“Bark.” She glanced at the other two students. Julie Yoo, who was far too rich to be spending her time studying spiders, and Patrick Mordy, who was in his first year in the graduate program and not anywhere near as smart as his transcript and application materials had indicated, and was, Melanie suspected, profoundly unlikely to finish his degree. “What?” she said. “What’s so important that you guys couldn’t wait for me to get back to the lab?”
Both Bark and Patrick stared at Julie, who looked down at her shoes. Melanie sighed and tried to keep her temper. She liked Julie, she really did, but for a girl who had everything going for her, Julie could have used a dose of confidence. Her parents had a lot of money. A ton of money. Private jet money. A building on the American University campus named after them money. What the hell was Julie doing in a lab studying spiders money. And Julie was pretty, and not just in the way girls in the sciences could be pretty because there wasn’t a lot of competition. Julie would have been pretty in business school or law school, Melanie thought. Now that’s pretty. She smiled to herself as she thought this. She could think like that because she knew she looked the same way. She looked her age, but she looked good for it, the kind of forty-year-old woman who made men stare at their wives and wonder why they hadn’t made better decisions. She caught Patrick looking at her and starting to smile back and she jerked her mouth into a scowl. They weren’t as careful with their lab work if she wasn’t hard on them.
“You can tell me while we walk,” she said, brushing past them. “I’m going to stop and buy a salad on the way, and if what you guys have is interesting enough, I’ll buy lunch for you as well. If not, I swear to God, if you’re here because another moron thinks he’s found a poisonous spider in a crate of bananas, I’m making you play hot potato with a brown recluse.”
She hung her bag off her shoulder and braced herself for the heat she knew would be waiting for her outside the air-conditioned building. It was only five minutes from there to her lab, and she’d be making a stop at the café for her lunch, but it was going to leave her sweaty and red-faced. The Washington heat was not something she enjoyed, and it had come early this year.
“The brown recluse won’t bite unless—”
Melanie spun around and Patrick’s mouth snapped shut. She nodded. “That’s what I thought. Now what do you have for me?”
It was Julie who positioned herself at Melanie’s elbow, Patrick and Bark at her heels as they went down the steps and started crossing the quad. There were soft clouds sleeping above the campus buildings, but no real hope that rain would break the heat. Maybe she’d quit early tonight, crank up the air-conditioning in her apartment, get some takeout, and watch a bad romantic comedy or two by herself. Or maybe she’d have Bark over for a night of activities that required no talking from him. Deep down, though, she knew she wouldn’t leave the lab before she normally did. If she were the kind of woman who quit early, she’d probably still have a husband to go home to. That wasn’t entirely fair, she knew, since it wasn’t as if Manny had ever come home from the White House earlier than she came home from the lab. The difference was that when Manny was home with her, he was actually home with her, while when she was home with him, there was still a large part of her that was at the lab.
“You were right,” Julie said at last.
“Of course I was right,” Melanie said. “About what?”
She walked briskly, not bothering to look behind her to see if the boys were having trouble keeping up. She didn’t worry about Julie. The young woman might have no confidence, but she was maybe the hardest-working scientist Melanie had ever met, and even a pair of two-inch heels—modest for a night on the town, but deeply impractical for the lab—wasn’t going to keep Julie from staying with her faculty advisor.
“Nazca,” Julie said.
“Nazca?”
“Nazca,” Julie repeated, as if it were supposed to mean something to Melanie.
Melanie didn’t stop walking, but she did glance over at her. Another hundred meters and they’d be inside and cool again, at least for the two minutes it took her to buy herself lunch and have it bagged up so she could finish walking to the lab. “Nazca? What the fuck are you talking about, Julie? Nazca? That’s what you’ve got for me? The three of you waiting outside my classroom like a bunch of freshman, waiting to pounce, and that’s what you’re giving me? That’s what can’t wait for me to get back to the lab? Nazca?” She picked up the pace.
“Nazca,” Julie said again. “As in Peru?”