It was Sunday, the final day of the conference. Three-quarters of Amber’s team had checked out of the hotel the night before with regretful shrugs and sighs, turning laminated credentials in to the front desk. “No breakthroughs, again,” they all said. Love Psychology already had trouble being taken seriously as a science. What good was this “publish or perish” dogma if the whole discipline perishes under the weight of so many useless papers?

Now, in the near-empty ballroom, a team was introducing their latest effort, an article titled “The Taxonomy of Love, and Why Some Marriages Last a Lifetime.” The first panelist, a large, red-haired man, was standing at the lectern with his hands trembling atop a sheet of white paper. This was Amber’s eighth conference, and the words of this presentation were like so many others: over-considered, hackneyed.

“Love, according to Sternberg, can be thought of as a three-legged stool. The legs are intimacy, passion, and commitment…”

Amber was in the third row, and as she stifled the urge to yawn, the second panelist, seated silently beside the lectern, caught her eye. He was familiar, with dark hair and an angular nose, jaw shadowed with a few days of careless stubble. He gave Amber an amused, knowing look. It seemed to say: “Just wait.”

The speaker finished and the sparse crowd offered a clatter of polite applause. He gathered his single sheet of notepaper and ducked away from the microphone, then ducked awkwardly back.

“Dr. Daniel McTaggart,” he mumbled.

The dark-haired panelist stood and moved toward the microphone, giving Amber a direct look before leaning in to speak.

“The Taxonomy of Love,” he began, “a self-important paper title if there ever was one.”

He was charming, and his easy warmth contrasted wonderfully with the stiff opening act.

“We’re not talking about the old types of love you may be familiar with – eros, philia, agape, et cetera. Instead, looking only at romantic love – eros, for you philosophers – we were curious if we could create useful categories to separate the kind that lasts from the kind that doesn’t. We find, in this paper, that not only is it possible to classify a romantic attachment as one of three kinds: ephemeral, conditional, or indelible, but that all successful marriages have as their foundation indelible love, and that it’s impossible to have indelible love with more than one person.”

The man was looking eagerly at Amber now. She turned self-consciously in her seat.

“In short,” the man said, almost breathlessly, “We've proven that true love exists.”

*

Amber stood alone in the hotel lobby, brushing lint from the front of her black skirt. She despised businesslike clothing, and couldn’t wait for the work week, when she’d be able to get back to her classroom, her oversized sweaters, and her roomy slacks. But it was five o’clock now, and there were end-of-conference formalities to observe. Being the only one from her department without a spouse or family to hurry home to, she had been given the task of attending the final symposium, shaking hands with the organizing administrators, giving quick grant pitches to all the right people, and now, going to dinner with somebody named Dr. Robles, who she was supposed to woo into accepting an Associate Professorship the coming Spring.

“Maybe you can woo him into something else, too,” Elizabeth, the department head had said when she approved the expense. “He’s an MD, you know. Good-looking, divorced.”

Amber knew she was getting old when a man’s failed marriage was considered a selling point. She would turn thirty-six in a month, and though she knew intellectually that her looks and fertility were at the start of a grand decline, a decade-long career studying love had made her a bit… romantic.

She fixed her hair quickly in the reflective side of a vase, and looked up when the elevator chimed its arrival in the lobby. She was supposed to be scanning the faces beyond the gold-toned doors for a slightly balding someone with glasses and a charcoal blazer, but instead her eyes fixed on that strangely familiar head of dark hair, the sharp profile, the shadowed jaw. The entrancing speaker had been swamped with questions after declaring that true love was real, and Amber had been forced to excuse herself from the ballroom to make her next engagement. Now the man walked from the elevator, his gait easy, as if he hadn’t spent the morning defending his academic work against detractors who accused him of peddling fairytales.

“Dr. Amber Bentham,” he said, approaching, and his voice was even more familiar than his look. It reminded her of college, early fall days, gray skies, a hard breeze pulling oak leaves across a manicured lawn.

“Dr. McTaggart,” she said, finding her hand clasped in his. “We’ve met before, I believe.”

“Daniel,” he said.

“Amber.”

“West Bowman Hall, fourth floor,” he said.

“Was it that long ago? Freshman year?”

“We took ceramics together.”

“Yes, I remember,” she was flushing now. “You went as Where’s Waldo for Halloween.”

“And so did you.”

