Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 20:44:37 -0000
From: Beverly Taff <bevanhulse@totalise.co.uk>
Subject: Two by Two   Chapter 1

Two by Two.
Chapter 1.

Steve and Vicky each believed they had finally made it.
They could now consider themselves successful.      Not
financially you understand, but academically.     They
had both newly been appointed to professorships at a
prestigious university after both having succeeded in
some vital research in their respective fields.   Their
respective individual researches were beginning to
receive acclaim throughout the field of medicine.
     Steve had just been appointed as professor of human
physiology whilst Vicky had been elected to the chair of
vetinary surgery.
     They met at the university the very first time in
their early thirties after long years of research at
different universities all over the country.      During
those early years they had buried all other interests in
pursuit of their respective disciplines.        It was
only after gaining their respective professorships in the
same year that they had finally begun once more to
explore other aspects of their lives.   Both now felt
they had at last arrived after long years buried in
basement laboratories and operating theatres.   .
     The two become acquainted with each other after the
inaugural ceremonies as they were circulating at the
garden party.   Steve was turning to leave a group and
accidentally knocked Vicky's plate out of her hand as she
was walking by.
     It was not love at first sight.    Steve lacked many
social graces and after apologising cursorily, he stood
awkwardly silent for long seconds instead of helping her
to clear up the mess.    Eventually, he recognised his
blunder and quickly stooped to recover the paper plate.
His next blunder was to gather some of the unbroken cakes
and offer them to her as she tried to wipe the stain of
her professorial gown.
     "I can get that cleaned." Offered Steve brusquely as
he stood proffering the recovered plate.
     "It's no bother.   It was an accident.      There,
it's almost gone.   A bit of cold water later and it'll
be OK."
     Steve still stood holding out the plate.
     "I won't be needing that now, will I?    She scolded
indignantly as she picked some tiny gravely bits out of
the exuding cream of a crumpled pastry puff.     "Here,
you'd better give it to those squirrels."
     Steve shook his head stupidly.   'Of course, it was
stupid to offer the spoiled food.   No woman in her right
mind would have eaten stuff off the floor.'
     That single action was an indicator of how far Steve
had sunk in the slobbery scale.
     Buried deep in his researches, he had been living
such a slobbish bachelor existence he had virtually lost
all contact with women.   Indeed, he had almost lost all
contact with his fellow man as he laboured away with his
research.

     Since leaving high school, his whole adult life had
been bound by the simple criterion of science and logic.
It had served him well academically, but as an all-round
balanced member of the human race, Steve was a total
failure.   He had turned into a virtual recluse.   Had it
not been for his research and discoveries, the medical
school would have chosen somebody else.      He was an
extremely useful reference agency for any of the medical
faculty who had any physiological problems with any of
their cases.     Steve was a fantastic problem solver and
solution finder.
     Steven however, considered people nothing more than
a distraction.    Once given a problem, he would
disappear into his office, (Which was virtually a second
laboratory,) and nag away at the problem until he cracked
it.    He was truly an asset to the university.
     Steve was neither a misanthropist nor indeed a
misogynist; indeed, as a young student, he had entered
medicine with the most philanthropic ideals.     He did
however consider his disassociation with people to be
justified.      As a nerdy high school student his
bookish tendencies had set him apart and the other
students.    Most had tended to avoid him, tease him or
bully him.    Consequently, Steven was never comfortable
around other people.    He didn't hate them however he
was simply indifferent to them.        It was just, well,
people were a distraction and girls particularly so.
At college he found it better to work with the science of
medicine and its structured order.     The art of
medicine did not really concern him.    Bedside manners
were no longer an issue once he entered research for he
rarely had to bother with patients any more, except to
occasionally take tissue samples.     Then he studied the
samples and tested them as he examined his ideas and
solved others problems.      He had little time for
socialising except to discuss ideas and any new
developments.          Socialising was a luxury he did
not let himself indulge.    He found the effort to
indulge in small talk and polite conversation to be
tedious.   He thought many academics to be too thin-
skinned and jealous of their achievements and
reputations.
     The easy way that some academics got offended and
carried grudges was too much to countenance.    Their
fragile egos left him disappointed and weary, especially
when they took offence at some real or imagined slight
that they felt Steve might have committed.      The whole
social equation made Steve weary.
     Men he found bad enough, but he thought women seemed
to take it that fragility little bit further.   Oddly,
for him that is, he found most women to be less vain
academically.     There were a few exceptions however and
Steve felt that, if they suffered from any greater
vanity, they often took their academic vanity into their
personal lives.   If they deemed themselves ugly, they
would be jealous of any good lookers and if they were
lookers, they tended to spend too much time on their
appearances.   Steve had often fallen foul of this
particularly female type of vanity and it had left him
puzzled.  His solution was simply to bypass that
particular woman in future.
     On the other hand male vanity was just too boring to
countenance.   Steve would cut a conversation dead if he
suddenly encountered some inflated ego.

