36 Arguments for the Existence of God - [21]

“So tell me what you’re doing in these parts. You’re still at Berkeley?”

“No, I’m not. I’m retired!”

“Retired? You’re too young.”

“That’s the beauty of it! The University of California is bankrupt! The only money they have is in their pension funds. They’re broke, and can’t pay our salaries, but they’re flush with pension cash! So they offered early retirement to any senior faculty that wanted it! They’re paying me a yearly stipend that just about matches my salary, only I don’t have to go to work! How sweet is that? I hit the jackpot!”

“Are you staying in California?”

“I’m keeping all options open. With a little encouragement, I’d dislodge that Lucinda person. I noticed you’re living with her.” He’d been right that she had devoted those five minutes to research.

“I am.”

She gives a melodramatic sigh.

“I thought so. A girl takes her eyes off a guy for two or three measly decades, and the next thing she knows, he’s two-timing her.” This last is delivered, to perfection, in her Mae West impersonation. “You haven’t gotten married again, have you?”

“No, we’re not married.”

“I’d be hurt if you had gotten married and hadn’t told me.”

“You know I wouldn’t do that.”

They’re on the Larz Anderson Bridge, crossing the frozen Charles. Cass glances left and sees Weeks Bridge gleaming in the brilliant wintry light. As they make a left on the far side of the Charles onto Storrow Drive, Cass gestures and says, “Look over there, Roz. Do you see the way the rushing water has carved out a cathedral in the ice? It’s sublime, isn’t it?”

“Sublime? Cathedral?” She’s craning her neck to see what he’s talking about, but they’re already making the turn that will get them onto the turnpike, and she turns back to him, shrugging. “So this is how the atheist with the soul carries on. Sounds like there’s a whole lot more soul than atheism going on in there. How’d you come to write a book like that anyway?”

“We can talk about my book later. Let’s concentrate on you first.”

“You always know the right thing to say!” She laughs. “Okay. So you want to know what I’m doing now that I’m retired from academia? You won’t believe it! Cass, this is the most exciting adventure of my life.”

“I hope this one doesn’t involve international lawyers and investigators from the State Department.”

“I’m sorry, but I’d smuggle those papers out again in order to help Absalom.” Absalom Garibaldi had been her dissertation adviser and field supervisor in the Amazon. “I had to defend him against those outrageous charges his enemies were making! Accusing him of intentionally infecting people for experimentation, like a Nazi doctor, when we were trying so desperately to inoculate everyone! You remember what we went through!”

“I just sometimes wish you wouldn’t take the risks you do.”

“Well, this is one you’re going to love! This one is unbelievable! I’ve started my own non-profit! It’s called the Immortality Foundation! We’re going to conquer aging! It’s ironic. I retire so that I can devote myself to wiping out old age! You have no idea how close to our goal we really are! Anybody who can just hold on long enough is going to make it. We don’t have to accept aging! Think of it! We don’t have to accept decline and decay and diminution! Aging is simply barbaric. It’s like bubonic plague.”

“You don’t literally mean immortality, do you?”

Roz breaks out into her peals of laughter.

“You think I’m going off the deep end, right? You think I’m going to end up like the Klap, Yahweh rest his bogus soul!”

“‘Rest his soul’! My God, Roz! Is he dead? My God! I hadn’t heard anything!”

“Calm down, Cass, calm down! You’re going to kill us both! No, I haven’t heard he’d died! I just assumed it!”

“Don’t do that to me!”

“I’m sorry, Cass! I should have thought before I spoke!”

“That’ll be the day,” Cass mutters. He’s seriously rattled, his hands gripping hard on the steering wheel to stop their trembling.

“The Klap” refers to Jonas Elijah Klapper. This was how Roz had invariably referred to the man who had been Cass’s idol.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats. “My God, I didn’t know he still has that kind of hold on you. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay, Roz. I’m okay. And who knows, maybe Klapper has died.”

“I honestly had taken it for granted. I haven’t heard a word about him in years. So I just naturally assumed he was dead. What else could have shut him up for this long?”

“It’s true that it’s been decades since he’s published anything.”

“It’s like he disappeared off the face of the earth. That guy was always publishing. He’d excuse himself to go the bathroom and come out holding his latest. It’s like he shat magnum opi-is that the plural?”

“Opera.”

“Really?”

“The plural of ‘opus’ is ‘opera.’”

“I love the way you know these things. How do you know these things?”

“Klapper.”

“Which brings me back to the question: how could he have deprived the world for so long of his erudition? That is, if he’s still alive.”

“But surely there would have been an obituary in the Times. He was too important in his day for his passing to go unremarked.”

“Well, I could easily have missed it. I spend a lot of time in places that don’t have the