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does.”
    “Or,” suggested Nick, “they don’t like what it does and they want to get rid of it.”
    “Either way,” Caitlin said, before taking another sip, “someone should check it out.”
    Nick interpreted “someone” to mean “not her.” And he couldn’t blame her. After all, Mitch and even Petula were a part of this, too. But it seemed like Nick and
Caitlin had been doing all the heavy lifting, with or without gravity reduction. And then there was Vince, who hadn’t been involved lately, for obvious reasons.
    Nick said nothing for an uncomfortable moment, and Caitlin shifted as if about to get up.
    “Well, I’ve got homework,” she said.
    Nick stopped her. “Caitlin,” he said, “I’ve been thinking.” He tried his best to maintain eye contact, but somehow that had been easier to do with the weightless
casaba man. “Yeah, I was thinking,” he repeated.
    She looked at him expectantly.
    “If we’re not going to go hunting for more stuff this weekend…” he continued, “I mean, you know, stuff from my attic—I mean Tesla’s stuff—not
that I don’t like doing that…I mean, I don’t, but it’s okay when I’m doing it with you—”
    “Nick,” Caitlin said gently, “you’re babbling.”
    This interrupted his train of thought, which, he had to admit, was more like a train wreck. “What I mean to say is that I know how you like funny foreign films that end badly, and
My
Big Swedish Funeral
is playing downtown.”
    “Are you asking me out on a date?” Caitlin asked with unbearable bluntness.
    “Well…yeah. I guess.”
    “You
guess
? Or you
are
?”
    Nick took a deep breath. “I am.”
    “Oh,” said Caitlin. “Okay.”
    “Okay, yes? Or okay, you’re acknowledging that I just asked you out on a date?”
    “The second, I think.”
    “You
think
? Or you
are
?”
    Caitlin took a deep breath, which was not a good sign. “Nick,” she began, “we’re in the middle of something really important. Going out on a date would…complicate
things, don’t you think?”
    Nick felt his ears turning red, and he hoped his cheeks weren’t turning red as well. “I think complicated is good.”
    Caitlin’s shoulders sagged.
    “Unless,” Nick said, perhaps a little more belligerently than he meant to, “your heart is still set on Theo.”
    She looked at him as if he’d just slapped her. “It’s not that, and you know it.”
    “Do I?”
    He could see Caitlin struggling for words.
Good,
he thought,
let her struggle. If she’s going to turn me down, let it be as hard for her as it was for me to ask.
    “I’m just not sure how I feel about it.”
    Nick got up with so much force that his chair slid backward across the kitchen floor. He wanted to storm out, but he realized that this was his house, and storming out would be weird. So he just
stood there.
    “Well,” he said, “maybe you should get Tesla’s tape recorder so it can tell you how you feel.”
    Caitlin rose from her chair. “That,” she said, “was uncalled for.”
    She turned and stormed out far more effectively than Nick would have.
    Nick resolved not to feel bad about what he’d said, and not to regret having asked her to the movies. Their friendship had grown since those first difficult days. It had survived the near
end of the world. Was it too much to ask that their friendship take on a new dimension?
    Now that Caitlin was gone, Nick returned to the attic and stood alone in front of Tesla’s machine.
    He was hurt by Caitlin’s rejection, but, somehow, being with the machine made him feel a little bit better. He couldn’t explain its grip on him. How, when he was near it, he had the
urge to crawl inside it. To become a part of it. It now occupied that strange gravitational vortex in the center of his attic—the spot where he used to sit when the room was empty. Being
there had made him feel like he was at the center of all things, but more importantly, at the center of himself. He couldn’t get to