Science Hill

My phone rings and I ignore it.
It's the first thunder storm of the season, and I feel like I'm watching rain for the very first time, captivated.
There is one big, fat cloud -- a purple, blue and scarlet blob -- applying darkness to the world, drifting slowly and cloaking the sun. I watch it from a hill miles from its epicenter, a hill still soaked in sunlight.
Science Hill isn't being rained on.
I stare at the opposite scene with mortal amusement, and she walks up and says it's beautiful.
"Isn't it?"
I don't take my eyes away, annoyed that she's suddenly broken my solitude.
"Cold air pushing warm currents, all invisible," she says. "Oxygen and hydrogen mixing a trillion times over, forming tiny drops. And that can sometimes lead to a flood. So much of such tiny things."
"Unbelievable."
We're quiet, staring, like in a museum at a portrait, the smudges of clouds the colors, the downpour the brush strokes.
It's Science Hill's Science Day, and there are a lot of people with an understanding of things beyond my understanding, talking about things beyond me.
They serve champagne and I tell her that I like the champagne.
I'm dressed as the best I think I am, blue suit, Hilfiger, darker blue tie, DKNY, brown shoes, shined, and she just grins at me with a smile that could easily beat all of it, handing me a drink from a shimmering silver tray beside us.
"Have some more."
There is electricity in the dank air.
Maybe protons and neutrons collide between us, but I don't feel them, lost in my own clouded thoughts.
We are talking about nothing suddenly, her and I, and I can't focus, focusing only on a text I got earlier with three simple, stupid words: "It's not good."
And I don't feel good, spiritually. Science Day on Science Hill may as well be a washout, for me. I'm done with today.
We talk more about nothing: informalities that are so much formalities that they are insignificant.
I stare at the rain and think that I wish it would just pour on me, drown me, wash me away, flood my mind and submerge everything in my mind.
She mentions that she's still paying for her PhD, and that the recession isn't helping, adding something or another about a student loan bill that just passed the Senate.
"I don't trust Senators," she explains.
"Can't trust everyone," I add with cynical emphasis
My phone rings and I ignore it, and she realizes that I'm ignoring her and she walks away after quick informal goodbyes.
I'm alone in a crowd of scientists, but it doesn't last long.
He begins talking to me, suddenly, about his work, how he's been recognized for his work, and how his work is changing.
He's the chairman of the science board.
"Politics, though, isn't my strong point," he says.
I mention that humans are naturally disposed to politics.
He explains that ideas are so hard to sell, for people to grasp.
"I have something new," he says, his grey eyes wild with a deep excitement. "Something extraordinary."
"When will you unveil it? Today?"
"Later," he says. "Always later."
At Science Hill the next big thing is always tomorrow, he says, and I'm thinking about tomorrow, not today, a wasted day.
I have eight missed calls, and I sigh, ignoring the voice mails.
I wonder if the scientists ever wonder about the human side of things. It's not always abstract. Today I screwed up and paid a consequence as a result and today I feel the storm building up and can only imagine how it will end. I'm surrounded by smart people, a lot of people. I want one of them to explain to me what to do.
Somebody gives them bad news, too.
At Science Day they announce that funding for Science Hill has been cut and, suddenly, it's raining on everybody.
I smile, actually, as misery suddenly has company, and, finally, I've found it at this party.
"That's what this Great Recession has done for us," one person states.
Then it turns into academic analysis, as it always does here.
"Economics is cyclical," he explains. "We'll get through it."
And he's standing next to me telling me the greatness of economics as a natural science, a cyclical science, something that has ebb and flow, or is seasonal, like a bountiful summer to cold winter. He smiles as he talks, his grey eyes and hair shimmer with the analysis. Maybe I forget, for a second, about the emotional weight of the natural process economics has on life, and look at it from an abstract way.
"Phoenix rises and falls, then again," he concludes.
His words ring in my ear, and I've finally unsorted the knotted rope of my problems.
Then there is another ringing.
Wires spark and satellites send an array of radio signals through the nothingness that is the atmosphere and a transmitter tower collects them and distributes them and the device in my pocket accepts them and my phone erupts, all in a split second.
The phone whines and vibrates, and I ignore it.
"Won't you get it?" He asks.
"It's just the same person who has been trying to get a hold of me all day," I say. "And I've had a bad day."
"Call them tomorrow," he says. "It's a new day."
Then he walks away.