Kapitoil_ A Novel Part 17

JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: DECEMBER 5.

I worked on the epidemiology project, but by Friday I still had no ideas for what to do with Rebecca. And then I decided to yield to my difficulties: I would simply not plan anything. It had the potential to be a growth experience. So I emailed Rebecca and told her to meet me in Central Park on Sat.u.r.day at noon.

We met in Sheep Meadow. Rebecca blocked her eyes from the sun with her hand and asked, "What's the plan, Stan?"

"I do not have a plan, Dan," I said, because I thought she was doing a play on words with me and the only other American name I could think of that rhymed with "plan" was Dan. To boot, I now had a response for Dan when he called me "Karim the Dream." "I thought we could walk around Central Park." I had walked through parts of it before, but not much of it, and always by myself.

At first I wondered if we would discuss the events of Thanksgiving with each other, and because I was distracted our conversation was rigid, and I asked her several questions such as, "What did you do to entertain yourself last night?"

Rebecca said, "I know I always say this, but, really, you can let yourself go some. We're not in the office. You can curse or whatever."

I considered this, then said, "f.u.c.k. s.h.i.t. a.s.shole."

Rebecca laughed, and that softened the rigidity of our dialogue, and then we talked about a play she had seen the previous night that her roommate acted in, and about her brother and how he had joined his university's newspaper, and then about how that might interest Zahira as well, as she was an excellent writer.

We entered an area called the Ramble which is known for birding. We spent several minutes watching different species, many of which we didn't know the names of, but Rebecca made interesting a.n.a.lytical observations, e.g., how multiple birds frequently partner on a tree after a few birds first land there, as if the first birds are scouting to certify the tree's safety. Although I didn't learn as much as when I was with Mr. Schrub, it was more stimulating because I prefer problem solving to receiving data pa.s.sively.

When we reached the end of the Ramble, we decided to progress to the reservoir at 96th St. By then I forgot about what happened on Thanksgiving and it was like we were still coworkers at adjacent desks, although we weren't talking about work anymore.

At the Reservoir, Rebecca asked if I had anything else I wanted to do. "I am enjoying this," I said. "Would you like to continue walking around?"

She said she would, and we shifted over to Riverside Park on the West Side and walked along the blue and green and gray water of the Hudson River, and through the Upper West Side aggregated with Jewish families and Asian restaurants, and finally all the way down to Chelsea and the variably angled streets and cafes of Greenwich Village and the cla.s.sy and minimal clothing stores in SoHo and the less clean streets and caged athletics areas of the Lower East Side and the East Village. And although we ended up spending almost no money, minus water and some snacks (e.g., in Chinatown, where we ate dumplings and something called red-bean-paste bun), that's not why I wanted to do it, but I'm glad we did that instead of paying for external entertainment. Sometimes merely partnering on a walk is sufficient.

When we were on Sullivan St., she was discussing her brother and the art cla.s.ses he was taking at university, and I was asking her questions about art. "You know, there may be a bit of a language barrier, but you're pretty easy to talk to," she said. "Most people here, their conversations are intellectualized middle-school sarcasm. They're just trying to prove how intelligent or cool they are. You're not like that." At first I thought she meant I wasn't intelligent or cool, but then I understood she meant that I didn't try to prove I had those qualities, and although I believe I am intelligent in certain modes, I'm of course not cool in any modes, so that part remains true.

We were both exhausted at 6:30 p.m. Rebecca asked if I was hungry, and I was, but so far restaurants in New York had caused problems for me with questions about halal food, and also I didn't enjoy waiters serving me. So I proposed cooking dinner, and Rebecca suggested we do it in Brooklyn because groceries were cheaper there.

We discussed what to cook on the way there. Rebecca said she was trying to become a vegetarian, so we shouldn't buy meat. She added, "And I'm not just saying that because it'll be harder to find halal meat." I told her I was glad she'd said that, and how I disliked it when Americans corrected their behavior around me. She didn't say anything else about it.

We selected pasta with peppers and cauliflowers and a salad and divided the cost equally and took the food back to her apartment. Her roommate was out at her play. Rebecca asked if I wanted to hear music while we cooked.

"I liked the musician you played for me before," I said. "The one who sings the line 'Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm.'"

"I remember," she said.

This time she played a song called "Suzanne," and it was equal in quality to the song she had played in her room. The line that intrigued me most was "And she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers," because sometimes there is no difference between garbage and flowers, and things that people discard or ignore or forget or lose often contain the most valuable material or data, as Rebecca once said.

"Are you a good singer?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "If you consider the anguished cries of a fatally wounded dolphin 'good.'"

She opened a bottle of white wine and poured herself a gla.s.s but she didn't make any comments about how I could have some if I wanted. So I finished my gla.s.s of water and poured myself some as well.

We ate dinner in her living room, and when we finished we drank more wine, although I was careful to drink just a small amount. I discovered if I drank at the rate of 0.75 gla.s.ses/hour it slightly relaxed me but didn't negate my control, which was optimal, especially in a situation like this.

