Free Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307) by Rachel Kadish Page A

He’s responding as though I haven’t just been pouring out my heart, intellectually speaking, for an entire meal.
Do you criticize all your dates,
I’m on the verge of asking. But what I mean is,
How dare you?
    â€œWater?” he says. He refills my glass from the pitcher on the table. He doesn’t, I have to admit, sound like someone who’s just passed judgment—but rather someone who’s stumbled across something that’s piqued his interest. There it is again: that thoughtful, inquisitive look. It’s obvious it means me no harm. But I feel harm. I can’t recall the last time I felt so rattled.
    â€œWhat about you?” This time I keep my voice neutral. “Tell me who
you
are.”
    He opens his mouth and laughs. “Touché,” he says. “Okay . . . I have a new theory about the universe. It came to me this week.” He watches me. Once more, that gentle dare. “Yesterday, while sitting at my desk, I thought: Life isn’t people or animals or trees.”
    â€œNo?”
    â€œNope. Life isn’t us, though we make that mistake all the time—thinking we’re life. But life is really just this big glorious wave, like a wave in a pond—it’s the
energy
that moves across the pond. And the thing is, we’re insignificant.”
    â€œWe are?”
    â€œImagine doing the wave in a stadium.
We’re
not the wave—the wave is its own creature. At one instant all the people standing are part of it, the next instant the wave has gone past us forever.”
    â€œUnless you’re a Hindu or Buddhist, and you believe the stadium is circular.”
    He smiles—I’ve taken the dare. “All right. But we can’t know the stadium’s shape. All we know is, we can’t hold onto the wave. It doesn’t belong to us any more than it belonged to the millions of generations it already passed through, on its way to wherever it’s headed. We’re just little bits of matter that get to be the ones in the wave for this particular millisecond.” He stops to consider me. “I was sitting at my desk this morning, just thinking how beautiful the whole thing is. And how before we fall back to being nothing—to being just empty water drops—we want to procreate. Send along our descendants, so they can be part of the wave for their own millisecond, too. And maybe their kids and grandkidsmight each be part of the wave for a flash, when we’re already way behind in the wake. It’s like we’re wired to be sure that the wave goes on. That’s our whole“—he hesitates, then his palm describes a low arc over our table—”
purpose.
On earth. To stand up, and flap our arms. And sit down again and wish the wave well. And hope someone else keeps the damn thing going.”
    I think about this, fork stilled over my plate.
    â€œThat’s it,” he says, sitting back to watch me. “The World According to George.”
    And George doesn’t waste time.
    â€œI like the idea of five billion people standing up at once,” I say. “Doing the wave.”
    â€œWould look pretty good, eh?” he murmurs.
    â€œMore than good. Staggering.” I chew a forkful of pasta. “Though—you think maybe we have some other purposes on earth? Any other legacies we leave?”
    He considers, then grins. “You seem worth doing the wave for.”
    I can’t help laughing in his face—a high, glad laugh. So he doesn’t think badly of me?
    He polishes off the last of his pasta.
    Or is he just flirting, upping the ante to pass the time?
    â€œAdmit it,” I say. “You use this routine on all the women.”
    â€œI throw food to get their attention, then dazzle them with kitchen-sink philosophy?”
    â€œWell, give me this: There aren’t too many men who talk about procreation on a first date. It’s a bit forward, don’t you