“Then yourself will do.” She smiles. “Think of the future. Of your livable salary, which will allow us to hire some brawny lad to come lift the top part of the credenza onto the bottom part of the credenza.” She points at the hutch in the corner of the living room. Cece and I hit a wall mid-assembly. Three years ago. “And of course it will keep me in the cheese lifestyle I am accustomed to.”
It’s easy, with Cece, to smile and let myself believe. “Unlimited pecorino romano.”
“And all the insulin your worthless pancreas desires.”
“Concrete bricks. To squash the Raid-resistant crab-hornet spiders.”
“A little plasma TV for Hedgie’s terrarium.”
“Matching ‘academia sux’ tattoos.”
“A golden toilet.”
“A golden bidet.”
We gasp. Then laugh. Then I sober up. “I just want to be paid to contemplate cosmological models of the observable universe, you know?”
“I know.” Her smile softens. “What does Dr. L. say about your chances?”
Laurendeau—or Dr. L., as I’d never dare to call him to his face—was my Ph.D. advisor and is the person to whom I owe every single bit of my academic success. He’s just as involved in my career as he was before I graduated, and I’m constantly thankful for it. “Optimistic.”
“There you go. How many days is the interview going to be?”
“Three.”
“You start today?”
“Yup. Informal interview dinner tonight.” I think about the chair wanting to meet me early. Is it promising? Inauspicious? Weird? No clue. “Teaching demonstration tomorrow. Research talk and a final reception the day after. Various meetings with faculty members scattered throughout.”
“Did you prep?”
“Is ‘prep’ rocking myself? Contemplating my own mortality? Sacrificing a live creature to the gods of academia?” I glance at Hedgie, who looks dutifully cowed.
“Have you stalked the search committee online?”
“I haven’t been given their names or a detailed itinerary yet. It’s just as well—I need to answer emails. And buy pantyhose. And call my mom.”
“No, no, no.” Cece lifts her hand. “Do not call your mom. She’ll just dump all her problems on you. You need to focus, not listen to her bitch about how your brothers are punching each other over the last hot dog.”
“Woman—they’re considering fratricide over a woman.” The Hannaways: prime Jerry Springer material.
“Doesn’t matter. Promise me that if your mom calls, you’ll tell her about the interview. And that your childhood was mediocre, at best.”
I mull it over. “How about I promise to avoid her for a few days?”
She squints. “Fine. So you’re going out for the pantyhose?”
“Yup.”
“Can you stop by the store to get me cereal?”
I don’t really have time for that. But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Or makes you resent your pathological inability to set boundaries, one of the two. “Sure. What kind—”
“No!” She slaps her hand on the table. “Elsie, you have to learn to say no.”
I massage my temple. “Will you please stop testing me?”
“I’ll stop when you stop putting others’ needs in front of yours.” She sets down her—my—empty mug and picks up Hedgie. “Gotta pee. You still want to borrow my red dress for tonight?”
I frown. “I never asked to borrow your—”
“And I’ll also do your makeup, if you insist.”
“I really don’t need—”
“Fine, you win—I’ll pluck your eyebrows, too.” Cece winks. Hedgie glares, parrot-perched on her shoulder. The bathroom door closes after them.
The clock on the wall says six forty-five. I sigh and allow myself a small indulgence: I double-click on the Word doc on the upper left corner of my screen. I scroll to the bottom of the half-written manuscript, then back to the top. The title, A Unified Theory of Two-Dimensional Liquid Crystal, waves wistfully at me. For a handful of seconds I let my imagination run to a near future, one in which I’m able to set aside time to complete it. Maybe even submit it.
I sigh deeply as I close it. Then I self-consciously trace my eyebrows and go back to answering emails.
* * *
? ? ?
Academic job interviews are famously optimized to ensure the candidate’s maximum suffering. So I’m not surprised when I get to Miel and find out that it’s a multi-fork, Lego-portioned, May I recommend a 1934 sauvignon blanc type of restaurant.
I observe a minute of silence for the expensive, excellent cheese I’ll order but not enjoy while busy hustling for my future—bleu d’Auvergne; brie; camembert (significantly different from brie, despite what the heathens say). Then I step into the restaurant, newborn-calf wobbly on my high heels.
