Don’t Worry, Dandelo

Viktor was a mild-mannered fellow who told people that his greatest claim to fame was that he had once been described as “the funniest guy on the eleventh floor … of a twelve-story building.” So how did he become an unmasked hero of the world, and also find love and happiness?

Well, the “how” will take a little telling. But the “when” – the Yogi Berra fork in the road of Viktor’s life – was New Year’s Eve of 1990. “You know,” as Viktor would later quip, with his impish grin, “back in the days when Pluto was still a planet.”

It was the middle of winter, so the sun had already set by the time Viktor left his office in the “wannabe city that boasted of being the Insurance Capital of the World.” Traffic was light because a lot of workers had called in sick, as they had much of the previous week – to use up the last of their sick and mental health days before the end of the year.

Our hero-to-be was one of the few workers who had not called in sick the previous week, because he didn’t think that one should use a sick or mental day unless one was actually sick or mental, even if one had become totally disenchanted with his or her job and was being treated, as the old joke goes, like a … mushroom.

Although Viktor enjoyed doing his bit for the Gross Domestic Product, he was happy to have escaped from the office, and his spirits jumped another quantum packet when, the moment he crested Avon Mountain, he spotted something incredible in his rear view mirror – a full moon hanging low over the Hartford’s miniscule skyline. But this was not just any dime-a-dozen full moon! This was a blue moon falling exactly on New Year’s Eve – something that only happens once every nineteen years.

Viktor loved the moon. In fact, he loved all the planets, the stars, the constellations, and everything else up there. As a kid he’d dreamed of becoming a World-Famous Astronomer. Although things hadn’t worked out very well so far – if the truth be told, they had not worked out in the slightest – Viktor hadn’t quite given up hope, and thought it was still possible, albeit just barely, at age 40, that he might still be able to realize his boyhood dream.

Viktor lost sight of the wonderful moon as he descended the western slope of Avon mountain, but now another treat awaited him. As he turned onto his street, Lancelot Lane, his headlights exploded the whiteness of a huge moving truck jack-knifed into cul-de-sac at the end of his street.

Viktor’s boyish heart leaped up in joy, and in the privacy of his fuel-efficient car he exclaimed, “Yes! Yes! He’s here!”

It was Chuck “Flat Top” Nelson, a stocky Giants fan, who’d told Viktor, three or four weeks earlier, that Dan Ball’s house had finally sold, adding that he – Chuck – thought it was a “single feller” who’d be moving in. With that, Chuck had made a disapproving face and said that he had no f—ing idea why a single feller would choose to live in a place like Avalon Acres, meaning a wholesome, family neighborhood. Viktor hadn’t pressed him, though, because he was well aware that Chuck already considered him – Viktor – an odd duck, and this was many months before our hero-to-be went off the deep end, as more than one person would describe it.

Viktor, who’d begun joking that he was so bored that he was thinking of taking up Tetris, had been thrilled by the prospect of a new neighbor, and especially one who sounded a bit odd. So, rather than sorting through the mail at the kitchen table, as he usually did, or heading out for a Power Walk of his own, Viktor took the mail out to the living room and sat in the fake leather club chair Marlena’s mother had given them when she downsized.

Viktor lingered there for close to an hour, but didn’t see a darned thing, because the open side of the truck faced away from him, toward Dan Ball’s old house, and it was dark out.

Finally, two men emerged from the house, locked the front door, and then climbed up into the truck, and took off, their eighteen wheels rattling Viktor’s picture window, which needed to be recaulked.

Viktor got the birding binoculars Marlena had given him at his infamous fortieth birthday party. He killed the lights in his living room, and trained the seven power lenses on Dan Ball’s old house. But no luck. The curtains and blinds of every window were pulled down as tight as a geometry proof. All the inside lights were off. And there was no car in the driveway.

Viktor’s spirits fell as he concluded that his new neighbor had not arrived yet. The movers must have just put everything in according to the instructions on the boxes. The new neighbor himself was at this moment probably motoring down some highway, or flying across the country, his forehead pressed dreamily against the cool glass of an airplane window, like when Viktor himself had flown back from Cincinnati a couple months earlier.

Viktor’s wife, Marlena, was on the 3-11 night shift this evening. She had, however, left a heart-healthy casserole in the fridge for Viktor. He took the casserole, with a glass of red wine, into the family room and watched the evening news, and then some stupid movie, which was what he usually did on evenings when Marlena wasn’t home, and sometimes when she was home. He couldn’t see Dan Ball’s old house from the family room but he went out and took a look during each of the innumerable commercials. But saw nothing.

Never having been one to make a big deal out of New Year’s Eve, Viktor went to bed at 10:30. At about quarter to 1991 he heard his garage door motor up. While Marlena fussed about in the kitchen, Viktor heard distant cries and the crack and pop of fireworks. Then Marlena came clomping down the hall. He pretended to be asleep, waited until her hugeness tipped the bed – for she weighed about 260 at that point – and then murmured, in a sleepy voice, “Hi. How was work?”

“Oh, God,” she sighed, “don’t ask.”

He didn’t, ask, but he did get up to go pee, as he often did a couple times a night, in those days. The bathroom felt too bright, like there was a Hollywood searchlight outside, and that perplexed Viktor, until he remembered the moon. He couldn’t see it, because it was on the other side of his house, but the yard and trees and the clouds were all bathed in silver. Very pretty, he thought – like that high school poem.

Without flushing – because he was conservation-minded – Viktor turned back toward the bedroom. And that was when he spotted its chrome sparkling in the moonlight. There was now a car parked in the driveway of Dan Ball’s old house!

Viktor’s sleepy heart surged with joy. “Wow!” he exclaimed, silently. “He’s here! Finally! And on this amazing blue moon! What an entrance!!!”

Huge Fish With Puffy Lips in Dark Green Water

The days are long in December, so the sky was still dark when Viktor awoke the next morning, and his first – panicky – thought was that he’d just imagined the arrival of his new neighbor, for Viktor had an active imagination, to say the least. He jumped up, hurried to the window, and was relieved to see that his new neighbor’s car was still there.

Viktor and Marlena lived at this time in what Viktor referred to as the so-called Avalon Acres – so-called because there wasn’t a single house in the 108-house subdivision with a plot larger than a half an acre. This was New Year’s Day, which meant that up and down Avalon Acre’s curvilinear streets, all the Christian residents – that being about 97% of them – would soon be busy taking down their Christmas decorations and putting their trees out for collection. Not Viktor and Marlena, though, because Marlena had had the idea of donating all the money they would have spent on Christmas decorations, presents, and so on, and then some, to a charity that provided medical supplies to kids in the Sudan. Viktor had always felt that Christmas was too commercial, so that was OK with him, though he had a hard time picturing Santa in the Sudan.

He used the morning to wrap up his end-of-year finances. He checked the closing prices of his investments and saw that, despite his talent with numbers, his portfolio had once again significantly underperformed the market. On the other hand, Viktor had always been frugal, and he and Marlena had not had any “other” college educations to pay for, or expensive orthodontic work, being what the demographers called DINKS (Dual Income, No Kids). Thus, his spreadsheets showed that if he was to take his retirement in September, and the 80% pension that came with it, he could still afford to go back to school and pursue a graduate degree in astrophysics. If it wasn’t too late. And if he had the nerve.

Viktor couldn’t see Dan Ball’s old house from his office, but he looked down there every time he went to the kitchen for tea, or to the bathroom, and there was nothing to see.

It was about 10:00 when Viktor heard Marlena clomping about in the bedroom, and then – through the thin walls of their pre-fab house – heard the shower running.

When Viktor met Marlena, twenty odd years earlier, she’d told him that her father had named her after Marlene Dietrich, who he’d had a crush on when he was in Germany in WWII, but he’d spelled her name with an “a” to be a little different. Viktor had been charmed by that story, but a few years later, after they were married, Marlena’s mother told him that the real story was that Marlena’s father – a drinker – had just spelled it incorrectly at the hospital.

Now, in what Viktor viewed as an oblique form of irony, Marlena herself worked at a hospital, as a pediatric nurse. Although she had enough seniority to not have to work the Graveyard Shift (Viktor had been tickled to hear that they called it that at a hospital) she rotated through all three shifts like the younger nurses, and even worked weekends and holidays. Viktor very much respected that work ethic. And, if the truth be told, he also very much enjoyed having huge chunks of time to himself.

Actually, Viktor had très mucho time to himself even when Marlena was home, because at any moment in time his large wife was involved in at least three charitable causes. That afternoon, while she knitted sweaters for babies in Bolivia, or some such thing, Viktor changed the batteries in all the smoke detectors, as he did every New Year’s Day, and also did “Squeak Patrol,” which meant oiling squeaky doors and cabinets.

Toward the end of the afternoon Marlena suggested they go out to dinner that night, since she was now off for two days. When Viktor said that he thought a lot of places would be closed on New Year’s Day, she said they could go to the new Thai place, and Viktor wasn’t quick enough to think of a good reason to say no.

At dinner, Viktor mentioned that their new neighbor had moved in, but he hadn’t actually seen him yet.

“I don’t envy him,” Marlena sighed, “with all those boxes to unpack, and having to get the phone and utilities changed over and everything. Moving is so overwhelming!”

It had been fifteen years since Viktor and Marlena had moved to Avalon Acres from a one-bedroom walk-up in the South End, with no furniture to speak of, but from Marlena’s weary tone you would have thought they’d had a suite of mahogany furniture with legs as chunky as Godzilla’s, and this Herculean ordeal had occurred last week. Viktor was pretty sure her tone was actually related to the previous evening’s “Oh my God, don’t ask” comment, but he ignored that. Instead, he said, in an upbeat tone, “Well, the move probably wasn’t all that bad, because I heard that our new neighbor bought a lot of the Ball’s furniture along with the house. He even bought those ugly green curtains!”

There was a long pause, and then Marlena said, “You told me that three times last week, Vik-tor,” and a bit snappily, because Marlena didn’t like it when Viktor would tell her the same thing “over and over again, a thousand times.”

Reacting to the snappiness, Viktor shot back that if he stopped repeating himself they’d only talk half much. With a different delivery, it might have passed for one of his little quips, but that wasn’t how Marlena took it. She jumped back, as if her father had slapped her, and the rest of the dinner was a little tense.

Marlena always drove to dinner because Viktor liked to have a glass of wine with his meal, whereas she never drank a drop – because of her old man. This evening he’d thrown caution to the wolves and had a second glass, which might have had something to do with his zinger.

As soon as they were a polite distance from the restaurant, Viktor took a deep breath, and apologized for being short with her.

That was all it took. Marlena collapsed into the center of herself, like a dying star. In a defeated voice, she apologized for having been short with him, as well, and explained that a patient on her ward had passed away the previous night. They’d actually expected to lose the boy a few days earlier, but he’d “clung” to life.

“He was young?” Viktor asked, because he could tell she wanted him to ask, and maybe he owed her a little something.

“Yes,” she sighed. “Only fourteen.”

Viktor said he was sorry to hear that, and of course he was. But at the same time he didn’t totally believe Marlena – that the boy’s death was the real problem, that is. Viktor often had the feeling that there were murky forces swimming around in his oversized wife – like huge fish with puffy lips in dark green water was how he pictured them – and those were the real reasons why she’d be snappy, blue, or some other mood or color. Viktor knew, even back then, that Marlena wanted him to ask her about those fish, but he wasn’t about to do so. If she wanted to come right out and tell him what was going on with her, that would have been one thing. But our hero-to-be did not yet have the courage to let himself get dragged backwards into a murky conversation like that.

The Odds Against It Were Roughly One in Three Hundred and Eleventeen Kajillion

When Viktor got up on Wednesday morning, his new neighbor’s car was still in the driveway, and it did not look like it had moved since his arrival. But by the time Viktor backed out of his garage, at 6:30, it was gone.

Another early bird, Viktor thought, with satisfaction, because this suggested that he and his new neighbor might be similar in other ways as well.

The sky was still dark when Viktor arrived at the parking lot in the North End where he always parked. This was not the safest neighborhood in Hartford, even in daylight, but parking there cost only 40% of what it cost to park next to his building, and Viktor was frugal. Also, a brisk, nine minute walk – each way – was good for his arrhythmic heart.

The tower named after Viktor’s company grew taller as he approached it. Built in 1919, it had for many years been the tallest building in New England, but by the time the last two digits on the date flipped from 19 to 91, it wasn’t even the tallest building in Hartford. Viktor didn’t work in the Tower, in any case, but in one of the annexes – a location kind of in keeping with his work, which was “Special Risks.” “As if those risks might suddenly explode,” Viktor sometimes joked, picturing the pieces of the building flying out in slow motion, like the Death Star after Luke nails it.

Although the Special Risks Division was far from the largest group in the company, it was one of the most profitable lines of business. SRD didn’t underwrite weird, Lloyds of London type risks, like Jimmy Durante’s nose or Tina Turner’s legs. Rather, they focused on mundane special risks, like people who worked in plastics factories, who checked the box next to scuba diving, or who, as Viktor liked to say, “snipped the ‘do not remove’ stickers off their mattresses.”

