Dr. Marsteller Chapter 12
12
-Ponce de
Leon, welcome home. She kissed him on
the lips. Ponce de Leon was Nichola’s
pet name for him when she was a 20 something grad student dating him when he
was an associate professor. She loved
his hopes and dreams and was amazed he wanted to be the first to discover a way
to stop aging. She had the same glint of
youth back in her eye in the past month after the Science article came out.
Their sex life improved tremendously.
Not that it had been terrible even at his age. He loved his wife.
-How did
the defense go today?
-She
passed.
-Is she
going to take the job in Yale like you planned?
Nichola was no stranger to the politics of academia as she was a
professor of history. Although surprised
her husband never told her about the experiments he supposedly completed over
the last ten years, her perception of his stoic silence while undertaking an
incredible project fueled her desire for him even more. She could never keep quiet in front of him
while writing a biography of Andrew Jackson.
She’d want to tell him every detail.
She believed it was because she was weak and couldn’t keep anything to
herself. And here he was, discovering
the fountain of youth while she babbled about the Hermitage.
-No,
actually, strangely enough, Alexandria wants to go to Canada. Newfoundland.
Said he wants to, um, get back to her roots in the wilderness, hiking
and the good small town life to raise children.
-I thought
she grew up in New York City.
-What?
-I thought
Alexandria grew up in New York.
-Oh, uh,
yeah, but her family spent summers up in the Catskills and Adirondacks.
-Funny, she
never mentioned it.
-Yeah,
well, she was quiet.
-Yeah, I
guess. By the way, Mrs. Viscane called
and she wants to treat us to dinner down at Escobar’s in a couple hours.
-Really? That’s nice of her.
Escobar’s
was an expensive restaurant with all the accoutrements. In Garret, it was the place for the academia
to unwind with fine wine and food, sharing anecdotes from travels and
studies. The imagined themselves like
the expatriates in the 20s discussing literature and art and that Garret was
the modern Paris. Mrs. Viscane had
increased his funding and wanted to be seen with him at the trendiest place in
town. A far cry from a few weeks ago
when she was going to cut him off entirely.
His wife kissed him on the cheek and winked at him.
-I bought a
dress for the occasion. Its red, your
favorite color.
-Nice. He grabbed her ass and chased her upstairs.
Jack came out of his room and stuck his finger in his mouth as if he was going
to vomit.
-You guys
are disgusting.
-Oh, you’ll
be like this too when you’re in love.
-Gross.
-We’re
going out with Mrs. Viscane tonight.
You’ll be all right?
-That’s so
cool. I’ll be fine, I have basketball
tonight.
Damn good kid, thought Dr. Marsteller. It’s fun to be innocent. How do we lose it when we’re old, he thought. If you could maintain your innocence until you die, life would be wonderful. I suppose evolutionarily, we must lose our innocence if we are to protect our children.
Jack had also found even greater respect for his dad since his recent fame. Discovering the fountain of youth is pretty sweet.
This originally appeared in Dr. Marsteller