“I—”
“But I saw your face last night. You had no idea who I was. So back to square one. Why the lie? And what else have you lied about? How have you kept it up for months without Greg realizing it? How will he react when he finds out? And above all, how will you react when he finds out?” He stares at me like I’m a hexagonal Rubik’s cube. I picture him lying in a bed too small for his frame, wondering all sorts of things about me, and nearly shiver. “Are you in love with my brother, Elsie?”
I swallow. “This is a very intrusive question.”
“Is it. Hmm.” He shrugs graciously.
“And anyway, Greg is thirty years old. He doesn’t need you to run his life.”
“Greg is thirty years old, and you are the first person he’s been in any kind of romantic relationship with.” His eyes harden. “Considering the lies you’ve been feeding him, it seems that he does need someone looking out for him.”
“If you just called him—”
“He won’t be back until Sunday.”
“Have you tried to get in touch with him?”
“No.” His eyes darken. “I’m not going to tell my brother that his girlfriend is secretly a liquid crystal theory superhero on the phone. I’ll do him the favor of breaking his heart in person.”
“So you can pat him on the back? Say ‘there, there’?”
“I’m serious, Elsie.”
I cock my head, picturing an empty auditorium. Greg dressed like the apostle Peter. A single person in the audience, clapping loudly after every song. My best friend. “You really care about Greg.”
“Yes,” he says like he’s talking to a child, “I care about my brother.”
“It’s not a given, you know.”
“Do you not care about your siblings? Or do your siblings not care about you?”
I shrug, remembering my phone calls with them this morning after they didn’t bother answering the phone last night. Lucas picked up half-asleep. Not only didn’t he recognize my voice, he also asked, Elsie who? “I don’t think they are fully aware that I exist in a corporeal form,” I murmur, almost thinking out loud. I regret it instantly, because Jack nods in a way that has me wondering if he’s filing away the information. Future ammo?
“I’m sorry your brothers are assholes.” He sounds surprisingly sincere. “But given your history with lies, you can’t blame me for being concerned about mine.”
“You didn’t know that I was lying when we first met.”
“No, I didn’t.” Jack’s expression sharpens. He straightens and leans forward, elbows on his desk. The entire room shifts and thickens with tension. “I did know, however, that there is something about you. That you tirelessly study people. Figure out who they are, what they want, and then mold yourself into whatever shape you think will fit them. I’ve seen you play half a dozen different roles for half a dozen different situations, switching personalities like you’re channel surfing, and I still have no idea who you are. So I think it’s within my right to be concerned for my brother. And I think it’s within my right to be curious about you.”
I freeze.
Did he just—
He didn’t. He doesn’t know me. I must have misheard. Misinterpreted. Misunderstood. Mis—fuck.
“I—” My hands tremble, and I slide them between my thighs and chair, like a child. I feel bare. Head spinning, I blurt out, “I don’t know what you—”
The phone rings. Jacks lifts one finger to signal me to wait and picks up. “Smith-Turner. Hi, Sasha. Yes. She’s here. She was just about to . . . Ah. I see. Yeah. No problem. I can take care of it.” I’m too shaken by what he just said—mold yourself into whatever shape you think will fit—to eavesdrop. Which makes it all the more stupefying when Jack says, “Volkov’s in the middle of something and cannot give you a tour of the department.” The faint, crooked smile reappears. “But don’t worry, Elsie. I’m happy to take over.”
7
ELECTRICAL RESISTANCE
I repeat to him “There’s no need” so many times, the words lose meaning like in a tongue twister. It’s all in vain.
“Jack, I’m sure you have lots of things to do,” I say as he ushers me out of his office, arm brushing against mine.
“Like what?”
“Um.” Make necklaces out of baby teeth? Deadlift an anvil? “Work?”
He slides his key in the back pocket of his jeans and sizes me up from five feet above me. I feel ridiculously overdressed, even though I’m the one wearing proper professional attire. “I can make the time to show around a potential future colleague.”
