Me, Becca, a Ping-Pong table. Defeating the guys. I am in my childhood heaven.
Okay, defeating the guy, singular. Not guys, plural. Defeating Justin, to be exact. It is very satisfying. And unlike twelve-year-old boys, Justin doesn’t tell us that we won only because of my freakish height or because of Becca’s tricky serve or because he wasn’t really trying.
“You two are good!” he says, at twenty-one to nineteen. This is the second game he’s lost to that score.
He doesn’t mention that maybe we won because we were playing two against one. I point this out.
“Right! Let’s not forget that,” Justin says, laughing.
“Oh, I think we could put some other guy across the table with you and still beat both your pants off,” Becca crows.
There’s no other guy around to draft into this challenge. We’re the only ones in the rec room of the Franklin Grove Community Hall.
“Another time,” Justin says.
I introduced Becca and Justin this afternoon for the first time. They like each other, I think. Sometimes he seems a little surprised by—let’s see, what shall I call it?—her assertiveness. Not bothered by it, not at all. Just mildly surprised, and maybe amused, too. I understand. Becca’s earnestness can be kind of funny. For sure, it helps keep her assertiveness from having sharp elbows.
Justin is earnest in his own way, too, which I’m finding kind of funny also, and also kind of—appealing. Before we came to the community hall this afternoon to bat around the Ping-Pong ball, we met up at my house. Justin walked in with a small grocery sack.
“I come bearing gifts,” he said.
“I like him already,” Becca said.
“Gifts of food,” Justin added.
“Oh,” Becca said.
He set the bag on the kitchen table. “Five kiwis, three mangoes, and a pineapple.” He unpacked them, one piece at a time.
“Fruit! I’m very touched. Thank you,” I said.
“Not just any fruit,” he said. “These are among the top low-pesticide fruits out there. In light of our conversation last week at the coffee shop, I thought I’d, um, I thought you’d like—”
He was distracted because Becca was holding up a kiwi and a mango like she’d never seen them before.
“Pay no attention to me,” she said. “I’m just looking to see if maybe you’re hiding chocolates inside of them.”
“Pay no attention to her,” I said. “Thank you for the pesticide-free fruit.”
“Low-pesticide fruit,” Justin said. “I don’t know if a pesticide-free fruit exists in our grocery stores.”
We peeled three kiwis and two mangoes, and halved the pineapple.
“Good,” Becca said, popping a pineapple chunk. “I’m sorry I made fun of your fruit, Justin.”
“That’s okay. I have a thick skin,” he said. And pointedly looked at the peelings in the sink, waiting.
Becca and I groaned.
“That may be the only pun I think of all year,” Justin said.
Taking a break from our serious table tennis competition, Becca and I rally the ball back and forth. Justin stands at the side of the table and tosses us new balls when we hit out of bounds.
“So I hesitate to ask this, Justin, but …,” Becca says.
“As if you ever hesitate to ask anything.” I laugh.
“This passion for pesticide-free fruit that you two share—”
“I don’t think it’s fair to say Danielle shares it,” Justin says. “I think she’s just been polite.”
“Excuse me, I can speak for myself,” I say.
“Okay, speak,” Becca says.
“Yeah, no, I’m not passionate about fruit,” I say. “I like fruit, though.” I silently mouth to Justin, “Sorry.”
“I’m not holding it against you,” he says.
“So, then,” Becca says, “Justin, your passion for pesticide-free fruit …”
“Jeez, that makes it sound pretty, um, peculiar,” he says. “It’s really more an interest in …”
And he gives a little speech on toxins in our food and water supply. Becca’s interested, especially when Justin mentions some journalists who apparently are famous for their writings on environmental issues like these.
“So you don’t just have a thing about fruit,” Becca says.
He laughs. “No, I also have a thing about water.”
By now, Becca and I have stopped hitting the ball back and forth, and we’re sprawled on the shabby chairs in the lounge. I think the community hall gets its furniture from neighbors who donate stuff they don’t want anymore.
“Did you see the movie Erin Brockovich?” Justin asks us.
