I Read
A sentence...
…in a book that made me mad. This particular book was the only one that looked passable on the giveaway shelf in the train station, so I took it. The plot was relatively straightforward, successful businessman courting an up-and-coming musician, shades of Pretty Woman, I guess, though I’ve never seen it. I was okay with the cliched part, the man’s success, the woman’s spirit, but something in the writing bugged me. I thought maybe rewrite it but then it started to change.
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BIO/PICS
He had asked her out to get a better sense of science. All those hours in the lab, all those books devoured—she knew so much and he wanted in. This was in the months following his first big sequel, and he could open doors just by looking at them. He would suggest fancy restaurants that he knew impressed her, some so exclusive that even he had to wait for a reservation, and through the entire meal he would ask her questions. How does the brain produce consciousness? Does a memory make a difference in a cell? What exactly guides cellular senescence? He asked so many that at some point her food was gone and his was largely untouched. All the questions were fair game, because all were beyond him. She addressed many of them, though there were others she brushed past on the way to the entree or dessert, the wine, his car and driver, his bedroom. He allowed all of it, even with the nagging suspicion that he was, if not exactly being used, being kept away somehow. Was she taking care? What if he was simply not smart enough? He took a role that required more of him: speaking in another language, learning to operate a skid unit. Sometimes, after a premiere or an awards show, he would hold her head between his hands, look into her eyes, glimpse what was darting through the space behind them, and swell to the thought that he was in contact with this singular being, even though the contact was largely limited to muscles straining against muscles, frustration pushed toward pleasure, sweat released to skin, nerves deliriously overloaded. That was biology, wasn’t it? [©2026 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas]