The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [14]
“But it’s magnesium and polycarbonate!” Van argued. “They only weigh seven kilograms! You can stack them.”
Dottie examined the catalog page, fork halfway to her tender mouth. “But this chair doesn’t even have a real back.”
“It’s got a back!” Van protested. “That thing that grows out of its arms, that is its back, see? I bet it’s a lot more fun to sit in than it looks.”
Dottie poured Van fresh coffee as Ted yanked at her pageboy brown hair.
“You don’t like it,” Van realized mournfully.
“That’s a very interesting chair, honey, but it’s just not very normal.”
“We’ll be the first on the block to have one.”
Dottie only sighed.
Van stared at the awesome chair, trying not to be surly. Six hundred dollars meant nothing much to him. Obviously Mondiale’s stock wasn’t at the insanely stellar heights it had been when he had bought the mansion, but any guy who bought his wife emeralds for their anniversary wasn’t going to whine about a magnesium chair.
Van couldn’t bear to turn the catalog page. The astonishing chair was already part of his self-image. The chair gave him the same overwhelming feeling he had about computers: that they were tools. They were serious work tools. Only lamers ever flinched at buying work tools. If you were hard-core you just went out and got them.
“This is a Victorian house,” Dottie offered softly. “That chair just doesn’t fit in here. It’s . . . well, it’s just too far-out.”
Dottie took the catalog from him and carefully read all the fine print.
“That chair is not that weird,” Van muttered. “It’s the whole world that’s weird now. When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” He picked up his wireless laptop. “I’m going to Google the guys who made it.”
“You really want this thing, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I want ten or twelve of them.”
“Derek, that’s seventy-two hundred dollars for chairs. That’s not good sense.” Dottie sighed. “Tony Carew keeps saying that we should diversify our investments. Because the market is so down this season.”
“Okay, fine, fine, we’re not stock freaks like Tony is, but folks still need wires and bits.” Van shrugged. Van owned Mondiale stock because he put his own money where he himself worked. His work was the one thing in the world that Van fully understood. Whenever it came to the future, Van would firmly bet on himself. That had certainly worked out for him so far.
Dottie smoothed the glossy magazine page. “Derek, my grant expires this semester. That’s not good. I’ve got everything publishable that I’m going to get out of that cluster survey. The peer review people are saying we need better instrumentation.” She wiped at Ted’s spit-shiny chin with Van’s spare paper towel.
Van struggled to pay attention to her words. Dottie’s lab work meant everything to her. She had been working for four solid years on her globular cluster study. Dottie had colleagues in Boston depending on her. Dottie had grad students to feed.
“Derek, it just didn’t break wide open the way I hoped it would. That happens sometimes in science, you know. You can have a great idea, and you can put a lot of work into the hypothesis, but maybe your results just don’t pan out.”
“People love your dark energy nucleation theory,” Van said supportively.
“I’ve been thinking of spending more time here at home.”
Van’s heart leapt. “Yeah?”
“Teddy’s going to walk soon. And he’s talking now, listen to him.” Dottie stroked the baby’s wispy hair as Ted’s jolting head banged at her shoulder. “A little boy needs a normal life in some kind of normal house.”
Van was shocked to realize how much this idea meant to him. Dottie, living with him and Ted, every single day. He felt stunned by the prospect. “Wow, being normal would be so fantastic.”
Dottie winced. “Well, Helga is never around here for us when we need her. I think maybe I made a mistake there.”
“We could put out an APB for her.” Van smiled. “Aw, don’t feel bad, honey. We can make do.”
“I should do better,” she muttered. “I just don’t look after you and Teddie the way that I should.”
Dottie was plunging into one of her guilty funks.