12
“For God’s sake!”
Was nowhere safe from him? The MEC control room, the Modern Physics hallway and kitchenette, Maiman Auditorium, his office, her own sleeping brain—
She shook off Martina’s hand and stood.
“Erin—”
“He can’t just—no. He doesn’t get to ruin this chance for me.”
She left her friend at the window and scooted along the bench, bumping knees and hardly apologizing for the wine and charcuterie spilling onto the low table behind her. She shouldered her way toward the entry, toward Ethan as he stepped over the threshold. Planting herself in his path, she dared him to notice her, dared him to meet her gaze.
He doesn’t get this night. The hot flash of anger pulsing in her stomach was so much better than guilt.
“Erin…”
Martina again, back at her elbow. “What are you doing?”
Erin ignored her. She kept her focus on Ethan, unblinking. She couldn’t allow him to slip away from her into the crowd. Because she couldn’t meet Bannister with him here. Not when he might be out of sight but eavesdropping at the bar. Despite the ear-splitting noise levels in the room, he might overhear their conversation. Overhear something personal. Compromising.
Forster, writer.
No.
So he had to leave the Wine Room. She marched up to the door. Cooler air stirred the translucent fabric of her blouse against her half-bared abdomen, her skin already flushed and now prickling with the temperature change—and with acute awareness, too: he’d abandoned both his usual fleece and yesterday’s suit in favor of chinos and a sweater, the shape of the buttons on a collared shirt visible under the pull of heather-gray cashmere across his chest. He’d shaved again. The ends of his hair were damp around his ears and jaw, and even through the ripe odor of the crowd her nose tingled with the smoky, amber spice of his aftershave—
He saw her now. Ethan halted just inside the bar, his mouth curving into a scowl.
She fisted her hands. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I—?”
The creases beside his lips deepened. He didn’t move aside for the group of hoodies from the back room when they swayed to the door with hollers about getting buckets of fried chicken from a bubble tea shop down the street. “What are you doing here?”
“I was at the Wine Room first.”
She stepped closer. She breathed and swallowed, reaching for her anger again. Her inhale only pulled his aftershave deeper into her lungs. “So you… y-you need to go.”
Please go—
No: Forget about Friday.
Forget what you saw.
Forget what you—
“Sound logic.”
His jaw tensed. He’d recovered from his surprise. “But I… I was at SVLAC first. That didn’t stop you from hustling your way into Modern Physics.”
Thank God. She needed him to fight, and squared her stance. But his gaze slid away—past her.
Looking for someone else? No, he didn’t get to ignore her.
“Your being inconvenienced by my research is your problem.”
She whipped back her hair. Martina’s braid stung her neck. “Not mine.”
“You think that your work jeopardizes my analyses?”
At least he was keeping to their script, even if he continued to avoid her eyes. “Your field’s a relic. Relativistic mechanics is only a… a building block for more advanced sciences. It’s not a frontier, not like quantum mechanics. But even if it were—that sole-author paper you keep flouting? The Journal of Supermassive Astronomy and Astrophysics has a focus that’s too sectarian to make any real impact in the field. I don’t care about your diamonds either, or whatever other commercial angle you’ve been using to—”
“Then if this isn’t about my research data or my paper, is it actually about coffee creamer? Don’t think I didn’t notice you intentionally using the last of the oat milk when you saw me coming, even though it was enough for three or four people. You never put that much creamer in your drinks—”
He’d taken another stride into the room, maybe—hopefully—preparing a response to her comeback. But now, he stopped. “What?”
Don’t you dare look confused.
“Coffee! You’re mad because—”
“No, why would I get mad about…”
He shook his head. “Who cares about the coffee?”
“You, apparently. Since you claim not to care about—”
“I don’t—”
“Really? Well—”
Their argument was complete nonsense. The angles of their anger were wrong. But she couldn’t stop. If she didn’t keep their altercation spinning, keep its current of vitriolic magnetism rushing, she’d—
“What I care about is what you’re doing here. Palo Alto’s not your city.”
“It’s—it’s not yours either, and you need to—”
“Dr. Meyer!”
“Wha—?”
Ethan stumbled back a step. So did she, pushed toward her window bench as sixty-four inches of Pilates and stilettos shoved between them: Martina, who mouthed a question and a warning—Bannister?—at Erin before turning to her other colleague.
“I didn’t know that you came to the Wine Room, Dr. Meyer. From Redwood City, with Saturday night traffic on El Camino Real?”
“Uh.”
Visibly flummoxed by both the abrupt shift in topic and its participants, he blinked down at Martina’s bright, disarming smile. “Dr. Perez?”
“Their seasonal wine list must be excellent if you’ve driven all the way here. Since the wildfires haven’t hit Napa or Sonoma badly this summer, the pours should stay good for the next several years, don’t you think? No smoke-wine.”
