in mind.
Generally I order ramen, but given my track record, maybe I should avoid anything liquid to reduce the likelihood of another spill.
On the other hand, if I get sushi instead, Fisher will witness my ineptitude with chopsticks.
When the server comes to take our order, I settle on my usual, with a silent prayer that tonight won’t end with a bowl of hot broth and noodles in someone’s lap—unless I need an out.
We sit in awkward silence for several minutes after that, me casting about for a topic of conversation that isn’t peppered with landmines, and him taking measured sips of his beer.
It’s some Japanese brand, which they’ve served in its squat brown bottle rather than a glass.
One corner of the label is flipped up, and when he returns the bottle to the table, he worries it a little with his thumb.
It makes me think of the sticker on my laptop and—oh.
That sticker didn’t just peel away when the adhesive wore out, did it?
It disappeared, just like everything else to do with Jane Austen.
Not only is each of these realizations accompanied by the fresh stab of an emotion I still can’t name—some combination of disbelief, panic, and heartbreak—I’m also irritated by my own obtuseness. Why didn’t I put two and two together before now?
And that’s no doubt why I respond to Fisher’s uncertain confession that’s he’s not great at small talk with a sharp, snarky, “I know.”
When his dark eyes flare, I try to walk it back and only make things worse. “I mean, I always figured it was because you didn’t care that much about making conversation.” I make a circle with my fingers, a sort of frame around him. “It’s all part of your ‘I’m too smart for this shit’ attitude.”
“Wow.” He honestly looks stricken, as if he has no idea of the vibe he gives off. He drops his gaze to the table, watches himself twist his bottle on its coaster. “Makes me wonder why you agreed to come out tonight.”
“To get to know you better, of course,” I tell him impatiently. “To find out if there’s something beneath that salty crust.”
“Salty crust,” he repeats. In spite of the downward tilt of his head, I see a smirk of something like reluctant amusement lift one corner of his mouth.
“I’m going to tell myself you mean that more like ‘rim of a margarita glass’ than ‘car chassis in January.’ But just in case, can you give me an example of this … attitude?”
“Tough to pick just one,” I retort with an exaggerated sigh. “But OK. The last time we went out, you were wearing a t-shirt that said something about recursion. I asked you about it, but you wouldn’t explain, like you assumed I was too stupid to understand.”
His chin jerks up. “I … what? No!”
I fold my arms over my chest, daring him. “Then what does it mean?”
He rubs his forehead with a pinching motion, like maybe he can feel the beginnings of a headache coming on. I recognize that expression from every math teacher I ever had.
Then he asks, “Did you ever look really closely at a snowflake?”
I can’t help but nod—growing up in Minnesota has given me an intimate familiarity with snow. (And salt—though more the road-maintenance kind than the margarita kind, sadly).
“Then you’ve probably noticed how the individual parts of a snowflake are just smaller versions of itself.
That’s called a fractal, and it’s an example of recursive behavior—a pattern created by a pattern repeating itself.
Or think of one of those infinity mirrors, where it looks like your reflection goes on forever.
In pure mathematics, recursion can be infinite.
Kind of mind-bending, really. But most of the time, in more practical applications, like computer science, recursion only feels infinite—like when you’re trying to drill down to a starting point, the base case, to find the coding error in a program. ”
“Oh. That actually makes sense.” And I know I sound a little incredulous, but I didn’t exactly have Fisher pegged as someone who would be good at explaining complicated ideas. “So that t-shirt, with the circle—”
“Is an inside computer science joke—and not a very funny one at that.” He looks chagrinned. “I never had any doubt you were smart enough to understand it. I just didn’t want to bore you.”
“Oh.”
So, last April, he’d been trying to save our date, not ruin it?
I’ve been annoyed for six months because he was struck by one of those quintessentially grad student moments that comes when you’ve dug so deeply into a subject you feel like you’re the only person in the world who knows what you’re talking about—or cares.
“I believe one exceptionally dull math-slash-computer-science lesson entitles you to explain something about your work to me.” He raises his beer halfway to his mouth, then pauses. “Why don’t you tell me about your dissertation?”
