Of course he’s naturally curious, I remind myself as we leave the restaurant. Instead of heading straight back to his car, we begin wandering along Congress, side by side. The guy’s a scientist. Curiosity is his fuel.
“Enough about me,” I say as the Thursday-night bustle flows around us—college kids heading to bars, stores open late to take advantage of the foot traffic, guitar music and drumbeats audible from the door of every club. “What about you? What made you decide to study earthquakes?”
“And volcanoes,” he adds.
“Can’t leave out the volcanoes,” I say, and am rewarded with a small smile.
“Well, when I was about ten years old, my mother and stepfather took the whole family to Hawaii.”
Stepfather, I note. Jonah could have no memory of his real father, and Carter Hale’s been married to Jonah’s mother for almost three decades. Most kids in that situation would wind up calling their stepfathers Dad. Not Jonah.
He continues, “Like most tourists in Hawaii, we went out to see the volcanoes. I hadn’t imagined you could get that close to the lava flow. When I saw it—glowing orange with heat, pure liquid stone—” To my surprise, he grins. “I was ten, so I thought it was totally cool.”
I laugh out loud. “So that’s how you picked your scientific specialty? Because it was cool?”
“Any scientist who tells you something different is lying. If you’re going to spend your entire life studying something, it needs to thrill you. Volcanoes and earthquakes thrilled me when I was a kid, and they still do. Even after all the studies and the dissertation and months of looking at nothing but seismograph readings. I get a charge out of it every time.”
“Hey, they always say that if you do what you love, it doesn’t feel like work,” I say.
“Which is a crock.” When I raise an eyebrow at Jonah, his smile regains some of the fierceness I know so well. “If you spend twelve hours in a row doing something—anything—it feels like work.”
Laughing, I admit, “Okay, yes. The studio’s my favorite place to be, but there are times when I feel like if I go in there one more time, I’ll tear my hair out. Still, I’d rather go crazy making art than do anything else.”
Jonah nods. “That’s it exactly.”
“So you get to spend your whole life chasing lava.”
“And you’ll spend yours making art.”
“Yes and no,” I say. “After graduation I’m hoping to go into museum work. Preserving old etchings, curating important pieces, even using original plates from centuries ago to make new prints.”
He gives me a look. “You should do your own work. Not worry about taking care of someone else’s.”
“It’s not either/or. I’ll never stop creating my own work. But even if I set the entire art world on fire, it’ll be years before I can support myself through my etchings alone—if ever. So there’s going to be a day job for a while, probably a long while. Should I do something boring that sucks my soul away one day at a time? Or should I surround myself with some of the greatest etchings of all time, and help other people understand how amazing they are?”
After a moment, Jonah nods. “When you put it that way, okay. I see it.”
Then his hand brushes against mine. At first I think he’s drawing me aside as we go past a group of college kids drunkenly weaving along the sidewalk. After they pass, though, he adjusts his grip, twining our fingers together.
Jonah Marks has screwed me hotter and dirtier than any other man ever has—and yet my heart flutters like a girl’s as he holds my hand for the first time.
We browse the various shops for a little while, mostly for the pleasure of remaining hand in hand. Cowboy boots are available in every color, every size; these days in Austin, college girls wear them more often than ranchers do. Other stores offer Mexican crafts—thick woven serapes, kitschy wrestler’s masks in red and gold satin, bins filled with beads painted like the skulls of Dia de los Muertos, tin hearts crowned with flame.
“These are called milagros, right?” he asks as he traces his finger around the sharp edge of one of the hearts. “Miracles?”
“Exactly.” An enameled image of the Virgin Mary is at the very center of the heart. “The flame symbolizes the Holy Spirit, touching hearts, making us change.”
Jonah gives me a look; I seem to have surprised him. “Are you a believer?”
“I think you’d have to call me a ‘hopeful agnostic.’”
“I’m less hopeful. But when I see things like this—the feeling in them—I envy that kind of faith. The world must look so different, through those eyes.”