
At the far edge of the pond a heron stepped, its knees bending backward. Long body,
long legs, long neck, long head, long beak. A great blue heron, Frank guessed, though
this one's dark gray feathers looked more green than blue. A kind of dinosaur. And
indeed nothing could have looked more pterodactylic. Two hundred million years.
Sunlight blazed green at the tops of the trees across the ravine. Frank and the heron
stood attentively, listening to unseen smaller birds whose wild twittering now filled the
air. The heron's head cocked to one side. For a time everything was as still as bronze.
Then beyond the twittering came a different sound, fluid and clear, rising like a siren,
like a hook in the flesh:
Oooooooooooooooooop!
National Science Foundation, Arlington, Virginia, basement parking lot, seven a.m. A
primate sitting in his car, thinking things over. As one of the editors of The Journal of
Sociobiology, Frank was very much aware of the origins of their species. The third chimp,
as Diamond had put it. Now he thought: chimps sleep outdoors. Bonobos sleep
outdoors.
Housing was ultimately an ergonomic problem. What did he really need? His
belongings were here in the car, or upstairs in his office, or in boxes at UCSD, or in
storage units in Encinitas, California, or down the road in Arlington, Virginia. The fact
that stuff was in storage showed how much it really mattered. By and large he was free
of worldly things. At age forty-three he no longer needed them. That felt a little strange,
actually, but not necessarily bad. Did it feel good? It was hard to tell. It simply felt
strange.
He got out of his car and took the elevator to the third floor, where there was a little
exercise room, with a men's room off its entryway that included showers. In his shoulder
bag he carried his laptop, his cell phone, his bathroom kit, and a change of clothes. The
three shower stalls stood behind white curtains, near an area with benches and lockers.
Beyond it extended the room containing toilets, urinals, and a counter of sinks under a
long mirror.
Frank knew the place, having showered and changed in it many times after runs at
lunch with Edgardo and Kenzo and Bob and the others. Now he surveyed it with a new
regard. It was as he remembered: an adequate bathroom, public but serviceable.
He undressed and got in one of the showers. A flood of hot water, almost industrial in
quantity, washed away some of the stiffness of his uncomfortable night. Of course no
one would want to be seen showering there every day. Not that anyone was watching,
but some of the morning exercisers would eventually notice.
A membership in some nearby exercise club would provide an alternative bathroom.
What else did one need?
Somewhere to sleep, of course. The Honda would not suffice. If he had a van, and an
exercise club membership, and this locker room, and his office upstairs, and the men's
rooms up there.... As for food, the city had a million restaurants.
What else?
Nothing he could think of. Many people more or less lived in this building, all the
NSF hardcores who spent sixty or seventy hours a week here, ate their meals at their
desks or in the neighborhood restaurants, only went home to sleep—and these were
people with families, with kids, homes, pets, partners!
In a crowd like that it would be hard to stick out.
He got out of the shower, dried off (a stack of fresh white towels was there at hand),
shaved, dressed.