“Well, I—uh,” I stammer. I know he means well, lobbing me a real softball, but the thing is, I haven’t recovered my dissertation proposal from my jumbled files yet, and who knows where things stand with it anyway, since that proposal was based on a database that no longer exists, and approved by an advisor who has also, um, gone through some changes.
“Go on,” he coaxes. “It’s true I haven’t had a humanities class since I was a sophomore in college, but I like to think I’m a reasonably intelligent guy.”
(That’s what we literary types call understatement—aka, the humble brag.)
“A sophomore?” I exclaim, intending to tease him. “That’s a travesty. An indictment of the American education system. A—”
“When was your last math class?”
I pretend there’s a catch in my throat as an excuse to make the next words barely audible. “High school?”
His eyebrows rise above his glasses, but he doesn’t say anything, merely takes another sip of his beer and waits.
And of course, I cave. “So, anyway. Yeah. Naturally, the idea came from my work with the database”—I find it’s easier if I don’t name it; less risk of slipping up and sounding crazy; more protection from feeling crazy—“and my interest in recovering literature by women. As you may or may not know, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women wrote a lot, but they were ambivalent about attaching their names to their published work. So I’m exploring the differences between their public and private voices, as seen in letters and things like that.
Ultimately, I want to reflect on the ethics of the database itself as a means of discovery and distribution.
Does that … um, does that make sense?” I’m afraid my explanation was neither as smooth nor as clear as his.
He pays me the compliment of looking thoughtful for a moment.
“I think I get it. Basically, these women in the past were conflicted about going public as writers, and now you’re wondering whether you digital humanities types should feel conflicted about using the internet to make their work more public than they could have imagined. Right?”
“Right.” Though it’s not my main argument, that idea will form a significant part of my conclusion.
“Do you?” His tone is pointed. “Feel conflicted, I mean.”
Somehow, that was not the follow-up question I anticipated. “Well, maybe on some level. I hate being reliant on subscriptions to share these amazing works. And of course, I think women should have control over their own stories, so—”
“So, technology is evil, computers are bad.” His fingertips catch the corner of the bottle’s label and tear a third of it away in one ragged strip. If I did that, it would just be normal fidgetiness. But the same behavior from him radiates frustration.
See? Landmine.
“I never said that,” I protest.
“You didn’t have to. It’s implicit.”
I try to clarify. “I wouldn’t say that. I don’t believe—”
“My philosophy professor sure did,” he snaps back, then abruptly squeezes shut his eyes.
“Oh, my God.” When he looks at me again, his dark gaze is softer.
Chastened. “This is what you meant, isn’t it?
I’m sorry.” As I suspected, the word sounds a little rusty, like it’s rarely used.
“It’s just …” He drags in and slowly releases a deep breath that’s almost a sigh.
“Every computer science major at my school was required to take ‘Ethics of Technology’—the running joke was, the administration was afraid that without that course, we’d grow up to let the machines run amok and terrorize the villagers.
But, uh, it wasn’t a joke—at least, not to that professor.
And I guess, even after all these years, I’m still a little …
” He gestures with one hand as if fishing for a word, but comes up empty.
Salty? I’m tempted to suggest.
But I can also understand how such an unpleasant classroom experience might make a person defensive, and I’m on the point of saying as much when the server arrives with our dinner, so beautifully presented it’s almost a shame to eat it.
He gestures at the food with his chopsticks without removing them from their paper holder.
“If you’d rather just declare this date a disaster now, I can ask them to wrap all this up to go. ”
I rest my arms on the edge of the table between me and the brimful bowl. “I would never have taken you for a quitter.”
He sits up a little straighter and leans toward me as he unwraps his chopsticks, and there’s a compelling sort of light in his eyes that I’ve never seen there before. Like he’s not used to being challenged, but he kind of likes it. “I believe it’s your turn to ask a question.”
It’s conversation by the rules, but I’m willing to play along. Uncrossing my arms, I pick up my spoon and dip it into my ramen. “All right, here’s an easy one. Have you always wanted to work with computers?”