Margot by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

THE LECTURE WAS TITLED “Nervous Systems of Nudibranches: How Memory and Neuron Response Can Be Mapped in Aplasia.” A brown-speckled sea slug, with a frilly foot and two long extendable eye antennae, smiled on the poster. The hall filled up with an odd assortment: grungy boys, distinguished white-haired professors, women in sundresses, every kind of geek in between. Marvin’s friend, Cosimo Case, gave a talk in which the phrase “gill and siphon withdrawal reflex” recurred often.

“What did you think?” Marvin asked her as they came out of the auditorium.

“Super interesting.”

“I know, right?”

“Cosimo, meet Margot. She’s smart. She knows her RNA from her DNA. She’s good at counting chromosomes. She found a Superman this week.”

“Stay away from those guys,” said Cosmo, “they’re loco.”

“Hello,” said Margot, putting out her hand, She’s smart! still smarting. “I enjoyed your lecture.”

Cosimo bowed low. “I’m glad it’s done! Now I need a drink.” There was a clam shack behind the Stony Beach parking lot where everyone always ended up after the Friday night lecture. It was still warm enough to sit outside. Picnic tables, a couple of lopsided red Coca-Cola umbrellas. Styrofoam plates of littlenecks on the half shell, bottles of Tabasco on the tables, a big Igloo cooler full of Budweiser. People pulled up stools and a small crowd gathered at their table. The conversation quickly got down to the nitty-gritty: ribosomes histones peptides amino acids RNA. How to turn a sea slug inside out and dissect its nervous system and then reverse engineer nerve cells back into stem cells.

“What makes them nerve cells? What turns them on?”

“Have you tried Swedish girls in a hot tub?”

“Imagine what we could do with a big fat test tube of pluripotency.”

“Everything gets shuffled during meiosis; but how? Like, what’s the chemistry of that?”

“You mean, what can cut all those covalent bonds?”

“Could you use voltage?”

“Yeah, like Frankenstein.”

“Where else are you going to get the energy?”

“Mitochondria?”

Margot opened her mouth to offer an idea, but a guy with a blond moustache said what she was about to: “What about viruses? Viruses alter DNA,” and was immediately shot down.

“Viruses don’t just alter it, man, they blow up cells with a billion replicants. It’s like Hiroshima for the host DNA.”

“Maybe man is just a complex virus.”

“It’s been said by many.”

“Ah, the age-old battle between viruses and bacteria.”

“It’s what I’ve been saying all this time! War is written into our genome.”

“It’s encoded in all of us.”

“Perfect theory: you see, it incorporates memory and reproduction and violence.”

“Well, it’s one way of explaining Vietnam—”

“Are you going to the antiwar rally?”

“Nah, I can’t. I’ve got an autoclave full of protein broth.”

“I have a friend who fought in Vietnam and lost an arm,” said Margot, to say something, and then wished she hadn’t.

The sun went down. The sea striped blue to indigo. Beer bottles piled up, someone pulled out a guitar, strumming Dylan. Maybe the answer was blowing in the wind. The corners of her mouth ached from smiling; everything was clear and fluid. The conversation turned to the headlines: antiballistic missiles and Oakland burning, would RFK run? Marvin squeezed her knee.

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