She pressed a trendy clipboard-style menu into his hands. “Look, this place rotates their offerings every week.”
“They do?”
“Yes. Enjoy!”
Then she snagged Erin’s elbow and hauled her away. She parted the crush around the bar in an uncompromising march to the bathroom.
“Martina—”
“Thank me later.”
Martina pulled her to a row of sinks and parked her in front of the mirror.
“I—”
“You can either argue with Ethan Meyer, or you can meet Bannister. Which do you want?”
“I—I was trying to get him to leave.”
“Yes? Well, you can’t make him.”
“Can’t I?”
She eyed her water-spotted image darkly. Her nose was pink and her cheeks were very red.
“What you can do,”
Martina ignored her, shifting aside for a woman tottering toward the faucets and retrieving a brush from her purse, which she pointed at Erin’s reflection, “is to calm yourself down, clean yourself up, and meet Bannister. And ignore Ethan Meyer.”
“Ouch!”
She flinched when Martina ran the bristles through her hair. Though maybe the pain was good. Distracting. “That’s easy for you to say. He isn’t rude to you whenever you see him.”
“Open.”
Martina refreshed the lipstick Erin had smudged off. “No, he isn’t. Just awkward. Blot.”
Erin pressed a tissue between her lips. “Why is he only rude to me?”
“That’s a rhetorical question, right?”
“He’s been a complete asshole, almost since my first day in Modern Physics!”
She dragged the strap of her blouse back into place, scowling at her flush in the mirror, then knocked on the nearest faucet and ran a stream of cold water over her wrists.
“Well—”
“No, no—sweetie.”
The other woman in the bathroom grabbed her arm. Her eyes were unfocused, tipsy but very earnest while she blinked at Erin’s glasses. “Sweetie, listen. You don’t need his toxicity in your life. If he’s rude—if he takes you for granted? Drop him. Find a man who appreciates you. He doesn’t deserve you. I mean, just look at you! Legs for miles, complete Diana Prince. You can do so so so so so much better!”
“Uh… no, he’s not… we’re definitely not—”
“Definitely.”
But as Martina confirmed this and detached the woman’s hands, her gaze stayed with Erin. It was a long, long look.
Erin was the one to break it.
“So it shouldn’t make any difference if he’s out there, should it?”
Martina went on after a moment. “You’re at the Wine Room to meet your mystery artist. To get kissed. Maybe more. Ethan’s just going to sit in a corner with a glass of wine, because what else would he do? If you’re worried about him overhearing something—”
“Or seeing something.”
She stared at the water trickling over her forearms, wondering why it wasn’t rising off her overheated skin as steam.
“—just think: what are the real chances of that, in this crowd?”
“Ooh. Unless you want to rub your new man in his face!”
the tipsy woman chimed in, nodding and smearing her mascara worse than before. “Park your pretty ass right in front of him and get dirty with your guy. Or any guy. That one with the tattoos is fine—”
“Is he here?”
“Yeah, he’s at a table near the windows—”
“Not him,”
Martina waved their companion away. To Erin, “Bannister.”
She fished out her phone. 7:08 p.m. No new messages from him alerted her that he’d arrived at the Wine Room. In fact, he hadn’t sent any texts at all. She tapped back into their thread, checking the time and content of his last communication: several hours ago, confirming their meeting. She’d responded enthusiastically. But since then?
Silence.
At least he hadn’t messaged to ask if she was the crazy woman blocking the door into the bar while arguing about physics and oat milk. He could’ve seen her do it, though—and a fresh surge of frustration coursed through her. Why did Ethan Meyer have to be here, of all the possible Bay Area bars and nights of the week? After Friday—ugh! Biting her lip, she swiped her thumb over her screen to lock her phone. But she fumbled and the device skidded through her wet fingers.
Down into the sink.
Directly under the running faucet.
“Fuck!”
She grabbed for it, frantically shaking water from the screen—which flickered and died.
“No, no, no…”
She blotted the glass with handfuls of paper towels, but the screen remained black. Efforts to turn her phone off and on resulted in a blur of staticky pixels. “Martina, do you have anything in your purse—”
“Like a whole bag of rice?”
Martina tossed away more tissues and blocked their drunk companion’s unhelpful attempts to resuscitate the device herself. “Sorry, no.”
Soaked like this, it could be hours before her phone was functional again.
“Damn!”
“Hey.”
Martina sighed and caught Erin’s cheeks in her hands. “It’s not a great situation. But wasn’t the idea to get the two of you off your screens and meeting in person? Maybe this is a sign.”
“A sign.”
“Yes. Your phone’s dead, but you’re here. So come on. Let’s get you some wine.”
“And… what? Just hope we run into each other?”
“What other options do you have?”
Martina was right.
