This Blue Ball | Page 5

felt fine. He
asked me to come look at his computer monitor --" She paused again, this time not for
her sake. "The monitor was glowing, Gary, just glowing, in a way I've never seen
anything glow before. It wasn't like any of his games. I asked Andrew if he had shut the
computer off, and he said yes -- "
Gary jumped in, knowing that it was probably the wrong thing to do: "I imagine it was
the monitor's test pattern. They typically come on when there's no signal from the
computer, and can be quite surprising, sometimes." He smiled into the phone, hoping that
he had allayed her fear.
"All right," she said, audibly eased a bit, "that may be it. But there's two things I don't
understand, and Andrew couldn't explain them either. The monitor was unplugged from
the surge protector, completely unplugged, and the image seemed to be projected six
inches off the monitor, like ink glowing in the air. It burned itself into the glass -- this
morning I could still read the image in scratches. I've never seen anything like it."

Gary knew that if he expressed the slightest doubt about her description, she would hang
up on him and that would be the absolute end. Yet he had no reason to suspect that she
was exaggerating or mischaracterizing. She did neither easily: too proud to exaggerate
and too careful to mischaracterize.
"That does sound very strange," he said. "It's hard to know without seeing it."
The self-invitation was a big risk, but basically his only play.
She thought too long about this, and said the following with a forced nonchalance: "Yes,
that makes sense. Would you be able to come by sometime and take a look? I know it's a
lot to ask. But I'm worried." A moment passed before she confessed her worry: "There
might be radiation or something."
Gary wanted to tell her that there was simply no chance of dangerous radiation emanating
from a monitor, even one which had for some reason gone completely gaga. But he also
knew her fear would outweigh his assurances unless he could give specifics, whether she
understood anything about them or not. If what she described was true, he suspected that
a circuit had surged after a brownout or from a failing circuit breaker, and that the
monitor had had a brief excess of current. No big deal, even if he could not explain it
with confidence.
"How about tonight then?" he said. "I can stop by after work. Say about seven?"
Her jaw half clenched, she replied: "Sure, I would appreciate that." She thanked him, and
hung up.
He imagined himself using his voice of assurance to assuage and win her over. He saw
himself pull the technical wool over Andrew's eyes, and impress both of them. But he
could only partially convince himself, so he went back to work.
No. 4 -- The first impression is more powerful, and often more positive, than later
impressions. With Alice Philips, impressions often started low and, after the third or
fourth encounter, began a steady rise. Oh, she did make a respectable first impression:
trim, well dressed in a not quite tailored look, an attractive balanced face, with an elegant
cosmetic overlay and coiffure. But she was not a quick or smooth talker, or a smiling
conversant, or a great beauty, or primed to appeal to male fantasies, either the demure or
wild kind. Her manner became clearer over time. She moved with an even, one might say
strangely calm manner, slowly and deliberately, turning as if moving a large mass around
a carefully balanced center of gravity -- that, by careful observation, you would swear
had to be in the cavern of her pelvis. It was an eerily sexy effect, once you noticed it, but
not something that struck you at first glance. You might just think she was slow.
Alice had big, expressive brown eyes, within a dark brown face. She was of African
descent, with American Indian and European thrown in for good measure. The brown of
her irises was rich and luminous -- endlessly brown, as you might expect of the richest of
soils in a dank rain forest stretched beneath an equatorial sky. Not that she was
particularly exotic, having been raised in Yonkers, New York. Still, there is something

inherently intriguing about eye color outweighing the black of the pupils, about skin that
is a color in its own right, not the pale reflection of blood coursing through the body, not
a red or freckled organ that the sun must first paint. Her face was defined by the large
luminous eyes, broad nose and bursting lips of her African ancestry, and her profile
seemed to be a fuller version of the