SRD occupied floors 9-12. Viktor got out on 11 and ambled down the carpeted corridor, still feeling good about having a new neighbor who was an early bird. The Level IV offices, to his left, had views of the Connecticut River and the purple hills beyond Manchester, whereas the Level III offices, on his right, only had views of the corridor.

Viktor was a Level III. The Level IV office immediately opposite his office was vacant, as it had been for about six months, since Jerry Gable had retired. After checking to be sure he was alone, Viktor stood in Jerry’s old doorway and watched the sun rise.

Although Viktor had not originally set out to become an insurance guy (“Who does?” he often asked) he had always craved success, and the pats on the back that came with it, so if he were to be promoted to Level IV, that might have satisfied him. It might not have, but it might have. But that was almost certainly a moot point, because our hero-to-be – who analyzed probabilities for a living – put the odds of his promotion to Level IV at “roughly one in three hundred and eleventeen kajillion.”

Insurance companies are neat places, and Viktor’s office was even neater. There were no pictures of the children and pets he didn’t have, and not even a stapler or a letter opener, which he kept in a tidy drawer – just one picture of Marlena on a desk void of papers. The back wall, however, did display a handful of certificates and commendations, including Viktor’s “SRD Analyst-of-the-Year” plaque from 1980.

When Viktor joined National Financial Group in 1971, right out of college, all the major insurance companies had access to more or less the same databases, and used the same mainframe computers to crunch those numbers, so they tended to come up with pretty much the same projections for risks. That sameness was young Viktor’s window of opportunity. Partly because he’d always been freakishly good with numbers, and also because he had a quirky reasoning process, Viktor had had a special talent for sniffing out exceptional risk, or the lack thereof, which was actually more valuable to an insurance company. A mentor took Viktor under his wing, and he was soon given more such assignments, and within a year or two he became kind of famous in this narrow but intense area of human activity.

Viktor was promoted to Level II, in 1973, and made Level III just six years later, at age 29, the same year he won the plaque and a week in Boca Raton for he and Marlena.

“Three by Thirty” was considered fast track. The bosses called Viktor “Boy Wonder,” “Wunderkind,” and, in a play on his last name, “Our HAL 9001.” Jealous co-workers hung less flattering monikers on him, but all indications were that Viktor was headed for the 12th floor, if not the Tower itself.

Viktor was so proud of his success that he was always making fun of it, saying things like, “the higher a monkey climbs, the more of its behind you can see.” By the time he was 35, however, the applause had ended. It had happened in such slow motion – like the thinning of Viktor’s straw-colored hair – that it was difficult to see any change month by month, but it was soon apparent to Viktor, and his Schadenfreudish co-workers, that he would probably not make Four by Forty, and it was written that if you didn’t make Level IV before your 41st birthday, you never, ever would.

Co-workers maintained that Viktor had just had a lucky streak, and his flameout was simply a regression to the mean. Viktor explained his downfall differently. “The problem,” he quipped, “was that my predictions became more predictable.” And that was true. During the late 70’s, and especially during the early 80’s, computers got faster, and had access to richer, relational databases, and programs that could do “fuzzy math.” As those forces converged, the gap between Viktor’s quirky predictions and the cold calculations of the supercomputers narrowed faster than men’s ties.

Of course, another reason that Viktor was unlikely to make Four by Forty was that Level IV was the first true management level, with the title vice president, and Viktor had never been regarded as “management material.” For at least seven reasons.

He (1) didn’t play golf. He (2) sported a mustache that was almost too faint to see. Of Slavic ancestry, he (3) “looked more New Britain than West Hartford.” His given name was (4) spelled with a “k’ instead of a “c,” and his family name, which his father had shortened when he moved to the United States, to not sound so foreign, sounded (5) more like the nickname of a first name. He (6) wore penny loafers, rather than tasseled loafers, with (6a) actual pennies that had been (6b) minted in his birth year. And, worst of all, since ties have been mentioned, Viktor had refused, from the very beginning, to wear a (7) tie of any width. While all that had been tolerated in a wunderkind whose quirky predictions were making serious money for the Biggies, it was really not OK for a Level III drudge, and certainly not acceptable for a Level IV vice president.

Ergo, the long odds.

Plan B

If Viktor wasn’t going to be promoted to Level IV, then Plan B was to reactivate his boyhood dream of becoming a World-Famous Astronomer, an idea that wasn’t as far-fetched as it might sound.

As early as second grade, Viktor’s teachers had noticed that he was phenomenally good with numbers. “Genius” was the medal his father pinned to his own tall chest, grandly informing people in check-out lines, for example, that his wunderkind could add items faster than the register. Viktor was embarrassed, but also happy to get some attention from a man who was “more self-centered than Ptolemy.”

The school counselor recommended that young Viktor skip third grade. His father was all for that on the grounds that it would give his son a jump on all the other second graders in the rat race of life. His mother was against it on the grounds that her boy was already “socially maladroit” as she, who was fond of big words, put it. Viktor’s parents fought about this for weeks, snorting, sighing, and slamming doors.

It was Sputnik that finally decided the issue. Sputnik had been launched that October, and some people feared that the Russians were now winning the space race. Viktor’s father was among the most worried. America needed to catch up, and quickly, he said, and he was certain that his genius son was the Viktor von Braun who would save the Free World from Commie enslavement.

Presented with this humanitarian vision, Viktor’s Mother capitulated. As always. A bit like Marlena, Agatha used crises – real or imagined – to attract sympathy. But as soon as she’d gotten even a modest dose of attention, she capitulated. And so it was that, while his mother continued to roll her eyes, and made Viktor’s social maladroitness one of her top ailments of that season, she put him on the bus and sent him off to fourth grade.

It didn’t help matters that Viktor was on the skinny side, or that he had a huge head and a baby face. Nor did it help that by the end of the first month he was light years ahead in math, and doing far better than all his classmates – with the exception of Brenda Peabody – in most of the other subjects as well. Socially, however, he was still back in second grade. If not first.

Viktor was ten when he first indicated to his father that that he might not really want to become Viktor von Braun. He knew the date because they’d gone out to watch the new Echo communications satellite pass overhead, and Echo 1A was launched in August of 1960. His father said something about how it wouldn’t be long before America would be putting military satellites in orbit so we could nuke the Commies from space, and Viktor would likely play an important role in that noble endeavor. Whereupon young Viktor acknowledged that his father was most likely right, but added that there was a tiny chance that he might want to become a World Famous Astronomer instead.

His father took a long, deep breath, somehow managing to not cough, despite his smoker’s lungs, and then, as von Clausewitz would have advised, made a strategic retreat. “We’ll see about that, son,” he said, and strode inside to pour himself a stiff Scotch.

In the end they compromised. The plan they agreed upon was that Viktor would major in Engineering, as his father wished, but he could keep open the option of switching to Astrophysics at a later date (if, for example, hell froze over, or Viktor Sr. succumbed to his long-expected heart attack).

Of course Viktor never said this to his father, but it was kind of his fault that his only son had decided to be a World-Famous Astronomer instead of a Commie-nuker – because he’d moved him to a little town in New Hampshire, where the sky was as dark and lustrous as blackberries, and the stars were brighter and more alive than at any other time or place in Viktor’s young life.

Viktor dreamed his World-Famous Astronomer dream all through high school, slogging his way through complicated treatises like Sir Arthur Eddington’s “The Internal Constitution of the Stars.” His favorite daydream was that he’d be the first astronomer in the world to figure out why RR Lyrae stars pulsate the way they do – like Cepheids but on a much shorter cycle – and those stars would then be re-named after him. Viktor Variables, for example, had a nice ring to it.

The first sign that this wasn’t in the stars, so to speak, was when our hero failed to get accepted at MIT, and had to settle for WPI. He put that down to not also playing sports, or the Glockenspiel, as opposed a lack of aptitude. The next, and more troubling, sign was when he noticed, about mid-way through his junior year, that there were a few people at WPI who were as good at math as he was, and two who looked like they might be significantly better.

Viktor’s father was fond of mottos like, “Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration,” and, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Viktor tried the tough perspiration approach, and it worked OK up to his senior year. By then, however, he was getting only B’s in some courses, and one C+. He was accepted for graduate work at Cal Tech, but had already begun to worry that his mathematical talents, while significant, were not world-class, and wondered if maybe he should stick with engineering, after all.

Then, a month before graduation, Marlena turned up pregnant, and would not even talk about the possibility of ending even an embryonic life. Viktor was not religious, but he was highly responsible, so he did what many people would call the right thing – they married quickly, and Viktor moved to the Insurance Capital of the World immediately after graduation. He got a summer job at NFG, told Cal Tech he’d have to defer for a year, and they rented a small apartment in the South End.

Marlena miscarried three weeks later. Viktor would have been able to re-enroll for the fall, but when NFG offered him a full-time position he decided to work for a year to save up money for grad school. Then he and Marlena would move out to California.

What happened, though, was that Viktor quickly became a star at NFG. So he decided to stay for one more year, and then a year after that. Then he was Analyst of the Year, lying on the beach in Boca. And the next thing he knew, the company’s theme for the upcoming year was “Ready for the 80’s.” It had been OK for a while, but when the music died, and he realized that instead of unlocking the mystery of RR Lyrae variables, or even nuking some Commies, he’d just made money for the Biggies, the bottom kind of fell out for Viktor. The middle and the sides, too.

Because he’d started so young, Viktor would only be 41 when he reached the 20 year mark, so he could retire with an 80% pension and proceed with Plan B. On the one hand he thought it might not be too late. But the other hand had different fingers.

Only One Neighbor Liked the Standoffish New Fellow

Viktor was sitting in his driveway, listening to the radio. The garage door was up, but he hadn’t pulled in yet because he wanted to hear the end of a program about how the United Nations’ deadline for the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait was expiring, and what might happen next.

Although Viktor had been told that he looked a lot like the man who was at that moment president of Czechoslovakia, he was a fervent isolationist. “We have enough onion rings to fry in supersaturated fat without meddling in everyone else’s affairs,” he liked to say. Nonetheless, he was kind of hoping that Saddam would refuse to withdraw, so we could go in and “kick some butt.” Because Saddam looked like a Class-A Bad Guy. And because Viktor was bored, which was why he was listening to the news in the first place.

Until about a year earlier, Viktor had prided himself on not following the news. At all. Because there wasn’t a “darned thing” anyone could do about it. “I mean,” he said more than once, “It’s been almost five weeks since President (H.W.) Bush called to ask me for my advice. About he didn’t take it that time, either.

“Meanwhile,” he would add, “just imagine what would happen if the 200 million Americans who spend one point nine hours a day uselessly reading the paper every day and watching the same news every night would spend that 138.7 billion hours per year doing something productive. Even just picking up the trash that litters our communities!”

Marlena was of the exact opposite mind, but when she countered that in a democratic society it was important to be an informed voter, Viktor would just grin his boyish grin and say yes, but that didn’t mean that everyone had to do their own research. In his case, all he had to do was vote opposite to her. Better yet, since their votes always canceled out, they could both stay home and pick up trash along Route 44.

Over the last year or two, however, a total reversal had taken place, and Viktor had become a closet news junkie. He now listened to the news on the way in to work, took the Journal at the office, perused the left-leaning magazines Marlena subscribed to, and even watched the evening news, but only when she wasn’t home, to not look like a hypocrite. It was, he mused, as if he was having an affair with the news.

The reasons Viktor gave himself for this transformation were that (a) he wanted to look more promotable, and (b) he was scanning for some off-the-wall factor that might help him with his Secret Project. But the real reason was that (c) he was desperate for something – almost anything – to happen. A financial collapse. The slender possibility that an asteroid would strike the earth. The sudden appearance of a deadly new disease that would kill millions. Or a war against a certifiable bad guy. There was juice in all that!

As the commentators concluded that there would almost certainly be an invasion of Iraq, possibly as early as tomorrow, Viktor looked sadly over at his new neighbor’s house. He had expected to meet his new neighbor within a day or two of the fellow’s moving in, perhaps when he marched over to borrow something like a (sneaky grin) left-handed screwdriver, or a (sly chuckle) right-handed rake. But it had been more than two weeks and Viktor hadn’t even seen the man!

The new fellow’s car was neatly parked in the driveway, and Viktor had had the thought that if he were to photograph his neighbor’s driveway each day for a month, the car would always be parked within an inch of the same spot. To Viktor this suggested that the man was a scientist of some sort, and maybe also from a military background.

Viktor was dying to meet the fellow, but the man didn’t go out to check the mailbox that still said “Ball.” He didn’t open the door when Boy Scouts in uniform came collecting. And his blinds were still snugged down.

Viktor had gotten his hopes up when a storm dumped fourteen inches of snow on the neighborhood, but a pick-up truck pulled up at 5:00 a.m. and a pair of men – who looked kind of like the movers, Viktor thought – plowed his neighbor out, and even cleared the snow off his car, which remained in the driveway.

