"Paul Levinson - Loose Ends (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Levinson Paul)

wondering if we might be able to get together and talk sometime
-- in your office -- I, um, have some questions I'd like to go
over with you about grad school."
Jeff looked at his watch and gestured Laura to walk with
him towards the stairs. "Look, I'd ask you to join me for lunch
right now, but I've a departmental meeting to attend. Why don't
we have lunch together next Monday?"
Now Laura's face flushed a bit. "I ... that would be very
nice, but I've got labs starting at noon that run to four
o'clock. Do you think it might be possible for us to meet in
your office at 4:30 on Monday?"
Jeff stopped and looked steadily at Laura for a moment.
Those eyes were alluring. "Monday at 4:30 it is, then," he said
crisply, and strode away.
***
"I almost didn't keep our appointment today," Jeff said,
sipping the third glass of red wine he and Laura had partaken
since they'd adjourned their meeting from his office.
"Oh? And what possibly could have kept you?" The wine had
lowered Laura's voice to a quiet, warm contralto. The cafe,
five minutes on the subway from his office, had the smell of
fine spirits and food.
"I didn't want the aggravation," Jeff said.
Laura considered his deadpan face, then burst out laughing.
"Well thank you very much."
"What would you say if I told you that I could predict the
future?" Jeff asked off-handedly, taking another sip of his wine.
"You mean in a socially forecasting way?"
"I mean in every way."
"Well, Professor Harris, you told us in one of your
lectures that for very good reasons no one can ever really know
the future. So I would say either you were lying ... or speaking
metaphorically."
"Good," Jeff nodded, "but let's say I stubbornly insisted
that I did know the future, and that this in no way contradicts
what I said in my lecture about no one ever being able to know
the future. What would you say then?"
"I'd say you were kidding me or crazy." Laura thought for a
bit. "I don't think the future exists yet -- it doesn't exist
until it's actually created, in the present -- so there's no way
you or anyone could really know it in the way that we know we're
here in this little bistro on Broadway, for instance."
"Fair enough." Jeff waved to the waiter for another round
of wine. "You're sharp. But let's say I were to tell you that
Lyndon Johnson will beat Barry Goldwater by a landslide this
November?"
Laura shook her head. "No. Not good enough. Everyone
expects Goldwater to get the nomination, and there's no way that
Johnson won't win big what with the Kennedy sympathy vote.
You'd have to do better than that."