“Ready?”
“No.”
But she followed her friend back out to the bar.
Even encountering Chase at the Wine Room would’ve been better than this.
Erin Monaghan, here?
Of all the times they could’ve collided, of all the places she could’ve ambushed him—outside the Modern Physics building, or in the experimental halls, or in his own damn office—it had to be here, now, following hard on the heels of his disastrous Friday and just when he was scheduled to meet Forster.
What are you doing here?
What are you doing here?
You need to go.
He’d refused. What would Forster think if he switched their meetup location now? He wouldn’t do that to her, and he wouldn’t give Erin the satisfaction of yielding. Besides, Forster might’ve already driven an hour along the Peninsula from Santa Clara or San Jose in Saturday traffic, then braved the hazards of parking in Palo Alto, all to meet him. So yes, he’d refused, rehashing their old arguments, because the alternative was to back away, to let his stammering agitation silence him, and at least there was some control in denying Erin what she wanted.
But what if Forster had seen their confrontation? She might’ve come to her senses and left before identifying herself, slipping out a window from the bathroom or through a service door behind the bar. They hadn’t agreed on a signal like characters from a 1990s romantic comedy, something like a rose or a book, so how could he know if he’d already passed her in the crowd? He wouldn’t have blamed Forster if she’d run.
He could blame Erin, though.
He would.
Blame was safe. Blame was good.
Because even if he and Forster were to meet now with tentative waves that gave way to laughter as they settled with their drinks into a nook somewhere near the candles illuminating the fireplace, trading stories as if they’d known each other for years, knees bumping, arms brushing, the distance between their smiles closing… even if everything he’d dared to hope for tonight happened, how could he focus on her? How could he give her the attention she deserved when Erin was here?
Erin: gilded in lamplight, barefoot.
Erin: never pulling punches.
Erin, who if she ever met Chase Meyer Jr.—
His mouth puckered. He’d never make it past the crowds to the bathroom, so instead he elbowed his way up to the bar and pointed at a random selection from the wine list that Martina Perez had given him.
With a smooth nod and an even smoother pour through an aerator, the bartender slid a glass in his direction. “This winery—Calathus—has produced some of the best reds in its region lately. Excellent choice.”
Maybe it was. It didn’t matter. It was Chase who understood vintages. Ethan had spent a childhood vacation in Tuscany cooped up in a hotel room after a meal of bad airplane shrimp ravioli while his family went wine tasting and made pasta with Italian grandmothers. His brother had returned at the end of one day’s expedition to announce that if Ethan had waited to eat his—Chase’s—own ravioli, maybe he wouldn’t have gotten sick. Maybe he would’ve imbibed some culture and appreciation for the local grapes. Chase had touted those Tuscan adventures for years, taking dozens of dates home to demonstrate his pasta-making prowess. Or something.
Tossing back a mouthful of inky Malbec that tasted only of tannin, he edged to a corner whose open windows faced out onto Ramona Street. Maybe a few minutes away from the crush while he downed his glass of depressant chemicals would steady him. Holding the stemware occupied his fidgeting fingers, too.
He should’ve brought his sketchpad to the bar. That would’ve been better than a rose or even Ted Chiang’s story collection. But if Forster noticed it, so might Erin. She’d see the evidence against him, proof of his secret second life. She’d see it like she’d seen him on Friday night when she’d witnessed him at his worst: wild and weak.
She’d know—
Where was she?
He took another slug of Malbec and scanned the room. She wasn’t by the street door, wasn’t outside at one of the upright wine barrel tables, wasn’t perched on a couch near the fireplace—thank God. But if he couldn’t locate her, then she had the advantage of surprise, could catch him unawares again, the recessed golden bulbs overhead skimming her collarbones and the tiny divot of her navel—
He choked on his next sip.
And he watched for Forster. Waited for her. After a fourth gulp of tannin, he thumbed back into their messages.
Forster
See you at 7 p.m.! I’m excited to meet you.
She’d sent that text earlier this afternoon. He’d heard nothing from her since.
It was past seven o’clock, now. 7:13 p.m. But a fifteen-minute delay in Bay Area traffic wasn’t anything unusual. If she didn’t text while she handled heavy machinery on a freeway, even better. Maybe she was stalled trying to find street parking. He should’ve told her to head for the City Hall garage. Maybe she was still circling the block.
Ethan
The garage under Palo Alto’s city hall always has open parking spots, if you need one.
The text zipped into their thread. “Delivered”
didn’t immediately appear beneath its blue bubble, however. Sometimes it took a minute… if she was driving in a tunnel, somewhere without service. But there was nothing when the clock on his screen read 7:16 p.m., either.
Her phone was off.