According to Marlena, the neighbors were not pleased by what they interpreted as the new neighbor’s standoffishness. They wondered why a youngish – low 40’s was the consensus – apparently single fellow would choose to live alone in an eight room suburban house. In a condominium in the South End, perhaps, but not in a neighborhood where the typical family had 1.3 pets, 2.3 children and 3.1 televisions. Sure, there were other people in Avalon Acres who lived alone, but none who’d arrived that way. Those other alones were all the result of deaths, divorces, and one rumored sex change operation.

One theory held that the new neighbor was a famous person who wished to live incognito. A variation held that he was a famous – or infamous – person, such as a mobster-turned-witness who’d been given a new identity by the FBI. That theory gained some support from the fact – divulged, perhaps improperly, by the real estate agent – that Dan Ball’s house had been purchased in the name of a real estate trust with a fake-sounding name (Smith). Although each neighbor had a different theory, there was striking unanimity on one point. Not one of them liked the standoffish new fellow.

Viktor, by contrast, defended his new neighbor right from the start. He pointed out that the man’s house was more isolated than the others – at the end of the cul-de-sac, with a wetland wrapped around one side. Also, the fellow appeared to be a diligent worker who left his house very early. He didn’t appear to have a wife to be out meeting people, or kids to bring their schoolmates over. On top of all that, January wasn’t the time of year, Viktor noted, when one would be out doing a ton of yard work.

He didn’t mention that he thought the fellow was a scientist, because he didn’t want to get the neighbors thinking along the lines of Frankenstein, although that would have been fine with Viktor. And there was a part of Viktor that understood how his new neighbor might feel – that he might be a sort of renegade who didn’t want to make small talk with the neighbors, or give money to door-to-door causes when he already paid far too much in taxes. Viktor was a bit of renegade in his own mind, if not in his lifestyle, and he imagined that when he finally did meet his new neighbor, the man would be even more to his liking than he did not dare to imagine.

All Three of Them Had Pterodactyl-Shaped Birthmarks

When two weeks went by and Viktor had still not seen his neighbor, he formed the theory that his new neighbor might be a scout sent by an alien civilization. This theory, Viktor thought, would fit the facts in some interesting ways.

It would (a) explain why his new neighbor was so reclusive – because he’d been programmed to interact as little as possible with the local human units until his alien controllers had smoothed out the glitches in his social programming, which was of course the most difficult programming of all, being illogical.

It would (b) explain why he was a bit odd, as people said he was, even though no one had actually met him.

It would (c) explain why he’d purchased a split-level ranch house in a suburban neighborhood, even though he didn’t have a wife and kids, if in fact he didn’t have a wife and kids.

It would also (d) explain why he’d bought the house furnished, green curtains and all.

Best of all, it would (e) explain why he didn’t put his car in the garage, even when it was going to snow – because the garage was where he kept his space ship or space-time portal.

Of course Viktor didn’t really believe this theory, but having an alien move into neighborhood would have perked things up nicely. Unless, of course, he, she, or it wound up blasting a few neighbors with some kind of death ray. Although, Viktor thought with a crinkly smile, he could live with that.

Viktor had met a pair of aliens thirty years earlier, on the evening of his eleventh birthday (April 29, 1961). After his pubescent guests had left, he’d gone up to the hayfield to look at the moon with the six-inch reflecting telescope his parents had just given him.

As he was looking at it, the almost-full moon seemed to go blank, as if it had been eclipsed for a moment. Viktor took his eye off the eyepiece and scanned the sky, thinking maybe an owl had flown through his field of view.

He heard a shrill cry, the stars swirled a bit, like that Van Gogh painting, and now he noticed a faint greenish glow coming from the woods, in an area where there were no houses in those days.

Viktor sneaked through the trees, the way his father had taught him to stalk deer, and to his astonishment, but not really his surprise, came upon the silhouette of a silvery space ship, hovering silently about fifteen feet above a patch of baby white pine trees none of which were taller than five feet. Two figures – humanoid, but about 20% taller and 50% thinner, and with much bigger eyes – were jittering around beneath the silver vessel, as if collecting firewood.

When Viktor inhaled in surprise, the taller of the two aliens turned, and widened its already huge eyes in alarm. The shorter alien spun, grabbed an object from his belt, pointed it straight at Viktor, and then “fired” it by emitting a ricochet sound exactly like the one used in black and white Westerns. When Viktor cringed, the shorter alien erupted in a sneezing sound that was evidently their form of laugher for the other one was now smiling, too.

This taller alien signaled Viktor to come closer. After closely inspecting the Pterodactyl-shaped birthmark on Viktor’s left arm, which was exactly like the marks they had on their arms, they invited Viktor to ascend into their ship on a series of free-floating steps that hovered in the air.

Viktor was impressed by the ship’s simplicity. The walls were smooth and shimmery, like liquid mercury, but without a single window, item of decoration or instrumentation. Nor was there any furniture in the craft. However, when the taller alien gestured for Viktor to be seated, a lounger – holographic in appearance, but solid in texture, and with a cup holder in each arm rest – materialized exactly where it was needed. Then the shorter, funnier alien smiled, added Viktor’s favorite drink – a can of Dr. Pepper – and then sneezed.

Viktor and the aliens conversed, without sound, in a language that was already known to him. They told him that he himself was an alien who had been placed with an Earth family for “research.”

“You mean Viktor Sr. and Agatha are not my real parents?”

Both aliens sneezed at that idea.

“No,” the first alien replied, in response to the question now forming in Viktor’s mind – his Earth parents did not know he was an alien, and it would be best if he did not tell them.

“Especially your father!” sneezed the short one.

“Yes” they nodded, in unison, Viktor would be allowed to go “home” at some point. If he wished to. In the meantime, his assignment was to lead a so-called “normal” life, which they would be monitoring.

“No,” his return date had nothing to do with his performance. It had to do, they said, with “politics,” which also struck them as funny, though with more of a snort than a sneeze.

Suddenly, an alarm sounded and swirling colors patterned the walls like a discotheque. Without a word being spoken Viktor understood that a fighter jet had been scrambled from nearby Grenier Air Force Base. He hurried down the steps as the serious alien pressed the patterns with his long fingers.

As soon as Viktor’s foot hit the ground the floating steps pinged back up into the ship with a muted xylophone sound. He asked his new friends, who were standing in the open hatch, how long it would be till they came back.

“17,778 units,” they replied in unison, and then waved. The empty can of Dr. pepper rolled out of the still open hatch and fell to the ground. The surface of the ship shimmered, and went smooth. And then whole deal rose silently into the sky.

Viktor heard the sound of a jet in the distance. He turned his head and spotted a blinking light, approaching quickly from the east. “Uh oh,” he muttered, but when he looked back at where the alien ship had been there was only a cloud shaped like a teapot, silver in the almost full moonlight.

In the years that followed Viktor gave a lot of thought to the number 17,778. It was possible that it represented a certain number of Earth days. If so, it would be a very long time before he saw his friends again – it would be New Year’s Eve of 2009. Young Viktor wasn’t patient enough to wait 48 years, 8 months, and 2 days, so he placed his bet on 17,778 hours, but that date passed uneventfully, shortly after his thirteenth birthday.

Their Daily Bread

The natives thumped the butts of their staffs onto the makeshift stage in time with the drums, and then, after a final note, the audience applauded. Although the program conceded that this had just been an “interpretation” of a native dance, Viktor was annoyed that the tribal dancers were mostly white folk made up for the part.

After the dancers left the stage, a man who was so thin he looked like a fax of himself cruised over to Viktor and introduced himself. Although wearing a dark brown suit, he looked more native than the “natives.” His rangy gray hair reached almost to his waist, and he sported sandals on bare feet. Nor had he just donned the sandals for the occasion. Viktor knew that Clifford Worthington III wore sandals – even in the dead of winter, which it was – to the board meetings at the billion dollar company of which he was Chairman and majority stockholder. His grandfather had founded the company, which manufactured can openers, at the turn of the century, and his father, Clifford Worthington, Jr., had moved boldly into electric can openers and related kitchen appliances in the 30’s and 40’s.

Clifford Worthington III told Viktor that he wanted to thank he and Marlene (sic) for everything they had done. He said “they” because, while Marlena was the one on the Host Committee, and the person who had made literally hundreds of phone calls to solicit contributions, she and Viktor were listed together as “Angels” in the program, a category reserved for people who had contributed $1,000 or more to “Their Daily Bread,” that being about $999 more than Viktor would have contributed on his own.

Worthington went on to tell Viktor that, thanks to caring people like he and Marlene, “Their Daily Bread” would be able to save up to 10,000 people in Ethiopia and nearby countries from starving to death. Viktor listened politely and nodded from time to time, but the phrase “starving to death” reminded him of an article he’d read in Field & Stream when he was eleven. Viktor’s father had hunted deer when they lived in New Hampshire, and when his mother objected to shooting the “poor things,” Viktor Sr. had read her this article about how it was humane to hunt deer, because if you didn’t “cull” the herd they’d starve to death in the winter, which was an even crueler fate.

Viktor thought it might be kind of like that in Ethiopia, too, if the problem was that the population was growing faster than the land and water could support. Of course you weren’t going to hunt down the excess people, but did it really make sense, Viktor wondered – never in ninety-nine million years suspecting that he would one day adopt a future rebel leader from Ethiopia – to feed them contributions from Connecticut?

Viktor would have liked to say that to this fellow who was, after all, supposedly a businessman. But he knew he couldn’t, because Clifford Worthington III had contributed twenty thousand dollars to “Daily Bread,” and Marlena had very specifically cautioned Viktor to be “nice” to him.

After Worthington shook Viktor’s hand and headed off to schmooze some others supporters, Viktor counted his fingers, then went to the buffet, which had been donated by a catering company that probably did all the food events for Worthington’s company. Viktor was hungry, but the food was of an African persuasion – tabbouleh and tofu and so on – that appealed to him about as much as moldy sawdust. Also, he thought it would be impolite to eat too much at an occasion such as this, especially where there was a hand-printed note saying that the leftovers would be donated to a local homeless shelter.

Nibbling politely, Viktor cast an eye at Marlena, who was locked in conversation with a woman in multi-colored robes on the other side of the room. Her victim held a small plate of munchies, but both Marlena’s hands were free and moving animatedly, and Viktor guessed that she wouldn’t eat a bite at the event.

Viktor shook his head without actually moving it, because it didn’t make sense to him. Marlena ate a fraction of what he did, yet her weight kept increasing. She’d seen specialists of all persuasions, including crystals, and no medical explanation had been found. But Viktor had a theory. He believed that his huge wife was slowly absorbing the miseries of the world, like a black hole absorbs light. If Marlena saw a disaster on TV – even if it was happening on the other side of the globe – she’d draw the miseries of those people into herself. She was always involved in at least three causes like “Their Daily Bread.” Plus there was all the suffering she encountered at the hospital. And it added up. “If light has mass,” Viktor told himself, “then suffering might have even more.” It was even possible that suffering was the 95% of the universe that was supposedly dark matter. If so, the sky was the limit for Marlena, poundage-wise.

Rather than express such a serious thought, though, Viktor made cracks about it to his colleagues. Such as, “I think Marlena’s letting herself get heavy because she wants to be more attractive. You know, in the gravitational sense of the word.” And if that didn’t make his audience laugh he would sigh and say, “Well, the good news is that I have not once been tempted to call her the ‘little woman.’”

With his head for numbers, Viktor had actually calculated that if present trends continued, Marlena would hit 260 pounds in ten years, by which time, he said, but only to himself, “it will take two dogs to bark at her.”

A Gus Grissom Lookalike

Finally, Viktor saw him! On the first day of February, 1991, our hero-to-be got up even earlier than usual, showered quickly, installed himself in the living room, and waited – the way he and his father had waited for deer to come down to the pond – for his neighbor to come out of his house – and his heart jumped when, a couple minutes before 6:00, the front door opened. Viktor raised his birding binoculars slowly, to not spook his prey.

The man was about five foot ten, slender, and wearing a 60-40 jacket and a furry hat with ear flaps, a trapper hat. He locked the door, and then pivoted – militarily, Viktor thought – and marched down the six steps to his driveway, carrying a gym bag. He got into his car, backed out into the cul-de-sac, swung the vehicle around in one move, his headlights sweeping across Viktor’s house, and then headed up the street at a sensible rate of speed.

As the car passed the lamppost by his mailbox, Viktor got another glimpse of the man. He’d taken off his trapper hat, and Viktor could see that he sported a crew cut, like Chuck nelson, but his hair was darker and closer cut.

At that very moment the man half-turned toward Viktor’s house, and our hero-to-be’s jaw dropped, and remained that way long after the new neighbor was out of sight, because he was, Viktor thought, a dead ringer, for a man who had been on the cover of Time Magazine many years earlier, when Viktor was only ten or eleven years old.

Viktor hurried into his study and got out the very magazine, which he kept in a plastic collector’s sleeve. “Astronaut First Team,” it said on the cover, which displayed a photo of John Glenn, Gus Grissom and Alan Shepard looking like three Rushmore Presidents. All three had crew cuts, but it was Grissom, in the center, who Viktor’s neighbor so closely resembled.

Viktor obsessed about this image all day at work. Although Grissom had been killed in an Apollo 1 test, and never made it to the moon, he was far and away Viktor’s favorite astronaut, and the thought that someone who looked just like him now lived right next door launched Viktor into an orbit of his own.

