A Regular Guy by Mona Simpson

retirement benefits, Owens had told him. Even his father called to talk about Owens’ sister, and she needed money too.
    “So what about your work?” Noah asked. “How’s Genesis?”
    Owens looked at his friend in a way that was intended to impart meaning. He touched Noah’s shoulder. Noah was lower to the groundand neither of them ever completely forgot that. “I want to talk to you about that. Let’s get some coffee.”
    “Sometime you have to let me make you coffee.” Noah had never once succeeded in getting Owens to accept his hospitality. And among his building’s labs and department offices, Noah was renowned for his coffee. Two secretaries came with their own mugs and a carton of milk every afternoon. Kaskie was a man beloved by secretaries. Yesterday they’d brought biscotti from the lesbian bakery. Lesbians are good bakers; why is that? A womanish thing. He remembered the girl on the bike, head on her friend’s back.
    Owens stopped in front of the old Alta church. Cool air veiled out of the open door. “I’d like to get married here someday,” he said, although he’d never attended a service. It waited, orderly and still, the pews symmetrical, the altar plain, evenly patched light from the windows the only ornament. “At five or six o’clock on a summer evening.” Suddenly, he turned to his friend. “Where do you think you’ll get married?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. Justice of the peace, probably.”
    “I can imagine meeting a woman and being married in a month, if I really knew.” Owens was always talking about love as if Olivia factored nowhere in it. It was Noah’s part to remind him of her existence. The name was met with a sigh.
    “You know, one of my considerations is, I have to think: what would Olivia be like as a First Lady? And I’d have to say the answer is: not great.”
    Noah doubted very much that his friend would marry anytime soon.
    Once, the girl in college had said she loved him. He asked her if she’d said that before, and she’d laughed softly. “Yeah, a lot,” she admitted. And it had ended after only a few weeks. Even when she’d been with him, Kaskie felt amazed, incredulous, that someone so exquisite could love him. He had never gotten used to it. Maybe she didn’t, he realized now, maybe she only said so.
    The two men followed the soft, palm-lined road that led to Alta’s small downtown. They passed the old movie house, which had been restored by the heir of the Valley Electronics Company; it was shinyand polished, with an outsized marquee. Then they were at the Pantheon, which had great coffee made with Italian machines but a manager who didn’t like Owens. He had once tried to bring in a bagel and they’d had a loud altercation, with Owens lowering his voice for the final, gentle statement: “Probably it’d be a lot better for business if someone else had your job, somebody with a very different approach.” At that time, Owens was already a local celebrity, and a number of customers clapped. The manager had never been popular because he chased out young girls on roller skates when they came to buy their ices after school.
    But this morning, teenagers worked the counter and quiet organ music shelved down from speakers on the ceiling. The coffee was served in thick brown cups.
    “So I have something to talk to you about,” Owens said. “I think we found a neurotrophin that can regenerate brains. We’re in monkey trials now. Parkinson’s isn’t going anywhere.” He shrugged. “Unless we make it. I’d like you to come work with us.”
    This wasn’t the first time he’d offered Noah a job. Noah had no plans of accepting, but he was still glad to be asked. He let Owens go on until a salary was named.
    “Whoa, don’t tempt me. Listen, I really appreciate it, but I like what I’m doing.”
    “See, in a couple years, we’d give you a new building and you’d have your own team and you could revolutionize biology. You could leapfrog ten years