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  “Right,” she smiled.

  “I’ll confess that sometimes in class, I’d see all of the kids running around tapping on their phones, and I knew that it was to lead to the decline of humanity, the fall of Rome. Maybe not in a day, or a week, or ten years, but somehow, it would end for us all in calamity.”

  “I feel that way, too, sometimes,” she agreed.

  “It’s astonishing,” he finished. He considered going on, but then thought about Hemingway. What would he say? he wondered. The minimum, he thought, with a quiet harrumph. He and Zoe lapsed into another comfortable silence, each entertaining their own thoughts.

  Moments later he was wrenched from his thoughts by the excited cry of his wife: “Oh, look! It must be from the Kite Festival!” She pointed to a tall tree nearby. Resting on one of the uppermost branches was a kite of Easter egg hues: pastel blues and pinks, combined with yellows and oranges.

  “Hmm, I thought it was cancelled this year. Bad weather,” he said. They had attended the annual Zilker Kite Festival every year for most of the previous four decades, since college. If there was going to be a lost kite, this would be the place, and March would be the right time. He was only surprised they’d never seen a casualty in the trees before.

  “That’s right, it was. Must be a coincidence.”

  “I’m sure people had their kites ready. They must have come out in hordes when the weather cleared up.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed, then jumped in excitement. “Look! It’s falling!” She left his side and raced over, as eager as a child. The kite floated to the ground in front of her, and she retrieved it easily. He waited on the path, amused, watching. She came back just moments later, cheeks flushed, holding up her prize prominently.

  “Ha! Look at that. My wife, the kite runner.”

  “Yeah, it’s amazing … like it was waiting for us,” she mused. “I think it’s your good luck kite. I’m going to take it home.”

  They made their way through the park slowly after that, and were soon driving down Barton Springs.

  At home they stopped and had a light lunch, full of tomatoes to keep Zoe happy, and full of fiber to keep Dr. Reynolds happy: bruschetta, a light pasta with tomatoes, and broccoli. During the year his cancer was discovered, Martin had pored over health journals, books, and articles. He received the good word of doctors. In the end, he learned that diet was probably the most important factor to longevity, with regular light fitness a close second.

  Changing diets had been tough for Martin. Raised in the Midwest, and a resident of Texas, it was understandable that barbecue and steak were staples of his life. They were his greatest weaknesses and his culinary companions of choice.

  Now, those foods of heavenly design were begrudgingly demoted from dear friend to mere acquaintance, from prominence to insignificance. He suffered pangs of yearning each time they passed Stubbs BBQ in the city!

  “Are you ready to update our status?” Zoe asked, clearing dishes from the table.

  “Sure,” he replied. He helped her carry plates and bowls to the kitchen where they gave them a quick rinse and deposited them in the dishwasher before going to the computer.

  They pulled up Facebook and signed into the page they co-administered: The Good Professor.

  “Funny … I used to swear off all of these social media sites, remember?” he asked Zoe.

  “Yes.”

  “A good bit of irony infused into this situation,” he said and laughed.

  Irony? he wondered. Definitely. His attitude had been one of intellectual contempt for MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and all of the other online entities he commonly referred to as “silliness” or “a catalyst for the degradation of man.” When he learned the Pope used Twitter he thought for sure the Mayans were right and that the world was going to end in 2012.

  But he was wrong. In so many ways, and on so many levels.

  He and Zoe had been financially prepared when the cancer first reared its head in Martin’s body. He had tenure at UT and insurance; they had savings. They weren’t worried.

  But then the insurance faltered for a test or two. The co-pay for medicines and procedures was borderline astronomical. 100 percent coverage? Not even close. All of the things they thought insurance would cover, but had never double-checked, were up in the air.

  When he began missing work, things got even trickier. It was okay at first, but a few days became weeks. A month here and there. He was tired, he had treatments, and he wasn’t the same man he had been.

  The Lange savings disappeared faster than cake at a child’s birthday party, and soon they were debating whether they would sell their home or declare bankruptcy. Things were moving from bad to worse so quickly it was difficult to comprehend.

  Then out of the blue one day, some of his students approached him. More than a few, it was nearly an entire class, but one boy in particular, John, behaved as a sort of spokesman for the group. Martin was uncommonly confused—students normally flooded out of the room—bound for snack machines, dorm rooms, or that next class. He had actually turned and begun clearing his white board when the absence of footsteps made him turn back.

  “John?” he said, startled. John was standing right in front of his desk and all the students were looking at him, or glancing around; several throats were cleared almost in unison.

  With an alacrity that belied the goodness of the boy’s upbringing and the compassion in his heart, John said, “Professor, we’d like to talk to you.”

  “Who, John?”

  “All of us,” he replied, waving his arm, indicating everyone in the room. “We know about what’s happening,” he said. “We’ve talked to people, we’ve spoken to your wife, but we swore her to secrecy, so don’t be upset with her.

