The Nitrogen Murder(15)

“Whoa!” Matt said, clearly pleasing Elaine. He undid the twist-tie and opened the waxed paper bag, releasing a wonderful sugary aroma. We let him have the first handful, then helped ourselves.

“Anything from Andrea?” asked Elaine, the most well-mannered kettle-corn chewer I’d seen.

A whopper came to my lips, way too quickly for comfort. By rights, I should have choked on a salty-sweet kernel.

“An attempted message from Rose.” (A truth to start with, at least.) I cleared my throat. “And also Andrea mentioned some new work on a nitrogen molecule. Maybe Phil knows something about it? Do you think he’d be willing to talk to me?”

I saw Elaine’s eyes light up. At any time that wasn’t two weeks from her wedding, Elaine would have balked at the coincidence—an hour after she tells me Phil is working on nitrogen, Andrea Cabrini, three thousand miles away, finds something that prompts me to have an interest in it, too? Blinded by love as she was, I thought, Elaine instead saw this as a bonding opportunity I could almost read her mind—her best friend and her fiancé, discussing a common interest. So what if it was a molecule?

“Of course!” she said, with enough enthusiasm to power a firecracker.

I didn’t dare look at Matt.





On Sunday afternoon, Elaine and I walked around the neighborhood, as promised. For girl talk, we told Matt, who was just as happy to stay home and listen to Elaine’s many jazz CDs.

“Every one of my boyfriends had a different musical taste,” she’d told us. “And each one added a new section to my music collection. The jazz is from Bruce, the one who …” Elaine waved her hand and grinned. I thought I saw a blush creep onto her face. “Oh, never mind. Enjoy, Matt. Let’s go, Gloria.”

I hoped she would not tell me about Bruce.



Elaine and I returned to one of our favorite routes, up and down Holy Hill, the local name for Berkeley’s Graduate Theological union  . Nine different Catholic and Protestant seminaries and a dozen other religious programs were centered at GTU. We played our traditional game of picking out religion or theology students from the other passersby. We checked out the spines of their books, noticing their medals, pins, and T-shirt logos. (WWJD slogans were in the lead: WHAT WOULD JESUS DO? A close second was SHANTI, the Hindi word for peace.)

We thought the snippets of conversation were uniquely Berkeley

“Deepak Chopra is old news,” from a young man with very worn Birkenstocks. “I’m listening to an audiotape by Houston Smith.”

“I thought he was dead,” from his female companion.

A nun in a modified dark blue habit crossed the street in front of us. Her posture was ramrod straight; her veil hung off the back of her head, like a fabric ponytail.

“I didn’t think they wore those anymore,” said I, a long-lapsed Catholic with no factual basis for the observation.

“You see them all the time around here,” said Elaine, who’d never belonged to a major religious denomination. Unless you counted the Spirit of Energy Church, the Breath of Life Congregation, and a few other flocks of Berkeley souls she’d joined over the years.

“For the community aspect, Gloria,” she’d tell me every time she tried a new group of worshipers.

“You mean for a dating pool?”

“That, too.”

On this Sunday afternoon, with a cooling breeze coming off San Francisco Bay, I should have been relaxed and comfortable. Instead, the storefronts along Euclid Avenue seemed older and more run-down than I remembered, the sidewalks more cracked and littered, the bicyclists more rude.

Or maybe I was feeling the weight of my deception. I’d researched Elaine’s fiance using her own computer, in her own home, less than two weeks before I’d stand beside her at her Rose Garden wedding. Guilt poured down my back like a stale, flat champagne toast.

Not that it influenced my behavior.

“When do you think I can talk to Phil?” I asked her.

“Oh, I already made a date. We’re meeting him for lunch tomorrow.” Elaine whipped off her lightweight sweater, which perfectly matched her olive green slacks, as if the thought warmed her. “You two really have a lot to talk about. You know, Phil reads lots of scientific biography, just like you. He has books on Newton’s Laws, Boyle’s Laws, Bernoulli’s Laws, Einstein’s Laws, Everyone’s Laws.”

“Have I taught you nothing, Elaine? Science is not about laws—”

“I know, I know, just kidding.”

“You just don’t want my speech about the sciences as philosophical models of the universe—”

“Anchovies,” Elaine said, snapping her fingers.