Love, Theoretically

From: [email protected]

Subject: thermo paper

omg I forgot to write it can I turn it in late? im sorry i was at wedding last weekend and got soooo high i’ve been out of it for the whole week.

From: [email protected]

Subject: No fair!

A B- on my Vibrations paper? Offensive. I’m emailing the Dean about this.

No rest for the adjunct.

As in, contractually: adjuncts cannot take time off. Since I’ll be busy interviewing, I prerecorded lessons and scrambled to find instructors to cover my classes. But I need to reply to students’ messages—while fantasizing about “accidentally” misspelling my email in next year’s syllabus. When I arrive on the MIT campus, I’m still answering the odd May I have an extension email. The one thing adjuncting has done for me is hone my teaching skills, so I’m not too nervous about today’s demonstration.

That is, till Monica meets me at the entrance of the physics building and tells me darkly, “You’ll be evaluated by me, Volkov, and Smith-Turner.”

Instant. Stomach. Knot.

“I see.” Maybe it’s like figure skating at the Winter Olympics, where the highest and lowest scores get automatically tossed out?

“But don’t worry.” She darts up the stairs, and I struggle to keep up in my pencil skirt. (The thigh highs are proving surprisingly comfortable, if . . . drafty.) “I’ve seen your student evals—you’re an excellent lecturer.” She takes a right and guides me through a series of doors. “You’ll be teaching a graduate class, and the Ph.D. students will be asked to weigh in and give their impressions of you. Keep that in mind and do the thing where you make them feel important. Stupid questions don’t exist, yada yada.” She stops outside a closed door and bites her lip. “There’s something else.”

“What is it?” I’m a little winded.

She clears her throat. “I really tried to get your demonstration to be for another group of students.”

Oh? “Why?”

“Because the faculty member who teaches this one—”

“Dr. Hannaway!” We both turn. Volkov is waddling toward us, grinning like we go way back and he used to babysit me. “Do you know the one about the radio that only works in the morning?”

I force myself to smile. God, I’m tired. “The AM radio?”

He laughs, delighted. Monica discreetly rolls her eyes, opens the door, and gestures me inside, our coaching session cut short.

The first thing I notice is Jack—which is unsurprising. He’s a giant mountain of muscles, after all, and there’s probably a physics equation that explains his annoying habit of becoming the center of mass of every room he burdens with his presence. He’s standing behind the podium, tinkering with the computer, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, as though the world outside is not relapsing into an ice age. The lines of his tattoo curl around a biceps that frankly no one, no one who doesn’t work out for a living should have. I still can’t tell what the ink’s supposed to form.

In theory, it’s a scene I know well. The few minutes leading up to the start of class: students enjoying the last few seconds with their phones, the instructor scrambling to pull up the PowerPoint against all IT odds (missing cables, incompatibility issues, never-ending Windows 10 updates). In practice, there are about twenty pairs of eyes in the room, and they’re all fixed on Jack with a mix of admiration, respect, and awe, like he’s the dominant turkey of the mating season.

Okay.

So the MIT grad body fanboys over Jack.

Fantastic.

“—whether it’s true or not,” a young man with faded green hair is saying, “that Christopher Nolan uses you as a consultant on all his movies?”

Jack shakes his head, and I see the muscles cording his neck. Breaking news: necks have muscles. “I will not be blamed for Tenet, Cole,” he replies, and everyone laughs.

I hate him. Though that’s not news. What is news is how he looks in my direction and politely says, as though last night I didn’t threaten to feed his rotting corpse to the earthworms, “Welcome, Dr. Hannaway. I started the monitor for you.” He’s smiling, but there’s an edge to it. A challenge. Like he’s asking me to jump into a puddle that’s actually twenty feet deep.

“Thank you.” Our arms brush together on my way to the podium. I remember his hands, warm, unwavering around my waist, a hushed settle down murmured against my temple, and I suppress a shiver.

Have I mentioned that I hate him?

“Good morning, and thank you for having me,” I say once my PowerPoint is loaded. The class is (predictably) 90 percent male and (predictably) made of students who are around my age.

It’s complicated, being a woman in STEM. Even more so when you’re young and unproven. And even more so when you have a semi-pathological need to get along with others. As the only female grad in my department, I’ve had ample opportunity to contemplate the tightrope that those who are not white cishet men tread in academic spaces.

