Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [109]
They talked about the day, the work in hand. Frank admitted to being impressed by the IPCC group and the work they had done. “Still, I’d like to do something faster, if we could. I think we’ll need it.”
“You think so?”
He told her about seeing Khembalung go under. Then his notions for dealing with the changing ocean, for clean energy, for really serious carbon drawdown from the atmosphere.
“So,” Diane said, “really you’re talking about global cooling.”
“Well, if we can warm it, maybe we can cool it too.”
“But the warming took a lot. The whole world’s economy, two hundred years.”
“Well, but just by accident though. The economy wasn’t dedicated to warming. It was just a byproduct.”
“Making things cooler might be harder than warming.”
“But if we actually direct part of the economy to that project. Like as if paying for a war or something.”
“Maybe.” She thought about it, shook her head as if freeing herself from the subject.
Then they talked about their pasts, in brief disconnected anecdotes. She described her children, Frank his parents. This seemed odd, but then she described her parents too; quite like his in some ways, it sounded. Her mother had been born in China, and Diane could do a funny imitation of her primitive English, “You go in street car squish you like bug!” After that Frank could hear better the Chinese accent in Diane’s own speech, which was perfectly grammatical and idiomatic, California Standard in fact, but with a lilt to it that he now understood better.
Then world events; problems in the Middle East; travels, New York; other meals in New York. They tried each other’s dishes, refilled each other’s wineglasses. They each drank half the bottle; then, over crème brûlée, sipped samples of cognac from a tray of ancient bottles offered for their inspection by the waiter.
Complex sensations, coursing through the sensorium. Some part of the parcellated mind watched all the parts coming together. Nice to be so here in the moment. Frank watched Diane’s face and felt something like the glow he had felt when she took his arm on the street. She too was enjoying herself. Seeing that was part of the glow. Reciprocity: this kind of mutual enjoyment, he thought, only works if it is mutual. We live for this, we crave this. He felt a little vertiginous, as if climbing a hard pitch or maybe the Chrysler Building up the street. Aware of a risk.
He saw again how beautiful her arms were. This was an Optimodal thing; not just biceps but the whole upper arm, amazingly thick front to back, from shoulder to elbow; unlike anyone else’s arms. Gorgeous. It was different for everybody, what looked good to them. The argument that beauty corresponded to adaptive function was obviously stupid. Deviance from the norm was what drew the eye. Francesca Taolini had a crooked nose and various other asymmetries typical of narrow sharp-edged faces, and yet she was gorgeous; Diane had a blunt pentagonal face, perfectly symmetrical, and she too, while not as glamorous as Francesca, was yet still very attractive, one might even say charismatic. Yes, a true star that day at the UN. She drew the eye.
At a table near the door to the kitchen, another couple was having a similar sort of dinner, except they were much more demonstrative, more romantic; from time to time they even leaned together and kissed, in that New York way of pretending they were alone when they weren’t. Frank thought they were showing off, and turned his head away; Diane saw them and his response too, and smiled her slight smile.
She leaned over and whispered, “They have wedding bands.”
“Ah?”
“No way they are married to each other.”
“Ahhh,” Frank said.
She nodded, pleased by her deduction.
“The big city,” Frank said awkwardly.
“It’s true. I waited tables here for a while