The Lab Bunny Experiment

"If you stop being our lab bunny, then what will you do?"

She laughed. "Live a normal life?"

"Get married?"

"I'm already married."

"What?" I propped myself up on my elbow. The idea that there might be another man in her life, a husband, no less, had never occurred to me.

"Don't worry about it. We're separated. When my grandmother was destroyed, it put a lot of psychological stress on me. I stopped being much of a wife to Rob so he left. I don't blame him. I was in terrible shape. We don't see each other much any more. He's living with another woman. He'll want to marry her eventually so it's only a matter of time until we make our divorce official."

If she was willing to share personal information with me, then I had another question. "I've been wondering about something."

"Yes?"

"How do you support yourself? Are you independently wealthy?"

"No. I work. I sell real estate. I'm pretty good at it. It's a good career for a lab bunny. Mostly I show houses in the evenings and on weekends. I simply don't schedule appointments at the same time that I have appointments here with you guys."

"I think I love you." I blurted it out without thinking.

There was a long silence, then she leaned over and kissed me. "That's so sweet. I can't tell you that I love you back. This whole arrangement has been really confusing for me. I like all of you in different ways. You, I like a lot. An awful lot. Maybe it's love or maybe just deep affection. Like I said, I don't know. I do know one thing, though. If I had to choose just one of you over the others, you'd be the one that I'd choose. By a long shot."

"You'd choose me?"

"No question about it." She looked into my eyes. "You know something else?"

"What?"

"I'd choose you over my ex-husband, too. He wasn't a bad guy. I loved him when I married him. But you've become something special to me."

"Special enough to marry me?"

She laughed. "Special enough to move to California with you and find out if we can love each other full time."

"You'd do that?"

"If you wanted me to. You can think about it."

"Okay. I'll think about it. There. I've thought about it. I want you to come with me more than anything else in the world."

She hugged me tight. "I guess today is the day that I stop being the lab bunny."

"I only have one other question."

"What's that?"

"What's your name?"

She laughed. "Belinda. Belinda Fergus. But you want to know something funny?"

"What?"

"My friends have called me Bunny ever since I was in grade school. I like being called Bunny better than Belinda."

That was six years ago.

Today, when people ask how I met my wife, I tell them that I met her back in our lab at Carnegie Mellon when I was a student and she was a visiting researcher. Bunny smiles and agrees.

She should. It's the truth.

And when I'm not in my lab and she's not out selling seaside mansions, we're in bed, soaring from one heavenly cloud to another.

I've concluded that there's no limit to the joy a man and woman can discover right here on earth if they experiment a little.

The only problem is that Bunny loves to ring the doorbell before she comes into the house. She never ceases to be amused by my involuntary response. Seeing how long she can maintain my Pavlovian conditioning is her personal ongoing research project.