Do I want to be seen as a congenial, affable colleague? Yes, and thanks to a lifetime of APE, I know the exact combination to achieve that: charming self-deprecation, modesty, humorous tangents, admitting to doubt and fallibility. It’s not rocket science (incidentally, a branch of experimental physics I’m obliged to scoff at). Using jokes and simple examples to be a charismatic, engaging speaker is a pretty textbook way to come across as a likable guy.

Guy being the operative word. Because when you’re a woman talking about your research, there are anywhere between one and a million STEMlords ready to exploit every little weakness—every little sign that you’re not a lean, mean science machine. The you people want is sharp, impeccable, perfect enough to justify your intrusion in a field that for centuries has been “rightfully” male. But not too perfect, because apparently only “stone-cold bitches” are like that, and they do not make for congenial, affable colleagues. STEM culture has been a boys’ club for so long, I often feel like I can be allowed to play only if I follow the rules men made. And those rules? They downright suck.

Like I said, a tightrope. With a bunch of crocodiles throwing their maws open in wait for fresh meat.

Well. Here goes. I make my smile a combination of warm and self-assured that doesn’t exist in nature, and say, “Since this class deals with current topics in physics, I’ve prepared a lecture on Wigner crystals, a highly discussed—”

A groan.

Did someone groan?

I look around, puzzled. Students stare at me expectantly.

I imagined it.

“Wigner crystallization occurs when electron gases that live in a periodic lattice—”

“Excuse me?” Cole. Of the green hair. “Dr. Hannaway, are you going to talk about the topic of Wigner crystals from a theoretical perspective?”

“Great question. Mostly theory, but I’ll give an overview of the experimental evidence, too.” Next slide—and perfect segue. “Once we achieved the ability to create large inter-electronic distances, Wigner crystallization—”

“Excuse me.” Cole. Again. “A question.”

I smile patiently. I’m used to this. The last time I presented at a conference, some dude well, actually’d me before I even pulled up my PowerPoint. “Of course, go ahead.”

“My question is . . . what’s the point of this?”

Several people laugh. I sigh internally. “Excuse me?”

“Isn’t it a bit useless, talking about theories for hours?” He talks slowly but earnestly. Like he’s Steve Jobs unveiling a new phone. “Shouldn’t we focus on the actual applications?”

I open my mouth to ask who hurt him—Did Michio Kaku bully you, Cole? Did Feynman steal your lunch money?—but my eyes fall on Volkov. He’s giving me an interested look, like he’s curious to see how I’ll deal with this shitgibbon. Next to him, Monica’s lips are flat and resigned. And behind her . . .

Jack.

Who never bothered to sit. He leans against the wall, arms crossed over his chest in a casual Yeah, I work out way, staring at me like a brown recluse spider on steroids. His sharp, unyielding eyes miss nothing, but whatever emotion I managed to squeeze from him last night is gone, and I’m back to having no clue what he’s thinking. He’s like a closed book.

No, he’s like a book on fire. Fahrenheit 451—no words to read, just ashes and the abyss.

Everything clicks together. I fill in the blanks of my interrupted conversation with Monica: it’s Jack who teaches this class. Jack, who has lots of opinions about theorists. Jack, who indoctrinated his students into believing that people like me are the enemy. Jack, whose sexual fantasies likely involve me failing to defend my discipline to two dozen hostile dudes. I bet he gets off to recordings of me mispronouncing syzygy at the eleventh-grade science fair.

This is a setup. The teaching demonstration was always going to be my Titanic—the ship, not the high-grossing motion picture.

Except that, no.

I hold Jack’s eyes and give him my sweetest, most feral smile. You underestimated me, it says, and he knows it. Because he half smiles back and nods minutely—devious, ready, coiled. Have I, Elsie?

It’s on.

“You make a really good point, Cole.” I set down my clicker and wander from behind the podium. “Theoretical physics can be a waste of time.” I take off my suit jacket, even though it’s cold. I glance down at my abdomen to make sure the bump of my pod is not visible. I’m basically one of you. Two, three years older? Look, I’m sitting on the table. Let’s be friends. “Who would agree? Show of hands.” It takes a few seconds of exchanged Is this a trap? looks, but 80 percent of the hands are up in no time.

That’s when I raise my own, too.