Which was fine, and he’d put away his device once she arrived, too—maybe: what if Dr. Kramer emailed him?—but powering it down before they’d found each other at the bar? That didn’t make sense. She’d have a reasonable explanation, though. He knew it. They’d laugh about the confusion together. Soon.
But soon became seven thirty. Then seven forty-three. Then eight o’clock. He fended off attempts from a couple on a first date to annex his spot. He craned his neck around a boisterous group of coworkers celebrating end-of-quarter bonuses to watch the door.
8:01 p.m.
No messages came from Forster’s number, or from anyone else. The next cohort to try for his bench was a cluster of women in strappy heels. One of them almost sat on him.
“Oops! Sorry, didn’t see you!”
He grunted. He didn’t look up from his phone. He didn’t move.
“Sir,”
from the bartender a quarter-hour later, “if you’ve finished, would you mind…”
He stayed where he was. “Another Malbec.”
He’d downed half of his second glass by eight fifteen.
His fingers were clumsy on his keyboard.
Ethan
Seems like your phone’s off, but if it isn’t, I’m here near the entry.
Ethan
If tonight doesn’t work anymore, we can reschedule.
Ethan
Just want to know if you’re all right.
He waited.
8:22 p.m.
Still nothing. No delivery, no response.
Well, he could ask every woman in the Wine Room if she wrote science fiction under the pseudonym Forster, couldn’t he? No, not without Bunsen as his wingman. Or he could stand up on his bench and shout her name. Then Erin Monaghan would certainly notice—something. Or he could keep waiting.
8:34 p.m.
A third Malbec arrived from the bartender. He poured it out the window into a potted plant.
8:40 p.m.
9:00 p.m.
He waited more than two hours before pushing his way through the rowdy, thickening crowd to the exit. Only when he emerged onto the sidewalk did he catch sight of the far side of the Wine Room.
Erin was there.
Seated under the opposite windows with a depleted bottle of Chardonnay and a hummus platter, head bent in conversation with her friend, she didn’t notice him outside.
But he saw her: a chiaroscuro figure in the warm, noisy glow. He saw the damp flush on her cheeks.
She’d been crying.
Which evened their score again, after Friday’s fiasco in front of the Department of Energy officials—and then that even worse moment in his office. Didn’t it? Maybe the Malbec’s depressive chemicals were lingering in his bloodstream, however, because as he watched Erin wipe her cheeks with a napkin before reaching for the sediment at the bottom of her bottle, Dr. Kramer’s voice in his head was quiet, and the pitch through his stomach wasn’t triumph. She looked… tired.
Yes, that was a safe analysis.
Tired.
As for the knot clenching under his ribs while he drove back to Redwood City—it didn’t feel like it, but that had to be tiredness, too.
13
Her phone spent a full thirteen hours and eight minutes in a bag of rice before its screen flickered back to life on Sunday afternoon.
Battery at 0%
Erin exhaled and smiled at the warning. “Thank God.”
Closing her laptop on the day’s STEMinist Online header posts, tossing aside This Is How You Lose the Time War, she took her device to the kitchen and shook it over the sink, then rushed back to her desk to charge it, just missing Kai as her roommate exited the bathroom while toweling off her cropped turquoise undercut.
“Erin, you okay?”
“Oh—yeah, fine.”
“Ashley and I are getting a late brunch at Cafe Borrone, if you want to come.”
“Sure, but maybe another time?”
She waved her phone in explanation as her bedroom door shut behind her. Then she plugged in her charging cable. While Kai called out her readiness to Ashley, she watched the battery bar turn to a buffering green. Of course, it would take at least an hour for her device to reach a full charge, the cafe near Kepler’s Books did a delicious banana pancake stack, and it might’ve been nice to catch up with her roommates for a bit… But eating before running the hills on the Stanford Dish trail was a recipe for nausea. Plus—her phone. She watched the charging icon, tapping her nails against the screen, against her cheek, against her jittering leg, waiting for it to edge back to functionality.
“You’re sure you don’t want to come, Erin?”
with a knock from Ashley.
“No, I’m set. Thanks, though.”
Her roommates left for brunch, and she went on staring at her device. The instant the phone registered sufficient power to turn itself on, she unlocked the screen, checked that no emergencies had been reported in the Monaghan family chat, opened her message thread with Bannister—and made a noise like shower sandals skidding on wet tile, something between a groan and a shriek.
“Argh!”
He’d sent his first message just after she’d dropped her phone into the bathroom sink. The next texts had come more than an hour after they’d planned to meet at the bar.
Damn.
Last night’s alcohol headache rose again, blood vessels pulsing in her skull like the bass beats from the Wine Room. A waterlogged phone, frustrated and tipsy tears over a bottle of Chardonnay, and Ethan Meyer, stiff and awkward in aftershave-scented cashmere?
Disaster.
She swallowed, breathed, and clicked into the reply field.
