Copyright 2001 by Morris Rosenthal
An e-mail arrived in Connie's inbox with a link to the State website where the bid specification was posted. Connie spent a few hours reading through all the legalese, and came to the conclusion that the reporter had been substantially right. The specification had been written to emphasize academic qualifications, so she had a reasonable chance of winning the set-aside portion. The specificity of the skills listed for the main contractor led her to believe that it was a bag job, the winner had already been selected and had participated in writing the bid. She had no experience in dealing with state governments, but intuition told her that this probably went on all the time.
"The big question," she said to herself, "Is whether or not I really want to win it." No point in scraping together even a simple proposal if she didn't really want the job. True to the Weinberger form, she drew a line down the center of a piece of paper and began to make two lists; For (submit bid), and Against. She spent a good twenty minutes on each list, doodling around the margins and picking up the page, holding it up to the light, setting it down again. When she'd used up the time she'd allotted, she settled back to review the results.
The For list read:
In the spaces above and below the list she had drawn two profiles of Eric, and one sketch of them bumping down the street together. Granted, Northampton is a nice place to be, but she knew that staying with Eric was what she had in mind when she'd written the first reason. Or stay away from Yaakov. Am I in one of these 'rebound' situations people are always talking about, she mused. Rushing out to replace the guy everyone has been assuming I was going to marry for the last eight years? Well, onto the professional reasons.
She lumped real world experience and consulting credentials together, all this really said was that the bid work would fill a reasonable space on a resume.
Learning about MLT's did interest her, and she was well aware that scarce as private industry jobs were in magnetic levitation, they still outnumbered openings in nuclear fusion. It was also a chance to gross fifty thousand dollars for six months work. That seemed almost obscene to someone who was used to graduate assistantships that were essentially break even propositions. The last reason amused her, because she was beginning to feel like a slug after just a few weeks of vacation.
The Against list read:
Shorter list, much stronger reasons. Pure research contracts for government agencies supported a high percentage of the academic world, and were not to be shunned. This state bid, however, seemed to be a request for a rubber stamp approval to move on to phase two. The same section that spelled out the SWOMBA set aside, also made it clear that the subcontractors real function would be to take ten percent of the money and stay out of the way. At least that's how it looks, she thought. Maybe I'm just new at these things.
The bid opening was in three days. She'd written proposals for grants before, and realized that the requirements for this one were relatively simple, in fact, she thought it more closely resembled a Request For Proposal (RFP) then a bid. But Friday? She barely had enough time to go to the U. Mass. library and read some articles in the science groupie magazines, so she wouldn't make a fool of herself. Losing the option for the Princeton postdoc in the fall didn't bother her much, particularly since Yaakov had announced that he'd be staying on another year.
Probably the biggest trouble she had with winning was that the whole scheme sounded like a tremendous waste of money. Who needed a three hundred mile per hour link between Boston and Albany? Who even went to Albany? As for Western Massachusetts, half the people she talked to wanted to secede from the Commonwealth and join up with Vermont. The general perception was that the real Massachusetts didn't extend much further west than Interstate 495, an imaginary boundary for commuting to Boston.
There was a botched picture on the Against side of the sheet. It looked like an attempt to draw Yaakov that had turned into an Eric about a third of the way through. She absentmindedly turned the sheet over, and started sketching a half scale drawing of Eric's face from memory. She was still at it when Carol finished her noon session and came in for lunch.
"Connie loves Eric, Connie loves Eric," she chanted mockingly, glimpsing the drawing before Connie could turn it over again.
"Shut up," Connie retorted, "I could say a thing or two about your lover."
"You can leave Laura out of this," she replied with some heat, "Besides," she continued, smiling again, "At least Laura doesn't see me professionally."
"Maybe she should," Connie mumbled below her breath, "Maybe you both should."
"A list!" Carol exclaimed, choosing to ignore her, "Let me see. Come on now," she wheedled, pulling a chair up close, "Maybe I can help."
Connie pushed her the list. "My clothes better not be big on me when you're finished," she grumbled.
"Since you brought up shrinking, how about you make us lunch while I plumb the depths of your soul."
It's getting tougher to bait her, Connie reflected, too bad. She pushed things around the refrigerator, looking for some convenient leftovers in a Rubbermaid container to nuke. Failing this, she began pulling out salad fixings, along with some goats cheese for protein. The lettuce was wrapped in cellophane with a Cudson farms sticker. The sight of it cheered her up immensely.
Outside of the ability to read Russian, a reasonably useful skill in the world of physics, the only inheritance Connie had from her parents lives in Russia was her mothers style of cooking. Lots of turnips, parsnips, beets, and potatoes. Her mother frequently joked, "Some people spend lifetimes searching for their roots, other people eat them." All in all, it wasn't a bad summation of the Russian experience.
She tore the lettuce into manageable pieces, diced in a tomato and a carrot, and scooped out the remains of an avocado she'd opened for breakfast. "You want anything special on your salad," she called over her shoulder to Carol, who was now leafing through the bid spec.
"There's a half a Bermuda onion in the crisper, if you don't mind."
"Ugh, I'll put it on a side dish for you. I'm crumbling the goats cheese on top, O.K.?"
She took no answer as a yes, and proceeded with the operation. While retrieving the onion from the fridge, she grabbed an armful of salad dressing bottles, depositing them on the table. It was easier than asking. Some plates and silverware, a couple of glasses with ice and a pitcher of homemade ice tea completed the preparations, and she resumed her place at the table.
Carol shoved all the paper work to the side and began piling salad on her plate. "So, you're going to try to win this, I take it."
"Yeah, I guess so."
"If it ever gets built, you could try to have it named the Eric Express."
Connie swallowed her initial comeback, and followed it with a forkful of cheese. It tasted exactly like one would expect goats cheese to taste, which is probably why it hadn't captured any market share in middle America. She wondered if they put salt on everything the goat ate, or added it to the milk after the fact. Carol was openly surprised at her forbearance.
"I'm sorry, hon, I'm not really trying to provoke you. It's just habit, you know?
"It's my fault for conditioning you," Connie replied, "I guess I've always given you a hard time about your chosen profession and lifestyle."
"Yes, you certainly have," Carol answered, and they let the conversation drop for a few minutes. Carol looked over the list of reasons again, then turned the sheet over to study the full face portrait. It was a reasonable likeness, and quite life-like, for someone who hadn't focused on art since she was eight.
"The subject makes the drawing," Connie said, reading her mind.
"The two of you seem to have gotten off to a quick start, or at least you have. The feelings are mutual?"
"He hasn't talked to you about me?"
"Are you kidding?" Carol gave a self-depreciating laugh, "I'm his ticket to staying in school, not his therapist."
"Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure."
"Good. I do know that he's stopped spending our entire session trying to sneak looks at me when he thinks I'm not watching. It's quite a relief for me, actually."
"That's a relief for me too," Connie laughed, "Well I'd better head up to the university and see what I can dig up on MLT's. Or," she paused, "Maybe I'll drive down to Cambridge and look in a MIT. They have the Bitter Magnetic Lab, and did the some of the original work on levitation drives."
"I'm not planning on using the car, if you were asking."
"Thanks a lot, sis. You could do worse then Laura," she added.
Carol threw the car keys at her.