6. Clark #2
Okay. What. The. Fuck. I had expressed an opinion that would naturally lead to her saying something like what she just had, but I had said it inside my head, not out loud.
I was certain of it this time. I’d caught out the same phenomenon a few times before, but this was the first time I could say with clarity that as dumb as it made me sound, Olly McLeod was quite possibly reading my damn mind.
That, or we were very, very in tune with each other.
We toured the office, which was essentially, “this is your workstation, and that is mine,” along with a quick introduction to team members in their own cubbies, with the promise of cake this afternoon for both me joining the team and Olly getting the senior position.
I oohed and aahed appropriately over the coffee maker, which shared a wall in our break room with a gigantic replica Bat’leth—those crescent-shaped swords that the Klingons used in Star Trek.
When I pointed at the weapon and raised an eyebrow, she looked confused for a second and then chuckled.
“Oh, right. Sometimes I forgot it’s unusual to have alien swords in your workspace.
It belonged to Dolores. She’s a Star Trek junkie, like me, and her grandson made it for her.
It’s been on that wall my entire time with Rose.
I guess she wanted to leave it as a parting gift. All her other stuff is gone.”
“Well then. Wo’ batlhvaD!” I said, in a triumphant voice and enjoyed the slack-jawed stare she levelled at me.
“What the…?”
“It means, ‘For the honor of the Empire.’ It’s also one of the few phrases I remember from school. I had this astrophysics professor freshman year who was a Trekkie and would teach us a Klingon phrase at the end of each class.”
She laughed again, tilting her head backward and letting out a long, throaty noise. God, she was radiant when she let loose with laughter. “Now, you’ve got to be making some of that up. You studied astrophysics? Klingon in a real class about space?”
“Hey, Cub’s Honor,” I replied, holding up my hand in the Cub Scouts’ salute. And so, we were both giggling a bit when the security staff arrived.
“So why astrophysics?” she asked, pretty much as soon as the security guy left to go laminate the card with my photo on it. “I mean, what did you specifically study?”
I’d had this reaction before to an area of study that sounded compelling, particularly to other space geeks, so I had whittled down a precise answer that didn’t invite too much of a deep dive as a follow-up.
“I was part of a team at McGill working on finding scientific, mathematical evidence that the multiverse exists. Hawking came to believe it did, you know. He just wasn’t able to complete his work before he died. ”
Olly looked like she’d gone white as a sheet as soon as the word “multiverse” left my lips, but I couldn’t figure out why, unless it was just a coincidence and she was getting nauseated again.
“Hey, are you okay?” I asked. She nodded, then shook her head, and went running for a bathroom.
I felt bad for her, but really there wasn’t much I could do...
except pull a Prince Charming and return her shoe?
It looked like she had shed one on the way but had no time to grab it.
I scooped it up and walked down to the line of ladies’ rooms, and I saw a dark-haired woman of about my age dressed in some vintage clothing—I mean, we’re talking shoulder pads—and knocking softly on one of the doors. I was going to bet Olly was inside.
“Um, hi,” I said to her, and it was like I had to wait a beat for her to turn her attention away from the door and over to me.
She looked surprised to see me talking to her, and whether that was due to her thinking I was hitting on her at the entrance to a toilet or not wasn’t quite clear.
“Sorry, I’m not some weirdo who stalks women outside the bathroom.
I was looking for my boss, Olly—Olive—McLeod.
She ran in this direction when we were talking, and I just wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help her. Other than return her lost shoe.”
The woman wordlessly reached out a hand, and I realized she wanted the shoe.
Shrugging, I deposited the shoe into her waiting palm.
Then, to our mutual surprise, if the expression on her face was any indication, the door swung open, and there was Olly, looking pale still but much better.
That was, until she saw the woman with the shoe.
I wondered what kind of relationship they had, because in addition to looking incredibly surprised, all Olly said was, “Thank you, Gemma, for the shoe and your concern.” That sounded almost cold to me when this woman had been here waiting to help Olly out, which didn’t jive with the woman I knew.
Okay, the woman I barely knew. Then something kind of weird happened.
In the time it took Olly to put her shoe back on, Gemma must have moved on quickly because without even a parting word, she was nowhere to be seen.
I even popped my head around the corner, and no trace of the emerald-green blazer she’d been wearing was visible. Weird.
The day went quickly after that, with me running off on my lunch hour to my apartment in Olly’s car.
I was suddenly seeing the drawback in carpooling in her vehicle, and we’d have to discuss it.
I took Becky outside to do her business in the designated grassy spot, roughhoused with her a little bit, took her back in and gave her a new antler to chew on, and said goodbye until later this afternoon.
I wanted to stay a bit longer, but I had this feeling, all the way down to my toes, that Olly needed me.