Chapter 4
“M arge, please!” I shouted, banging on the steering wheel. “No no no no no no! Not today!”
I couldn’t believe this was happening. I was never late for anything, and now I was going to be showing up to work late on my very first day with the excuse of “car trouble.” This was going to look so bad. After the way faculty night had ended, I knew I was skating on razor-thin ice with the Creepmaster General. And now Marge decided to make things even worse for me. I was definitely getting fired.
I got out of the car and ran across the street to Professor Dunbar’s house, pounding on the door to see if he’d already left for work. He was my next-door neighbor who I’d met when the moving van finally showed up a couple of days after my arrival, and he’d graciously helped me move a few of my things in. He was a horticulturist who taught in the agriculture department of the university, and it showed. His small garden at the front of his home was absolutely stunning. I baked him a few of my homemade triple chocolate brownies as a thanks for helping me, and he offered to get my shrubbery looking just as good as his if I promised to bake more goodies for him. I had to concede another pro to California’s column—the people here were a lot friendlier. I don’t think my neighbors would stop to piss on me if I were on fire back in my old neighborhood.
When he didn’t answer, I was about to give up and call for a taxi when suddenly, I saw a familiar face coming out of the townhouse directly across from mine.
My mouth fell open. There was no way.
Dr. Alexsander Strovinski lived in the faculty housing units? I guess it kind of made sense. He wasn’t from this area, and I’m sure wasn’t trying to put down roots in Stanford.
I decided I was going to have to take advantage of this opportunity, even if my ego would have to take a hit.
“Dr. Strovinski!” I called out, rushing over to him. He turned and found the source of the disturbance. He looked so taken aback at the sight of me that I thought he probably didn’t remember who I was and just saw a crazy lady running toward him.
“Dr. Strovinski, hi! I’m Hadley Olivier. I don’t know if you remember me, but we met the other night at the faculty banquet,” I said, a little out of breath.
“I remember you,” he said succinctly. Great . Guess he was still mad about the whole shoulder tap thing that wasn’t even me!
“Well, I was hoping to ask for a favor. You see that car over there taking a cigarette break?” I pointed to poor Marge, who still had black smoke coming from her hood.
“That’s my car, and I really would hate to be late on my first day of work. Could I catch a ride with you? If that’s where you’re heading, of course.”
He stared at me blankly for a few moments, I’m sure trying to decide if I was really crazy or not before he replied, “Okay.”
“Thank you, thank you!” Relief washed through me so much so that I had to hold myself back from throwing my arms around him in a tight hug. Bet that would have gone over about as well as a screen door on a submarine.
“I do have a roommate that I’m waiting for. He should be coming out shortly.”
“No problem! I so appreciate this, you have no idea. I didn’t think I’d have time to call a taxi and still make it there on time.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything further.Maybe he was on some kind of strict word diet because the silence seemed to stretch on and on. I found myself opening and closing my mouth like a confused goldfish, desperately trying to think of something to say.
As the silent standoff continued, my eyes went skyward, searching for someone to save me from the jaws of this awkward monster. I was about to break down and call on the hero of small talk to come and rescue me, but today’s weather would have to wait because I finally saw my savior emerge from the townhouse.
“Well, well, well, who do we have here?” his roommate asked. He looked to be about the same age as Strovinski, but a lot smaller in stature, with a coy smile playing across his face.
“Hey, I’m Hadley,” I said, overjoyed to be with someone who embraced verbal communication. “I was having car trouble this morning, so I asked your roommate for a ride. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Damsel in distress is my favorite kind of damsel.” He extended his hand. “Stuart Benowitz. Pleasure to meet you, my lady.”
I offered mine in return, which he brought to his lips, kissing the back of my hand.I laughed at the corniness of the gesture, knowing in my gut that he was harmless.
“Let’s get going. We don’t want to be late,” Strovinski said tersely.
I was definitely on his bad side. Maybe if I searched high and low, I could find the roadmap to his good side. Then again, it would probably just keep rerouting me to the land of “do not disturb.”
“So, do you guys work together?” I followed them to a shiny, silver Lexus GS that was only a few cars down from my vehicle, which thankfully no longer had smoke wafting from under the hood.
Stuart rushed ahead to grab the door handle to open it for me. “Going on ten years now.”
“And you live together as well?”
Stuart paused, the door hanging open midway. “It’s not what you think.”
I smirked. “I didn’t say anything.”
Stuart’s head whipped towards Strovinski. “I told you people would start to say that about us!”
His roommate seemed totally unbothered by the notion.
“Knew we should have gotten separate places,” Stuart grumbled, opening the door the rest of the way for me.
“Thank you.” I smiled and slid into the front passenger seat at the same time as Strovinski, who still hadn’t said more than a few words.
“Thanks again, Dr. Strovinski. I really appreciate this,” I said, trying to warm him up to me a little.
“Lex is fine.” He put the key in the ignition and adjusted his seat back slightly to make more leg room.
Stuart got into the back seat and slid to the center so he could lean forward between us. “Yes, please! If I have to hear one more person around here say Doctor Strovinski, I’m going to blow my brains out. This is an Ivy League university. We all have doctorates.”
“I don’t have one,” I pointed out.
“Well, what is it you teach?”
“I’ll be teaching music composition to level one freshmen.”
“Oh, so you’re part of the college of fine arts… makes sense. I thought you were a work of fine art when I first saw you.”
That was so cheesy, but I still couldn’t help but smile. “And it makes sense that you’re part of the biology department.”