  “We started a Facebook page for you. We’ve been tracking down your old students. We’ve even got a fundraiser planned for next week, which is really why we need your help.”

  “What … whatever do you … John…” Martin stammered. Another one of those isolated and dreaded moments seized him and he was incapable of speech. It dawned on him where all of this was going, what was happening, and he felt his knees shake. He reached out a hand and steadied himself by holding onto the desk.

  “Look, Professor, here’s the thing. We’re not taking no for an answer. You’ve given yourself to students for forty years. Now forty years of students want to give back to you. And you’re going to let us.” He paused when he said that and looked at Martin. The kid’s gaze was piercing and rock-steady. Martin gave only the slightest of nods. His throat was dry and he was, again, speechless. John walked around the desk and put a hand on his back and spoke quietly, “We’re gonna beat this, Professor Lange.”

  Martin felt his eyes filling and pulled out his handkerchief—one of many idiosyncrasies that made him so honest and endearing to the students. Who carries a handkerchief in 2014? He dabbed at his eyes and nodded again. Around the room, damp eyes quickly outnumbered the dry, and students moved down and surrounded Martin, who looked at them, laughed, and cried openly.

  That was so long ago, it seemed, as Martin logged into his own account, placed the cursor over the cog in the upper right corner, and selected Use Facebook As The Good Professor from the pop-up menu that had appeared.

  Soon he was looking at a small picture of himself and his wife and a long, rectangular backdrop showing the university skyline. The page had almost 10,000 likes. Students, friends of students, friends, family, and so many people had come to his aid.

  Zoe left Martin as he began typing and zoned into the computer…

  “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears…” he typed, using Shakespeare’s words from Julius Caesar to begin his status update. “It is with pleasure beyond the wildest stretch of my imagination that I pass along the latest update to you.

  “The doctor tells me that my cancer is in remission,” he continued. “I’m on cancer watch indefinitely, but for now, the good in my body has overcome the evil.

&nbs
p; “I find it hard not to be emotional, even though I am typing to you while on a computer from the comfort of my own home. It’s simply overwhelming, the support you’ve given me. No. That’s not right. You’ve given me more than support, you’ve given me back my life. You’ve given me the chance to wake up and see Zoe for a few more mornings.

  “For all of you that are old students of mine, maybe you’ll remember me saying you can do anything! Now you’ve taught the teacher … shown me what is possible. For that, I can never properly thank you.” He paused for a moment, started to type. Paused again. He was torn between verbosity and silence.

  “Shakespeare said that ‘Men of few words are the best men,’ and for once in my life I’ll make the attempt to be one of those best men, and I’ll stop.

  “All of our best, from Zoe and me, to all of you.” He hesitated for a moment with the cursor over the post button, started to check his work, then shook his head and laughed and clicked. He sat back in his chair and watched as at least ten Likes and several comments appeared almost instantaneously. He laughed even harder, then doubled over as the gales shook his entire frame.

  “Are you okay?” Zoe asked, coming into the room.

  He had to wait until he had control of himself before he could answer.

  “Perfect, Dear. Perfect.”

  Chapter 8

  Paul without Amy

  Paul hadn’t gone out much since his incident with Amy.

  Amy wasn’t the reason he didn’t go out, though. Not at all. He was merely preoccupied with watching game after game after game of glorious, digitally recorded basketball. He dribbled his own basketball around the apartment during breaks, a habit of his since high school.

  Of course, he wasn’t completely impervious to human emotion. He was mildly annoyed about how things went down with Amy, but that would never have kept him holed up, shying away from the world. The thought almost made him laugh … he would never let a woman get the best of him.

  No, if he were that bothered, he would have already made sure she felt his anger.

  Well … there was that brief moment when he thought he might go pay Amy a little visit, one that she’d never forget…

  It was late, the same night they’d broken up, and he settled down to mess around on his iPad and watch ESPN. When he opened his Facebook account, he had discovered that not only was Amy no longer friends with him on Facebook, but she had blocked his account completely. He searched repeatedly for her using her name, then her email address, and finally by looking at mutual friends’ accounts. Nothing. Zero. Zip. Some of those mutual friends that were really Amy’s friends were gone, too.

  Stupid bitches, he thought. His eye twitched while he considered that little visit for a moment. I could certainly teach her something … nobody embarrasses me like that.

  He could feel the mounting pressure behind his forehead, a steady throbbing, and for a few seconds he thought he was going to fucking lose control.

  But he didn’t…

  …Now he was completely in command of himself—in control—had never really lost it. He’d given people extra attention before, and while it fed the animal inside him, he thought it should be reserved for truly unique occasions.

  Another game finished on his DVR, and he found himself completely caught up. For the most part, the teams he picked had won. Processing data and calculating odds were always going on behind the curtains in his mind. Statistics and numbers were second nature to him, but more than that, he could watch people and read between the lines. He was a master interpreter of nonverbal information. It gave him an alarming edge in his profession and made him an ace with the ladies.

