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Shit, I write for a third time.
And she said…
I wait. Unable to look away from the phone.
She said, “I think He already did.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
Obviously, she writes, I have issues with…so much of the Catholic Church. And so does she, really. Religion is a weird mix of weird and ugly and incomprehensible, but it also has in it this beautiful thing that made her love me exactly as I landed on her doorstep. That’s why I still go to mass with her on Sundays when I can. It’s why when I legally changed my name, I took hers as my middle name. Camilla. So. There you are. I’m complicated. I have issues. I get it.
I don’t have a good response. Not in words. Instead, I send her an emoji string: a heart, a bowl of soup, and heels.
Sorry, I append. Bad at words.
No, she types. I’m pretty sure that’s emoji for “hold me.”
Exactly right. She’s exactly right.
I sit in place.
I still don’t know her name. I still haven’t seen so much as a picture. I’m pretty sure that I’m more in love with her than before this conversation started. I don’t know how to move forward, but I can’t stay in place.
The one thing I’m sure of is that I don’t want to hurt her.
My number is 650-555-2761, I write. I think we’re beyond a selfie or two at this point. I want to do this right. I want to hear your voice.
There’s a bit of a pause before she responds. That’s a Bay area code. I’m 415-555-3113.
That’s San Francisco. My pulse is racing. She’s right across the Bay. Has been this entire time.
And, she continues, it’s past midnight. I have a hangover, and I need to be up by eight. Call me vain, but when we talk for the first time I want my voice to sound its dulcet best.
I look through my calendar. Work, work, work, and then Gabe has a seminar in the evening and I’ve already committed to dinner. Tomorrow sucks. I have a late afternoon thing and dinner with friends. But I can beg out by eight or so. Pacific time.
The silence that follows seems fraught.
This is why I was afraid of this, I say. I’m so fucking busy. We’ll get together, and then in a month I’ll be like, bye, have to go to Australia for two weeks! I don’t want you to hate me.
A., she says, I’m busy, too. I was just about to say that if we make it tomorrow at nine Pacific time I can make it.
Shit. This is happening. This is really happening. I’m scared. My nerves tingle in anticipation. And if her phone number is any guide, she lives just across the Bay.
I’m glad we’re still friends, she says. Who else would I get to emergency-text me, after all?
I manage a half-hearted smile. I was just thinking about that earlier today. You know, I think we may be quantum entangled?
Quantum entangled?
You know. Transmitting information to each other faster than the speed of light.
For me, it’s a second way of saying I’m half in love with her already. And maybe she gets it, because she sends back a smile.
Good night, Em, I say.
Good night. Talk to you tomorrow.
Except this time, she really means talk. I set down my phone.
Let me not screw this up.
17
JAY
I spend the first two hours of my day going over an experiment with Vithika.
“Jay,” she finally asks over Skype, “are you okay? You’re not paying attention.”
I shake my head, “Uh.” Shit. “I have a date tonight.”
Her eyebrows go up.
“Shut up,” I say, even though she didn’t say anything.
I spend an hour in my lab talking through experimental design with Gary and Soo Yin. I grab a sandwich in crackling plastic from the campus market for lunch—it’s fast, at least, and filling, even if the bread is soggy.
I’m good at working. I’m shit at feeling.
By the time it’s four in the afternoon, I’m a complete tangle.
Gabe comes to my rescue.
Yo, he texts half an hour before his seminar. I was gonna go meet Maria and bring her up here, but I got delayed.
Gabe. Late again. I shake my head.
Can you bring her up?
I exhale. It’s not like I have any option to say no. It won’t even be the first time I accompany Maria there. Gabe works at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and despite heavy ties to the university, it’s a separate entity run by the federal government. Maria couldn’t just walk in. LBL employees (like Gabe) or affiliates (like me) can sign visitors in, but otherwise the gates won’t open.
Fine, I tell Gabe.
“Well, here we are,” I say to Maria a half-hour later when we meet in the courtyard outside my lab. “It’s confirmation bias again.”
She gives me a level, annoyed look.
“You okay with walking?” I ask.
“Fine,” she says tersely.
I sigh.
Maria doesn’t like me, and I can hardly blame her. I accept responsibility for the fact that we don’t get along, but… Still, we don’t get along.
I walked into work today, which means I don’t have my car. It’s not really my fault that I’m forcing her to walk, but I still feel responsible. Nothing about her outfit looks like it was made for walking.
Her dress comes halfway up her thighs, and the material is a little tight. To make it worse, LBL is up a hill. Calling it a mere “hill” isn’t quite fair. The Berkeley Hills are steep, with the road up to the lab at something close to a 20 percent grade. The sun is out, though, and it’s a nice day.
“You know that I’m going to have to be responsible for you,” I say as we start up the hill.
“Relax, Three Sigma,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “I don’t run with scissors.”
“I’m serious. This is not the kind of site where visitors can wander around and gawk at buildings. It’s the kind of site where the wrong person in the wrong place when the synchrotron is running will die of radiation poisoning in seconds. Not that there’s any danger of that.”
“Aw, you’re being a pedant again. Having never visited or talked with my brother, I wouldn’t know anything about his workplace.”
I accept this sarcasm in silence.
“Although,” she continues, “radiation poisoning could solve a lot of my problems. Want to play canary?”
A smile tugs at my lips despite myself. With my blinders off, I have to admit that Maria is something of a trouper. She’s wearing a gray sweater dress that clings a little bit too much to her smoo
th curves. It’s tight enough that I can see the round muscles in her ass tense and release as she goes up the road.
I shouldn’t be looking. I’m talking to Em tonight. But I’m human.
And Maria and I may be nothing alike, but dammit, I have to respect her. And her ass.
“Don’t be shy,” she says. “Your death will be for the good of the country.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll stick to determining safe spots theoretically and leave the empirical validation to you.”
She glances over her shoulder at me. “Running out of breath? I thought you wanted to walk.”
I’m not running out of breath. Yes, I’m breathing hard, but it’s a hill, and Maria walks quickly. She tilts her head, as if gauging my fitness level. Then she speeds up, which I hadn’t thought possible. Her dress sways around her thighs. Shaping her quads. Spilling over her butt.
Maria and I will never get along, but I’m not about to let her leave me behind. I grit my teeth and dig in and move faster. I can’t believe that she’s doing this in heels.
And that’s when my eyes fall to her feet. I’m not much of a shoe person. One heel looks much like another. But Maria is wearing red heels.
Not just red heels.
My heart stops. My fists slowly clench. I feel almost dizzy. Yep, some undiscovered part of my mind whispers. Those sure are shoes. Everything seems to move slowly; I can hear every individual beat of my heart separated by an infinity of silence.
Her shoes are three-inch heels. Red. Chased with a bit of ribbon, decorated with gold butterflies and Swarovski crystals. I know those shoes. I have them practically memorized.
Maria Lopez is wearing Em’s fuck-off shoes.
I can’t look away from them. They click on the pavement in front of me.
For a moment, I can’t even process what this means. Why is Maria wearing Em’s shoes? Do they know each other?
No. My mind may be moving slowly, but I know the truth. Words I can’t even say in my mind.
Maria can’t be Em. That makes…
No, I correct myself. It doesn’t make no sense. It makes a lot of sense.
The floodgates of recognition open. Maria is the right age. Em is, and always has been, a… Well, a nerd for lack of a better word. Maria knew enough statistics to know what three sigma meant. She knew enough physics to understand her brother’s job talk. And she gave me hell for assuming she couldn’t do these things based on how she looked.