In fact, I was still very nervous. When I kissed her previously, it happened because I temporarily didn't strategize. Now I was strategizing too much, with ideas such as (1) (1) the lighting was too bright; the lighting was too bright; (2) (2) we were both holding gla.s.ses of wine and a sudden movement could spill them (even though it was white wine and therefore less permanent); and we were both holding gla.s.ses of wine and a sudden movement could spill them (even though it was white wine and therefore less permanent); and (3) (3) we were one foot apart from each other on the couch and moving closer to her would take too long. we were one foot apart from each other on the couch and moving closer to her would take too long.

I understood why movies about romance, such as the one I partially watched on television on Monday night, are so popular in the U.S., because they present high quant.i.ties of conflict, although I typically dislike the way those movies depict romantic conflicts, as they result either from simple misunderstandings or because the two main characters initially hate each other before falling in love, and although I am a novice at these situations, even I know that that conversion is illogical. In fact, frequently it is the opposite: People fall in love soon after they meet, and over time they lose it.

I said, "This wine has some pear notes."

She smiled slightly and didn't respond, and I had no other evaluations of the wine. Then I remembered my gift. "I have something for you," I told her, and I retrieved my coat and depocketed R #1 R #1.

"It is an algorithmic drawing," I said. "I created it using the discrete Fourier transform, by mapping each spatial frequency band of a picture of a watermelon to its own color-"

She linked her arms around my neck and said, "Thank you."

I was still nervous about what to do, but then I thought: You have to accept responsibility for your own decisions. She may reject you, but you will not know until you try, and if you do not even try, then it is as if you are rejecting yourself.

And then I shifted my head and kissed her, and she kissed me, and we stayed like that for a long time on the soft couch, and I thought how strange it was that two people could enjoy contacting their lips and tongues and hands for so long when most of the time we avoid contact.

She brought me to her bedroom, and our actions didn't equal what I did on Halloween, but it was still stimulating. We enjoyed each other's bodies but we didn't say anything about it, as I did with Melissa. Rebecca wasn't as thin as Melissa, but I preferred that. In addition, when I had difficulty releasing her bra, she whispered "It's okay," and did it herself. I also accidentally crashed my hand against her gla.s.ses at one point and they became asymmetrical on her nose. I apologized and was slightly humiliated by my poor dexterity, but she said "Look," and intentionally made the gla.s.ses even more asymmetrical, then put her hands out in the air and rotated her head and eyes rapidly as if she could not see anything and was panicked. It was humorous, so I laughed, and she said, "Thank G.o.d gla.s.ses are sort of in now and being a nerd is almost cool. It was a rough stretch there in high school for people like us, right?" Initially I disliked how she accurately cla.s.sified me as a nerd, but then I valued how she did not mind calling herself one and therefore I was careless that I was a nerd as well.

When we were finished we didn't say anything for a few minutes, until I asked, "Goldman is a Jewish surname, correct?"

"Yeah," she said. "My family isn't really religious, though. Is yours?"

"We are. My father is the most," I said. "Both your parents are Jewish?"

"Just my father," she said. "But he's not really anything."

"What is his job?"

She yawned and turned her body away from me. "He's a surgeon."

I was asking about a subject that wasn't my business, but I didn't stop. "Why do you not see him anymore?"

"Are you trying to find out if I have daddy issues?" she said.

I said I didn't know what daddy issues were, and that I merely wanted to know why she didn't see him, but if she didn't want to discuss it, then I understood.

She turned to face me again. "He wasn't abusive, he wasn't an alcoholic, he wasn't a philanderer," she said. "Hope I'm not disappointing you with a mundane tale of middle-cla.s.s neglect. He was a workaholic and never really paid attention to my mother, or my brother, or me. Sorry-he paid attention when he thought I would become a doctor, and when I accidentally-on-purpose failed bio, he gave up. They finally divorced when I was seventeen, which made for a fun senior year, we moved in with my grandmother in Wisconsin, he remarried, and I stopped talking to him four years ago because he never really seemed to care about talking to me. Satisfied?"

I didn't say anything for a while. Then I said, "I have some daddy issues as well, although they are different." I didn't say anything about my mother, though, because it would seem like we were exchanging personal data for the sake of exchanging it. I would also ask her another time about why she took Zoloft, which I had researched and learned was for depression and/or anxiety, because it was not necessarily caused by her relationship with her father, e.g., that is why I don't tell people about my mother, because they might think everything I do is caused by that, when human actions are the result of infinite factors and are complex and sometimes impossible to decipher.

connoisseur = expert in a fielddaddy issues = conflict with one's fatherphilanderer = a husband who is disloyal to his wifeworkaholic = someone who works constantly to avoid the remainder of his life

JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: DECEMBER 12.

Rebecca and I didn't see each other at all the next few days, as I was busy with Kapitoil and the Y2K project was ramping up. My test results were enhanced, and I believed that with some additional work and more specific knowledge of epidemiology, which I lack, it might truly have value.

However, to apply it to other fields would require opening up the code and the idea to others who have more specialized knowledge, e.g., via an academic paper. And this would mean the termination of Kapitoil, because Schrub would no longer have a monopoly on it, and if everyone had access to the same predictive patterns, then they would cancel out on the market.

