36
Arthur poked delicately at the remaining Madonna lilies in Teresa’s basket. Their scent had been changed to a bright spearmint, like an air freshener. “Okay, bend closer so you can see the details. Lots of things to notice.”
Teresa scooted over to the ragged man on the cool fountain rim. Arthur nudged open the soft white flower. “Look at how everything fits. The petals surround the anthers and the stigma, where the slightest brush of a bee’s foot will distribute the pollen grains.” He touched the anthers and came away with a smear of yellow dust. “A grain of pollen travels down the pollen tube and fertilizes the seeds inside this receptacle.” He turned the lily over so she could see the green sepals embracing the petals. “This part becomes the seed pod.”
He handed her the flower. Teresa cupped it in her hands.
“Now look at the cut end of the stem, see the tiny straws. Each one is a fluid vessel to carry nutrients from the roots, like plumbing and electrical conduits in a skyscraper, or the circulatory system in your own body.”
Day after day, she came to the old man, usually when she finished her flower-delivery rounds. Arthur didn’t want anything from her, didn’t have an agenda. He just enjoyed the conversation and attention, and Teresa learned everything she could. “Oh, Arthur, you’ve made the world so much more complicated.”
“I hope that’s a good thing.” His smile warmed her heart.
She clasped his bony wrist. “It’s more interesting that way. I’m ashamed at how I never noticed what was right there in front of me.” She hesitated, never having asked about his past. “How do you know so much? Were you some sort of doctor or surgeon . . . before?”
Arthur gave a high and hoarse laugh, which degenerated into an alarming spate of coughing. When he had recovered, he looked at Teresa with amusement. He gestured to the tall buildings that ringed the plaza. “No, no—I used to work in those skyscrapers. I was just a plumbing engineer.”
Another day, Arthur took her inside one of the buildings, showed her the ancient keycode for a maintenance entrance. “These are areas the general public doesn’t see, but that’s where you’ll find the most fascinating things, the systems that keep everything running.”
They slipped along dimly lit passages between walls, access shafts, and hatchways. They ducked under a thick black pipe and followed as it ran along syncrete blocks before turning left and plunging through an opening in a wall.
“I didn’t even know these places existed,” Teresa said, breathless.
“Nobody understands the whole picture,” Arthur said. He tapped a water pipe with his fingernail, making a dull sound. “The city, this building, even your own body—the closer you look, the more complex it becomes. Like fractals. You never get to the bottom of it all.”
The echoing passageways were lit by harsh glow tiles not designed for the comfort of human eyes. The air smelled dank in the untraveled tunnels. Creatures stirred in the shadows, spiders and crickets and mice.
“I used to map and maintain the water systems inside this building, all seventy-eight stories of it.” Arthur moved with a spring in his step she had not seen before. He seemed to forget his aches and pains, his poor health. “It’s good to revisit my old stomping grounds, especially with an eager pupil at my side.”
He rattled off statistics relating to the building, pointing out minute details she would never have noticed. He explained the intricate conduits, power connections, and overflow systems.
“I had a lot of time to myself down here. A lot of time to think. When I understood how this building worked, I realized how much it reminded me of the human body—structural supports like bones, plumbing like a circulatory system, electrical conduits like nerves, thermostats and optical sensors and alarm systems like our senses.” The old man lowered his voice. “But even the greatest networks inside the mightiest skyscrapers can’t truly compare to the elegant complexity of the human body.”
Arthur held up his gnarled right hand. “I finally got it through my head that the fluid-flow pathways in my little finger, designed by the pressures of evolution or by God Himself, far surpass any system that centuries of human engineering has managed to construct. We’re just . . . amateurs at this.”
He led her up a narrow metal staircase that paralleled an elevator shaft. Teresa listened to his labored breathing as he clomped higher and higher. With a humming rattle, an enclosed elevator car whisked past them and a counterweight shuttled upward in an opposite shaft.
Arthur rested on the steps. “When I found that discarded copy of Gray’s Anatomy, it seemed like a sign. I abandoned my work and took to living as best I could on my own limited resources. I needed more time to study.”
Teresa held herself back, trying not to push him faster than he wanted to go, but Arthur climbed level after level, driven from within. “You must have made up your mind before then never to hopscotch.”
Arthur finally paused at a landing. “It’ll take me a century just to understand this hunk of flesh. Why should I make the problem more difficult by stepping inside someone else’s guts and muscles?” He inspected his scrawny bicep with renewed interest.
“But aren’t you curious about other people? Their perspectives, their sensations?” Teresa had been in so many different physiques, so many men and women—strong and weak, beautiful and average. She had noticed a host of differences, but also an underlying sameness.
“Okay, I could be healthier, more energetic—but at whose expense? Every body has a given life span, like a warranty, and if I take good care of mine, maybe I can extend its service lifetime.” He shrugged. “Regardless, I’m satisfied with the body I was given at birth. No regrets.”
Later, Teresa helped him back out into the sunlight, away from the skyscraper’s maintenance corridors. Arthur looked bone weary, his feet dragging and his shoulders slumped. The fresh air seemed to do him no good. He urged her to be off, to complete more deliveries for the day. “Go. I don’t want you to get in trouble on my account.”
Teresa hugged him gently, afraid she might break his old body. “I’m worried about you, Arthur. You need to rest.”
He waved her off. “Okay, I’ll take a nap. Don’t worry—I’ll be fine.”
She left him at the fountain, hurrying to pick up another load of bouquets for the afternoon deliveries. The old man was too tired to watch her go.