     However, it was that peculiar brand of female vanity
that left Steve really baffled.    It had that extra
dimension that took any relationship into a different
realm; a realm he preferred to avoid, a realm of sex and
emotion.     He'd had some bad experiences at high school
and now he stuck to a rigid philosophy; once bitten twice
shy.     What had begun, as a simple teen-aged defence
mechanism had, by his early thirties, become an ingrained
unconscious habit.
     All importantly, appearances or looks counted for
nothing with Steve.   He only related to what the person
said and failed utterly to read a person's body language
or demeanour.    As a social animal, Steve was a total no-
no.   The only time a compliment passed his lips was to
praise a good idea.     Clothes and appearance counted
for nothing and this of course invariably put him
continually in the female sex's bad books.
Consequently he had no time for female vanity.
     'Fine feathers,' he would often muse.   'Or was
there something more.    Something he just couldn't
grasp.    Was woman's extra vanity just a ploy?'  He
often wondered.
     To avoid these complications and keep his life
simple, he avoided people generally and women in
particular.    Steve simply stared through women as
though they were pieces of glass, unless of course, they
had something intelligent or astute to say.
     'Hell hath no fury,' he usually surmised defensively
as he almost invariably stared straight through the woman
in front of him.
     Vicky, the offended woman who now stood in front of
Steve, was getting exactly this treatment after the plate
incident.
     Other men who thought they new about these things
considered Vicky a real beauty.  Her stunning good looks
and spectacular figure had already turned heads and
broken hearts throughout every vetinary faculty she had
ever worked in.
     Vicky had expected the same tiresome response from
the clumsy lummox who had scattered her plate but she was
surprised.     After always having to gently scrape men
off her arm, (and her body), then drag their gaze back
from her cleavage to her face, then finally let their
egos down gently, Vicky was mildly relieved to find an
individual that simply did not appear to react to her
stunning beauty.     Vicky knew the normal male reaction
when she saw it, it showed in men's eyes and even the
most suave and sophisticated could not hide the glint of
anticipation in their eyes nor the inevitable drop of
their sightline to her cleavage.
     This big stupid lummox however was totally
impervious to her charms.
     Women appeared almost alien to Steve.   He had only
moved to the university a few weeks earlier and this was
the first time he had met any socially.    The garden
party after his and Vicky's installation was the first
time he had met the whole academic caucus.
     Nearly every woman on the academic staff had been
put off by his untidy, unkempt appearance.    But even if
he noticed, (which was not often,) it bothered him
little.    It served to keep that essential distance
between him and his fellows and permitted him to pursue
his researches unimpeded by emotional entanglements.
     Even his new professorial apartment already
reflected Steve's unkempt habits.    He had only occupied
it for those same couple of weeks but already it was a
virtual pigsty.
     He had already instructed the cleaner to stay away
from the kitchen for that had already become an extension
of his lab.
     The accident in the garden party exactly reflected
all this about Steve.     He was holding the paper plate
and appearing to stare through the woman in front of him
as he scanned for a waste bin.    There was none nearby
so without a word he decided to follow the woman's
suggestion.   Without a word he turned abruptly towards
the bushes where the two squirrels were rooting through
the fallen leaves.    As several members of the staff
turned to watch, he threw the two cakes towards a pair of
squirrels.    The pair flicked their tails eagerly and
needed no second invitation.    They shot forward and
immediately seized the trophies.   `    Steve watched and
smiled as the pair chattered and squabbled over the
titbits.    Then, after studying their antics for a few
moments, he concluded they were a courting pair and
deemed it to be of no further interest.     Already the
incident with the plate and the woman was long forgotten
so he did not return to offer any further any apology.
     Without further ado, he strolled off paper plate
still in his hand, to address an idea that had been
exercising his mind since talking to the group.
     Vicky watched him stroll unconcernedly away then she
shook her head and shrugged her shoulders as she joined
the group.
     "You must forgive Steve," offered one of the other
professors.    "He's an oddball, but a brilliant mind."
     Vicky nodded sagely as she kept her own ideas to
herself.
     'Brilliant he may be but a total idiot socially,'
she thought.      'For all that supposed intelligence, he
seemed to be utterly dysfunctional.   Bereft of social
skills and more than a bit scruffy.      Still, not bad
looking,' she thought, 'under that wild thatch of hair
and ridiculous worn out tweed jacket.'   She watched him
strolling away and studied him further.    'Even the
professorial gown seemed to somehow look out of place on
him.   It only added to the strangeness of his appearance
instead of bestowing authority and respect.'
     Vicky returned to the table and loaded another plate
before resuming her socialising.     The strange doctor
however, would not leave her mind.