Bewilderment

-

ONE DAY NEAR THE END OF MY PH.D., back from a week of field sampling, I sat down in a campus computer lab next to a frantic but friendly woman who, by chance, was struggling with one of the few quirks in the university file system I knew how to solve. She leaned over to ask for help, a thing, it turned out, she never did. And the first words out of her earnest mouth—Do you know how ttt-t…?—tripped on a stutter that caught even her by surprise.

She got the word out, and then the sentence. I worked my one little trick of digital wizardry. She thanked me for saving her from failing her course on animal law. By her third sentence, the stutter settled down. If you ever need any advice about what constitutes legal cruelty, I’m your gal.

Everything about her felt familiar, as if I’d been briefed on the local customs in advance. Her mouth puckered in permanent near-interruption, halfway between a- and be-mused. Her auburn frazzle was parted down the middle. The top of her head just reached my shoulder. She held her small frame like an athlete before the starting gun: challenges everywhere. She felt like a prediction, a thing on its way here. Compact but planetary. My favorite poet Neruda seemed to fall in love with her, too, the minute I did.

She had on Mil-Spec hiking boots and a green vest that made her look like something from the Shire. I lunged at my one entrée. “I’m just back from a week in the San Juans.” She lit up. Even as I worked up the courage to ask if she’d like to see our field site, her lips formed her trademark look, half wince, half smirk. Laugh lines swamped her hazel eyes and she said, I can go days without showering. The stutter was nowhere.

It took some months to accept my luck. I’d met someone else who liked to hike more than most people like to sleep. It boggled me that a woman who looked like her would also be aroused by Latin nomenclature. Weirdest luck of all, she laughed at my jokes, even when I didn’t know I was making one.

The fit between us was rough but useful. I gave her stamina and fed her curiosity. She taught me optimism and appetite, albeit plant-based. There it was: roll the dice and find your life catalyzed by another, one who, ten minutes later or three seats farther down at another computer screen, would have remained an undetected signal from deep space.