Erin
Hi, Bannister. I’m so sorry about not responding to your messages last night, and sorry that we didn’t find each other in the Wine Room. I dropped my phone into the sink in the bathroom, and it died.
She didn’t mention why she’d been so uncoordinated, or why she’d been in the bathroom at the exact time when they were supposed to meet. She didn’t mention her run-in with Ethan, or why she would’ve been bad company for anyone—even Bannister—after her confrontation with her rival at the door. What use would that be? The odds of artistic Bannister knowing robotic Dr. Ethan Meyer were miniscule. Sharing his name would explain nothing. She hadn’t left their encounter feeling particularly proud of herself, either.
Pulse, went her headache.
She closed her eyes and typed blindly.
Erin
Could we reschedule and try again?
To avoid watching the screen for his reply, she gulped down an ibuprofen, yanked on a pair of running shorts, bundled her hair into a ponytail, taped up her blistered toes, then fought her way through the head opening of a racerback tank top when a lightsaber’s swish sounded from her phone.
Bannister
It’s fine. I’m glad you’re all right.
She sagged in relief, and swiveled the reversed shirt around her neck to insert her arms.
Bannister
Rescheduling is good. The bar was so loud last night that it wouldn’t have been an easy place to talk, anyway.
Erin
It was! I think one of the groups there might’ve been a bachelorette party.
Then again, attempting to prove she’d been on site, that she wasn’t making excuses for standing him up:
Erin
Did you try any of the wines? My white went nicely with the house snack platter.
Bannister
I had a Malbec. It tasted like tannin.
He’d been one of the twenty or thirty men drinking red. That didn’t narrow down the possibilities for identifying him by much: any one of the people with whom she’d bumped shoulders or knees that night—people who’d seen her with her mascara dripping and her gestures sloppy. Who might’ve seen her confrontation with Ethan. He could’ve been anyone, and seen anything. So she didn’t ask Bannister what he’d worn on Saturday, or where he’d waited for her. If she broached those questions, he could volley them back to her. And the truth was, she didn’t want him to have seen her there. But she’d manage their second meeting differently. She’d make very sure that Ethan wasn’t present, too.
Erin
Tannin? Gross. Now I’m trying to remember why I thought the Wine Room was a good idea.
Bannister
We’ll pick somewhere else next time.
She slathered sunscreen across her shoulders, grateful for his easy assumption that of course, there’d be a next time. She laced up her athletic shoes by the door.
Erin
Brainstorm after my run?
Bannister
Deal.
The traffic lights at Sand Hill Road and Junipero Serra Boulevard were both green. She locked her bicycle by the Stanford Dish gate, cued up a playlist while she swapped her helmet for a baseball cap and stretched a heels-and-Pilates ache from her hamstrings, then set off up the first paved hill. With Stars’ “Take Me to the Riot”
in her ears, the incline melted under her feet. She waved her way past groups of panting hikers sheltering for water under the shade of a spreading oak woodland fringing the trail and drove herself hard on the flats near the Dish’s radio antennae where the device jutted against the blazing blue sky behind a row of cattle guards, before heading down the far slope, circumventing a thermoregulating rattlesnake, then powering up another incline to merge with the initial hill, sweating out her headache.
Where did Bannister and Bunsen run?
She’d imagined them in San Francisco because of their Crissy Field photo, though that beach was a destination for dog owners all around the Bay Area. They could be in any of the North Bay, East Bay, South Bay, or Peninsula counties. So: where? She wondered while she cleaned her hair out of the apartment’s shower drain following her post-run rinse, but when she settled down with a smoothie and elevated feet in the living room, she found Bannister’s list of suggestions for their meeting rematch waiting for her. There’d be plenty of time to suss out the specifics of his routes later.
Because he didn’t seem angry. At all. Last night’s blunder had been an honest mistake, and he didn’t hold it against her. He wasn’t that sort of person, and she smiled as she scrolled through his ideas, which included Haberdasher and Salt she had an ice cream date set for next week with Bannister and she’d sent the details of her LIGO research to Richard Hall even earlier than expected. But as for Monday at the lab…
She booted up her computer in the Modern Physics bullpen to find a new item on her calendar for the day: D.O.E. After-Action Sync. She had a nine o’clock meeting scheduled in the Manzanita conference room with Dr. Nadine Fong, Dr. John Kramer, and Dr. Ethan Meyer.
A sudden jitter of anxiety hit her stomach. She’d gone too far last Friday. She knew that. In attracting notice from the United States Office of Science and securing its consideration for research funding, she’d broken through yet another barrier to her success, just as she fought to do every day while navigating the lab’s internal politics and shouldering her way up her field’s supposedly meritocratic ladder. But her pride in the achievement was… flat. Barreling past the hurdle while also executing her revenge had left collateral damage behind. Real damage—to people. One person. Public damage. It was a line she shouldn’t have crossed.