Becca turns to me and bugs her eyes out.
“Did I see it?” I say. “You mean, did I memorize it. I’ve seen it twelve times.”
“At least,” Becca chimes in.
“Really?” Justin says. “Why?”
“I thought it was so cool, what she did,” I said. “Figuring out what made all those people in that town in California sick….”
“Toxic substances in their drinking water,” Justin said. “That was my point.”
Yes. I hadn’t made the connection between his government paper and my hero-worship of Erin Brockovich.
“Danielle’s going to go to law school to become Erin Brockovich’s boss,” Becca says.
Justin smiles, but looks puzzled.
“Becca’s got it all planned out,” I say. “She’s going to be a big-time investigative journalist. And I’m going to be a big-time lawyer battling the forces of evil. According to Becca.”
“But ‘Erin Brockovich’s boss’?” he asks.
“Because she was a law clerk, not an actual lawyer,” Becca explains. “And wouldn’t you rather be the lawyer making the decisions—telling the law clerk what to do—”
“Because I’m so talented at telling people what to do,” I interrupt her.
“—cross-examining witnesses in court, making arguments before a jury?”
“Now, those are really my strengths, aren’t they,” I say.
Justin is still looking puzzled. He doesn’t know about my illustrious history of public speaking. It hasn’t come up.
“They could be your strengths,” Becca says. “I know you have it in you.”
“Well, Erin Brockovich was definitely as important, or more important, than any lawyer in that case,” Justin says. “She was the one who led the investigation and figured out it was hexavalent chromium in the groundwater that caused cancer in all those people. And that it was the power company leaking the chromium into the ground.”
Even Becca can’t argue with that.
“But, I mean, if you want to be a lawyer,” Justin says to me, “you should go for it. I can see it. I can see you making closing arguments.”
“It’s all settled, then,” Becca says. “How about you, Justin? An environmental lawyer?”
“I’m more interested in the science side,” he says. “Like bio-engineering. Or chemical engineering. There’s this thing called bioremediation, where you use bacteria to clean up poisons in water and in the earth.”
This is what Justin mentioned that day we had coffee.
“There are bacteria that will basically eat toxic substances,” he continues. “Even hexavalent chromium, the stuff in Erin Brockovich. They eat the poisons, digest them, and what’s left is water plus a harmless gas.”
“Magic,” I say.
“Really complicated magic,” he says. “Because it’s not easy to figure out what bacteria will work. If you get it wrong, they eat the poisons, yeah, but then digest them into another type of poison.”
“Black magic,” I say.
“And even once you find the right bacteria,” Justin says, “you’ve got to make sure conditions are right for them to stay alive. Without the right temperature, without the right amounts of oxygen and nutrients, they’ll just die.”
He gets so earnest and lit up when he talks about this. But as soon as the words “they’ll just die” are out of his mouth, he turns somber. He looks at me apologetically.
Ah, the problem of mentioning life and death in front of Danielle.
“Guys, it’s okay,” I say. “People are going to talk about living and dying. You don’t have to worry about me falling apart just because someone says something about dying. Especially when the subject is bacteria.”
They smile, a little.
“Just trying to be sensitive,” Justin says.
“I know.”
“It would be fine if you did fall apart,” Becca says. “Especially around your friends. Around me, to be specific, who has known you a long time. No offense, Justin.”
“None taken.”
We sit there in silence for a few moments. I know that when Becca realizes I’m not taking this strand of our conversation any further, she’ll move on.
And she does.
“So, Justin, how’d you get interested in all that?” Becca asks him. “In toxic whoevers and bio-whatevers.”
Justin thinks for a moment. “I guess I’m just a nerdy science guy.” He smiles, big.
Yes, his earnestness is definitely appealing. His smile is definitely not nerdy.
Becca gets up from her chair. “Feel like getting clobbered again?” she asks. “In Ping-Pong, I mean.”
Justin picks up the paddles. He offers one to me and one to Becca, extending them handles-first.
“You think you can beat me again?” he says. “Get a grip.” And waits.
We react in the only way you can to a bad pun, which is by groaning.