Viktor was happy to see that his neighbor’s car was back that evening, because he’d had an idea on the drive home. Marlena was on the Night Shift, and wouldn’t be home till after midnight. So, after he finished the veggie burger and broccoli she’d left for him, he’d walk over with a bottle of wine as a belated house-warming present and, who knows, maybe the fellow would invite him in to share a glass or two.

After eating, Viktor got a Cabernet some friends had given them for the holidays, evidently not stopping to think that Marlena didn’t drink. He slid it back into the maroon and gold gift bag it had come in, pouffed his thinning hair, and headed for the door. But the minute his fingers touched the fake brass door knob he got cold feet. If he’d gone over with a housewarming gift right after the fellow moved in, that would have been OK. But a whole month later? The idea started to feel a little iffy, so Viktor decided to not go after all. Instead, he would shoot a little pool.

The people they’d bought the house from had left this pool table behind. It wasn’t a great table – just an eight footer, and non-Euclidean, as Viktor liked to say, meaning that the rules of Plane Geometry did not apply on its warped surface. Also, the basement was too small, so Viktor had to use a short stick on the side by the back wall, and there was a steel pole to contend with on the other side.

Viktor had had the idea of knocking the back wall out to make room for a full-size table and maybe also a bar. If they’d done that they could have expanded the kitchen, which was above that part of the basement, at the same time, or added a back porch. Each time Viktor brought this up Marlena said the same thing – that the kitchen didn’t bother her, because she didn’t cook much, or fancy, and of course she had no interest in the bar, though she could see how it would be handy for parties, not that they ever had parties. Also, she wasn’t sure they’d get the money back on the work when they sold the house. But Viktor should go ahead with the project if it was really important to him.

Viktor had not interpreted that as outright encouragement. He also thought Marlena was probably right about not getting their money back if they decided to move, and he certainly didn’t like to waste money, so he hadn’t pursued the project. But now he had a brilliant idea!

Dan Ball’s house had the bigger, A-Plan, basement, and Dan had also left a pool table behind when he moved – a full-sized slate table with leather pockets. That might even be where Viktor’s new neighbor was at this very minute – shooting pool!

“Wouldn’t it be weird,” Viktor muttered to himself, “if as I’m shooting at the seven ball, he’s attempting the same shot, or a mirror image of that shot – maybe cut to the left instead of to the right – like a reflected, parallel universe.”

Viktor reconsidered taking the wine over to his neighbor’s house, along with his pool cue, but again concluded that it would be too forward. Instead, he uncorked the bottle, poured himself a glass, and imagined that he was playing Eight Ball against his new neighbor.

Because he thought his new neighbor was a scientist of some sort, Viktor soon found a way to impress him by working in a reference to Newton’s Fifth Corollary. To his delight, his new neighbor didn’t remember which one that was.

“It’s the one that says that if you’re in a closed room moving through space at a constant speed, there’s no way for you to determine whether you’re moving or not. Even if the room is equipped with (grin) cable television.”

“Ah yes, I remember now. Do you mean that it feels like that down here in the basement?”

“No, I mean that that’s how I feel in my life. I’m in constant motion, but I’m not sure I’m getting anywhere.” But no sooner had he said that than he thought he was being too personal too fast, so he rewound the scene and just said, “Actually, that’s kind of how we all are, I think.”

Viktor kept drinking as they played pool, and it had the usual effect, which was that he shot better at first, and maybe best after two point two glasses, but definitely worse after three, though he didn’t mind as much. The next morning, he didn’t remember the final score, but he did recall that his new neighbor had won two-thirds of the games, though that might have just been because, being an astronaut, he hadn’t had as much to drink.

Chuck’s Theory

Ground Hog Day fell on a Saturday that year, and when Viktor got up that next morning he went downstairs and, before he even started the coffee, retrieved the dead soldier, as his father used to call his empty bottles, although his father’s dead soldiers had all been Scotch. Viktor buried it deep in the trash, rather than putting it into the glass recycling bin, because he didn’t want Marlena to know he’d drunk a whole bottle of wine while shooting pool, not that she had ever come right out and objected to his drinking. The closest she would come to that interesting subject was to say, with a tight smile, that he – Viktor – had certainly had a good time at a party. That smile was the one he called her “false positive,” the one that meant that, although, Marlena was extremely upset about something, she would not let you see her anger. And maybe wouldn’t let herself see it, either.

Viktor was of the opinion that Marlena had gotten darker in recent years. But maybe Marlena hadn’t changed at all. Maybe she’d always been dark, but in the early days he’d been fooled by her smiles.

When Marlena got up, she said she’d had a “trying” night at the hospital. When Viktor didn’t ask for detail, she asked him if he would please run to Gil’s to get some dish washing soap. Viktor hated to shop at Gil’s because items purchased there cost an additional 36%, according to a calculation he’d actually done, but Gil’s was half an hour closer (round trip) than the supermarket.

He knew from the moment he pulled in that Chuck “Flat Top” Nelson, was in the store, since his black Blazer with six Bush ‘88 bumper stickers obscuring the back window was parked outside. Viktor would have preferred to avoid Chuck, because he couldn’t think of many subjects that he and his stocky neighbor agreed on – and he had no way of knowing that Chuck would one day save his cookies – but there was only one aisle in Gil’s, and Chuck had been a nose tackle in college, so the next thing Viktor knew, there was his neighbor, cracking a comment about how they must both be pussy-whipped to be out grocery shopping on a weekend.

Chuck then launched into to the number one topic on his mind – the Super Bowl, which had transpired a week earlier. Although Viktor didn’t really follow sports, even he had heard that the Giants, who were the most popular team among the locals, had won an extremely close contest against the Bills, who were probably the second most popular team. He even knew that the Bills had missed a last second field goal attempt that would have – some said should have – given them the victory.

“A very exciting finish,” Viktor said, hoping that a little football knowledge would make him seem like less of a wimp to Chuck, while also praying that Chuck was a Giants fan.

Chuck said that the game never should have been that close, because the Giants should have “sealed the deal” on such and such a play.

Before Viktor could even agree, Chuck asked Viktor if he’d met their new neighbor yet.

“Which one?” Viktor asked, disingenuously, since a young couple with a yellow lab – which Viktor for some reason always wanted to call a vanilla lab – had also moved in recently.

“You know, the unmarried feller, the one on the cully sack.”

Viktor didn’t correct Chuck’s language. Nor did he say that he didn’t think anyone knew for a fact that the fellow was unmarried. He just shook his head, neither too quickly nor too slowly, and said no, he hadn’t met him yet.

Chuck wrinkled his nose, leaned into Old Spice range, and then said that he and the wife were a little worried about having this feller so close.

When Viktor asked him why, Chuck glanced up and down the aisle, to make sure no one was in earshot, and then said, in low voice, “Well, you know how, every so often, some wacko walks into a mall carrying a funny shaped package, and next thing you know he pulls out an autimatic weapon and opens fire.”

“Has our new neighbor done something that would make you think that he’s one of those wackos?” Viktor asked.

Chuck snorted. “That’s just the problem,” he said. “They never do. All the friends and neighbors always say the feller seemed totally normal – a bit odd, but not off the deep end. But all the time the nut job has a basement full of weapons and is talking to voices, building up his nerve. Then, one day, a clerk in the f–ing mall is rude to him, or he doesn’t get his f–-ing tax refund on time, if he even pays his f–ing taxes. Out comes the f–-ing AK-47, and everyone who knew the shooter professors to be amazed, but at the same time they’re not really surprised, if you see what I’m getting at.”

Perhaps because of his own tendency to daydream similar scenarios, Viktor asked Chuck if he really thought his new neighbor had guns or something in his basement.

Chuck shrugged, but then smiled a tricky smile. “I don’t know what it is, Vic, but it’s not in the basement, I can tell you that. It’s in the f–ing garage.”

Mention of the garage caused Viktor’s heart to flutter, but he maintained a straight face. “Why in the garage?” he asked.

Chuck mocked him with a smile. “Because he doesn’t put his car in there, you dummy. Haven’t you wondered about that? It’s winter, for Chrissake, with ice and snow, and that’s a nice two car garage that Dan Ball used to keep immacular. If this feller’s not hiding something in the garage, then why doesn’t he put his f—ing car in there?”

Viktor was not at all tempted to say that he himself had wondered if his new neighbor was an alien who kept his space ship out there. Instead he suggested that the fellow might still have a lot of stuff from the move stored out there, trying to sound reasonable, but not like he was defending the feller.

Chuck snorted and said, “Where do you keep your garbage pails, Vic?”

“In the garage.”

“Of course. Like everyone else in the neighborhood. Everyone except your new neighbor. That weirdo keeps his trash in the house, then takes it out in a black plastic bag one or two nights a week, stuffs it in his trunk, and dumps it who knows where. He has not once put his barrels out for collection. Now you tell me, why would any God-respecting person do that?”

As Viktor drove home he wished he’d thought to suggest that maybe the new neighbor was worried about identity theft, not that he thought that was the reason. As he pulled into his driveway he shot a look at his new neighbor’s garage and felt a jolt of excitement. If his new neighbor really was doing something clandestine out there, like building a Deathmobile – “Animal House” being one of Viktor’s favorite movies – our hero-to-be might have been willing to ride shotgun.

In This Case, Galileo Was Wrong

Unlike all the other Level III’s, who arranged their desks so that they looked out into the corridor, across which they could catch glimpses of the views through the Level IV’s windows, Viktor had arranged his desk so that he looked at his own blank (left) side wall. Thus, it was only out of the periphery of his vision that he noticed Frank McNulty, a fellow III, waddle by, toward the coffee nook, sneaking a look at Viktor as he passed by.

A couple minutes later McNutty – as Viktor called him – circled back with a cup of coffee, rapped on Viktor’s door, even though it was half open, as always, and inquired whether he could ask him a question about the methodology he’d used in a recent risk analysis.

“Of course,” Viktor replied, swiveling sideways in his chair, and gesturing to his hard-backed client chair.

As Viktor explained the methodology, he noticed McNutty’s eyes jumping to a black-framed certificate on the back wall, and as soon as Viktor had finished his explanation, McNutty pointed to it and asked him if he was a skydiver.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Viktor said. “But I did two jumps last year, with Peterson, from Sales. It was just a static line jump. Still, it was from 2,800 feet, which is high enough that you make a dent if your chute doesn’t open.”

“Ouch,” exclaimed McNutty, with a grin.

The skydiving story reminded Viktor of a joke. He wasn’t sure if he should tell it, because it was kind of close to the real reason why he thought McNutty had stopped by, but laughter was supposed to be good medicine.

“Speaking of falling from heights, are you in the mood for a little puzzler?” Viktor asked, with a smile that suggested that this would be more of a joke than a puzzler.

“Sure,” exclaimed McNutty, who was the very person who had told Viktor that he was the funniest man on the eleventh floor.

“OK, here’s the deal. As I’m sure you know, our office building is 527 feet high at its tippity top, which makes it 41.17% of the height of the Empire State Building, which is 1,280 feet. Or you could say that the Empire State Building is 2.4288 times higher than our building.”

McNutty went a little cross-eyed.

“You’re a pal, so I’ll tell you that those figures are just superfluous data designed to muddy the waters. But here’s the deal. One afternoon, Brad Barlow, the esteemed General Manager of SRD, and Caroline O’Donnell who, as we all know, is Senior VP of HR for the whole megillah, decide to jump off the tippity top of our building at exactly the same moment. Don’t ask me why they want to go together, because I’m not allowed to say.”

That elicited a nervous laugh and a sideways glance at the corridor.

“Now here’s the question. If the two of them leap off at exactly the same moment, and ignoring the frictional effects of the atmosphere, who hits the ground first? Barlow or O’Donnell?”

Viktor had told this one maybe a dozen times before. Most people, thinking of Galileo, said they would hit the ground at the same time. Most of the rest said Barlow, because he was chunky, while O’Donnell was a skinny, fitness nut. In what Viktor thought was a clever variation, one person said Barlow would hit first because he was a Level VII and O’Donnell was only a VI. Only two people had said O’Donnell would hit first. One said that was because she was always in a hurry, and the other said it was because she was carrying a big hatchet – both pretty good answers, Viktor thought.

McNutty was having trouble deciding, so Viktor counted down from ten, telling him that he had only ten seconds left to win the new over-under washer-dryer, nine, eight …

At the last moment, McNutty voted for Barlow.

“And your reason?” Viktor asked.

“I don’t know. I guess maybe because I hear they’re considering another RIF, and I wouldn’t want it to get back to O’Donnell that I said she’d hit first.”

“An honest answer,” Viktor said, smiling grimly, because he’d been sure that it was the rumored Reduction in Force that was on McNutty’s mind.

“But what’s the real answer,” McNutty asked, with the wide, innocent eyes of a puppy.

“Well, this is a joke I first heard somewhere else, about a different company, but their answer to question of who hits the ground first is … “Who cares!”

That elicited a nervous laugh.

“However,” Viktor continued, leaning closer, “I’ve come up with what I think is a better answer, especially in the current environment.”