There were no pantyhose at the store, which means that I’m wearing thigh highs—a fitting tribute to the burlesque that is my life. I’m also 56 percent sure that I shouldn’t have let Cece talk me into her crimson-red sheath dress or her cardinal-red lipstick or her lava-red nail polish.
“You look like Taylor Swift circa 2013,” she told me, pleased, finishing side-curling my hair.
“I was aiming more for AOC circa 2020.”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “We all were.”
I reach for my phone. Under the inexplicably vulva-shaped cracks on the screen—the iTwat, Cece calls it—I find a last-minute email from my advisor:
You’ll make a fantastic impression. Remember: more than any other candidate, you are entitled to this position.
His trust is like a hand on my shoulder: reassuringly warm and uncomfortably heavy. I shouldn’t be this nervous. Not because I’ve got the job in the bag—I’ve got nothing in the bag, except death, federal student loans repayment, and three-year-old Mentos crusted in lint. What I do have is lots of practice showing people that I am who they want me to be, and that’s what interviewing is all about. I once convincingly played a lovesick ballerina, kneeling in the middle of a crowded restaurant to propose to a balding middle-aged man who smelled like feet—just so he could refuse me in front of his work archrival. I should be able to convince a handful of MIT professors that I’m a decent physicist. Right?
I don’t know. Maybe. I think so. Yeah.
I’ll just focus on the fake-girlfriending protocol. APE, Cece and I call it. (Well, I call it APE. Cece just shakes her head and asks, “What’s wrong with scientists? Were you all, like, bullied in high school?”) First, assess the need: What is it that the person in front of me wants to see? Then, plan a response: How can I become what they want? And lastly, enact—
“Dr. Hannaway?”
I turn around. A dark-haired woman studies me as I mentally rehearse how to human. “Dr. Salt?”
Her handshake is strong. Businesslike. “It is nice to meet you in person.”
“Likewise.”
“Come—let’s go to the bar.”
I follow her, a little starstruck. Dr. Monica Salt wrote the textbook on theoretical physics—literally. The Salt has been sitting tight on my shelf for over a decade. Nine hundred pages of excellent content. Bonus: it squashes the hornet-crab spiders like a dream.
“Dr. Hannaway?” She sounds assertive. Charismatic. Badass. Like I wish I felt.
“Elsie, please.”
“Monica, then. I’m happy you applied for the position. When I saw your CV, I thought for sure some other university would have snatched you up by now.”
I smile, noncommittal. Yep, that’s me. Beating off job offers with a stick.
“Your dissertation on liquid crystals’ static distortions in biaxial nematics was brilliant, Elsie.”
I feel myself flush. Sex does nothing for me, but maybe this is my kink: being complimented by leading scholars in my field. Hot, huh? “You’re too kind.”
“I can hardly believe how much your work has already affected our understanding of non-equilibrium systems and macroscopic coherent motion. Liquid crystals are a hot topic in theoretical physics, and you’ve positioned yourself as an expert.”
I am thoroughly flattered. Well, almost thoroughly: there is something in her tone that has me on edge. Something odd. Nudging.
“Your discoveries are going to have long-ranging impact on many fields, from displays to optical imaging to drug delivery. Truly impressive.”
Like maybe there’s a but?
“I cannot overstate how impressed I am with the scientific output you’ve produced in such a short period.”
There’s definitely a but.
“You’ll be an asset to whatever institution you choose, and MIT would be the perfect home for you. I want to be honest and admit that based on what I have seen, you should be the person we hire.”
. . . But?
“But.”
I knew it. I knew it. I knew it, but my heart drops to the bottom of my stomach anyway.
“Elsie, I asked you to meet alone because I feel that it would be better if you knew about the . . . politics that are currently at play.”
“Politics?” I shouldn’t be surprised. STEM academia is 98 percent politics and 1 percent science (the rest, I suspect, “I Should Be Writing” memes). “What do you mean?”
“You might have several job offers, and I want to make sure that you choose us despite . . . whatever might happen during your interview.”
I frown. “Whatever might happen?”