His parents hadn’t found science interesting, but he wasn’t ignorant, either.
He let out a slow breath.
“Diamonds.” “Diamonds,” she agreed.
His laugh was a little shaky.
“‘Vast stretches of time’?” He arched a brow at her. “Did you just call me old?”
She snickered. “I said what I said.”
In companionable silence, they paid for their coffee and doctored it to their tastes. A splash of cream for him, milk and a generous waterfall of sugar for her.
Over the years, he’d received extravagant compliments. Often from people who wanted something from him—money, a brush with fame, sex with a star—but also from people who simply admired him for reasons flattering or uncomfortable or both.
Somehow, she’d managed to turn a discussion of minerals into praise as sweet as her coffee. Nerdy too, which somehow made it even sweeter.
No wonder she loved rocks. In her hands, on her tongue, theydidtell stories. Ones more faceted and crystalline than any he’d managed to craft over years and years of writing fanfic.
“Diamonds shouldn’t be as expensive or rare as they are, and I hate how they’ve been extracted from the earth and used as a justification for exploitation and subjugation. So much of the diamond industry is hateful and corrupt. That said...” After taking a sip of her coffee, she wrinkled her nose and added more sugar.“The first time I saw the Hope Diamond in DC, I considered a life of crime.”
When he laughed, a nearby mom with a stroller took a cell photo of him.
Discreetly, he steered April toward the windows, and they looked outside as they drank and talked about favorite museums. Or, rather, he urged April to discuss hers, since she didn’t need to hear about the misery of his previous museum visits.
“Ready for rocks?” she asked, after they’d finished.
He offered his arm, and she took it. “Ready for rocks.”
They spent an hour or so rambling through the museum, first peering at and handling a startlingly bright rainbow of minerals, then visiting the penguins and studying expansive dioramas rife with vegetation and animals preserved through expert taxidermy.
At the first text-intensive informational sign they encountered, she glanced at the display. Bit her lip.
Of course she remembered, cared, and wanted to know more.
“I can read it, but it’ll take me longer than you. Just...” He sighed. “Please don’t get impatient.”
Her brows drew together. “Of course I won’t get impatient.”
And she didn’t, no matter how long he took, although he still tended to favor displays that didn’t require much context to appreciate them. Hands-on activities, or the enormous blue whale and T. rex skeletons, or—to April’s delight—the Shake House.
“This is my first earthquake simulator.” Grinning, she tugged him through the doorway. “We don’t get many noticeable quakes in Sacramento, so I’m excited.”
He allowed himself to be dragged toward a spot near the faux-window. “Good news, then. Now that you live in the Bay Area,you’ll feel something every year or two, at least. Hopefully not abigsomething, though.”
Her nose crinkled in a wince. “Well, at least we’re not in Washington or Oregon. Sooner or later, those poor people are in deep, deep—”
Just then, the museum helper began talking, and he made a mental note not to move to Seattle.
As the polo-clad woman explained what would happen next, he studied his surroundings. Beside him, April was doing the same, her eyes sharp and narrowed in scrutiny as she scanned the cloth-covered ceiling, the screen disguised as a window, the blue-patterned walls and built-in shelves.
The simulator, built to resemble a Victorian drawing room inside, didn’t boast many decorations on those walls and shelves. Some books, decorative plates and glasses, a mirror, a painting, a chandelier. A fishbowl too, amusingly enough. White-painted metal railings crisscrossed the room, providing handholds each small group of visitors would need in due course.
Along one wall, the screen showed a window’s-eye view of the Painted Ladies near Alamo Square. The city as it existed in 1989, during the Loma Prieta quake, according to the museum employee. Eventually, she told them, the image would change to the city as it appeared in 1906, before the most infamous disaster in San Francisco history.
Compared to aGods of the Gatesset, the room was sparse at best. But in today’s scene, he got to hold April’s hand and interlace their fingers, knowing he wouldn’t have to die a stupid, stupid death on camera. All in all, he’d take that trade every time. Even though more than one cell phone was now pointed toward the two of them, rather than the room or the guide explaining the gist of what would happen.
First,as the polo-clad woman explained, the room would jolt through the 1989 earthquake, then the 1906 temblor. Or at least modified versions thereof, demonstrations safe and brief enough for casual visitors. If the first, weaker, quake simulation proved too nerve-racking, they could leave before the second.
