The Life Of Reilly

“Just don’t kill them to examine them.”

She sat up a little straighter. “Observation without interference?”

“Exactly,” he said. “You can catch them alive, look them over, then let them go.”

“You realize, of course, that observation without interference is not even theoretically possible,” she said. “Heisenberg? Schrödinger? Wave-particle duality? Double slit experiments? Any of this ring a bell?”

“Umm…you’ve gone into that other language again.”

“That was English,” Lynn said. “Well, Heisenberg and Schrödinger are German names, but still…it can’t come as a shock to you that we change the universe whenever we look at it.”

“When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you?” Jack asked.

“Well, that’s Friedrich Nietzsche. He was a philosopher, not a physicist.”

“Is there a difference anymore?”

Lynn smiled. “Touché. When we start to look at the most fundamental building blocks of the universe, we do tend to blur that line, don’t we?”

Jack shrugged. “I really couldn’t say. I don’t know all that much about it. But listening to you…well, I’m reminded of some of our more esoteric conversations back in seminary. How many angels really can dance on the head of a pin, and the like.”

Lynn felt the flush rise to her cheeks. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the shock of a dinner invitation on the heels of Delphine’s visitation. “I’m sorry, Jack.”

He held up a hand. “No, don’t be sorry. I have to say, I’m fascinated. Truly.”

Fascinated. That was a word that could mean a lot of things. Some of them purely intellectual. Most of them not. The latter could be…dangerous. Very dangerous.

She sighed.

“Something wrong?”

Lynn shook her head. “Just tell me to hush when I start babbling about things that sound too weird.”

“On Treasure Island?” he asked with a wink. “Trying to define weird here is like stepping into a tar pit.”

“But—”

“Lynn,” he interrupted, “just be yourself. Don’t try to impress me, because you already have. And don’t try to play to my expectations, because I don’t have any. If I’d wanted to be surrounded by staid, ordinary, never-risk-looking-weird people, I’d have stayed in Connecticut.”

He waved his hand over the candles again, sending a few more moths back to the safety of the shadows. She took the opportunity to study him, really study him. She’d spent most of the evening avoiding directly looking at Jack except in brief glimpses. The interface of observer and observed was never more apparent than in human interaction. All her life, she’d had a strong tendency to watch people, to examine every movement, every facial tic, every shift of the eye or the posture, looking for cues to their thoughts. It had consistently made people uncomfortable, to the point where she’d trained herself not to look at people directly. That had grown into a shyness that had plagued her through childhood and into the present day.

Right now, however, she decided he was an attractive man. Person. Not a movie-star type, but handsome enough in a laid-back sort of way. His face seemed to want to smile, and laugh lines decorated the corners of his eyes and etched the edges of his mouth. The sun had bronzed him, nothing surprising here in the tropics, and left his brown hair streaked with blond. Almost a surfer look in a way, except his eyes held so much more depth.

That was when he realized she was staring at him. To her astonishment, he didn’t squirm. Instead, he smiled, revealing great teeth. “You look like you’ve never seen anyone push moths away from flames before.”

“I haven’t.”

He nodded. “I actually find it an interesting paradox. God gave most creatures a desire to live and the means of survival. Then we have the moth, who seems willing to immolate himself just to approach the light. One would think the heat would warn him off.”

“Not if he can’t feel it.”

He nodded. “Or…if the light is so beautiful the moth wants to approach at any cost.”

Instinctively, she looked into the candle flame. “It is beautiful.”

“And for the moth it is at once a desirable goal and a deadly trap.”

She glanced his way. “Are we talking metaphor here?”

“Why do people always think I’m speaking in parables?”

“Maybe because you’re a minister.”

He laughed at that. “Sorry, I was just marveling at one of nature’s oddities.”

“There certainly are a few of those. Although…”

She leaned on her elbows on the table. “Well, I shouldn’t I guess.”

“What?” he asked.

“The moths aren’t attracted to the flame.”

“Is that a fact?” His eyebrow lifted.

She nodded. “It’s actually the warm candle wax that’s the attraction. The infrared signature of warm candle wax coincides with that of the sex-attractant chemical emitted by female moths. Light-conducting spines on their antennae carry that signal to their brains, and they think there’s a…well…they think there’s a horny female moth there.”

“That would certainly explain the self-immolation,” Jack said. “Huh. So it’s not the flame at all.”

“I didn’t mean to spoil it for you.”

“Not at all! Why would you say that?”

She shrugged. “People are more comfortable with the familiar. The assumption is woven into the fabric of our language—‘Like a moth to flame.’ Then science comes along and shows something else entirely. People resent it when science turns their beliefs upside down.”

“Some people do,” he said. “I’m not one of them.”

Lynn nodded, wondering if his casual smile were covering something else. In her experience, discussing science with religious people tended to end very badly.

He paused for a moment, then continued, “Lynn, I’ve always felt that we miss so much if we don’t realize that the entire universe around us is full of wonders. Every breath of air, every beat of our hearts, is a kind of miracle. A beautiful, beautiful gift. Understanding why it happens, at a scientific level, doesn’t disprove the miracle. It helps us to appreciate the miracle even more.”

Right then and there, Lynn decided she liked Jack. And that, she reminded herself, could be a serious problem.

She jumped to her feet—not too quickly, she hoped—and said, “I’ve had a wonderful time, Jack. Thank you so much. But I have a stack of papers waiting to be graded.”

He rose immediately. “Then get to it, teach.” With a grin, he shook her hand. “See you around.”

She nodded and fled while trying to look as if she weren’t fleeing. This was going to be bad. Very bad. A neighbor who cared enough to save the tiniest creature from its own urges, and wasn’t offended when she shot holes in his worldview. Someone she could appreciate and also talk to. Yes, this was going to be very bad.