McNutty’s eyes whirled.

Viktor waited a good long moment. And then said, with a huge grin, “… neither.”

McNutty looked perplexed. So Viktor hit the punch line quickly. “Because they both have golden parachutes.”

That got a huge laugh. Too huge, really. It was a laugh so enormous that it caused McNutty to turn his head and check to see if anyone was out in the corridor. And when he turned back his face had darkened.

Viktor wiped the smile off his own face and said, “I know what you’re thinking, Frank, but I haven’t heard a thing. I mean, it’s no secret that a RIF is coming, but I don’t think it will hit SRD very hard because we’re profitable, and pretty lean already.”

He regretted that last word as soon as he said it, but McNutty didn’t seem to have noticed.

“If I hear anything, you’ll be the first to know,” Viktor said.

“Thanks, buddy,” McNutty said, nodding with multiple chins, then raised himself from the chair with some effort, smiled wanly, and left.

After McNutty left, Viktor had three thoughts. The first was that McNutty might very well be one of the people to let go, because he was an (a) middle-aged white guy who was (b) only so-so at what he did. Also because – though no one would come within a million miles of saying this – he was (c) overweight.

Viktor’s second thought was that the odds of himself getting promoted to Level IV were so small that perhaps he should tell HR he was planning to retire in September, on his 20th anniversary, but would be willing to leave earlier if he could depart with full benefits. That might help to protect McNutty’s job, since they had similar roles.

But Viktor’s third thought was that he didn’t really disagree with the decision to let someone like McNutty go. He liked Frank as a person. But he also thought that American business had gotten a little fat and happy, so to speak, and it was time to get leaner and meaner. Not that he could ever say something like that at the office, or (especially) to Marlena. Instead, when the subject of layoffs came up he tended to cite the old joke, which was that working for big companies was like being a mushroom, because they (a) kept you in the dark, (b) covered you with horse shit, and then, just when you were getting the hang of it, they (c) canned you.

“First Name, Norman. No, Nor-bert,”

That Saturday, Viktor was sitting in the living room reading about how, with banks failing at the rate of one every two days, the FDIC’s bailout fund might run out of money by the end of the year, when he spotted Jimbo’s blue and white jeep pass his window, swing around the cul-de-sac, without stopping at his new neighbor’s mailbox, and then head back toward Viktor’s house.

Viktor popped up and hurried to the door, grabbing an envelope from the side table as he went. On weekends, Viktor often went out to say hi to their ginger-haired mailman (who refused to let anyone call him a letter carrier). Today he also wanted to give him this letter that had been delivered to his house by accident.

Jimbo smiled when he spotted Viktor, leaned out the window of his right-hand drive vehicle, and asked him if he had any new ones, meaning jokes.

“Got one about Desert Storm,” Viktor said, “if a 4F is allowed to tell war jokes to a veteran who lost a leg in Vietnam.”

Jimbo grinned an enthusiastic “yes.”

“Well, it seems the Franklin Mint has issued a set of cast-iron chess pieces to honor our great Desert Storm Victory.”

Jimbo’s smile widened in anticipation.

“And what I heard,” Viktor continued, “is that the king of the white, American pieces is George H. W. Bush, who I voted for, by the way. And, of course, the king of the black, Iraqi pieces is Saddam Hussein, who I did not vote for. Saddam’s pieces are a little different from George’s, though. Except for himself, they’re all … pawns.”

Jimbo said that was a good one, and chuckled.

Viktor waited for the chuckle to die down, then added the punch line. “And you have to buy new pawns each week.”

That got a bigger laugh out of Jimbo, who been a pawn himself, and Viktor laughed as well, but not so much that he forgot to give Jimbo the letter that had been delivered to his house by mistake – an invoice from a pet store in Albuquerque.

Jimbo examined the address, then muttered that it was for the new guy at the end of the street and pointed back, without looking, at Dan Ball’s old house.

Viktor felt like he’d stepped into a hole in the dark. “My new neighbor’s name is Boltzmann?” he asked, in a cramped voice.

“Yup,” Jimbo nodded, all-business now. “First name Norman. No, Nor-bert,” he said, accenting the second syllable. “Norbert Boltz-Mann.”

Jimbo went on to tell Viktor that this Boltzmann fellow didn’t get mail delivered to his curbside mailbox. Everything went to a PO Box in town. In this case, the pet store had mistakenly addressed it to 51 Lancelot Lane instead of 57. Jimbo himself would have caught that mistake and taken it back to town, but kid who filled in for him on Thursdays and Fridays didn’t know the neighborhood as good (sic) as Jimbo did.

As Viktor watched Jimbo drive off, he thought he liked it that his new neighbor used his middle initial, though he wondered what the “H” stood for. And he thought the name “Norbert” sounded distinguished, or at least interesting. But most of all, he liked it that his new neighbor’s last name sounded scientific. In fact, there had been a famous Boltzmann.

At the same time Viktor kicked himself for having given the letter to Jimbo. If he’d realized who it was for – which he should have – he could have walked right down and handed the letter to Mr. Norbert H. Boltzmann himself. Not that the man would have answered the door. But he might have, and standing in the doorway, he might have sensed a kindred spirit in Viktor – that he wasn’t just collecting for some lame cause, that Viktor wasn’t like the other neighbors, that he was probably one of the only people in the greater Hartford area who had even heard of the Boltzmann Constant.

Viktor’s experience had been that as soon as an interesting word popped up, it tended to pop up again, so he wasn’t really surprised when, that evening, sitting in his Mission oak rocker reading Scientific American, he ran into a reference to the Boltzmann constant.

Viktor let the magazine settle into his lap, and imagined that, instead of giving the letter back to Jimbo, he was carrying it down to his neighbor’s house, arriving at the very moment – as luck would have it – when the man was stepping out of his car, wearing his black 60-40 jacket and ear-flapped trapper hat . Up close, he looked even more like Gus Grissom, with a long, straight nose, and a crimped upper lip.

Viktor introduced himself as a neighbor, pointing back at his own house, said he’d received a letter by mistake and then asked Boltzmann if he was by any chance related to the Austrian physicist, Ludwig Boltzmann.

“No, I’m not. And I’m surprised you’ve even heard of him,” Boltzmann said, with an accent in which his “w’s” sometimes became “v’s,” his “s’s” became “z’s” and he tended to emphasize the first syllables of words, while swallowing the endings.

“The Boltzmann constant uses the same units as entropy, doesn’t it,” Viktor added with a neighborly smile.

Boltzmann nodded, regarded Viktor with heightened interest, and then asked him if he was a scientist.

Viktor sighed, shook his head, and said no, he wasn’t. He was an insurance analyst. But yes, he had set out to be a World-Famous Astronomer.

“A ‘World-Famous’ Astronomer?” Boltzmann asked.

“That’s right,” Viktor nodded. “And I already knew, at the age of eleven, what it was that would make me famous.”

“And what was that?” Boltzmann asked, looking genuinely intrigued.

So Viktor told him the whole story – how he’d been gifted in Math, and had wanted to solve the mystery of RR Lyrae variable stars. He’d gotten a giant scholarship (he had previously told people it was “good-sized”) to WPI, and was then accepted at Cal Tech. But then Marlena got pregnant, so they’d gotten married, he’d put graduate school on hold and, because of one thing and another, he’d never gotten back on track.

Boltzmann looked at him with concern, and sympathy, and then asked, “Is it too late to pursue your dream?”

And now Viktor heard himself say something he hadn’t yet said anyone but himself, which was that maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe he would reapply to Cal Tech when he retired, and go after his dream again. The mystery of the RR Lyrae stars had been solved, but there were still “one or two unanswered questions.”

The only problem with him with going off to California, Viktor thought, when he got home, was that he wouldn’t be able to get to know his interesting new neighbor better.

Lunch With Bettina

Although Marlena always got herself to work on time, Viktor had never seen her be ready on time when they were going out together. She said that it took her longer to figure out what to wear, and to do her make-up when she wasn’t just putting on a uniform. Viktor – who was punctual to a fault – joked that her ancestors had probably come over on the Juneflower.

This Sunday, it was Marlena’s mother – Bettina – who they were going to visit, so Viktor didn’t pace the living room, inquire even once if Marlena was almost ready, or put on his coat until she was finally standing in front of him with hers on and her black bag in her hand.

“I’ll back the car out,” he said. They were taking his car because Bronco was in the shop, and it was difficult for her to squeeze into Viktor’s smaller car when it was parked in the garage, on account of her size.

Marlena had told Bettina they’d arrive at noon, but Viktor could see what it was going to be closer to 12:30 before they got to Manchester. He didn’t try to make up time, though. He drove at a sensible speed, came to a full stop at every stop sign, and was courteous to other motorists. That was exactly how Marlena would have driven, but it was not how Viktor usually drove – especially not on his commute. Although Viktor was not a speeder, he was far more competitive than most people would have guessed. He hated it when someone tail-gated him, or cut him off – especially if they were driving a BMW – and would take surprisingly aggressive counter-measures to hold them back, or to retake the lead from someone who’d cut him off, though he was careful enough to have never gotten a ticket, or even a warning.

Marlena often used “drive time” to bring up touchy subjects, but she was always quiet, in a heavy way, on their trips to see Bettina – as if headed to a funeral.

In contrast to her name, which Viktor always thought sounded petite, like “ballerina,” Marlena’s mother was a stocky, mannish woman with a coffee and tobacco voice. Marlena often complained that Bettina had done nothing but “ridicule” her throughout her childhood. Viktor said she probably shouldn’t take it personally, because his impression of Bettina was that she ridiculed pretty much everyone, including himself.

Bettina had sold her house about a year earlier for “far less than it was worth,” and used the proceeds to buy a “shoddy” condo in a brick complex. She’d had to down-size because her husband, Frank, “drank his way” through half their retirement savings, and the other half had gone to pay his medical bills and debts before he died, at 57, of cirrhosis. Marlena and Viktor sent Bettina a modest check each month, as did Marlena’s sister, but Bettina was forever complaining about how much everything cost.

She was standing on her porch with her coat on and her bag in her hand as they pulled up, at 12:28, and she marched directly toward the car even before it had stopped.

“Shall I gun it?” Viktor was tempted to say, but Marlena had no sense of humor in this area.

“You’re late,” Bettina announced, to Marlena, as she slid into the back seat.

Viktor lied and said that there had been a “ton” of traffic on 44.

Bettina snorted in disbelief, then said she’d made the reservation for 1:00 instead of 12:30, because she knew they’d be late.

Viktor smiled without moving his lips because he often did the same thing with Marlena.

Bettina commanded Viktor to drive to a steak place on the Middle Turnpike, although she knew Marlena was a fishetarian. Once there, Bettina signaled to a red-jacketed waiter before she’d even gotten to her seat and ordered a Manhattan. Viktor said that he’d just have a ginger ale because he’d be driving home, since Marlena couldn’t drive a stick shift.

When Bettina made a face he said, “Also, “I try not to get sloshed in the daytime,” then added that he preferred to get sloshed at night.

Bettina ordered the Porterhouse, well-done, because it had been “still moving” the last time she was here. Viktor said he’d have the chicken dish he’d had the last time, though “hopefully not the very same one.” Marlena ordered a large salad with no dressing or jokes.

The big subject that afternoon was the holidays. Bettina had spent a few days in New Jersey, with Marlena’s older sister, Nancy, who had three kids, so Viktor and Marlena had to hear all about their enormous successes in school, soccer, and society at large. It had been seven years since he and Marlena had taken their name off the adoption lists, and at this point in his life Viktor was 100% certain that not having kids was not a big deal for him. Of course at this point in his life he was also 100% certain that he would never be pilloried as a criminal, would never have to change his name to avoid persecution, or change it back and then become a thousand times more famous than he had been infamous.

Marlena had to work that night, but said she could get a ride home with a friend, so Viktor dropped her off at the hospital on the way home. As he was putting the car into gear, a siren sounded and an ambulance pulled in. He watched a stretcher being wheeled into the hospital, and an insight came to him, suddenly, and with great clarity.

“That’s what Marlena wants,” he whispered to himself. “She wants to be on that stretcher. She wants to be a patient! That’s the real reason she became a nurse. It’s all backwards!”

He thought about that on the drive home, and recalled a time when the wife of a friend had told them about something stressful that had just happened to her, and Viktor had replied that it sounded manageable, and he thought it would all work out OK (which it did). But driving home that evening, Marlena had told him that that wasn’t what her friend had wanted to hear. Viktor was supposed to say, “Oh, my god, how awful. How did it happen? Where does it hurt? Here, lie down, can I get you something?”

That was also, he now realized, what Marlena wanted to hear. Because her father had always been drunk, or tuned out in other ways. Because Bettina had told her to not be a cry baby. Because her sister was a beauty queen. And who knows what else.

If he was right, maybe all he had to do the next time Marlena told him about a kid dying, or a famine in Ethiopia, was wrap his arm around her – not that he could get all the way around anymore – and say, “Oh my god, how awful.” If he did that, their relationship might take a turn for the better right away.

On the other hand, Viktor wasn’t entirely sure that he really wanted their relationship to take a turn for the better right away.