Nadine—and maybe Human Resources—was finally stepping in.
She grabbed a sudoku sheet. She tried to breathe. Maybe sudoku really was better than caffeine for clearing brain fog, as Bannister said—but this wasn’t brain fog. This was panic. And it didn’t matter if she solved her puzzle at her desk, or if she hyperventilated in the bathroom. Because when the morning ticked on to nine o’clock, she had no more time for either option.
She stood tall. Despite the exterior temperature and the heat beating in her throat, she zipped her utility jacket up to her chin. She walked into the conference room.
Meeting: D.O.E. After-Action Sync
Day/Time: Monday, 9:00 a.m.–10:00 a.m.
Location: Manzanita Conference Room
Required Attendees: Dr. Nadine Fong, Dr. John Kramer, Dr. Erin Monaghan—
—and him.
Against all odds, his Monday wasn’t beginning in Dr. Kramer’s office—where it also could’ve ended. After last week, he wouldn’t have been surprised if his supervisor had called him on the carpet this morning, told him to pack up his desk, scrub the internet clean of every mention of his name in conjunction with Dr. Kramer’s work, and be ready for a security escort off campus by noon. Ethan would’ve complied, of course. Instead, he was summoned to a meeting. Including Erin Monaghan. Which wasn’t a much better alternative.
He entered the conference room to find his rival already seated at the central table, busy on her laptop. Ostensibly busy, at least. She must’ve heard him come in. He thumped the door closed. She didn’t look up. But the glare from the overhead lights on her glasses shifted.
He took the chair farthest from her spot. She continued to study something on her computer. The building’s air conditioning hummed. He tapped a capped pen against his palm. The flare on her lenses shifted again.
He waited.
Drs. Kramer and Fong joined them eventually. His supervisor dropped a briefcase onto the table, rattling the laminated wood and freezing Ethan’s pen mid-tap.
Then:
“Congratulations, Meyer.”
Dr. Kramer’s mouth was thin. He pulled out a chair and examined Ethan over his steepled fingers.
Thank you didn’t seem appropriate, somehow.
He stayed silent.
Fong settled into an adjacent seat; the bulge of her belly barely fit between her chair and the table. She smiled at Erin. “Secretary McCandless and Dr. Richard Hall from the Office of Science were both impressed with the findings from SVLAC’s current research in modern physics. In particular, the work from our two departments.”
“McCandless read the first page of an internet search on relativistic mechanics and quantum mechanics during the weekend. Now she’s an expert,”
was Dr. Kramer’s addition. “Quantum gravity appeared in her list. The majority of the research is coming out of China and Eastern Europe, which apparently alarmed her.”
“She’s right that the current geopolitical situation can’t be ignored. Secretary McCandless’s position is a political appointment and, although it was admittedly cursory, her initiative to identify the vanguard areas of work in our fields is admirable. Dr. Hall concurs that the United States’ National Labs should keep pace with the frontier, too.”
“Like a new space race?”
Finally, Erin closed her laptop.
“Yes. Since knowledge is power in the Information Age, the Office of Science has authorized immediate, generous funding of”—Fong named an amount that topped even the Eischer-Langhoff grant—“to SVLAC for studies on quantum gravity. The government won’t put out a call for proposals. It’s simply authorized the funds, with an end-of-year report on our progress and results determining whether the contract is renewed for another period. Oversight is minimal. While the process is unusual and bypasses our standard procedures for calculating the urgency of SVLAC’s projects, the federal quantum gravity research study is now the highest priority for our departments.”
Erin’s elbow slipped off the table.
Ethan dropped his pen.
“Now, I’m starting my maternity leave later this week, and for the next ten months, Dr. Kramer will be—”
“At CERN.”
Dr. Kramer leaned back in his chair. “Van Buskirk will provide minimal managerial and fiscal oversight of the Quantum group for the duration of my absence.”
“CERN?”
He hadn’t known.
But he should’ve guessed. He’d been aware of his supervisor’s upcoming travel plans to Switzerland. He’d reconciled the airline charges with SVLAC’s Finance department, hadn’t he? Dr. Kramer had recently delegated a series of departmental administrative tasks to Ethan, too, in addition to work on the holometer, and no, he’d never taken a hands-on approach to the Quantum group’s operational grunt activities, not when he had much better uses for his time—but if Ethan hadn’t been so preoccupied with Forster, he still would’ve seen the throughline in his supervisor’s system inputs.
Should’ve. He should’ve known that Dr. Kramer would be gone from SVLAC for almost a year. Every neuron in his skull diverted to calculations now, because ten months, forty-three weeks, three hundred days, seven thousand hours—
“A collaborative fellowship with the Director-General.”
Dr. Kramer smiled.