Don’t snort, Elsie. Don’t snort. “There really is no need—”
He tuts. “If you keep repeating that, I’ll figure that you don’t want to hang out with me.”
I don’t. But I’d love to hang you.
He pushes me down the hallway with a hand between my shoulder blades, and for a second his many feet and inches and pounds feel tantalizingly, inexplicably inviting. I’m tired. A little weary. I could sink against him and . . .
Whoa.
I think I’m getting woozy. Maybe I need to eat. I shouldn’t, though. I had vitamin-enriched gummy rabbits between interviews to keep my blood sugar from dropping—unwise, letting yourself get hangry when you’re with someone you daydream of slaughtering at baseline. I take out my phone, meaning to check my glycemic levels. Except Jack is staring at it, eyes on the crack splitting the lock screen. (A selfie of Cece and me laughing as we hold up a block of cranberry goat cheese. It was on New Year’s Eve, before we spent four hours watching a Belgian movie about cannibalism, then one more hour discussing its emotional throughline. I wanted to die. The cheese was good, though.)
My glucose monitor looks fine, but I want to check my pod. I need a minute alone. Maybe I can pretend I forgot something in Jack’s office? I turn around to give the door one longing look, and my eyes fall on his nameplate.
“Where’s the Turner from, anyway?” Jack gives me a curious glance. I suspect that his leisure pace is faster than my full-on sprint, but he slows down to match me. How gracious. “Greg’s last name is just Smith.”
“Turner’s my mom’s last name.”
“And Greg didn’t take it?”
“See, this seems like the exact type of information that someone who’s in a loving relationship with my brother would already have.” Okay. That’s not untrue. “Where was Volkov supposed to take you?”
I take my itinerary out of my minuscule pocket. I have to unfold it about twenty times, which seems to amuse Jack. Dick. “Wait. It says here that Dr. Crowley was going to give me the tour.” I look up, hopeful. “You don’t need to—”
“Crowley—and Pereira—are no longer on the search committee.”
“What?” The very two assholes I overheard in the bathroom? “Why?”
“Something came up. They had to step back.” He says it in a monotone, like it’s not weird that two faculty members would pull out in the middle of a search. “But I’m happy to take over.” He holds my eyes, final, blue-quartered. “What does the schedule say?”
Dammit. “Tour of the labs.”
He huffs a laugh. “You sure you want to see those? They’re crawling with experimentalists.”
I stifle an eye roll. “I’d love to see the labs. Like I said, I firmly believe in the collaboration between experimental and theoretical physics, and I value . . .” Jack’s eyebrow lifts (subtext: You’re full of shit), and I trail off.
“Should I just show you the offices, Elsie?”
I press my lips together (subtext: Stop saying my name). “Yes, please.”
The thing about theoretical physics is, it mostly involves thinking. And reading. And scribbling equations on a chalkboard. And contemplating a hemlock salad when you realize that the last three months of your work don’t jive with the Bekenstein-Hawking formula. While writing my dissertation, I spent the bulk of my time in my apartment, staring at the wall, trying to make sense of the segregation of crystals into chiral domains. Every few hours Cece would poke me with the Swiffer to make sure I was alive; Hedgie was perched on her shoulder, eagerly awaiting the green light to feast on my corpse.
We theorists don’t really do labs, and the fanciest equipment we need is computers to run simulations. I’ve never even worn a lab coat—except for the year J.J. made me dress like a sexy neurosurgeon for a Halloween party. Even then, it was 80 percent fishnets.
“Conference rooms are that way.” Jack points to the right. His forearm is corded with muscle. What workout even targets those? “About sixty percent of the department focuses mostly on theory. More, if you include hybrid faculty like Volkov.” He gives me a sideways glance. “Nice job with the puns, by the way. Did you spend hours googling dad jokes?”
Only about twenty minutes. I’m a skimmer. “Tell me, do you feel safe here?”
“Safe?”