by Miriam Heddy
“But by turning it around, one could at once see that now it's possible, if I say nature only allows such situations as can be described with a mathematical scheme, then you can say, well, this orbit is really not a complete orbit. Actually, at every moment the electron has only an inaccurate position and an inaccurate velocity, and between these two inaccuracies there is this uncertainty relation. And only by this idea it was possible to say what such an orbit was.”
--Heisenberg, reflecting on a conversation with Einstein.
It was an interesting thing, really, the peculiar habit Charlie had of appearing without an appointment or other previous arrangement, insisting on finagling a consultation with him on everything from the purely practical to the almost ethereally philosophical (though perhaps that range was more a matter of his response than of Charlie’s provocation). Perhaps lost on Charlie was that most of these consultations seemed completely independent of whatever activity Larry himself was involved in at the time, after which moment Charlie would inevitably pop off, evincing no real interest in the life left, interrupted, in his wake.
More than interesting... it was really rather remarkable. He supposed Charlie probably could, in a few minutes, describe with some precision the likelihood of finding Larry at any particular place at any given time. Though Heisenberg might have something to say about that. On the other hand, Charlie appeared somewhat oblivious to the idea that Larry actually had a life except in those moments when Charlie graced it with his presence. No, he supposed that, for Charlie, it was more a matter of seeing Larry Fleinhardt as less of a person than a pattern of movement, plotted out mathematically in space and time. He was curious about what variables Charlie had worked out for him. They should probably compare notes.
Larry couldn’t say that he minded, precisely. Though one did like to think of oneself as not entirely predictable, and as existing, on some level, independent of one’s relationships with others. A very American idea--the self-defined man. Did his interactions with Charlie provide him with definition or, more fundamentally, determine his very existence? Or was it all simpler than that? He was sorely tempted to ask Charlie to share the equations with him, as it might help improve the efficiency of his day if he only knew where and when he was supposed to be at any given moment as well as Charlie did.
He was sometimes tempted to vary his routine just a bit and see what happened, introducing a little human error into Charlie’s predictably too-neat equations. But, upon further consideration of the matter, he decided it would be counterproductive to attempt to elude Charlie when their system seemed to work so very well for Charlie, not to mention the FBI. More to the point, he might become entirely too productive without Charlie’s little interruptions.
“The data sets are still bothering me.”
“Hmm. Still.” Half-asleep now, he couldn’t offer much more than vaguely feigned interest, which was usually all Charlie needed to convince himself that Larry couldn’t possibly sleep until Charlie had determined the answer to his latest, pressing problem. Sadly, Charlie was often right.
Larry rolled over, propping himself on one elbow with some effort and not suppressing a yawn.
Charlie was on his back, arms crossed under his head, staring at the ceiling on which he was envisioning something very difficult indeed, if his eyebrows were any indication. He really had a very expressive face--especially now, when he was focused. He looked like this when he was coming, too.
And that thought was a pleasant distraction, enough to wake him--or at least parts of him--at least a bit.
“It’s the third guy--he doesn’t fit the pattern we’ve established--he’s established.”
“His name wouldn’t happen to be Harry, would it?”
“What? Who?”
Larry waved his hand toward the ceiling, as if he might be able to erase the equations there, replacing them with something far less orderly. “Harry Lime. He’s... never mind the plot if you haven’t seen it. You really haven’t seen it?”
Charlie shrugged. And now, in spite of himself, Larry was fully awake, parts of him still lagging behind others.
“Before your time, I imagine. There’s a part near the end that’s relevant. Or at the very least, interesting.”
“This is a book?”
“A movie--a book by Graham Green. But the movie’s the thing. It’s called The Third Man.”
“I’ve heard of that.”
Yes, the enumerative title alone was probably enough to catch Charlie’s attention. Larry sometimes imagined what it would be like to have direct access to that magnificent mind--to have had access to him--strictly intellectually, of course--decades earlier, when it might still have been possible to make the younger Charles Eppes watch movies and dream in gloriously complex shadings of black and white, not to mention Technicolor--dreams that couldn’t be reduced to 23.98 frames per second without losing something precious. Instead, he found himself in bed and quite frustrated with a young but already set-in-his ways mathematician, trying to argue against brute mathematics, a fruitless task he found himself engaging in with alarming frequency of late.
