The God Particle Read Free

weeks later, he got his chance. Janine showed up without Cro-Mag and Steve left with her phone number. She was a real estate agent, she told him, the top closer in her office three years running, with designs on opening her own firm. Never married and few relationships because most men couldn’t match her thirst for success.
    Steve said he understood what she meant.
    The date ended with sex, sex that quickly became a habit. She liked to talk and made squeaking sounds when it was particularly good. But over time the animality gave way to something more human, and he watched, fascinated, as Janine changed and enriched his life. When he decided to refurnish his living and dining rooms, he enlisted her help—not because he couldn’t decide for himself, but because he realized her opinion was important to him. One morning, he awoke from a dream of her in a hospital room, legs in stirrups, giving birth to their first child. A boy, to be sure. Steve Jr. He had nearly laughed out loud with joy.
    And though the last few months had been hectic as they gathered the assets and information required to launch her real estate firm, his mind had grown calm the way it always did when a watershed event was imminent. One of the major goals of his life—#4, actually—was in his grasp: Marry a grounded woman with whom he could forge a new and fruitful life. And achieving #4 meant that #5—fathering four wonderful and well-adjusted children—would become a real possibility.
    So he decided to propose. And since his visit to Switzerland was only a few weeks away, he figured he could wait to find a spectacular and unique ring that would properly dazzle her. But tonight, when Serena asked to try it on, something snapped in him. Something powerful and alien made him want to slap her when she fingered the ring and smiled that faraway smile. How dare she, even for a moment, assume the identity of the woman he planned to spend the rest of his life with? How dare she suggest that he loved her?
    He loves Janine.
    Steve loves Janine.
    For a moment he is overcome with an impulse to grab the stinking fellow next to him and reveal what is obviously life’s elusive and essential truth. Or perhaps the female bartender would be interested to know. To know that it isn’t the ring that matters, it isn’t that Janine can help him fulfill goal #4 (and #5), but that he is in love with her. That he wants to spend the rest of his life with her because he cannot imagine continuing otherwise. In this moment he realizes that Serena is right, that life isn’t about making two hundred thousand dollars a year before his thirty-fifth birthday (goal #3), it isn’t about the VP position that will be his by the end of the month, it isn’t about any of those things. He realizes that his numerous disposable sexual relationships have amounted to nothing, have in fact pushed him away from this fundamental truth, the search for someone to love, someone for whom he would sacrifice his life, someone with whom he could set about the quest for—
    His cell phone rattles against his chest, jerking his attention back to the smoky Zurich bar. When he pulls it from his pocket, the phone glows phosphorescent in the dark and announces: CALLER ID UNAVAILABLE . For some reason, telephone numbers from the States never display properly. He answers and then presses the phone hard against his ear.
    “This is Steve.”
    No one seems to speak on the other end.
    “Hello?”
    He thinks he hears something this time, but can’t be sure, not with electronic music obliterating his ears. His options: Disconnect and wait for the caller to try again later or head outside and get wet all over again. Steve stuffs the ring into his pants pocket and decides to brave the rain. After all, it might be Janine.
    The door is twenty or so feet away, and he weaves toward it through a dense crowd of velvety women and serious-looking Swiss men. Steps out into the sprinkling silence.
    “Hello?” Steve