{"id":287,"date":"2005-01-22T10:29:30","date_gmt":"2005-01-22T18:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/wordpress\/?p=287"},"modified":"2005-01-22T10:29:30","modified_gmt":"2005-01-22T18:29:30","slug":"scene-from-imathematicians-in-lovei","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2005\/01\/22\/scene-from-imathematicians-in-lovei\/","title":{"rendered":"Scene from <i>Mathematicians in Love<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#039;ve been working on <i>Mathematicians in Love<\/i> the last couple of weeks and it&#039;s going well.<\/p>\n<p>I wrote a funny scene yesterday.  The narrator Bela is meeting up with his girlfriend Alma and her parents outside the Greek Theater at UC Berkeley right after Alma&#039;s commencement ceremenony.  Alma&#039;s parents are from Santa Cruz&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>****<\/p>\n<p>        &ldquo;This is my friend Bela,&rdquo; said Alma.  &ldquo;And these are my parents Gary and Sarah.  Bela and his friend Paul have been letting me live in their apartment.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>        &ldquo;Yo,&rdquo; said Gary Ziff.  He had long curly hair hanging down like a welcome mat, a walrus mustache, and a Hawaiian shirt.  I made him for a parrot head.  Sure enough he lit up a joint, right there on the street.<\/p>\n<p>        &ldquo;Gary,&rdquo; said Alma.  She called her parents by their first names.   She looked very cute in her white graduation robe and mortar-board, which set off her dark eyes and intense features.<\/p>\n<p>        &ldquo;Hey, we&rsquo;re in Berkeley,&rdquo; said Gary.  &ldquo;This is a party town.  I used to come up here in high-school and freakin&rsquo; run wild.  Want a hit, Bela?&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>        I waved him off.  I was feeling buzzed enough from the wine, the emotions, and the weeks of over-mathing.<\/p>\n<p>        &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll shotgun you,&rdquo; said Gary, rounding his lips and blowing a stream of smoke my way.  &ldquo;It&rsquo;s my special Ziff-zone mix.  I put termite powder in it.&rdquo;  I accidentally caught a pungent whiff and felt instantly dizzy. &ldquo;Doin&rsquo; my job,&rdquo; added Gary.  &ldquo;I&rsquo;m an exterminator.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>        &ldquo;Make him stop, Sarah,&rdquo; said Alma.<\/p>\n<p>        Sarah Ziff was a stocky woman with a short ponytail, her hair black with gray at the roots.  She had a sweet doughy face behind her pointy black cats-eye shades.  But now, hearing Alma&rsquo;s distress, her mouth formed a fierce expression.<\/p>\n<p>        &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t.  Ruin.  The day,&rdquo; she said to Gary, drawing back her lips to reveal teeth like corn kernels.  She clamped her hand onto his shoulder and gave him a shake with each word.<\/p>\n<p>        &ldquo;Whoah,&rdquo; said Gary.  He took a few steps back, did one more toke, then pinched out his joint and dropped the roach in his pocket.  &ldquo;Bring the band down behind me, boys.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I think it&rsquo;s time to feed him,&rdquo; said Sarah, folding her expression into sweetness again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#039;ve been working on Mathematicians in Love the last couple of weeks and it&#039;s going well. I wrote a funny scene yesterday. The narrator Bela is meeting up with his girlfriend Alma and her parents outside the Greek Theater at UC Berkeley right after Alma&#039;s commencement ceremenony. Alma&#039;s parents are from Santa Cruz&#8230; **** &ldquo;This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}