What did your brother say?

He kissed me on the cheek and whispered to me that he loved me and that it was all right. And then it was.

And then it was.

Yes. Look. It’s a broken record. I’m doing this for you, not for me. I was given a letter to deliver and told not to read it. And I read it. And I cant unread it. Time’s up.

Oh. Yes. Of course.

II

How have you been?

I’m okay.

I missed you last week.

Yeah, well. You know. Busy.

Busy.

Just kidding.

All right.

All right.

So what’s been on your mind?

I dont know. What’s your wife like?

My wife.

Yes.

She’s Italian. What’s she like?

Yes.

She’s attractive. She likes Bach. She likes Italian food. She works with deaf children.

Is she a good cook?

Yes.

She’s not Jewish.

She is Jewish.

She’s nice.

Very nice.

Something you’re not telling me.

We were divorced. For three years. Then we remarried.

You treated her badly.

Yes. I did.

Why did you?

Because I was an idiot.

That’s what Oppenheimer said. At the hearings.

He seems a strange candidate for idiocy.

I think that’s why the quote is memorable. People who knew Einstein, Dirac, von Neumann, said that he was the smartest man they’d ever met.

Oppenheimer.

Yes.

I assume your father knew him.

My father worked for him.

What was his opinion?

Of Oppenheimer.

Yes.

He found him engaging, charming, erudite. An excellent party host. A bit frightening.

Frightening?

Yes.

In what sense?

He thought that Oppenheimer’s intelligence was not entirely contained. That he was capable of making bad decisions.

Was he?

Yes.

But not Satanic.

That would be a stretch.

I’m assuming that Satan is not a part of your worldview. Even if you seem to acknowledge something very like evil in the scheme of things. You mentioned Chesterton’s comment.

Well. I’ve never seen Satan. That doesnt mean he might not show up. What Chesterton doesnt comment on are the peculiarly material interests of God. If you were a wholly spiritual being why would you dabble in the material at all? At judgment day the bodies rise? What is that about? Spirits are disembodied, not unembodied? Christ ascends into heaven as presumably a corporeal being. Encumbering the godhead with a thing it had not previously to endure. It’s hard to know what to make of such lunacy. You can see why Chesterton would steer clear of it.

Was this part of the spiritual crisis that you spoke of?

It’s just a commentary. The spiritual nature of reality has been the principal preoccupation of mankind since forever and it’s not going away anytime soon. The notion that everything is just stuff doesnt seem to do it for us.

Does it do it for you?

That’s the rub, isnt it?

You grew up in Los Alamos.

Yes. We lived there until my mother died. Well. She actually died in Tennessee.

Do you remember Los Alamos?

Yes. Of course.