By the time he got home and stepped into the house he just collapsed on the couch. He was so tired from all this deep thinking that he felt like he’d visited nineteen museums.

Viktor’s Spy Mission

Once Viktor had gotten a glimpse of his new neighbor, he was eager to learn more about the mysterious Mr. Boltzmann. To accomplish this, he hatched a plan that involved some spying, although his father – who he thought might have been a real spy – would have laughed at his plan.

Using his binoculars, Viktor had spotted a decal in the lower left corner of the windshield of Boltzmann’s car. He still had the telescope he’d gotten for his 11th birthday, but Boltzmann always parked his car facing his house, and it would have been impossible to focus on the sticker as he drove by in the dark, especially aiming backwards like you do with a reflecting telescope. So Viktor needed to get up close to take a look.

He waited for an evening when Marlena was at work, then dressed in dark clothes, without literally dressing in black, or putting smudge under his eyes. He knocked back a shot of the same brand of scotch his father used to drink, from a bottle he kept in his study just in case his old man wasn’t really dead. He took a deep breath, and then sauntered, perhaps too casually, down toward his neighbor’s house.

Unbeknownst to most people, a twenty foot easement ran along the right side of Boltzmann’s property line. This led to a wooded three and a half acres which the developers of Avalon Acres had left untouched only because it was a wetland with a vernal pond (and/or to justify the “s” in Acres). Viktor had hiked back there one rainy night in March and found some yellow-spotted salamanders. The end of February was too early for those cute guys, with their buggy eyes that reminded Viktor of the headlights on old MG Midgets, to emerge from their cozy tunnels, but Viktor thought that looking for salamanders would be a plausible excuse to be walking out there.

Viktor worried Boltzmann’s door might open as he passed by, but it didn’t. He soon arrived at the vernal pond, which still had a thin layer of ice on it. Viktor pretended to be surprised by this and muttered, loud enough for any hidden police officers to hear, “Darn, it’s frozen.” He pinged a stone out, as if testing the ice, lingered a moment, picked at the hard ground with a stick, as if searching for salamanders, then turned and headed back to the cul-de-sac.

As he drew even with the front corner of Boltzmann’s property Viktor angled to the right, toward his own property. His heart was pounding now that he was actually crossing his neighbor’s private property. But no floodlights popped on, no shades shot up, no doors or windows flew open. Nothing.

Viktor was soon abreast of Boltzmann’s car. It was dark but our hero-to-be, thinking ahead, had brought a small flashlight. He shined it on the sticker, and could read it perfectly. That was the good news. The bad news was that it was a parking sticker for The General, an insurance company even larger than NFG, with its campus a few miles out of town. And that didn’t fit! Not at all! It didn’t fit Viktor’s scientist theory, or Boltzmann’s Gus Grissom look, and it was crushingly disappointing to think that this dark-haired man, who Viktor had begun to idolize, worked for a dull insurance company, just like himself. It was like hearing that Batman wore dentures.

For one horrible moment Viktor felt himself dragged down by a Jupitersque gravity (2.4 times that of Earth). But it was only a second before he silently exclaimed, “Oh! Right! Of course! That’s it! Mr. Boltzmann moved here from somewhere else. He bought this car second-hand, because you get better value that way, and the person he bought it from used to work at The General!” That was hardly out of the question given that, as Viktor liked to say, ten out of nine people in the Greater Hartford area worked for one of the insurance companies.

When Viktor got back to his own house he poured himself a second glass of Scotch and thought about his father. It was a well-documented fact that, in the years immediately following World War II, before our hero-to-be was born, Viktor Sr. had done some work with the CIC, the military version of the CIA – assignments that leveraged his ability to speak Czech. What was never clear was whether his father had continued to do any such work in the decades that followed, while ostensibly working as an electronics salesman .

His father had often implied that he was a spy. For example, he was forever giving Viktor lessons on “tradecraft,” such as an eighty-five mile per hour demonstration of how to shake a tail. There had also been times when, after a whispered phone call, Viktor Sr. would have to rush out to buy a pack of cigarettes, even though there was half a carton in the pantry. There was a code book in the bottom drawer of his bureau, under some girlie magazines. And he kept a loaded pistol in the nightstand on his side of the bed. But when anyone asked about any of these things, Viktor Sr. would snicker at the suggestion that he was a spy.

1985, Viktor Sr. took off with a waitress from Goffstown who was a couple years younger than Viktor, if she was telling the truth. It was supposedly an affair of the heart, but Viktor preferred to think that his father had actually been called off on a secret mission.

Each month, Viktor’s mother received a check, but never a petition for divorce. Viktor Sr. was an orderly and punctual man, so when one of his checks was late, Viktor and his mother knew something was wrong. A few days later – this had been just three and a half years ago, in September of 1987 – his mother got a phone call, and soon after that she received, via airborne delivery, her husband’s ashes and wedding band along with a sheaf of legal papers.

The story was that his father had been so badly disfigured in a car accident that he had been cremated immediately. But, even though his father had always driven recklessly, the story had never felt right to Viktor. Viktor’s alternate theories were that his father had (a) faked his death to cover his spy tracks, or so that (b) his mother could collect his life insurance, even though he had not believed in life insurance. But if there was to be a distinctive 1-4-1 rap on the door one night, Viktor would not have been entirely surprised.

Viktor’s Sense of Humor Had Been Going Downhill for a Few Years

Although Viktor’s favorite business magazine of that day claimed that global warming was a left-wing hoax, it did seem like the crocuses were coming up sooner and sooner. When a coworker said as much Viktor replied, with a crinkly grin, that there could still be a hard frost, this being the beginning of March, and if that were to happen it might very well result in (big compost-eating grin) “crocus interruptus.”

The co-worker sort of chuckled, but looked uncomfortable.

“The HR Police are wrecking everything,” Viktor muttered to himself, as he marched back to his office, a half-step faster than usual, to express his annoyance to himself. “Their Prime Directive is that if something is funny, you can’t say it, because it must be offending someone.” At the same time, however, Viktor knew that he couldn’t blame it all on the HR Police. The truth was that his humor had been going downhill for a few years now.

Viktor’s mother liked to say that her son had been born funny, and told stories about Viktor putting his mittens on his feet, or using his spoon backwards, and then waiting with his devilish grin, for the laughter that invariably followed.

Viktor’s mitten and spoon gags were followed by poop and piddle jokes, and then came the sexual material. However, unlike his prepubescent pals, who told one of nine standard sex jokes over and over, Viktor was best known for his impromptu remarks, which often followed one of the standard sex jokes. Like after hearing the joke that ends with the little girl saying, “But little boy, that’s not my belly button,” Viktor would screw his face into a question mark and ask, ingenuously, “But if she didn’t have a belly button, wouldn’t her bottom fall off?” For some reason that comment struck everyone as hilarious, and young Viktor was asked to repeat it every time the belly button joke was told.

Once everyone began jerking off nineteen times a day – “right about the time I started wearing glasses,” Viktor often said, even though he didn’t wear glasses – their humor shifted to jokes about sexual inexperience and/or inadequacy. Partly to be different, and partly because he wasn’t 100% sure he was human, Viktor shifted to alien jokes. While some of his alien material was about how the aliens did “it,” his most popular bits concerned the reports that the aliens sent back to their home planet regarding human behavior, as well as questions from the home planet requesting clarification of these reports.

In college, Viktor shifted to dryer quips and puns that sometimes required footnotes. For example, when asked about his religious affiliation, he would reply that he was a “non-sequitarian.”

Toward the end of his undergraduate years, as he began to struggle academically, and especially after he got Marlena in trouble, Viktor’s sense of humor kind of dropped out of sight for a while, even though that was when he could have used it the most.

His levity resurfaced shortly after he began working at NFG, perhaps because, as he often said, working at NFG was just like being in high school … except that the bells didn’t actually ring. Since Viktor didn’t follow sports or current events, and it would have been inappropriate to make sex jokes at the office, even in the 70’s, his material tended to be about the work environment. That might sound typical, but Viktor’s humor was sprinkled with a touch of the bizarre. For example, he once prodded his cafeteria pasta with a fork, furrowed his brow the way he had before launching his belly button line, and muttered, “You know, I’m not 100% sure that this is a free-range tortellini.” Another time, as a co-worker struggled to un-jam a copier, Viktor hung his head and confessed that he’d probably caused the problem by trying to make a two-sided copy of a one-sided memo from middle management.

It was in his mid-to-late thirties that Viktor’s humor began to go bad. 1987, give or take – right after father had supposedly died. The first symptom was that new jokes no longer popped into his head as readily as they had before, so he was forced to reuse old material. If a joke didn’t get a laugh, Viktor would hit the punch line harder, or repeat it, which is just the wrong thing to do with a dry joke, or he’d add an adjective, which is almost as bad. So now it would be the “darned” copier, or an “incredibly” one-sided memo. Similarly, he used to get a chuckle when he told people he’d grown up in Cleveland … New Hampshire. Later, to get the same chuckle, he had to call it Cleveland … New Hamster.

One of the best things about Viktor’s humor had been that, in addition to not making sex jokes or using four letter words, he didn’t make fun of other people. He might make a joke about a certain category of people, such as weatherpersons, beauticians, or vinyl siding salesmen, but he wouldn’t make a joke at the expense of a specific individual unless that individual was himself. But then he began to cross that line.

For example, Viktor had been making jokes about his bald spot even though it was more just a matter of his hair getting thin all over. He sometimes said that his bald spot was expanding at the same rate as the hole in the ozone layer, and that wasn’t a coincidence because it was in fact the reflection of sunlight off his bald spot that was burning the hole in the atmosphere. Or he would predict that, at its present rate of growth, his bald spot would get to Bulgaria before such and such a management initiative was implemented. And so on.

Then, one afternoon Viktor muttered that Reggie Thompson was so worried about going bald that his bald spot was turning gray. It was now Bill Robertson – not Viktor – who never had anything good to say about … himself. And had anyone noticed that Paul Hessenthaler had the physique of a Greyhound … bus. And it got worse. Like the time he asked a co-worker, “Animal, mineral or vegetable?” And when the co-worker asked Viktor what he was referring to, he said Fred Perkins, who’d just had a stroke.

Soon, the same people who’d smiled when they saw Viktor coming, lowered their gaze or ducked into an empty conference room. If they couldn’t avoid being present when he cracked a joke, they’d listen, politely, and sometimes emit a noise that sounded like a chortle. But they also seemed to back up half a step and regard Viktor warily. And, of course, making people back up half a step and regard him warily was the exact complete total opposite of the reaction Viktor had been looking for ever since he started using his spoon backwards and putting his mittens on his feet.

Boltzmann Knocks

Viktor finally met Norbert H. Boltzmann in a manner that even he, with such a lively imagination, would not have predicted. Because it was so darned pedestrian.

One evening in early March, when Marlena was at work, Viktor was shooting pool in his basement when he heard the brass knocker on his front door rap sharply. It was the same 1-4-1 pattern his father had always used, so Viktor fairly flew up the stairs, thinking that it was him, while at the same time telling himself that a lot of people rapped like that, maybe because the 1-4-1 pattern had been used on a famous radio show or something.

It wasn’t his father. It was him, Norbert H. Boltzmann. Viktor’s shock was further amplified by the fact that everything about the man felt larger or more vivid than the picture in his head. He was taller. His complexion was so pale, especially in artificial light, that it appeared white. His lips were full and almost blood red. And the thick lenses of his glasses made his dark eyes appear both larger and wilder than a normal person’s.

Because the image felt so much more vivid than life, Viktor thought it was one of his daydreams. But when he blinked a long blink and Boltzmann was still there, he knew it wasn’t.

Viktor’s new neighbor didn’t apologize for knocking so late, offer any explanation for his presence, or even introduce himself. All he did was ask if Viktor had any solder.

Viktor didn’t catch the word at first, because “solder” isn’t a word one is expecting to hear at a moment like that, and Boltzmann pronounced it like it began with a “z,” so he had to repeat it, and even add a definition, that solder was the alloy of tin and lead that’s used to make electrical connections.

“Ah,” Viktor nodded, with a smile, and said that, yes, as it happened, he did have some rosin flux solder, which would be perfect for electrical connections, even though his neighbor hadn’t said what he needed it for.

Viktor invited his new neighbor to step in, which the man did, although he first, craned his neck forward and peered with his huge eyes to the left and then to the right, like he, too, was half-expecting a surprise 40th birthday party.

“You’re my new neighbor from the end of the cul-de-sac, aren’t you,” Viktor said, in a neighborly tone, as he closed the door behind them.

Boltzmann said yes, he was, and gave Viktor another grin that felt like it was not only larger than as necessary, but also the wrong kind of grin. With his big lips and large teeth it almost felt carnivorous.

Viktor smiled a smile that probably wasn’t much more natural that Boltzmann’s, said he was pleased to meet him, and introduced himself by his full name.

“You are Czech?” Boltzmann asked, looking both surprised and concerned.

Viktor would have thought it would please his neighbor when he said yes, on account of the man’s accent, but the possibility that Viktor was Czech caused Boltzmann to back up half a step without actually moving.

