“I would not have changed the smallest thing,” Tesla announced to the audience of sick pigeons huddled in his room, small and unadorned, situated on the thirty-third floor of the massive Hotel New Yorker.

Thirty-three was a very good number, being easily divisible by three.

“Except, perhaps…an heir would have been nice. Someone to pass my knowledge to. If I had a son, I suppose I would have named him…oh, dear. Seraphina!”

His oldest companion fluttered her wings and lost many white feathers.

“I’ve told you everything, darling. And you’ve understood, haven’t you? If only you were capable of finishing my work! Or at least funding it, heh… Alas, it is my fault for choosing a life of celibacy, but who could accomplish what I have—I ask you, who?—with a woman around, much less a child? Besides, I am responsible for the death of one child already. I dared not be entrusted with another.”

The old pigeon pecked at the dresser, and Tesla smiled at the rebuke. “Dane, my brother. It was I who caused his fall from the horse, my jealousy. I believe that. My wicked thoughts caused it.”

Seraphina pecked again, louder.

“But it’s true! That is how powerful thoughts can be. Especially mine. That is why you are here, you know? I’ve always broadcast my signal to you, wherever I have travelled. And you have always found me.”

Seraphina blinked at him, signaling her agreement. And her love.

“I love you, too.” He strolled slowly across the room to stroke her back. “Now prepare yourself, for tonight I shall make my final confession to you.”

*

“Where is your pretty new secretary?” John O’Neil asked. Tesla was allowing the bashful Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter to follow him around, for O’Neil was penning a biography with a working title “Prodigal Genius.”

“Miss Haveck is off today—”

“I’m not!” she called from the front office. Like her boss, she was gifted with above average hearing, as well as being endowed with other heightened physical attributes.

“Such an eligible bachelor as yourself,” O’Neil whispered, “hiring such pretty girls. People will talk.”

“People always talk,” the inventor said, striding across the room as his biographer raced to keep up. “Tesla creates! I have no time for dalliances with my staff, be they pretty females or…” He cut himself short.

“Or?”

“Nothing. If your work is to be so involved with my personal life, find another subject. This is meant to be about science not slander. I wish the world to know of my deeds. What else matters? My father was a married priest, and I, a celibate sinner. Electricity is my jealous mistress. She allows no other.”

“You’re a man,” O’Neil sputtered. “No joe can hold out forever with such specimens in daily proximity, togged to the bricks...”

It was the final straw. “Mr. O’Neil, if you wish to utilize such slang, I advise you to ‘make tracks.’” Tesla escorted the rash reporter out, almost grabbing him by the arm in a fit of anger. But of course he stopped himself from actually doing so, for the inventor did not like touching others…

…or being touched by others.

Miss Haveck sat upright at her station, smirking as O’Neil was ushered out. She waited for instruction as Tesla slammed the door, turned, looked at her and blushed.

They were alone.

“At least he didn’t call me a tomato,” she said.

“Yes. Well, thank you, that is all for tonight.” With a flourish, he bowed and waved his hand to the coat rack. “Away with you now, to wherever you spend your evenings in the Apple.”

“And where do you think that might be?”

He straightened to his full height. “I meant no offense, ma’am.”

“For the record, I’m not spending my free time in clip joints and gin mills. I go home and read Dickens.”

“Do you?”

Rising from behind her desk, she smoothed the front of her conservative dress. Unlike many women who had interviewed for the position, she worn no jewelry or pearls, and affected none of the effeminate mannerisms he found so annoying. It was as if she’d done her research and known exactly what he looked for in a model employee.

She was simple, a throwback to an earlier time.

She reminded him of home.

Green eyes locked with his blue ones—a game of chicken. Who would look away first?

Neither did.

“I hate to see you work so late,” she ventured. “Even here hard at it when I return to duty the next morning.”

“I require little rest and less sleep. Two hours a night generally suffices.” Tesla squared his black-suited shoulders. “When ‘hard at it,’ I can go all night.”

“Can you?” Her fingers pressed down her dress again, though no dress could stay straight on so curved a mantle. She took a step, then another, toward him, flaxen hair gleaming under the hanging bulbs. “Would it trouble you…I mean, would it disturb you if I stayed a while longer? To watch?”

Tesla felt the blood rushing up to his ears. Taking a portentous step forward, he replied, his voice deeper than usual. “I’m a tad behind the grind this evening, due to the prattling of that reporter. However, dear lady, while you shall indeed be a distraction, you will never be a disturbance.”

The verbal ballet went on until at last the inventor felt compelled to ask, “Are you aware that I am in my fifties?”

“Yet spry as a university lad. So your peculiar diet keeps you?”

He laughed. “Doesn’t everyone perform measurements of their portions of food before consuming them?”

She was close enough to reach out and grab him…and he let her.

“Aren’t you cute as a bug’s ear, Nick. No, I don’t think anyone on this earth performs anything quite as uniquely as you. But…how about we run some further tests to see?”

*

Seraphina dozed under his gentle strokes as the recollections of Miss Haveck came to an end. He had confided what he’d harbored for decades. He had been celibate his whole life, except on one single occurrence and afterwards he’d been unable to perform any viable work for days, finding himself pausing to stare—actually, to ogle—her at work.

Once he’d asked her where she was from, believing he’d detected a trace of an accent.

A well-concealed trace.

“You’re an immigrant, like me?”

“Aren’t we all?” she’d replied. She’d been born Russian but moved with her mother before Czar Nicholas and his family were butchered. Tesla nodded at the tragedy; the entire royal family gunned down in cold blood…

He’d apologized then, for he realized with great embarrassment he’d forgotten her first name! He did have a large staff, but good manners were such an important part of his persona, he could hardly forgive himself.

She brushed it aside, reminding him gently that her first name was Ambrosia.

Ambrosia Haveck.

It was possible that he loved her. So he forced himself to fire her, using the justification that her foreign background could pose a security risk to his work. He couldn’t focus around her, and in his line of work, focus was all.

Over the decades hence, he would slip into states of melancholy of their tryst, the single most frightening, thrilling experience of his life, save perhaps seeing his great dynamos fire up at Niagara Falls. He’d remained celibate, and did not regret that decision. Luxurious distractions were disallowed, no exceptions.

Still, in old age he wondered how it would’ve been to have fathered a child…

“Yes, sleep dearest,” he cooed, holding his fragile bird closer, rocking her like a baby. “Now, as I was saying—if I would have had a son—the name Paris would have been suiting. I always cherished that city so.”