His smile was genuine. “I just thought . . . after last night and what happened today . . . that maybe the timing was off . . . what am I saying here?”
“Is that what you want?”
“Not at all. I’m trying to be nice.”
“Haven’t you ever heard that nice guys finish last?”
“You’re not too . . . sore?”
“I’m like shredded beef, but probably most girls are after their first time. Don’t worry. It won’t last forever.”
He stared at her. “You are amazing!”
“I am. My only regret is I should have started with JD and worked my way up.” At that, Vicks doubled over in laughter. Then she said, “Actually, I should have started with my old boyfriend in Scarsdale and worked up from him.”
He was still laughing. “He was small?”
“Average.”
“Uh . . . just how many have you seen?”
She threw her arms around his neck and kissed his mouth. “Enough to know that I hit the jackpot.”
The following day was just as beautiful and made even better because they didn’t talk about death. Vicks was driving, and Ro was navigating via the GPS on her phone.
“It’ll take about an hour either way. One way is to go through San Francisco via the 280. The other way is to go down the 580 through Sunnyvale and Silicon Valley.”
“Any advantage or disadvantage in the routes?”
“It’s basically one big circle because we’re leaving from Oakland International tonight. I say we try both routes. We have enough time.” It was half past ten in the morning and they had just checked out of the motel, both working on about five hours of sleep that had been segmented by lots of physical activity. When Ro had showered this morning, she could barely stand. “Let’s go through Silicon Valley. I, for one, would like to see Google or Facebook or Adobe or one of the many other Fortune 500 companies in the area.”
“They’re just buildings, Ro, unless you want a tour or something like that. I never knew you were interested in high tech.”
“I’m not. I’m just hoping that some nerdy millionaire will see my booty and have to have me at all costs.”
“I’m sure you could find many nerdy millionaires to fight over you. Yeah, even billionaires.”
“Probably. I do have an exceptionally fine booty.”
Vicks smiled, steeped in a recent memory. “Well, you got the nerd part down with me. Sorry about not fulfilling the millionaire part. But I’ll be happy to go with you on a tour.”
“No, I’ll pass. Whenever guys talk about technology, my eyes glaze over.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You know, Vicks, you’re really not all that nerdy. I mean, you are all math and science, but for one thing, you are really cute. And I’m not the only one who thinks that.”
“I know. Lisa Holloway.”
“The slut!” Ro began to sulk. “You could probably nail her with a smile and a beckoning finger.”
“I have no interest in banging Lisa Holloway.”
“How could he do that to me!” She was mustering up newfound outrage at JD. “And doing Shannon Stork at the same time? God, what an asshole!”
“Yeah, all true, but JD isn’t really a bad dude. He’s weak when it comes to sex.”
“Why are you being so forgiving of him?”
Vicks grinned. “Because I have you and he doesn’t.”
She slapped his shoulder, looking at his profile—straight nose, nice chin, lots of gorgeous curls. “There’s something about you, Vicks. A long time ago, I suspect you had another life that wasn’t nerdy at all.”
“Well, I did once have friends.”
“Wanna tell me about it?” she asked. “We certainly have time.”
“Nope. I’d rather tell you how beautiful you are.”
“I already know that.” She gave a dismissive wave. “Boring.”
“How about we talk about our favorite subject?”
“What’s that?”
“You. Tell me all about your life.”
“Okay, you asked for it.” For Ro, it was always easier to talk about herself than anything else. She talked and talked. And then she talked some more. She talked until they detoured through the main drag of the town of Mountain View, one of the many homes of high tech in Silicon Valley. The street was lined by a slew of restaurants and cafés, and at eleven thirty, the sidewalks were dense with people, almost all of whom seemed to be under thirty. There were lots of seriously skinny guys wearing shorts and T-shirts and hoodies. There were also lots of girls wearing the same uniform. None of them—male or female—looked as if they’d ever done competitive sports or ever thought about fashion. It wasn’t that they had bad bodies or faces. With a little effort, some of them could have been cute. But by the way most of them carried themselves, it was clear that they didn’t seem to care a whit about how they looked.
“These are definitely not my peeps,” Ro said. “Hard to believe that we’re the same species. But then again diamonds and carbon graphite have the same molecular composition.”
“Good analogy,” Ben said. “You’re being a snob, by the way.”
“No, I’m being superficial. These are your peeps, darlin’. God, with the way you look, you could probably get laid with a different girl every day.”
“Thank you, I think, for the compliment. Just think about how well you’d do here.”
“I’d be beating them off with a stick.”
“You’d need a mace with a steel chain.”
Ro grinned. “Well, I’m sure Facebook or Google or Adobe or LinkedIn would hire you in a heartbeat, especially with your experience at Circuitchip.”
“I could get a job here, but this isn’t really my thing. I’m more physics than high tech.”
“What about Stanford? Didn’t someone discover the Jason Biggs particle or something like that at Stanford?”
Vicks started laughing. “The Higgs boson particle.”
“Whatever . . . I don’t even know what all the fuss is about.”
“Really simply put, it’s the particle responsible for all the matter in the universe. It was discovered at CERN in conjunction with the Fermi Institute in Chicago. But Stanford, like all the other labs, has been working on it for a long time.”
“CERN?”
“It’s a laboratory in Geneva. It has this huge particle accelerator—a Large Hadron Collider. All accelerators essentially do the same thing. They smash atoms against each other at high speed and see what subatomic particles are released. Some are linear and some are circular. CERN has the largest linear accelerator. It’s about seventeen miles long and was built underground. They’ve known for a while that there had to be a Higgs boson in the universe, but they couldn’t find them within the proper accuracy. I think they wanted something like point-zero-zero-zero-five significance so obviously it took a while to find something with that little room for error. Actually, they didn’t really prove it was there—the Higgs boson. What they did is prove that it was impossible that it didn’t exist.” He didn’t talk for a moment. “Your eyes are glazing over.”
“’S’right. Your voice is lulling me to sleep.”
Vicks laughed. “In my own nerdy way, I’m not really high tech. I mean, I like my computer but I’m not obsessed with video games or apps or social networking. I’m much less Facebook and way more Lawrence Liv—” He stopped talking, going silent and pale.