Viktor quickly added that he was only half-Czech – that it was his father who’d been born there, and that he himself had been born in Washington, D.C.. Then, in an effort to lighten the mood, he added, with a chuckle, that if Czechoslovakia were to divide into two countries the way people were talking about, then he’d only be a quarter Czech.

This was a line Viktor had used before, and it usually got at least a thin smile, but after a momentary pause in which Boltzmann assessed whether Viktor was serious or not, his mouth shot open and he emitted a laugh that was both too big, and also very nervous.

Viktor took Boltzmann down to the unfinished half of his basement, where he had a workbench and a series of shelves with jars, boxes, and plastic trays, with everything neatly labeled. Boltzmann took in every detail, and seemed to appreciate the orderliness.

Viktor slid open a drawer marked “solder,” lifted out three spools, placed them on the work bench, and told Boltzmann he could take his pick.

Despite his thick glasses, or maybe because of them, Boltzmann had to lower his head to about two inches from the spools to read the labels, then pointed to the one on the left and then said he would take some of that one – not that he would like to borrow some, or could he please borrow some, but just that he would take some of that one.

Viktor told him he could take the whole spool, and there was no hurry about bringing it back. He was about to add that there was no hurry because he wasn’t in the middle of building a time machine or anything, but he headed that quip off at the pass because he didn’t want Boltzmann to think that he suspected that he was building a spaceship or time portal in his own garage.

Boltzmann nodded, accepted the solder, and said that he would go now. But as the two men headed for the stairs, Boltzmann spotted Viktor’s so-called pool table. He stopped and his big eyes seemed to warm up.

“Are you a pool player?” Viktor asked.

Boltzmann first looked at Viktor suspiciously, like he was wary of the question, then grinned and said yes, he did like the game, and there was a table at his house.

“Oh right,” Viktor said, trying to sound like he’d forgotten about it. “Dan Ball did have a table. Maybe we should have a game sometime. I mean, we could either play there or at your house, though this table isn’t the greatest.”

It looked like Boltzmann had two reactions to this suggestion. On the one hand, thought that was a great idea, and was about to say so. But then, he seemed to jump, like his mother had kicked him in the shin to remind him that she’d warned him a thousand times to never shoot pool with strangers. So he just told Viktor that he was very busy at the moment, but perhaps something could be “worked out” in a week or two. Then he turned, abruptly, like a dog that’s been called on an inaudible whistle, and said he had work to finish.

Viktor followed him up the stairs. When they got to the door, Boltzmann didn’t thank him, or say that it had been a pleasure to meet him, or anything of that sort. He just craned his neck out the door, looked left and then right, up and down the street, the same way he had when he entered, and then departed, marching stiffly up the street.

As Viktor watched Boltzmann walk to his house he thought to himself that this fellow was indeed an odd duck. And he thought that was a good sign, because people had often said similar things about him – that he had a weird sense of humor, and that they were as amazed by the things he didn’t know as by the things he did know, for example, that Viktor knew the difference between gravitons and gluons, but didn’t know the difference between Loni Anderson and Laurie Anderson, not to mention Playmate Pamela.

“Boltzmann and I may get along just great,” Viktor said to himself with a smile, as he closed the door. Then wrinkled his nose because he thought he smelled chicory.

Jauch’s “Foundations of Quantum Mechanics”

After Boltzmann left with the spool of solder, Viktor went back downstairs to shoot pool with him, even though it was already past his (10:00) bedtime, and they played imaginary games until the grandfather clock in the upstairs living room gonged 11:00.

11:00 was when Marlena’s shift ended, and Viktor didn’t want to run into her, but she almost always stayed a while to do paperwork, and then had to drive out from the hospital. So Viktor decided to have another glass of wine and read for a bit.

Viktor thought he might read one of the hundreds of spy-thrillers he’d inherited from his father, but then another idea bounded into his head like a white-tailed buck into headlights. On the back wall, high up, in a section of books Viktor hadn’t looked at in years, there was a heavy copy of Jauch’s “Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.” Viktor slid that out and carried it over to his Mission oak rocker. If he was serious about maybe going back to his studies, as he’d said to Boltzmann before he met him, a bit of review wouldn’t hurt.

As he paged through the text, Viktor was immediately struck by how almost every other sentence was underlined in blue ballpoint ink or highlighted in yellow marker. That reminded him of how much he’d struggled in his last year at WPI, and it was easy to see why – this was difficult material.

Then, fanning the pages, Viktor came upon on a pair of purple movie ticket stubs. Unlike the movie tickets of 1991, which told you the date and the theatre number, as well as whether you qualified for a low-cost 16% home equity loan, these tickets from 1971 just said “Admit One.” Viktor recalled that a theatre near the campus had offered a Sunday afternoon deal, and then Marlena would often stay over.

Holding the stubs between his fingers, Viktor pictured a moment when a much younger Marlena was asleep in the bedroom of the mini-suite he shared with Mike Schmidt, while Viktor was in the living room, struggling with this very text. And, as that image took shape in his mind, he felt an immense sense of loss press down on him, like he was back on Jupiter again.

He closed the book and exhaled deeply to try and expel the heaviness, but it didn’t work. He poured himself another glass of wine and sipped that for a while. But eventually he had no choice but to ask himself – why did this image make him feel so sad?

Viktor had met Marlena in September of his senior year, at a birthday party at the home of classmate Jeff Vogelsang, who he’d always called Jeff Birdsong. Marlena and Jeff Birdsong had gone to high school together, and Mike later said he thought Mrs. Vogelsang had invited Marlena to match her up with Viktor.

While Mike’s girlfriend was freshening up, he told Viktor that he thought Marlena had a great figure, and said he would give her 800 Millihelens. The principle behind Millihelens was that if Helen of Troy had been beautiful enough to launch 1,000 ships, then a woman rated at 500 Millihelens would launch 500 ships. Negative numbers, which were rare, could actually sink ships.

Viktor said that he’d only give her 675 Millihelens. He scored her lower because she was blonde, although it helped that she was a true blonde, which Viktor thought was rare, or maybe even a myth, like unicorns. She also lost points for being a bit chubby. As for the outstanding parts of her figure, Viktor was intimidated by them, though of course he didn’t say that.

When Mrs. Birdsong introduced them, he liked it that she wasn’t wearing any make-up that he could notice. Her score went up a bit more when she told him that she was at nursing school, not college, because Viktor liked it that she wanted to have a real profession instead of becoming a “liberal artist.” He especially liked how she laughed, wholeheartedly, at his jokes, even though his jokes at that point in time were either intellectual or geeky, like the relativity paradox about the pole and the barn.

But what Viktor liked most about Marlena – right from the beginning – was what he called her centripetal force, that being the opposite of centrifugal force, which is the force that flings a satellite out, away from a planet, Talking to the Marlena of 1970, Viktor had felt himself pulled in deep and close in a way he’d always longed for.

Marlena had a car, and she drove out to Worcester to see Viktor the next weekend. She slept with him on that first date, which he thought was great, though it also bothered him. He didn’t think Marlena was “loose,” so much as she was giving – but maybe a tad too giving.

Her political and social views were far more liberal than his, but that wasn’t a huge minus, since Viktor wasn’t all that attached to his political views. On the plus side, their debates introduced a sparkly energy into the relationship.

“Sparkly” was the right word for Marlena back then. She was excited about becoming a nurse and helping people. And, even though she saw plenty of injustice in the world, she believed that people were basically good.

Viktor was especially appreciative of the young Marlena’s optimism because he was at a low point. He’d begun to struggle in his courses the year before and wished he could take a year off to figure things out, but then he’d be drafted, and he was too responsible to dodge the draft. His sense of humor was barely functioning. His hair was thinning so fast that he joked that people could now see what he was thinking. And then he came down with an awful case of the flu.

Marlena appeared like Florence Nightingale. She nursed him. She reassured him that he would find his place in the world, and said it was important that he take the time to think things through. She told him that even if he wasn’t as brilliant as he’d thought, he was plenty smart, and – more important – he was a good person. She thought it was possible that he could get a 4F classification because of his arrhythmia, and there was no dishonor in that, since Vietnam was an unjust war. She also laughed at all his jokes, even the silly ones, which was most of them.

Now, sitting in his study, with Jauch open in his lap, Viktor could hear that laugh. And he missed it. And it wasn’t just the laughter that he missed. It was how warm and open and protected he’d felt when he was with Marlena back then. Like sliding into a nice warm bath.

So, was that what was making him so sad now – to think of how much she had changed?

Before he could complete that thought, another one hit him! And it was so obvious that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it right away. If he went back and looked at his class notes, he could probably find the exact date when he’d been studying in the living room while Marlena lay asleep in his bedroom. It was December – he was almost positive about that. It was right before Christmas break. And even someone with one tenth of Viktor’s mathematical aptitude could quickly calculate, as he did now, that Marlena, lying in his bedroom, had been about a month pregnant.

Partly because drinking wine often left him feeling maudlin, it just broke his heart to think of that – of the sleeping promise that had never come to life.

Viktor Knocks

As Viktor came over the crest of Avon Mountain the sky exploded into crimson and orange. Even one week earlier the sun would have set by now, but the days were getting longer and the earth turning warmer, if not kinder.

As Viktor pulled into his driveway he saw that his neighbor was home, as usual. Maybe this would be the evening, he hoped, that Boltzmann would return the solder. Viktor was pretty sure that he would return it, because Boltzmann seemed like a responsible and organized type, and Viktor was eager for him to come over with it, because he wanted to get to know his new neighbor better, and possibly have him become his best friend – heck, his only real friend.

The doorbell rang while Viktor was eating and our hero-to-be jumped up, but it was just kids with clipboards raising money for an anti-business environmental group. Viktor was an environmentalist, but he was also a free market capitalist, so if he gave them any money he would have had to take back the same amount, if not a few dollars more to cover overhead.

Still standing in the doorway, Viktor looked over at Boltzmann’s house. He thought about the solder again, and then had another thought. Marlena was working the Graveyard Shift right now, but was about to change to the Day Shift. Viktor didn’t want her to be home on an evening when his new neighbor showed up with the solder, because he was afraid she’d be jealous of the relationship he hoped to have with him, and would tear him down in the backhanded way she had. For example, if Marlena remarked that “Mr. Smith” was a successful businessman who provided very well for a family that he unfortunately didn’t get to see enough of, Viktor figured she meant that Mr. Smith was a ruthless predator who fooled around. Or, if she observed that “Mrs. Jones” was almost too pretty, the implication was that she was one of the sluts Mr. Smith was fooling around with.

So Viktor made a decision. He collected his pool cue and a six pack of beer, on the theory that a bottle of wine would not be manly enough, and headed down to his new neighbor’s house. He climbed the six steps to Boltzmann’s front door, took a deep breath, and then pressed the illuminated button that all the A-Plan homes had.

Viktor heard the bell gong inside (a nicer gong than his, too), and waited a long moment, but no one came to the door. Disappointed, but also – if the truth be told – somewhat relieved, he turned to go. But right then the lock clicked, the door opened a couple inches, and there were Boltzmann’s magnified eyes above the chain, huge with apprehension.

“I’m sorry if I disturbed you,” Viktor said.

It was as if Boltzmann only now recognized Viktor – from the sound of his voice – because he exclaimed, with some relief, “Oh, it is you, my neighbor from number 51.”

Viktor smiled and said yes, it was him, and apologized for disturbing him, if he had, and then said that his wife, Marlena, was at work, so he’d had idea that maybe the two of them could shoot a few games of pool, as Boltzmann had mentioned before, if he wasn’t otherwise occupied.

Boltzmann considered that for a long moment that felt like the time that passes when a computer with insufficient memory is struggling to open a large document. Then he nodded, smiled awkwardly, and asked Viktor to wait a minute. With that, the door closed, the lock clicked, and then it was so long before it opened again that Viktor wondered if he’d misunderstood his neighbor.

Now, holding the door as open as it had been closed, Boltzmann seemed as excited as he had been worried a few minutes earlier. “Come in, come in,” he said, eagerly.

Viktor stepped onto the inside landing of the split-level home. The living room was up to the right, and Viktor thought it looked odd – not because there was anything odd about it, but because there was absolutely nothing odd about it. Although it had been six or seven years since Viktor had been in this house, the living room looked exactly the same as it had when Gina and Dan Ball had lived there. Boltzmann did not appear to have added a thing. And nothing was a micron out of place.

Viktor wondered if Boltzmann had used the time when the door was closed to tidy up, but the room was too perfect to have been tidied up in just three minutes. It was as neat as a museum exhibit. That got Viktor thinking about his Alien Theory – that the house was just for appearances, and Boltzmann actually lived in a space ship in the garage, or a cylinder made of a material that did not exist on Earth. If so, was it possible that Boltzmann had used the time when the door was shut to “call home” and ask permission to have a human visitor?

A similar, and more plausible, theory was that Boltzmann was in a Witness Protection Program and had phoned his handlers to ask them a similar question.

Of course the delay also fit Chuck Nelson’s theory, which was that Boltzmann had used the time to put away his “autimatic” weapons.