They laugh. “Aren’t you a theorist, Dr. Hannaway?” someone asks.

“Yes, but I get it. And please, call me Elsie.” I’m not like a regular theorist. I’m a cool theorist. Yikes. Erwin Schrödinger, avert your eyes. “It is unfair that most of the physicists who win Nobel Prizes or become household names are theorists. Newton. Einstein. Feynman. Kaku. Sheldon Cooper got the seven-season spin-off show, but Leonard? Nothing.” People chuckle—including Volkov. Jack’s slim smile doesn’t waver. “The advantage of theory is that we trade in ideas, and ideas are cheap and fast. Experimental physicists need expensive equipment to troubleshoot every step, but theorists can just sit there and write”—I add a calculated shrug—“science fan fiction.” It’s an actual insult I got when I went to a Harvard social as Cece’s plus-one. From a philosophy grad who, after three beers, decided to mansplain to the entire bar why my publications didn’t really count.

The things I do for free food.

“Theorists hide behind fancy math,” Cole says. Sweet summer STEMlord. I promise you’re not as edgy as you think.

“What I don’t get is . . . what’s the point of building abstract theories that are not even bound by the laws of nature?” says the guy next to Cole. He’s wearing a long-sleeved tee that reads “Physics and Chill” in the Shrek font. I kinda love it.

“Experiments are way more useful.” Another dude. In the first row.

“You only care about what might be, but not what actually is.” Dude, of course. This time from the third row. “The possible applications are always an afterthought.”

Many students nod. So do I, because I can read them like a large-print edition. I know the exact Elsie they want.

Time to bring this home.

“What you guys are saying is that theoretical physics doesn’t always end in a product. And to that, all I can say is . . . I agree. Physics is like sex: it may yield practical results, but often that’s not why we do it.” At least that’s what Feynman once said. He’s also on record as calling women worthless bitches, but we’ll let it slide since his quote made you laugh. “How many of you are experimentalists?” Almost all hands shoot up, and Cole’s the highest. I’m depressingly unsurprised. “The truth is, you guys are right. Theorists do focus on mathematical models and abstract concepts. But they do it hoping that experimentalists like you will come across our theories and decide to prove us right.” Ugh. I want a shower and a bar of industrial-strength soap. “And that’s why I want to talk with you guys about my theories on Wigner crystallization. So that I can hear your opinions and improve through your feedback. I don’t know when theorists and experimentalists became rivals, but physics is not about competition—it’s about collaboration. You’re free to make up your mind, and I’m not going to try and convince you that you need my theories. I will acknowledge, however, that I need your experiments.” Am I laying it on too thick? Nope. Well, yes. But the grads love it. They nod. They murmur. A couple of them grin smugly.

It’s my cue to unsheathe my warmest smile. “Does that answer your question, Cole?”

It does. Cole’s ravenous ego has been sufficiently fed with scraps of my dignity. Oh, the things I do for healthcare and pension funds matching. “Yes, Elsie. Thank you for addressing my concerns.”

Dickbag. “Excellent.” I push away from the table and walk back to the podium. “I’m so excited to tell you about Wigner crystallization. Feel free to interrupt again at any point, because what you take out of the lecture, that’s what matters.” A beat. Then I deliver my final blow. “Unless you multiply it by the speed of light. In which case it energies.”

Aaand, scene.

I lift my eyes just as Volkov starts wheezing. Beside him, Monica gives me a delighted look: her gladiator, making her proud. I allow the students a few seconds to groan at my cheesy, dorky pun that they secretly love because—who doesn’t? “Thank you, I’ll be here all week.” Groans turn into chuckles.

And that’s when I let myself look at Jack. My chin lifts, just a millimeter. I told you you’d regret taking me on, Dr. Smith-Turner.

Jack stares back, expressionless. Not smiling. Not frowning. Not gritting his teeth. He just stares, in what I really hope is a reassessment of my threat to his physics domination plan. To his precious George. It’s fleeting, and I’m probably imagining it, but I could almost swear that I spot a twinkle in the blue slice of his eye.

I shelve it as a win and get started with my talk.

