Chapter Four
Four
That evening, Amira and I made dinner in our little galley kitchen, a ritual we followed whenever we were both home. The apartment smelled like cumin and red chilies as she toasted spices in preparation for her mother’s amazing curry recipe.
“If someone said they would give you anything you wanted,” I said while I measured out basmati rice, “would you do it?”
Amira leaned down to bathe her face in the aromas rising from the pan, then gave the spices another quick stir with a wooden spoon. “What, like in a fairy tale?”
I grunted as I wrestled our ancient rice cooker out of a cabinet. “Sure, yeah.”
“I don’t know,” she said, a little absently. She was focused on making sure the spice mixture didn’t burn, and after another judicious stir, she removed the pan from the heat and carefully poured its contents into a stone mortar sitting on the counter. “Like, I could have anything I wanted?”
“Anything at all,” I agreed as I plugged in the rice cooker.
Her brow furrowed the way it did whenever she had to think through a difficult problem. “What’s the catch?”
Reaching for another measuring cup, I moved to the sink. “What do you mean?”
“Well, even if someone could give me anything I wanted, why would they? What’s in it for them?”
I considered this question as I poured cold water into the rice cooker. “Maybe they want something in return. Something small.”
Picking up a pestle, she started pounding the spices in the mortar. “And you don’t know what that thing is?” At a small shake of my head, she frowned. “Forget it. No way.”
“Why?”
She gave me a wry look. “How many fairy tales involve some idiot making a deal that seems too good to be true and then regretting it later?”
I hid a wince by busying myself with the cooker. “But what if you didn’t have a choice? Like, what if this was your only way to escape certain death?”
“This hypothetical is getting awfully dark, Colin.”
“I know. But would you risk it?”
She considered this in silence as she reached for a small, round stainless-steel container sitting in the masala dabba on the counter.
“Maybe,” she said slowly as she shook the pounded spice mixture into the katori, leaving a little bit in the mortar.
She’d made enough that the leftovers would last us for a month at least. “Though this mysterious someone might want something in return that’s even worse than my death.
What if they made me hurt someone else? Is my life worth that? ”
Adding the rice to the cooker, I closed and locked the lid before turning it on. “Now you’re the one dabbling in dark hypotheticals.”
Replacing the katori in the masala dabba, Amira pressed the lid down before turning to look at me. “Why are you asking all these questions? Did you find a magic lamp or something?”
I smiled weakly. “No, of course not. Just something I’ve been thinking about.”
Standing on tiptoe, she opened a cupboard and reached for the canned tomatoes. “Well, if you do find a magic lamp, ask the genie inside to make me three inches taller,” she grumped. “Can you grab those? I’m going to turn on some music.”
We ate at the battered old dining table while Bollywood songs played from the wireless speakers in the kitchen.
Amira’s mom had grown up in New Delhi, and her Spotify playlist was a regular feature of our domestic life.
“So what amazing things are you working on these days?” I asked around a mouthful of curried chicken, desperate to talk about something that didn’t remind me of my impending demise—even if that something was particle physics.
“I’ve started collaborating with some people in the mathematics department. We want to model how fundamental particles might behave in non-Euclidean topologies as well as in dimensions beyond conventional spacetime.”
I stared blankly at her. “Non-Yukon what now?”
She gave me a long-suffering look. “We’re trying to figure out how particles move in more than the standard four dimensions.”
“Uh-huh. Great. Are any of these math nerds cute?”
Throwing a solitary grain of rice at me, Amira said loftily, “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Why not? Maybe one of them is packing a lot of area under their curve, if you get my drift.”
“Colin!”
I grinned at her outraged expression. “Oh, c’mon. You deserve to have some fun with a big integral or two.”
Shaking her head disapprovingly, she said, “I’m not going to become the youngest woman to win the Nobel Prize in physics if I’m distracted by…integrals.”
“At this rate, you’ll be the loneliest Nobel laureate in history.”
She lifted her eyebrows at me. “You’re one to talk. Not exactly frolicking in the dating pool, are you?”
