(Written by Bennett Joshua Davlin in chapter 4 of his novel: Mem-(o)ré)
“You needs some romance,†she urged.
“What he needs is to get layed,†thick hands hugged him from behind.
He smelled Max’s “Old Spice†cologne before he saws the aging man smiling at him. Max Lichtenstein was his mother’s closest colleague at MIT. Blue eyed with a full head of gray hair, the fifty five year old man radiated warmth. His hug wasn’t as tight as it used to be either. But even through his sweater, Max’s fit chest still hinted at the college running back that existed now only in faded, old photos.
But the game was still one of his great passions.
Taylor remembered a thousand NFL Sundays, when he and his mom would visit Max and his wife, Barbara. All of them on the couch rooting for The Cowboys. The professor was originally from Texas. Sometimes Carol would come over—she was Patriots all the way. Taylor remembered after the games, an endless stream of Sunday evenings when they would sit in lawn-chairs in the Max’s backyard. Max loved to point up at the stars and explain the true state of the universe to Taylor. A place so massive that neutrinos and atoms were meaningless. As a theoretical physicist, Max’s universe teamed with hundreds of billions of galaxies dotting the dark cosmos like grains of sand. His words were so powerful that they almost made you feel like you were staring through the eye of God.