I considered that (1) (1) I was performing very well with Schrub now and was getting to know Mr. Schrub more; I was performing very well with Schrub now and was getting to know Mr. Schrub more; (2) (2) possibly it would be foolish to interrupt my progress with an idea that might hurt the company's prospects; and possibly it would be foolish to interrupt my progress with an idea that might hurt the company's prospects; and (3) (3) Kapitoil, for oil futures, was the best program I had ever created, and even if it worked well in another area, I would destroy its perfect value for oil futures, and it is rare for something so ideal to exist in the world. Kapitoil, for oil futures, was the best program I had ever created, and even if it worked well in another area, I would destroy its perfect value for oil futures, and it is rare for something so ideal to exist in the world.

So I decided to be quiet about my program for now, and if I was 100% certain it functioned and I felt I was close enough to Mr. Schrub later, then I would bring it up.

Shortly after 5:00 p.m. on December 7 there was a small bombing in Jordan at a U.S.-owned hotel. Ramadan had just started there. Kapitoil would benefit again from the volatility in the market.

The next night I went to the mosque after work to pray. December 8 was also the day John Lennon was killed. At home I played some of his Beatles and non-Beatles songs, including "Imagine," which my mother adored. I enjoyed it, as I always did, but when I heard the line "Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too," I replayed it several times. Lennon was correct in that religion has caused some wars, but it has also created alliances where there might have been other other wars, in the same way that countries fight with each other, but they also restrict potential fighting within their borders. wars, in the same way that countries fight with each other, but they also restrict potential fighting within their borders.

Zahira called at 4:00 a.m. in Doha. "Why are you calling so early?" I asked.

"Because he is still asleep," she whispered.

"Oh," I said.

"We had an argument last night," she said. "About my studies."

He and I had agreed always to conference about her academics before talking to her about them. I tried to lower my volume. "What about them?"

"He thinks I should not consider a career as a scientist."

"What does he want you to do? Work in the store with him?"

"No. He wants me to change my cla.s.ses next semester and apply to the Nursing Technical Secondary School for next year."

"That is foolish. Nursing is valuable work, but your skill set should be applied to science."

"That's what I said, but he won't listen to me!" Her voice divided and she started crying.

"Stop crying," I said. "You are stronger than that."

It took her almost a minute to stabilize. It was difficult for me to listen to over the telephone.

Finally she stopped and inhaled and asked, "Will you talk to him for me?"

She didn't know he and I had had a fight. But I said, "Of course I will," and told her I would call him tomorrow while he was at work, and that she should call me again tomorrow night at the same time to discuss it.

I tried to relax, but I couldn't. Zahira and I had both worked too hard for her not to become something like a scientist. He may have contributed equally to her tuition, but it was not his decision to make.

The next morning I called my father after I arrived at the office. "What is it?" he asked after I greeted him.

"It's pleasant to hear from you as well," I said. "Zahira says you want her to think about a different profession."

"I told her there was a nursing shortage in Qatar," he said.

"She said you asked her to change her cla.s.ses and apply to the nursing school."

"If she is going to pursue it, she needs to begin now," he said. "Nursing is a growth profession, the Women's Hospital is an excellent facility, it does not require additional schooling, and she can stay in Doha very easily to find work."

"Stay in Doha?" I asked. "Why is that important?"

"It's not safe for a young female to work in a foreign country the way you are doing. You underestimate how many problems she could encounter."

"I thought we agreed to discuss her academics together before making any major decisions," I said.

He said, "Well, you're not here now."

"That is unrelated. You can easily call me or email me."

"I don't have email," he said. "You're the one who loves computers so much."

I forced my voice to remain calm. "We're both contributing to her tuition. If you prefer, you can pay all of it and then you will not have to consult with me at all. Or I can pay all of it, and then you will not have to be involved."

He laughed. "You think money is the solution to everything? I can pay for her tuition next semester. I'm her father. She grew up in my home. You are her brother. Just because you earn more money now doesn't mean you are in charge of her."

"I know I'm not in charge of her," I said. "I am letting her her be in charge. I am only trying to keep her options open for her future." be in charge. I am only trying to keep her options open for her future."

"She has no significant options that I am closing off," he said. My upper and lower teeth compressed.

"She possibly has more options than I do, and she certainly has more options than you," I said. "You have no right to restrict her. And I hope you do not let your own backward position destroy her life." I disconnected. My hand holding the telephone was vibrating.

I did very little work the rest of the day. Zahira called me at night, and I asked if she had talked to our father.

"I studied in the library all night to avoid him," she said. "What happened?"

"He said..."

"Tell me," she said.

I was about to tell her that our father was illogical and had obsolete values, but increasing her anger with him wouldn't result in any net gain. It's an issue I often have to resolve, because although she did grow up in his home, I truly partnered with him in raising her, and I sometimes oppose his ideas, but I have always tried not to reveal our conflicts to Zahira and to make it as peaceful an environment as possible.