(xlv)


An unfamiliar female.

She’s forgotten her keys. Will I let her into the lab?

She’s apologetic. “I seem to do this every few months, and then it’s such a pain, I remember not to for a while, but then I always forget again.”

A conventional sigh. Talking to the janitor.

But we’re walking down the hall, and, what use are good resolves.

She works upstairs. A Biochemist, then. A student of the notorious Professor A. No doubt he’s gotten into her pants.

And what are these pants? What is this outfit? A mutant sweatsuit?

She forgets every few months.

I look at her and grin. “Suggests something about exponential decay and memory, doesn’t it?”

The idea isn’t much, crude phenomenology, but good enough for idle conversation at five o’clock in the morning. Anyway, even a chemist can get this one.

She’s struck momentarily, and laughs, muttering, Yeah, but then remembers where she is, and looks at me, I think suspiciously. “You don’t talk like a janitor.”

A laugh. “I may look like Robert Ford, but I feel like Jesse James.” I let her in.

After this I am a couple of minutes behind, and have to hurry on the toilets.