Inner Harbor
Page 32

"How come?"
"Well, it's the middle of the day and no one's home. No cars in the drive, and the house looks empty. But there's a tricycle there and several large toy trucks. The house isn't new, but it's well kept. Most young couples both work today in order to buy a home, have a family. They live in a small community. Younger people rarely settle in small towns unless one or both of them grew up there. So I'd theorize that this couple lived here, knew each other, eventually married. It's likely they had their first child within the first three years of marriage and the toys indicate he's three to five."
"That's pretty cool," Seth decided after a moment.
However foolish it was, she felt a surge of pride that she might have avoided nerddom after all. "But I'd want to know more, wouldn't you?"
She'd caught his interest. "Like what?"
"Why did they choose this particular house. What are their goals? What is the status of their relationship? Who handles the money, which indicates the disposition of power, and why? If you study people, you see the patterns."
"How come it matters?"
"I don't understand."
"Who cares?"
She considered. "Well, if you understand the patterns, the social picture on a large scale, you learn why people behave in certain manners."
"What if they don't fit?"
Bright boy, she thought on another, deeper wave of pride. "Everyone fits some pattern. You factor in background, genetics, education, social strata, religious and cultural roots."
"You get paid for that?"
"Yes, I suppose I do."
"Weird."
Now, she concluded, she had definitely been relegated to nerd status.
"It can be interesting." She racked her brain to come up with an example that would salvage his opinion of her. "I did this experiment once in several cities. I arranged for a man to stand on the street and stare up at a building."
"Just stare at it?"
"That's right. He stood there and stared up, shading his eyes from the sun when he had to. Before long someone stopped beside him and stared up at the same building. Then another and another, until there was a crowd of people, all looking up at that building. It took much longer for anyone to actually ask what was going on, what were they looking at. No one really wanted to be the first to ask because that was an admission that you didn't see what you assumed everyone else was seeing. We want to conform, we want to fit in, we want to know and see and understand what the person beside us knows and sees and understands."
"I bet some of them thought someone was going to jump out of a window."
"Very likely. The average time an individual stood, looking, interrupting their schedule, was two minutes." She believed she'd caught his imagination again, and so she hurried on. "That's actually quite a long time to stare at a perfectly ordinary building."
"That's pretty cool. But it's still weird."
They were coming to the point where he would have to veer off to go to the boatyard. She thought quickly and in a rare move went with impulse.
"What do you think would happen if you conducted the same experiment in St. Christopher's?"
"I don't know. The same thing?"
"I doubt it." She sent him a conspirator's smile. "Want to try it?"
"Maybe."
"We can head over to the waterfront now. Will your brother worry if you're a few minutes late? Should you go tell him you're with me?"
"Nah. Cam doesn't keep me on a leash. He cuts me some slack time."
She wasn't sure how she felt about the loose discipline in that area, but at the moment she was happy to take advantage of it. "Let's try it, then. I'll pay you in ice cream."
"You got a deal."
They turned away from the boatyard. "You can pick a spot," she began.
"It's necessary to stand. People don't generally pay attention to someone who's sitting and looking. They often assume the person is simply daydreaming or resting."
"I get it."
"It's more effective if you look up at something. Is it okay if I videotape?"
He raised his eyebrows as she took a neat compact video recorder out of her bag. "Yeah, I guess. You carry that around all the time?"
"When I'm working, I do. And a notebook, and a micro audio tape recorder, backup batteries and tapes, extra pencils. My cell phone." She laughed at herself. "I like being prepared. And the day they make a computer small enough to fit in a purse, I'm going to be the first in line."
"Phil likes all that electronic stuff, too."
"The baggage of the urbanite. We're desperate not to waste a minute. Then, of course, we can't get away from anything because we're plugged in every second of the day."
"You could just turn everything off."
"Yes." Oddly she found the simplicity of his statement profound. "I suppose I could."
Pedestrian traffic was light on the waterfront. She saw a workboat unloading the day's catch and a family taking advantage of the balmy afternoon by splurging on ice cream sundaes at one of the little outdoor tables. Two old men, their faces nut brown and deeply seamed, sat on an iron bench with a checkerboard between them. Neither seemed inclined to make a move. A trio of women chatted in the doorway of one of the shops, but only one of them carried a bag.
"I'm going to stand over there." Seth pointed to his spot. "And look up at the hotel."
"Good choice." Sybill stayed where she was as he strolled off. Distance was necessary to keep the experiment pure. She lifted the camera, zoomed in as Seth moved away. He turned once, shot her a quick, cocky smile.
And when his face filled her view screen, emotions she hadn't been prepared for flooded her. He was so handsome, so bright. So happy. She struggled to pull herself back from a dangerous edge that she was afraid was despair.
She could walk away, she thought, pack up and leave, never see him again. He would never know who she was or what they were to each other. He would never miss whatever she could bring into his life. She was nothing to him.
She'd never really tried to be.
It was different now, she reminded herself. She was making it different now. Deliberately she ordered her fingers to relax, her neck, her arms. She was causing no harm by getting to know him, spending some time studying his situation.