“Why’s that?” he asked.
“Aren’t there a lot of other tiny organisms there too?”
I turned to see Stuart staring at me deadpan, and I laughed out loud.Technically, he stood about the same height as me, around five-foot-five, but I still had to tease him a bit.
“I’ll have you know dynamite comes in small packages,” he replied, wiggling his eyebrows.
“Are you saying you should come with a warning label?” I asked. “Because I completely agree.”
I spotted the barest flicker of a smile on Strovinski’s lips before he started up the engine, which, unlike mine, was working perfectly.
Stuart fixed me with another blank stare before he turned to Lex. “Where did you say you found this one?”
As soon as Lex started the car, a loud blast of music came through the speakers blaring Cher’s“If I Could Turn Back Time.”
We all jumped as he hurried to shut the music off. There were ten seconds of complete silence before I couldn’t take it anymore. I burst out laughing.
“Smooth, man,” Stuart muttered under his breath.
“My aunt was visiting over the weekend,” he explained. “I let her borrow my car yesterday to go pick up dinner.”
I tried covering my smile when I saw how mortified he looked. “Whatever you say.”
“Stuart can tell you. She stayed with us all weekend.”
“It’s okay to love Cher. She’s an icon. No need to be embarrassed,” I told him.
“Stuart?” he asked, looking for reinforcement.
Stuart clamped a hand on his shoulder. “We all have our passions, Lex. It’s no use hiding them from the world.”
He sighed, giving up the argument with the two of us ganging up on him, and pulled out of the parking lot.
“So Hadley, you’re new to California, right?” Stuart asked, giving Lex a break.
“Yes. I just moved here from New York.”
“Well, we’ve been here for a few months now. We’d love to show you around the city sometime, just so you can get the lay of the land. I mean, unless your boyfriend’s already doing that.”
I smiled, knowing what he was getting at. “Well, with his job, he really doesn’t have time.”
I glanced over to Lex, whose face remained expressionless.
“So you do have a boyfriend… figures,” Stuart said with a hint of bitterness.
“Yes. His name’s Bruce.”
“ Bruce ?” he said as if the name were offensive. “What kind of a name is Bruce ? Sounds like some meathead football player.”
“He’s actually a scientist too.”
“What?” they asked simultaneously, both turning their heads to look at me. Their tone was incredulous. I had to work hard to hide my smile.
“Yeah, he’s incredibly smart and a really nice guy. Well… most of the time, anyway.”
Stuart’s brows pinched together. “What do you mean?”
I sighed. “I can’t explain it. He just has this dark side. Sometimes it scares me how angry he can get.”
I could tell I had them eating out the palm of my hand. “Anyway, he’s absolutely brilliant. The smartest guy there is.”
Stuart scoffed. “I doubt that. I’ve never even heard of him. What’s Bruce’s last name?”
I had to bite my lip to keep the laughter from escaping. “Banner,” I said, waiting for the joke to set in. When the realization finally hit, Stuart threw his hands in the air, and Lex actually smiled the first true smile I’d ever seen him wear. It changed his face completely. There was a crinkle at the edges of his eyes that made him seem warm and almost approachable.
“Okay… you’re an asshole,” Stuart said dryly, and I laughed even harder. “Are you really even from New York?”
My chin lifted in mock indignation. “I would never joke about that.”
“Let me check to see if your pants are on fire.”
I chuckled before turning to them. “What about you guys? Where are you both from?”
“I’m from Portland,” Stuart answered. “City of Roses.”
“Chicago,” Lex stated. I wondered if he’d entered some kind of a contest to say as few words as possible around me.
“The talk of the town is Stanford gave you a heaping pile of money to do your research here.”
“It’s true,” Stuart confirmed. “They offered Doctor Strovinski a deal we couldn’t refuse. We were working at NIH, but they wanted too much of a say in what we were doing, so we started shopping around and found Stanford. The only requirement they had was that we teach a course each semester.”
I tilted my head. “So, is it just you and Lex then?”
“No, the whole team moved here. There are eight of us who have been together since the beginning. But we’ve acquired a few more team members since we got here.”
“That’s pretty amazing that you’ve stuck together all these years.”
“What can I say? Opens more doors when you’ve got the doc on your team.” He said it mockingly, but it was clear he wasn’t resentful.
“And have the two of you always lived together?” I asked, eyeing him meaningfully.
Stuart paused before shouting, “It’s not what you think!”
I laughed even more and realized how good it felt. Even if it was just for this short drive, I was grateful for the brief escape from the heavy reality that had brought me here in the first place.
As we drove along, I took the time to admire the campus.It was absolutely stunning, but I was a little overwhelmed by the size of it. The defining characteristics of the university’s architecture were thesandstone buildings with covered colonnades and half-circle arches stretching out in long corridors, giving it that historical Romanesque feel. I noticed a large portion of the campus was canopied by coastal live oak trees interspersed with different variants of eucalyptus trees. I knew if I stared at it for too long, I might start to think that living here wasn’t so bad after all.
I told Lex what building I was supposed to be in, which he somehow found without having to look for any directions.
“Thanks again, you guys. I really appreciate it,” I said when he stopped in front of the building.
“Don’t be a stranger, Betty,” Stuart said as I got out of the car.
I had to think about it for a moment, then it finally hit me. Bruce Banner’s wife—Betty Ross.
I laughed and waved goodbye to them. Stuart returned the smile while Lex simply drove off without another word. He was definitely going to win that taciturn contest.