Whatever the reason, this was a very different Boltzmann than the one who had come looking for solder. Where that one had felt dark and closed, this Boltzmann felt like a kid who’s been shut in with the measles for a month and has just been granted his first play date.

In contrast to the upstairs, the Ball’s old rec room had changed considerably. The A-Plan homes had bigger basements, so the pool table – even though it was full-sized –took up only half the available space. The other side of the room still had a couch and two chairs, a TV, and a bar at the end, but that furniture had been pushed to the end of the room to make room for a desk with a computer, a filing cabinet, and a bookcase that had two modems with blinking LED lights on top.

Although Viktor tried to not stare at the desk, or the modems, he must have looked at them a moment too long because Boltzmann explained, with a smile that was more like a grin, “I do some work from home, so I had a T1 line installed.” Then he added, “And I put my desk down here because it is cooler.”

Although that made sense, it didn’t feel like a true explanation to Viktor, especially since Boltzmann had moved into the house in the winter. Viktor felt the real answer was that his neighbor wanted his computer in a protected area that had no windows. Viktor did his best to not let this thought show. Instead, he raised up the six pack of beer he’d brought and asked Boltzmann if he’d like one.

Boltzmann shook his head and replied, with a smile that seemed at odds with his words, that no, he did not drink alcohol.

Viktor said that in that case he wouldn’t drink, either. He was going to add that that would give Boltzmann an advantage because he – Viktor – shot better after a beer or two, but he decided to not risk a joke that might be too complicated.

And then something very odd happened. Boltzmann walked over to a mini-fridge and pulled out two cans of Dr. Pepper.

The Three Boltzmanns

When Viktor walked over to Norbert H. Boltzmann’s house with his pool cue, he’d been hoping to get to make one new friend. Before the evening was over, though, he would see that the possibilities were greater than that, for there appeared to be at least three Norbert H. Boltzmanns.

The first Norbert H. Boltzmann was the Wary Boltzmann – the fellow who’d peered suspiciously into Viktor’s house before entering, who’d opened his door with a chain across it, and whose eyes had popped in fright at seemingly harmless comments that Viktor made.

The second Norbert H. Boltzmann was the Adolescent Boltzmann – the somewhat gawky fellow who, when he finally got permission to see Viktor from his alien masters, or witness protection handler, seemed tremendously excited about the idea of hanging out with him.

The third Norbert H. Boltzmann first showed up after the Adolescent Boltzmann asked Viktor what game he liked best, and Viktor replied that he usually played Eight Ball. There was a silent click, like when a digital clock changes from 1:58 to 1:59, and then this third Norbert H. Boltzmann – who Viktor would come to think of as the Brilliant Boltzmann – shook his head and said Eight Ball was a “childish” game, that Eight Ball was to pool as Parcheesi was to chess. Straight Pool, or 14.1 Continuous, was the only real game, he said, although Nine Ball was also “interesting.”

Although Viktor was taken aback by the intensity with which the Brilliant Boltzmann offered his opinion, he didn’t disagree that Straight Pool was a purer form of the game, and so he agreed to play that format. The first man to pocket fifty balls would win the match.

It was a lovely table – flat, with fast felt, and leather pockets that thwapped nicely when a ball fell in, or clicked if one was already in there.

It was clear to Viktor from the first few shots that his enigmatic new neighbor had a prodigious understanding of angles and spin. From any given position Boltzmann – and this looked like the Brilliant Boltzmann – could see exactly how to make the shot at hand, and could visualize precisely how a complicated cluster of balls would scatter when hit. Also, if Viktor asked him why he’d made a certain shot, the Brilliant Boltzmann was able to rewind the game to that point, pointing to exactly where each ball where it been at that moment.

There were, however, a couple problems with Boltzmann’s game. The first was that his physical skills did not come up to the level of mental capabilities, perhaps because it was the Adolescent Boltzmann who had the cue in hand. The Adolescent Boltzmann would hit the cue ball a touch too hard, or a couple degrees off center. He’d jump up after trying a difficult shot. Or he’d try to “steer” the cue ball with body English. And those human weaknesses caused him to miss a fair number of the shots that the Brilliant Boltzmann had diagrammed so perfectly in his mind.

The other problem was that the Brilliant Boltzmann refused to accept that he was incapable of making perfect shots. So, while he must have been able to calculate that the odds of making certain shots were abysmal, he continued trying to make them. The result was Viktor’s new neighbor had streaks where he looked unbeatable, but longer stretches when he couldn’t get a run going.

Many years earlier, when Viktor and his father used to play Eight Ball on a Sears and Roebucks table (also non-Euclidean) in their garage in New Hampshire, Viktor Sr. had given his son some important advice about pool. That advice was that one should not always be trying to sink a ball. There were many times, he said, when a defensive shot was a better choice. There were also times when one should play defensively to slow down a fellow who was hot, or to frustrate an impatient opponent. That had been unexpected advice from a man as dark and dangerous Viktor Sr., which had made it all the more memorable.

Viktor now saw that all he had to do to beat his new neighbor – who was one of the impatient types his father had described – was to play a reasonable amount of defense, and let Boltzmann hang himself on risky shots. However, Viktor did not play that way, and he was not just playing “client golf,” as the Level IV’s called it. He wanted to win this match, but he didn’t want to win it by being a dull analyst who played percentage pool. So Viktor also went for the hero shots, and made a few, and found – to his surprise – that the thrill he got sinking a few impossible shots was far greater than the enjoyment he would have gotten out of winning a more conservative game, even though his lead evaporated quickly.

Boltzmann won the first match, which pleased him enormously, and led him to remind Viktor that he had made the same mistake – hitting a bank shot too hard and shortening the angle – that he had mentioned to him the previous week.

“I hardly ever make the same mistake twice,” Viktor quipped. “Usually it’s ten, twenty, or even thirty times in a row.”

None of the Boltzmanns laughed.

When they played a second match, Viktor played more defense, though he disguised his safeties as missed shots. When Viktor won this match 50 to 46, the Brilliant Boltzmann sort of took credit for it, pointing to a number of places where Viktor had heeded his advice.

“I had a couple of lucky rolls, too,” Viktor added. Then, feeling high from winning, added that he could tell from the way his neighbor played that he was a scientist.

With that, the Wary Boltzmann appeared so suddenly that there was a sound to it. His body went rigid and he asked, “What makes you say that I am a scientist?”

Viktor felt like he’d stepped on a land mind and heard a “ping.” He said that he thought it was because of how intelligently Boltzmann analyzed the game, and maybe also that he had known the scientific definition of solder.

Boltzmann stared at him for a long moment, weighing this answer, or awaiting a response from his home planet. Then put his cue back in the rack and said that it was late.

“Yeah,” Viktor said, looking at his watch. “And I get up early.” He was tempted to say, “almost as early as you do,” but he held his tongue, because he didn’t want Boltzmann to know he’d been spying on him.

As he turned to go up the stairs he noticed it again – the earthy, nutty smell of chicory that had lingered in his own foyer after Boltzmann’s visit. An aftershave, he wondered.

On the way home Viktor kicked himself nineteen thousand times. In fact, he didn’t have a shred of evidence that Boltzmann was a scientist. In fact, the only actual evidence he had – the parking sticker – indicated that the man worked at an insurance company, though Viktor did not think for a minute that that could be true.

Five Theories

The morning after shooting pool with his new neighbor, in the hour before the official work day started, instead of working on his Secret Project, Viktor took out a pack of 3×5 index cards and set it on his bare desk.

On the first card he wrote “Alien,” not because he thought this was the most likely explanation for his new neighbor’s behavior, but because it was the most appealing. Under that title he put five bullets: “robotic,” “reclusive,” “socially awkward,” “garage?” and “bought furniture.”

On the next card he wrote “Famous Person or Witness Protection Program.” Under that he put, “reclusive,” “paid cash for house,” and “bought furniture.”

On the third card he wrote, “Chucks’ Theory,” using that as a code because he didn’t want to write the word “terrorist” on anything in his office. Under this he noted “reclusive,” “socially awkward,” and “garage?”

On the fourth card he wrote “Scientist.” Under that he wrote “reclusive,” socially awkward,” “brilliant,” “thick glasses,” and “solder.”

On the fifth card he wrote, “Insurance.” And under that he just wrote “parking sticker.”

Viktor reflected for a few moments, but couldn’t think of another good theory, so he now gave himself the task of ranking his theories.

Although Alien was Viktor’s favorite theory, the odds against it were literally astronomical, so he sighed and put it at the bottom. Theory Number Five.

Almost as unlikely, he figured, was Chuck’s Theory, so he placed that card second from the bottom – Theory Number Four.

Right in the middle – at Number Three – he put Insurance. He understood that this was probably the most likely occupation for his new neighbor, given the parking sticker, and the fact that Hartford was the Insurance Capital of the World, but Viktor didn’t want to believe it. Also, the man didn’t look the part. Viktor knew thousands of people in the insurance business, and Norbert H. Boltzmann did not resemble any of them.

Second from the top he put Witness Protection Program, thinking to himself that if you wanted someone to kind of disappear, the Greater Hartford area was a pretty good spot, since everyone was kind of identical.

At the very top – Theory Number One– he put Scientist. For all the reasons he’d just noted. And also because of how upset Boltzmann had been when Viktor suggested that he might be a scientist, which Viktor took to mean that he might be involved in some kind of secret research, or maybe even that he was a mad scientist who was building something amazing in his garage. Like a time machine. If his new neighbor couldn’t be an alien, Viktor would settle for a mad scientist. Oh yes, he thought with a smile, he’d settle for that in a flash.

Just then – as if his mischievous grin had caused this to happen – Viktor’s office phone rang. He saw on the LCD that it was a call from HR, and that gave him a jolt, because no one wants to get a call from HR, especially when a RIF is in the air.

The good news was that the call was from a fellow – Nick Provencher – who Viktor knew casually, because they had once been on a committee together. The bad news was that Nick said he would like to have a little chat, and when Viktor asked him what it was about, he replied that he would rather not talk about it on the phone.

Viktor got to the cafeteria fifteen minutes early. He poured himself a cup of weapons-grade coffee and sat worrying. It was faintly possible that he was on the first draft RIF list, since the first draft of a RIF list was customarily almost twice as long as the final list. Upper management would put extra people on the first list so that the middle managers could defend their people and then, when the upper managers “gave in” and struck those people from the list, the middle managers would owe them something. Still, Viktor didn’t think he’d ever been on even a first draft RIF list.

“But let’s just say,” Viktor thought to himself, “that I am on this list, if there is one. And let’s say no one protects me, and I wound up being let go.” That would be a shocker. But it might not be so bad. In all likelihood they’d offer him at least a six month package, which would carry him beyond his 20 year anniversary. So he’d get free sooner, with the same money. Nothing wrong with that! He hadn’t decided what he was going to do next with his life, but an early exit would give him even more time to figure it out.

In addition to making sense, this explanation had the advantage that it helped Viktor to be prepared for the worst news, so by the time Nick arrived and headed over with a cup of coffee Viktor had pretty much accepted that he was going to be RIF’ed and that it would be a good deal. But Provencher, though lanky, and dour looking, did not look like he was walking over with bad news. He looked cheerful, even playful, at least for an HR guy.

“So,” he said, as he slid into the seat opposite Viktor’s, “it sounds like you have another job possibility.”

“A what?” Viktor asked.

Provencher smiled a conspiratorial smile. “You don’t have to worry about me,” he said. “I’m the soul of discretion.”

“What makes you think I’m looking?” Viktor asked.

“Provencher opened his right hand and looked at it, as if it held a small bird, then smiled, raised one eyebrow in significance and explained that he’d gotten a call from another insurance company that was checking Viktor’s references.

Viktor asked him which company, and Provencher said that “in general” he was not allowed to disclose such information, but of course Viktor himself must know.

“I suppose it could be a number of people,” Viktor said.

Provencher returned the smile. “And it very much sounded,” he added, “from the nature of some of the questions, like a security clearance might be required for this position. So I’m guessing it will be a step up for you.”

Viktor tried to not let a single muscle in his face move, which no doubt gave him a weird, frozen aspect.

“I heard Finance got a call as well,” Provencher added, and then made a face and inspected his finger nails, as if to say that now it was Viktor’s turn to say something.

“I’m afraid I have no comment,” Viktor said.

“Well, you have nothing to worry about,” Provencher said. “You’ve always been a model employee, and I’m sure you’ll get great references up and down the line. But tell me, are you really serious about leaving, or are you just pushing for a promotion? And my lips are sealed,” he added, pulling an imaginary zipper across his mouth.

“Speaking theoretically,” Viktor said, “with a RIF in the air it would be sensible for anyone to have a back-up plan, and if the right offer came along, even if I wasn’t looking, mind you, yes, I might be tempted. Especially once I make my twenty years.”

Provencher whistled silently. “That would be a sweet deal,’ he said. “Retire at 80% and then take another full-time job at – what are you – only 40? Lucky man.”

Provencher asked Viktor if he wanted to have lunch, but our hero-to-be said that he was dining “off-campus.” That got another conspiratorial wink from the discreet HR man.

This is the end of the excerpt.