Rapture

Fresh cans of beer in hand, Sean and Jeff went outside to sit on the patio. The Adirondack chairs were comfortable and looked recently painted. Jeff was going to say something about them, but decided not to-he didn't want to hear that Sean had made them himself.

They chatted about the winters, summer vacations, the Mets and the Dodgers, cars and computers. Sean didn't like computers, and on his home ground he was less reserved about saying so than he had been the previous evening. Jeff didn't bother arguing. He found it amusing and rather pathetic. He had the luxury of being on the cutting edge of technology. In the cellar, Jeff had seen a huge display of tools, but they were the old tools, the tools of the past. Still useful, of course, but undeniably quaint, as far as he was concerned. Sean struck him as one of those people whose idea of common sense is to go back to some simpler, earlier way of life. The only technology needed to accomplish this was H. G. Wells's time machine. Jeff could smile at this without being aware of the irony.

"You must come jogging with me," Sean said, re turning from the kitchen with more beer. 'I go out early in the morning. It's beautiful."

'No way," Jeff replied, setting the full can of lager next to the one he hadn't yet finished.

They heard a car stop in front of the house. A door slammed shut, and the car drove away. A minute later Georgianne came out to the patio with a teenager in tow.

"Jeff," she said, "I'd like you to meet our daughter, Bonnie." Her voice was proud, her smile radiant. "Bonnie, this is Mr. Lisker, a friend of mine from grammar school and high school."

"Jeffll do fine," he said, standing. His heart hammered in his chest, and he was afraid his face had changed color. "Hi. How are you?"

"Hi. Pleased to meet you."

The girl smiled shyly. She was stunning. She was an inch or so taller than her mother and she had her father's darker hair, but otherwise Bonnie Corcoran fulfilled in almost every way the twenty-year-old image of Georgianne in Jeff's mind. Breasts perky and girlish beneath a thin T-shirt, obviously no bra. Legs long and slender in tight designer jeans, a compact but definitely female ass that Jeff could hardly bear to look at. Most of all, the face and eyes, so like her mother's. Jeff had to make an effort not to stare at Bonnie, but he ached inside.

Can I have some wine?" Bonnie asked her father.

"All right," Sean said. Then, to Georgianne, "Water it down a bit for her, would you, hon?"

The women went inside.

"Did Georgianne tell me that Bonnie's about to graduate from high school?"

"That's right," Sean said. "And she's only seventeen."

"She's a beautiful girl."

"The price is more or less constant terror," Sean said. "You think it'll get better as a child gets older, but it doesn't. Just the opposite."

"I can imagine."

"Bonnie looks like any other teenager, and she is, in most respects, but God gave her a great brain. She's highly motivated and she seems to know exactly what she wants to do. Her SATs were fantastic."

"That's great," Jeff said. "Where is she going to school in September?"

"Harvard."

"Wow!"

"And they're paying just about everything, which is just as well, since I couldn't."

"What does she want to study?"

"Molecular biology." Sean had a helpless expression on his face. "She can tell you about it; I can't. My knowledge of biology is limited to giving electricshock treatment to dead frogs."

Jeff laughed. "Me too."

The four of them ate at a large redwood picnic table on the patio. The food was simply prepared but excellent. Cold shrimp, which they dipped in a spicy sauce, was followed by a platter of soft-shell crabs and a spinach salad with mushrooms and hot pieces of crispy bacon. For dessert they had chunks of watermelon that had spent the afternoon soaking in iced vodka.

Throughout the meal, Jeff and Georgianne took turns telling old high school stories. It was a kind of mutual self-indulgence, but Sean and Bonnie seemed to find it entertaining. Afterward, they sat back and relaxed. Then Georgianne went inside to prepare the coffee, and Sean followed her to mix some vodka-and-tonics.

"So...you're going to be an Ivy Leaguer in the fall," Jeff said to Bonnie. The girl nodded, smiling shyly again. "You'll like Boston, Cambridge-well, Cambridge might as well be a part of Boston," Jeff continued. "I've been there a couple of times."

Bonnie nodded her head enthusiastically. We went up for my interview, and we walked all around Harvard afterward. I really liked the look of it, but we didn't see much of the city. Cambridge was nice."

"You'll like it," he repeated.