In towering letters Cicero’s words were engraved over the library entrance. Who knows only his own generation remains always a child. Now those words haunted Betsy.
We were just children, she thought, waiting for John’s plane to arrive. And foolish ones at that.
“May I help you?” said the café clerk.
“A cappuccino, two percent milk,” she said.
The local paper, The Aspen Times, lay rumpled and open on the café table. The last person had scrawled a telephone number in the margin and her eyes focused on an item right below:
HARD ROCK, GOTHS, AND DIE-HARD PUNKS. GET IT ON TONIGHT AT THE BELLY UP. BLACK METAL BAND VENOM PLAYS A TRIBUTE TO BATHORY.
Bathory?
Her heart thumped and she stared at the ad.
“There you are!”
John set down his bag and scooped her up in his arms, his skin smelling of piney soap despite his long plane ride. He held Betsy for longer than was comfortable, and she was sure he could feel the sudden stiffening in her back.
He released her and stared at her face.
“You’ve lost some weight. I can feel your ribs.”
Betsy shrugged and looked down at his old beat-up duffel bag. She knew it from their college days. “I always do when it starts turning cold.”
“Hmmm,” he said, holding her at arm’s length in order to study her better. “Not usually until mid-January after you’ve had a few weeks of skiing under your belt.”
Betsy looked away. She wanted to straighten the collar on her flannel shirt, but she knew that would indicate she had something to hide. During their marriage, she had taught him a lot about psychology. What she was studying, but also what her father had taught her over the years. She didn’t want to give him clues to interpret.
“What was so engrossing in the local rag?” he said, jerking his chin at the paper. “You looked like you had just read your own death notice.”
Betsy shrugged.
John looked down at the paper.
“Bathory?”
“A punk band. Goth, maybe. I don’t know.”
“Huh. I’ve heard of those guys—Bathory. Back in the eighties, I think. Come on, let’s grab a bite to eat. I couldn’t eat the crap they served in those snack packs.”
Typical John, thought Betsy. It didn’t rattle him that the name Bathory would appear in the newspaper, or that the paper was flipped to the exact page where the ad was.
Coincidence, he would say if she pressed him.
After their marriage broke up, he had earned a PhD in Advanced Mathematics and Statistics from MIT. He did not believe in meaningful coincidence, only numerical patterns. Coincidences were merely a matter of probability, little p in statistics. Wipe the slate clean and start a new problem, a coincidence wasn’t worth examining. Not statistically important.
An outlier.
A wave of bitter memories swept over Betsy—the uber-rational mind of her ex-husband clashing with her intuitive Jungian training. She thought back to their last argument, the one that would end their marriage.
“My father! My father is in danger, I can sense it.”
“Nonsense,” he had said. “You’re nervous and tired, studying for your exams. There is nothing wrong with your father. Your mother would have called us if there were.”
“But John—”
“What’s wrong with you? Get over yourself and your premonitions. You are completely irrational, Betsy. And self-indulgent! The world doesn’t spin just because you dream it so.”
“Me? What about you? Not everything is logical in life, John. There are outliers on a scatterplot, phenomena you can’t predict. You never look beyond the world of reason and probability. I know something is wrong.”
“You are hysterical,” he said. “You let your emotions rule you. How can you practice psychiatry when you think like this?”
“Why won’t you ever venture beyond the rational? Maybe you should do some self-exploration yourself.”
“What total horseshit!”
And when they learned of Betsy’s father’s death, John turned away. He did not know how to console Betsy. It was the beginning of the end for them.
They drove down the valley and stopped at the Woody Creek Tavern for burgers and a beer. It was empty, except for a table of tourists and a crowd of local yahoos at the bar, their baseball hats on backward, watching football on TV.
“Not the same crowd,” said John, looking around. The old photos tacked on the wall had faded now, a lot were gone. Someplace there were photos of the two of them nearly two decades ago—two college ski bums, raccoon-eyed from days on the slope, in full party mode.
“It’s a weekday, people are working. But you’re right, since it changed hands, the crowd isn’t the same.”