“I’m choosy.”
“Maybe you need a change of scenery. Like, I don’t know, a new job.”
And just like that, I was reminded of the grim fate awaiting me in the not-so-distant future. My good mood vanished, and shortly thereafter I invented a headache and escaped to my bedroom, where that ominous black card waited for me.
Lying on my bed, I traced the card’s edges over and over again as the apartment gradually grew quiet and still around me.
I knew that calling on that faceless thing for help was almost certainly a bad idea.
On the other hand, I liked being alive, or at least preferred being alive to being dead.
My present existence was dull and dissatisfying and occasionally humiliating, but there was always a chance that something good would come along.
Maybe, somewhere out there, the love of my life was waiting for me.
I’d never find him if I was quietly disposed of by Dark Enterprises at the age of twenty-seven.
That creepy Thing had told me I was destined for greatness.
Wouldn’t someone destined for greatness do whatever it took to survive?
The key, I suspected, was asking for something relatively small.
The more lavish the request, the more likely it would go horribly wrong.
Perhaps I could ask the Thing to get rid of Sunil—no muss, no fuss, just a tragic accident followed by a well-attended memorial service.
I’d still be stuck in that cubicle, though, surrounded by people who disliked me, until the next supervisor decided to make my life difficult.
Shifting restlessly, I told myself that I was thinking too small. I needed to aim higher. What did I really, truly want? What would change everything for the better?
The answer came to me as if it had been waiting in the wings for this very moment: power. I wanted people to give me the obsequious smiles I gave Ms. Kettering. I wanted the Sunils of this world to fear me. I wanted respect. I wanted authority. I wanted to matter.
Staring sightlessly up at the darkened ceiling, I imagined what I could do with real, genuine power. I’d be safe from Ms. Kettering’s cold eyes and Sunil’s homicidal pettiness. And who knew how high I might climb eventually? Maybe, someday, both of them would answer to me.
On my way in to work the next morning, stuffed into an overcrowded subway car with a thousand other commuters, I realized that someone was watching me.
He was tall, blandly attractive in a forgettable way, and wearing big, steel-rimmed glasses that were either retro or German.
Like me, he was gripping an overhead strap and swaying along as the subway barreled through a tunnel.
Hadn’t he been standing on my platform before the train arrived? Those glasses were familiar somehow.
Every few seconds, his gaze darted to me and then away again.
Did I have something on my face? Was my hair sticking up?
I did a nonchalant self-check. Everything seemed normal.
Maybe he liked my bow tie—it was pretty sweet, what with the polka dots.
I adjusted it a little self-consciously, then met his eyes when he looked at me again.
His head jerked a little as he turned away.
Was this flirting, I wondered, by someone even more awkward than me?
When I finally disembarked at my stop and began climbing the stairs up to the street, I glanced back and saw those glasses following at a discreet distance.
By the time I reached Dark Enterprises, though, the man had disappeared, leaving me to shrug and chalk it up to one of those weird subway encounters you have every once in a while.
I barely glanced at the receptionist on duty as I crossed the lobby and waited for an elevator to carry me up to my cubicle and whatever fresh torments Sunil had devised for me.
I could feel the business card in my pocket as if it weighed ten pounds.
Until I figured out exactly what to do, I intended to carry it everywhere I went.
When an elevator arrived, I shuffled inside and pressed the button for the sixth floor.
The doors were starting to slide closed when a voice called out crisply, “Hold the elevator, please.” Instinctively, I jabbed the DOOR OPEN button and a Black woman stepped into view.
She was a little taller than me in three-inch heels, with hair shaved down to her scalp and cool eyes that appraised me briefly before she inclined her head in silent thanks.
I tried not to goggle openly. This was Ms. Crenshaw, CEO of the New York office and, until now, someone I’d seen only on promotional brochures meant for clients. I was sharing an elevator with the CEO. It was like standing next to a rock star. “Wh-which floor?” I stammered.
“Thirteen.”