The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore - Benjamin Hale [104]
“It’s hard for me to explain, Bruno,” she said to me one night as we were lying in bed, facing each other with our heads on the pillows. Outside, the snow lay so thick on the surfaces of the world that it cushioned the noises of the city, and the streets were eerily silent. Lydia ran her fingers through the fur on my head.
“We have to move,” she said. “It has to do with a lot of things, but mostly it has to do with money. Norm doesn’t want to keep doing the project because we’re out of money, and nobody wants to give us any more. People think that what we’re doing is stupid. They don’t understand it. They don’t think the science we’re doing is real science. They don’t think our results are real. That’s why they won’t give us any more money. Norm is stopping the project. He wants to do other things, he thinks we’ve gone as far as we can go with this project. And where does that leave you and me?” she asked herself rhetorically, sighing and rolling over in bed. “Out to dry.”
I nuzzled my face into her armpit.
“Norm wanted to give you back to the zoo.”
I looked up at her with a spike of panic.
“Don’t worry about that, Bruno. That’s not going to happen. I wouldn’t let that happen. They think I want to keep the project going. I mean, I do…” Her eyelids were trembling. Her voice grew soft. “But the main reason is because I love you. Bruno, I love you. I can’t let someone I love be put in a zoo.”
Then she turned over and she kissed me. Then we made love for the third or fourth time that day. Much later, when we lay panting and fatigued on the bed, our bodies twisted in the damp sheets, as if finally continuing her thoughts, she said:
“Norm isn’t going to be in charge of the project anymore. There is no project anymore, actually. Not formally. It’s not officially considered research anymore. That’s why we’re moving to Colorado. I couldn’t get any research grants. I didn’t even try, actually. The people who give out money for science would rather give money to Norm than me, and not even Norm can get any money right now. As soon as Norm found out that nobody was taking us seriously, he wanted to stop the project. Norm doesn’t want people to quit taking him seriously. Nobody ever took me seriously to begin with. Now they probably never will. So I have nothing to lose. Do you remember the man in the cowboy hat?”
Indeed I did.
“He said he’s going to give us money. He’s being very, very nice to us, and we should be very, very nice to him. He’s also going to give us a place to live. He owns a lot of land in Colorado. That’s where we’re moving. He said we can live on his ranch, and that we can stay there as long as we want and finish our project. For free. They have a big ranch, where they keep animals. Colorado is far away from here. There are lots of trees and mountains there.”
But logistics, woman, logistics! What about our apartment? What will become of that?
“I’m leasing the apartment,” she said. “Maybe we’ll come back here eventually. I don’t know. I don’t really know what’s going to happen.”
And what about her position at the university? Surely we can’t just pull up stakes and leave so easily? Here she broke openly into tears as she said:
“Bruno, I don’t work at the university anymore.”
There followed another couple of weeks of busy preparations for our imminent departure. I understood so little of what was going on. I was not well traveled. Chicago was the only home I had ever known. I was born in it. I had never been outside its city limits. There were only three places in the world that I knew well: (one) the Primate House at the Lincoln Park Zoo; (two) the main campus of the University of Chicago in general and room 308 of the Erman Biology Center in particular; and (three) the interior of 5120 South Ellis Avenue, Apartment 1A, Chicago, Illinois. Now we were about to leave this place, this place that then constituted all the known world to me, and resettle