  In the bars he could watch women and, with extreme accuracy, identify whom he might take home. Would take home. He’d study the brands and types of clothes they were wearing, their mannerisms, their drinking habits, and their friends. A pattern would eventually develop from the chaos. He’d learned that patterns were nature’s clues. They were the rainbows that led to the pot of gold … or pot of honey.

  In school he devoured course after course with ease. Sure, he knew how to do research, but more important than that had been his assessment of his teachers. By tracking their personal motivations, life goals, even the car they drove, he could deduce what type of people they were and predict what they wanted to see in their students. After all, most people subjectively praised those in their image versus those that were, perhaps, closer to being correct.

  At work, he could always identify the companies that would excel or fail, and he invested accordingly. He memorized CEO habits, company projections, their competition, and local-to-global needs. His career was a rocket—he was unstoppable, bound for outer space.

  So … Paul had the women, the education, and the career. It was almost shameful how easy it was. With a nearly photographic memory, his nature usually gravitated to the analytical versus the artistic. He was a machine.

  Unfortunately, while sustained success in education and business were reliably achieved, the traits that made him so magnificent in those areas guaranteed only initial success with women.

  Paul knew how to approach females—keep their attention—and impress them. He had all of the motions perfected.

  He also knew how impressive he was in the bedroom. What could he say? He had a knack for some things—he was gifted.

  Yet, no matter his level of effort, most of his relationships ended quickly. He didn’t seem to have whatever it was that women required, and it didn’t seem to be something he could learn. Relationships frequently ended after a few weeks, two months tops.

  It’s because I’m hard, and women want hard at first, then they want pussies, he thought.

  Amy was the anomaly, the standout. He had to admit … he had thought she was the one. Was sure of it, even. The first five or six months they were together were good—the best he ever had. And even though he couldn’t be certain he was “in love” with Amy during that time, he figured she was more than acceptable, and it was the most he’d felt for anyone.

  Besides, he wasn’t sure there was really such a thing as love. He suspected it was only a concept crafted by desperate people who needed an ideal—like faith and religion—except he wasn’t buying it.

  He sighed and dribbled again. His hands snapped rhythmically with the rise and fall of the ball. One wrist moved rapidly upward to receive it, then fired it back down to the floor. Long fingers, handling the ball, resembled a bird’s beak, pecking at the dirt for worms: up, down, up, down. He controlled the ball. He owned it. He mastered the orange sphere. Every movement was predicated by him. Every bounce existed because he made it so. There didn’t need to be any purpose except to do what he wanted it to do.

  If only women were like the basketball.

  Paul zoned out for a second and the basketball clipped his foot, rolling across the hardwood floor toward the hallway. As payment for his foul-up, he dropped to the floor and began doing push-ups. He could almost hear Coach Hill counting them out, repeating every second or third number, claiming bad form, transforming thirty pushups into sixty or eighty...

  Twenty-three, twenty-three, twenty-three, lower Harris, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-five, we might be here all day, Harris, if you can’t reach thirty!

  He smiled to himself, pushing, pushing, pushing. The days were gone when 30 or 40 were a challenge. He ran through 150 before the lactic acid and blood pumping through his body started to become uncomfortable; he went over 200 before he stopped.

  He stood up, twisted his head from side to side, then bounced up and down and shook it out. He was in the best shape of his life—yet another characteristic that brought the women in—but failed to keep them. He lifted up his shirt and looked down at his abdominal muscles. He pinched and couldn’t grasp more than a millimeter of skin between his thumb and forefinger. They were hard and ridged and never failed to catch ladies’ attention. Sometimes girls would ask him if it was worth it, all the hours he spent working out.

 
They asked that while they oohed! and ahhhed! and couldn’t take their eyes off his stomach.

  The truth was that it was worth it because he thrived on perfecting himself. Work, school, and body—whatever he did—he was going to be the best.

  Paul dropped back onto his couch and picked up his iPad. He flipped open the magnetic cover and there, on the screen, was Amy. Damn it, he thought briefly; a flicker of anger flashed across his eyes. He had considered changing the image multiple times already. For the third time in two days he found himself tapping through the menus, drilling down into background image settings.

  And there it was: Amy’s picture.

  He hadn’t erased it already because he viewed it as a reminder…

  He pressed the concave button at the base of the tablet and exited without making or saving any changes … and there was Amy again. He disregarded her image without another thought and opened Safari, Apple’s response to Internet Explorer.

  Paul worked with stocks, investing, and other money strategies, researched companies and the market routinely, and it was surprising how frequently the Apple dilemma cropped up in situations.

  Android versus iOS was probably the most common topic of conversation. Everyone wanted to be the most plugged in, have the best access; and this was really the nucleus of where that decision-making began: which operating system and structure.

  There was always the Mac versus PC question. It was like asking somebody from the 1970s South to choose between Ford and Chevy. There wasn’t a clear winner. It seemed to Paul that it was mostly a matter of allegiance. Much like religion, people stuck with what their friends and family were doing.