A Working Theory of Love by Scott Hutchins Page B

years ago she was putting up with my voice.
    She tucks herself under the beau’s arm, as if expecting him to carry her out like
     a rug. For her it’s an impressive amount of PDA. They say their goodbyes and leave.
    “You were married to her?” Rachel says.
    I can’t tell if she’s surprised I was married or surprised I was married to Erin.
    “For a little while. We dated for a long time before that.”
    “She’s beautiful. Like Audrey Hepburn.”
    “I wouldn’t go overboard.”
    “I just mean—she’s gorgeous, she’s sophisticated.”
    “Would you please take your napkin down from your mouth?”
    Rachel lowers her hand to the table, her face a picture of heartbreak. “What happened
     to your connection?”
    “You make it sound like a phone call.”
    •   •   •
    T HE RIDE HOME SEEMS COLDER, shorter, grimmer. On Valencia Street, I look out the window at the hipsters on their
     fixed-speed bikes. The tight clothes, the tiny hats—their major struggle as a generation
     seems to be reducing drag. As if success in life requires being ever ready to slip
     through a narrow opening.
    We arrive back at my apartment, quiet. Rachel says she’d like to use the telescope,
     and so I grab a blanket and lead her to the dirty stairwell that climbs past my upstairs
     neighbor’s to the roof. The telescope was an unusual extravagance of my father’s,
     bought when he was in his early twenties, before he and my mother married. When I
     was a kid, he was reluctant to get it out, embarrassed—I think—by its perfection.
     In South Arkansas, perfection was considered a type of vanity. Tools should be just
     sufficient—less than, if you were courting glory. There was no higher boast than to
     say you’d fixed some troublesome mechanical problem in the most unlikely manner possible—with
     chewing gum or a well-aimed kick. My father prided himself on his descent from Louisiana
     plantation aristocracy, but on this issue he went native. He loved to boast about
     the time he fixed the Buick by hitting the manifold with a stick of firewood.
    But he wasn’t always opposed to perfection, as these German optics prove. It’s a reminder
     that change can be bad as well as good.
    “I’m sorry about the restaurant,” Rachel says, as we spread out the blanket. “Sometimes
     I have low self-esteem.”
    “Only idiots don’t.”
    “Not Erin.”
    “She used to. She’s probably all better now.” Through the viewfinder, I search for
     the Crab Nebula, but the air is hazy. The days have been warm and windless, gathering
     smog. “Her boyfriend doesn’t have apparent self-esteem issues.”
    “Tell me about it. He was staring at me like I was a bug.”
    “That’s called ogling.”
    “Please,” she says. “With a girlfriend like that you don’t ogle me.”
    “If she’s sleeping with him. She didn’t really sleep with me, towards the end.”
    “I can hardly believe that,” she says. “Who wouldn’t want to sleep with you?”
    “You must be kidding.” But, Sweet Jesus, she doesn’t sound like she’s kidding. She’s
     sitting Indian-style, wineglass held like a beggar’s bowl, shoulders exposed to the
     rare warmth. “I’m changing tacks here—I’m looking for Io.”
    “I don’t even know any constellations.”
    “Nobody does. Io is just a moon. She’s a cow who was Zeus’s lover.”
    “He fucked a cow?”
    “I think he changed her to a cow afterwards. I couldn’t swear to the exact timing.”
    “If I was a constellation, I’d be a butter churn.” I hear her shifting on the blanket,
     moving her legs, lying back. “My dad took us over to one of those Amish places, for
     fried chicken, in Pennsylvania? When I was like twelve. And they had this little barn,
     where you could watch the women churning butter and the kids chasing a goat and everybody
     thought it was so funny. But you know what I thought? Adopt me. Seriously. Let me
do
something. Churn butter. One stick of butter. Wrap it in