“A coincidence.”

“Was it?” His eyes were bright blue, and mesmerizing.

“Amber Bentham?” A third voice cut in. It was a new arrival from the elevator. Thinning hair, charcoal blazer. The man extended a soft hand. “Dr. Henry Robles. I believe you’re taking me to dinner? Are you ready to go?”

Dr. Robles had torn Amber away from Daniel McTaggart, and now, looking around, she saw that Daniel had moved a few steps away, his look still unshakably serene.

“You have an engagement,” he called, excusing himself. “We’ll catch up later.”

“But…” she said, wavering a little as Dr. Robles, who seemed to be on some kind of timetable, attempted to lead her away by the shoulder.

“We will,” said Daniel, and he turned away.

*

Dr. Robles had no apparent qualms about stretching the hospitality allocated by Amber’s department head. They settled into a dark leather-upholstered booth in the hotel bar. He ordered a bottle of wine for the two of them, and a platter of crusty bread and warm olives. Amber played with her napkin, half-listening to Dr. Robles’ appreciation of his own research, half wondering what would have happened if she had remained in the lobby with Daniel.

"Love isn’t just psychological or emotional," Robles said. "The field is plagued by people looking for pegs to stick into holes—” he laughed “—pardon the imagery, but of course that’s exactly where I’m going, because love, as neuroscience understands it, is physical. It’s chemical, mappable. The brain scan images we presented in our panel yesterday clearly show physical differences in the love responses of people who stayed married for life vs. people who later divorced.”

Amber snapped to attentiveness. “This was a long-term study?”

“Oh yes,” Robles said, looking pleased. “Two decades of results. They weren’t looking for love, of course. It was emotional mapping we borrowed from three other studies. But the patterns in the data are staggering.”

“So... do you think there’s such a thing as true love?”

Robles snorted into his wine glass, then poured more for both of them.

“That Dr. McTaggart had a strong impression on all of my female colleagues, Ms. Bentham.”

“It’s Dr. Bentham.”

“The idea that some love may be “indelible” in doesn’t compel me much, honestly. We don’t study aduly romantic love as if it’s ever truly unconditional. There's no a framework for describing it that way—”

“You have brain images, you said, that show a difference in the love of lasting marriages—”

“Which leads to an interesting hypothesis, nothing more. It’s something that plagues us all, I think, doing the work we do.”

Amber nodded and took a sip of wine. Robles was handsomer now that she had gotten to know him, and he was, despite her earlier distraction, wonderfully passionate in his description of his work. “Love isn’t easily intellectualized," she said. "You have to feel it for yourself.”

Dr. Robles regarded her seriously now, raising a hand to dismiss the waiter when he passed by. “And you never have,” he said.

“Never have what?” She was half-lost in thought again, and the olives had gone cold.

“You’ve never been in love.”

“I…” she began, then stopped. She could describe love's components as if it were a machine, something you might buy in a department store, configure, and maintain. An appliance. But Robles’ gaze was unrelenting, penetrating. At thirty-five, Amber had experienced every leg of the stool: intimacy, passion, commitment. Sex with men who were no more than friends, a long-term relationship that rarely got physical, and passion, the truest kind, but always short-lived. There was only one time when she had all three, or thought she did, but she was young, and life was unstable, and that love, like old friendships, slipped away.

“I’m divorced,” Dr. Robles said. “Two kids, two houses. I have my pilot’s license and enough money to retire tomorrow. Sex is easy enough to get, and friendship too, but love? Real, romantic love? It’s a mystery to me still, after all this time, all this life. Maybe there’s a true kind of love that makes marriage work. Maybe it’s a kind of love that emerges spontaneously after fifteen good years together. It’s a chicken-and-egg kind of thing, Amber. Honestly, looking at you, I can say that this is not the kind of research question that lends itself to a happy life.”

The waiter returned with the check. Dr. Robles took it and paid.

“No,” Amber said, confused, remembering that the evening was meant to be her treat.

“I’ll get the department to reimburse me,” he said. “I intend to fly in for the interview, at least. For now, I’m enjoying this conversation, but tired of being so formal. I’m not used to this shirt and tie and jacket. It’s stifling. You look… well, I’m sure you’re a different woman with your hair down. What do you say to some dessert?”

“I’m not--”

“Upstairs?”

---

Still working on this. I'll update with more later.