“Very prestigious.”
Fong exchanged a look with Erin that he couldn’t parse, his neural pathways continuing to fire numbers, his pen abandoned on the floor. “So, given that both of us will be out of the office soon for a protracted period: Dr. Monaghan and Dr. Meyer, you will collaboratively supervise the first year of SVLAC’s quantum gravity research, and at the end of the funding cycle, you’ll generate a report on your findings for the United States Office of Science.”
“You will be responsible if the project fails,”
from Dr. Kramer.
“And credited if it succeeds.”
Silence.
His brain flatlined for a brief, blissful moment—then leaped into analysis again. The responsibility was enormous. The honor of the assignment was equally large. Success didn’t just mean solving one of the most pressing dilemmas in physics—reconciling the incompatible theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics into a continuous, unified theory of space-time—but a thousand follow-up opportunities as well: papers in major journals, visibility in the field and beyond—profiles in Time Magazine?—and a level of public recognition to which even Chase could only aspire.
But: Erin Monaghan.
“No,” he said.
“This is not a request, Meyer.”
“Dr. Kramer is right. The project is compulsory for both of you. Circumstances being what they are, and with the relativistic mechanics versus quantum mechanics showcase that you put on for the officials on Friday, this is the outcome.”
Showcase?
“I expect a project charter on my desk by Friday, and weekly status reports.”
“But… but that means that we’d have to start work today! My LIGO research—”
Erin rose from her seat.
Ethan remained where he was. He couldn’t feel his legs.
We didn’t put on a showcase.
“This is a government directive. It takes precedence over any other contracts or department work and requires a moratorium on all existing projects. I’m sorry.”
Maybe she was, but Nadine Fong still continued with, “Anyhow, you and Dr. Meyer are already studying the fabric of space-time, even if it’s from different angles. Your joint expertise with optics and lasers will be useful for the study. You might find that there’s more common ground in your current research than you anticipate.”
“That’s doubtful—”
“Your doubt is irrelevant, Monaghan.”
Dr. Kramer retrieved his briefcase and stood. To Ethan, “The project charter will be on my desk by the end of the week.”
“Good luck,”
from Fong. She followed Dr. Kramer out the door.
But luck had nothing to do with success in science. Not that it mattered. Because this—this wasn’t an unlucky turn of events. A joint research assignment would’ve been unlucky last Thursday, maybe. Now, though? It was catastrophic.
It was Erin Monaghan’s fault.
That single clarion thought burned away the static still rioting in his brain. Sensation returned to his legs. He pushed up from his chair to match her posture over the table. “You did this, Monaghan.”
“What?”
“If—if you hadn’t spent all day politicking about gravitational waves and binary—”
Her attention broke away from the door. Eyes clearing from a thousand-yard haze, she transferred her frown to him instead. “What? No… no. You—you were the one who volunteered to present in Dr. Quarles’ place—”
“Someone had to.”
“Not you.”
Her shoulders straightened, her ponytail whipping back. “You… you put your research in the limelight and convinced Secretary McCandless that you could deliver something actionable—”
“Dr. Kramer’s work is still largely theoretical, but my data is—”
“Actually actionable? Good, since we’re stuck together now with an impossible—”
“Project—”
“—project—and stop interrupting me.”
A flush crept down her throat under her jacket. He’d seen the low dip of her collarbones on Saturday, knew just how the warmth would gather there. An answering bloom swelled in his chest, and—
Fuck! Focus.
He swallowed, tensing his forearms and his abdomen. “I…sorry.”
She blinked.
“Quantum gravity is an impossible research project. You…you’re right.”
“I’m… right?”
The silent pressure of her question and her gaze scorched his ears for an immeasurable breath—but then she rallied with her usual sarcasm. “Obviously, I’m right. Yes. But the… the issue is that it’s now my responsibility to make the impossible into something possible, because your talk—”
He breathed. “My talk. Quantum gravity.”
“Sure,”
with a snort, changing tactics. “Maybe you’ll finally get a first-author paper out of this!”
Thank God. This, he could manage. This was safe territory.
“Are you volunteering to be my second author?”
“You won’t get any traction without applying my expertise in relativistic mechanics, so why would I take a secretarial role?”
“You won’t get anywhere on quantum gravity without using the principles of quantum mechanics.”
“Thank you for stating the obvious.”
“You want the obvious?”
Turning back to her, he crossed his arms. “You would’ve volunteered to take a fifty percent cut to LIGO’s operating budget before you would’ve volunteered for this project.”
“I would’ve taken seventy-five.”
“And I’d never choose to work with you, either.”
But when had he ever been given a choice about what he did at the lab? Dr. Kramer didn’t care whether he would’ve chosen to clean corrupted data sets for a month straight, to sacrifice his nights and weekends to tuning the holometer, to manage budget reconciliations and second-author drudgery. He did what he had to do. Always.
