Free Physics Can Be Fatal by Elissa D. Grodin

prove his existence?”
         “Or disprove it,” said Paolo Rossetti.
         Donald Gaylord rolled his eyes theatrically.  Mitchell Fender looked as if he were about to implode.
         Ravi Kapoor jumped in diplomatically.
         “I’m sure we can all agree on one thing,” Ravi said.  “That is, that some things remain unknowable at the present time.  There is room enough––and tolerance enough––for each to have his or her opinion, until such time as these questions are proven one way or the other.”
         “Well spoken, Ravi!” said Lois Lieberman.
         Nearly everyone had ordered dinner by then, and the general conversation broke up into smaller groups around the table, when suddenly everyone’s attention was directed toward Helen Mann. 
         Helen’s eyes were no longer focusing sharply.  Her usually impeccable appearance had started to fray.  Her dark hair, which she wore in a short, smooth style resembling a helmet, had sprung a few loose strands, and her black eyeliner was traveling south.  Slowly, Helen raised her fourth glass of red wine.
         “’Man hath no better thing under the sun,” she blurted out, “’than to eat, and to drink, and be merry’!  And that‘s from the Bible, so drink up, god dammit!  The Department is footing the tab for all this.”
         There were embarrassed murmurs of ‘thank-you, Helen’, and ‘very generous of you, Helen’ around the table.  Only Nedda Cake ventured further.
         “We’re all very grateful for your generous gesture, Helen,” Nedda said. “But this is perhaps not an occasion for merriment, seeing as there is one less among us today.”
         “So true, so true,” Helen continued, speaking to her wine glass, “You know, I knew Alan Sidebottom thirty years ago.  We met at a conference in Brussels.  Alan seemed unhappy, even then, but he was so young, and so beautiful . . . I was young and beautiful, too.”  She glared around the table as if challenging anyone to disagree. 
         “We had a brief affair, couldn’t keep our hands off each other, as a matter of fact.”
         The gathering sat silent. People looked down at their food.  Laura Brenner nudged Edwina under the table.  Helen Mann had always kept her personal life private, and the fact that she had divulged something so intimate while under the influence of alcohol was discomfiting to everyone.  Except perhaps to Donald Gaylord, who relished Helen’s confession with great satisfaction.
           It was Seth Dubin who finally spoke, puncturing the moment.
         “Tomorrow is another day, my friends.  We all need to be fresh and rested in order to do our best work.  What say we call it a night?”
           Vastly relieved, most of the table got up to leave, mumbling ‘good-night’ or ‘see you tomorrow’.  A few straggled behind. Edwina couldn’t get out of the restaurant fast enough, unsettled as she felt by practically everything that had happened since she arrived at Sanborn House that morning.
         She jumped on her bike and started home, happy for the fresh air to clear her head.  When she got to her little house on Canaan Farm Road she washed up and went to bed, and quickly fell into a deep sleep, laden with dreams she could not, would not, remember the next day.
     
    *
     
         Edwina woke up the next morning with a heavy feeling of guilt over Alan Sidebottom’s death.  She could not shake off the notion that she had been somehow delinquent.  That it was somehow her fault Sidebottom had met with an untimely ending.  After all, she had been with him earlier on the very night he died. 
         She hardly knew what to do with these feelings, so she busied herself in the kitchen making breakfast, fed logs into the wood stove and stoked the fire.  She filled the kettle with water, set it on top of the wood stove, and sat down at the kitchen table in her nightgown.