They could start small, he decided, tomorrow. Thrillers and mysteries. The Third Man, The Fourth Protocol. Then science fiction and horror, for the human element. The Fifth Element. The Sixth Sense. They could invite Don over and watch Se7en.
“Was that by Orson Welles?”
“Yes--no--Carol Reed. And near the end, he’s on a ferris wheel and--”
“Orson Welles is?”
“Yes, and Joseph Cotten is--”
“A ferris wheel?”
“You realize I could go to sleep now, if you prefer.”
“No--no. Sorry. Go on. I’m listening. I like your bedtime stories.” And Charlie rolled over onto his side, a half-smile on his face. The sheet slipped down and he reached out and covered Charlie up again, reluctantly, but then Charlie’s smile broadened to a grin that demanded a kiss, and that led to a grope that ended with the sheet tangled at the foot of the bed, and Larry entirely distracted by the joy he could take from Charlie’s body.
“You were saying, Larry?”
“I was... Charles--don’t--can’t we just--Right there. Please?”
“Larry. Please. I like the sound of your voice.”
“I realize I do tend to go on a bit, but even I don’t like the sound of my voice.”
“You talk, I’ll listen. You were saying something about cotton candy and ferris wheels.” And Charlie hooked one leg over his and was dragging his fingertips over Larry’s chest, almost tickling. Larry suspected the ceiling equations had been transferred onto his skin.
“That tickles, Charles.”
“Only one-fifth of our five million hair follicles are on our head. Not all active at once, of course.”
Larry winced as Charlie patted him on the head.
“You’re impossible, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told.”
“And will be told again. And it’s Joseph Cotten, not cotton candy, by the way, which I assume you already know and are conflating to make some sort of obscure point. At any rate, the crucial scene takes place, in part, on a ferris wheel at an amusement park. The wheel as metaphor, if you will--perhaps even a visual reference to a film reel? Similar in structure, actually. At any rate....” At this point, he really had no idea what he was saying, and didn’t much care, as he thrust up into Charlie’s hand. “It’s a matter of cycles and distance, isn’t it?” he continued, his voice going high, even for him, as Charlie stroked the inside of his thighs, his touch on the right side of ticklish and his mouth so very warm and so very wet.
And then, just as Larry could see the bright edges of climax, Charlie abruptly pulled off.
Charlie was pulling a condom on, sitting back on his heels to do so. Larry watched, fascinated as always by the show. The condom was pink, and a bit of lubricant followed it, glistening.
“You stopped talking, Larry.”
“You stopped sucking, Charles. Y’know, you could have just said you wanted this. Nothing at all to do with the case, just pure, plain, mindless--”
“Sexual gratification?” Charlie grinned, looking both delighted and delightful. “No, actually. I really couldn’t sleep because I keep thinking that if I had just one more person I could be sure, but that’s wrong, because it doesn’t fit--”
Larry restrained himself from pointing out that it could’ve fit hours ago, if they’d cut out the conversation and moved right to the hot sex. “A fourth... now that’s interesting... that would mean someone else would be implicated, which would mean--”
“Starting over, probably. You can see why I can’t sleep with this--”
“Not to mention that--” Larry gestured at Charlie’s erection, hoping to return to the more interesting problem he was actually very much motivated to solve. “Ah, well. I suppose it was too much to hope for that you’d want me entirely for my body.”
“I want you entirely,” Charlie replied, sharply, looking entirely too serious.
Larry didn’t know what to say.
Then Charlie prompted him again, his voice turning sweet and playful again. “Orson Wells. A ferris wheel. A metaphor. How long is this movie?”
“Right. Yes. It’s all these interruptions.” He sighed, trying to remember what came next as Charlie began stroking himself idly, just toying with himself, really, the slick sound of the lubricant wet and again, he lost track of what he was saying.
“Ferris wheel, Larry. Focus.”
“Charles, could we perhaps continue this conversation later?”
“No. I want to be able to go to sleep after this.”
“And if I solve your case for you, you’ll sleep peacefully, while I’ll lie awake, thinking about serial killers and film noir. You know, you’re very self-centered. If I didn’t know better, I’d take you for an only child.”
“Do I have to go out now and rent the movie to figure out why it matters? It does matter, doesn’t it?”