The project charter will be on my desk by the end of the week.
Focus.
“We… we don’t want… this,”
he confirmed. “We agree. But we don’t have a choice. We won’t make any significant progress on the quantum gravity question if we work alone—”
“—because if I could’ve solved the paradox with just relativistic mechanics, I would’ve done it already.”
Erin echoed his stance, defiant. “And published my findings in Nature Physics. As a sole author. Just like you would’ve.”
“Right.”
“I don’t like sharing glory.”
He didn’t bother responding to that.
“You don’t like sharing data. Or using numbers like mine. But you’ll have to. Voluntarily.”
“None of this is voluntary.”
“No. So you’d better make this year worth my while, Meyer.”
What could possibly make this collaboration worth its cost? Dr. Kramer had assigned the work, though, so he’d have to find its benefit—to himself and to his supervisor.
If he didn’t?
“If—if—we can reconcile quantum mechanics with relativistic mechanics, solve the quantum gravity problem, eliminate the need for singularity theorems, have papers published in Reviews of Modern Physics or Reports on Progress in Physics—”
“—that might be worth it,”
she cut him off. “Might.”
Not a promising start, when Dr. Kramer would expect genius. And with Erin across the table, willful and difficult, flushed with irritation—
No.
Knees stiff, arms still crossed, since he didn’t trust his hands not to shake if he extracted them from their tight balls under his elbows, barely avoiding tripping over the wheels of his chair and his discarded pen, he shouldered out of the conference room, back to his office. When he locked the door behind him, his fingers instantly curled into his palms again with tremors.
So he fumbled for a new pen and his phone, sketching one-handed while he typed.
Ethan
10 a.m., and this is already the worst Monday.
Ping.
Forster
10 a.m., and damn, can I ever sympathize! Who am I kneecapping for you?
Erin Monaghan, he almost answered.
But if he brought Erin into their conversation, Forster might research her name, might find her SVLAC staff photo, might recognize her from Friday night at the Wine Room—and then she’d put together the shameful pieces to identify the man with whom Erin had been arguing.
Ethan
No one. But it isn’t the way I’d planned to start my week.
Forster
I still have my bat on standby for you.
Ethan
Thanks.
Then he pushed a slow exhale through his teeth, put away his inky sticky notes and his phone, and returned to his inbox. This wasn’t how he’d intended to start his week, and a quantum gravity project wasn’t how he’d meant to spend his next year of research time, either. A year of Erin Monaghan. But a government directive was just that: a directive. He could execute his work with her—and do it now—or quit. Or be fired and blacklisted from his field.
He opened a follow-up email from his supervisor.
Meyer:
Monaghan and Sec. McCandless’s political idiocy salvaged your mess. But if you fuck up this opportunity for my department like you fucked up Friday’s talk and the Nature Physics article, you’re done.
—K
No pulled punches. Just bald facts, except: Monaghan salvaged your mess. Like hell she had. Maybe their argument had impressed Secretary McCandless, and yes, his one dig from the podium had been good, but now—this. This was a mess. He wasn’t a complete idiot, though, so he typed out his response without contesting his manager’s assertion.
Dr. Kramer:
Thank you for this opportunity.
—E.M.
Next, he moved into a shared view of his nemesis and new collaborator’s calendar. Meetings and deep work blocks populated beside his own schedule, an overlapping clutter of dates and times that realistically should’ve safeguarded him from ever colliding with Erin by the coffee machine. That hadn’t worked out.
They were both free in the midafternoon on Wednesdays and Thursdays, however. It was tempting to set a regular meeting from seven to nine o’clock on Saturday nights. He’d never run the risk of seeing her in the Wine Room again, or at Salt & Straw… although if Erin couldn’t be at the bar or the creamery, neither could he. In making her life miserable, he’d also shoot himself in the foot. Still, he considered it. But eventually he scheduled a preliminary project period on Wednesday afternoons.
Meeting (Recurring): Quantum Gravity Work Block
Day/Time: Wednesdays, 1:00 p.m.–3:45 p.m.
Location: Sidewinder Conference Room
Required Attendees: Dr. Ethan Meyer, Dr. Erin Monaghan
Almost immediately, a message from SVLAC’s internal communications channel zipped onto his monitor.
Dr. Erin Monaghan
I was scheduling a block.
Dr. Ethan Meyer
It’s already done. Time management isn’t your strength.
Her response was to decline his invitation and send a new one.
Meeting (Recurring): Quantum Gravity Work Block
Day/Time: Wednesdays, 1:05 p.m.–3:50 p.m.
Location: Sidewinder Conference Room
Required Attendees: Dr. Erin Monaghan, Dr. Ethan Meyer
That’s how she wanted to play this?
Fine.