Larry sat up, riled. “Did I happen to mention how rude you are to anyone who happens to be in the room with me when you stop by with your cases? My friends and colleagues do matter to me, perhaps not as much as you do, certainly, but yes, they do matter as more than background for your crises.”
“I--sorry.” And Charlie actually looked shocked and somewhat chastened; Larry was, too, as surprised as Charlie that he’d said all that, and that they were having this conversation at all while he was naked and still pretty aroused.
“Apology accepted, keeping in mind that most of my friends are somewhat inept at social mores while being considerably less attractive than you, which strangely enough makes it easier to forgive you. Now as I was saying before, the killer says to Joseph Cotton, ‘Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?’ So the apparent randomness of the act--murder, that is, not the sexual act, such as it is--speaks to a mind that--” he paused, reconsidering before he could too bluntly draw a connection between Charlie and the killer. “The killer, in this instance, as Welles points out, is seeing the same dots that you do--that you’re trying to see. Welles is plotting it all out, pure and simple.”
“The story?”
“No--less nuanced than that, because a story still has a human element. He’s--the killer--Welles, not as director, but the character he plays--is plotting figures, not people. It’s not who the people are at all that matters. It’s not about character, for him, or even the traditional plot structure, beginning, middle, and end. There’s no climax--the climax--I’m going to spoil the movie, here--but what’s important is that what Holly--”
“Holly? There’s a girl in this?”
“A woman, yes--there’s Anna, but she’s not all that important at his point, just a distraction from the case, actually, and probably there to defuse the implicit homoeroticism between Cotten and Welles. Holly is Cotten--Cotten is Holly, rather--and he’s focused on the wrong thing--trying to discover the person he thought he knew but didn’t know--the person who was simply a projection of his desires, and meanwhile, there are other people he’s unaware of, distant from--”
“Dots. The killer wants to ensure his distance from the dots. The distance is what matters.” And Charlie’s was nodding now, thinking.
“Go--go on.” Larry nodded, encouraging him, and he knew--he knew--he’d said too much, in entirely too many ways. Because Charlie’s hand had come off his own cock and Larry knew that Charlie now wanted to go to the computer and play with this new idea he’d had. His face was alight with it, his body now moving to the beat of discovery and not lust.
Larry leaned in toward him, touching his face, tracing his jawline with one finger. Such a beautiful young man, and it wasn’t that he didn’t feel things, deeply. Larry sighed. It was that he was a young man, and very much still torn between sitting on the ferris wheel, believing that ride circumscribed the height and depth of pleasure, and wanting to join the rest of the dots on the ground where life was invariably more... variable. And messy. And gratifying, for all of that.
In time, Larry supposed, Charlie would discover that those two views weren’t mutually exclusive. But for now....
“Go--work. And Charles? You have fifteen minutes.”
“Twenty, I promise. Maybe thirty. Promise.”
“Probably 60, then. You do realize those little blue pills don’t last forever.” He waved Charlie off.
Charlie stopped in the doorway, leaning back in, still gloriously naked. “You don’t take those little blue pills. Do you?”
Larry rolled his eyes and fell back onto the pillow. “Are we really having this conversation, Charles?”
Charlie laughed. “No. Don’t fall asleep. I’ll be back, I promise.”
“You know where to find me, Charles.”
It was, Larry checked the bedside clock, over two hours later before Charlie’s cooler body slipped up against his warm back, rubbing suggestively with an energy that suggested Charlie had had some success.
“You awake? Larry?”
“Rosebud,” Larry mumbled, pressing back against Charlie’s erection.
“Larry, I think I have it!”
“Then give it to me, Charles. Before I fall asleep again.”
“Hmmm. Very funny. On your back this time.”
“No, like this,” he argued, not wanting to move now that he was warm and comfortable and resigned to it.
“I want to see your eyes when you come.”
“I want to feel my legs when I teach tomorrow.”
But his protests were strictly pro forma, and he rolled over, letting Charlie position him as he pleased this time, because on some level that was both wrong and entirely beautiful, when he came while looking into Charlie’s eyes, he felt it in his lower back, a sudden, inescapable shiver, the controlled fall to earth, the wheel making its turn. And with Charles wrapped around him, he always knew precisely where he was.
The End.