•   •   •

After the teaching demonstration I could use a nap, but my day is booked full. I have a meeting with the dean of the School of Science, a pleasant guy who sips coffee from a tentacle mug that has me pondering his porn preferences. Then there’s an informal lunch with two physics profs—clearly a couple having a lovers’ spat, which results in me staring at my salad while they bicker over someone named Raul. Afterward I get a five-minute bathroom break (spent figuring out whether my insulin pod is acting up or I’m just a dumpster fire of paranoia) followed by one-on-one interviews.

One-on-ones are, of course, what I’m best at. It’s simple math: being the Elsie one person wants is much easier than negotiating between the Elsies twelve different people demand. These interviews are ostensibly for me to ask questions about the department that will help me decide whether to accept an offer, but let’s not forget that (1) my current job situation is a bukkake of shit, and (2) carrying out interviews qualifies as academic service, and academics hate service with the intensity of a thousand quasars.

Luckily, I’m a pro at making people feel like time spent with me is not wasted. Dr. Ikagawa uses inflatable yoga balls instead of chairs—not ideal in a pencil skirt, but conducive to bonding conversation over our core and upper-body routines. Dr. Voight has been on hold with his dental insurance for hours, and when I let him spend our fifteen minutes fighting them on the phone, he looks like he could kiss me. I trap a mosquito that’s been infesting Alvarez’s office and make a lifelong friend. I workshop Dr. Albritton’s syllabus; laugh with Dr. Deol about his son’s third-grade teacher, who still thinks Pluto is a planet; nod as Dr. Sader sips on a Capri Sun while rambling about dark matter being not a clump but a smoothly distributed wavy superfluid.

It’s going well, I tell myself as a gangly grad student tasked with escorting me around takes me to my seventh interview of the day. I am projecting affability. Collegiality. Desirabili—

“Here it is,” she says in front of a black door.

I stare at the name plaque for a second. Briefly consider defacing it. Resist my base impulses and tell her, “I think there might be a mistake. My itinerary says that my next meeting is with Dr. Pereira.”

Was I looking forward to it after what I overheard last night? No. But since I cannot report him or his buddy to HR without admitting that I broke into a restroom, I was fully ready to make him uncomfortable with passive-aggressive questions about whether he’d be willing to take over my classes if I were to start a family.

It’s not like I’m ever getting his vote, anyway.

“There was a change to Dr. Pereira’s slots. Jack—I mean, Dr. Smith-Turner—is going to be your last interview.”

Maybe I was a baby-seal clubber in a past life. Or a Wall Street CEO. It would explain my luck. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” She clears her throat. “Dr. Hannaway, I wanted to say . . . you’re such an inspiration. When you won that Forbes award—well, hardly any physicist ever does, not to mention women. Also, I was in your teaching demonstration today. You were so poised and assertive. Cole’s a huge prick, and . . .” She flushes. “Anyway, it was inspiring.”

“I—” I flush, too. “I don’t know what to—” She scurries away before I can stammer the rest of the sentence.

Was she making fun of me? Does someone really find me inspiring? Even though I spend my life pretzeling my personality to avoid being hated? Even though I am the fraudiest of impostors?

It doesn’t matter. I sigh and knock on the worst door in all of Boston. “Come,” a deep voice says, and I resignedly let myself in.

I don’t look around Jack’s office. I refuse to care if it’s well lit, or wallpapered in brocade, or a pigsty—though, tragically, I do notice that it smells nice. Soap and books and wood and coffee and Jack, the scent of him but in intense, deconstructed notes. Because apparently I know his scent by now, which makes me want to tear my olfactory glands out of my nostrils. Bah.

There’s a free chair in front of the desk. I make a beeline for it as he keeps typing on his computer.

And typing.

And typing.

And—wait for it—typing.

Ten seconds go by. Thirty. Forty-five. He has yet to acknowledge me, and the same antagonistic tension from last night bubbles inside me, filling the office. I know exactly what he’s doing—power plays—and while I cannot stop him, I refuse to let him upset me.

Okay, I refuse to let him know that he upsets me.

I don’t look around. I don’t tap my foot. I don’t show impatience or annoyance at his rudeness. Instead I take the iTwat out of my purse and start doing what he does: minding my own damn business.

Dr. Hannaway,

It’s Alan, from Quantum Mechanics. I wanted to let you know: I don’t really like it. Quantum Mechanics, that is. It’s kind of boring. But I don’t blame you, it’s not your fault. Like, you didn’t come up with subatomic particles. (If you did, I apologize). But don’t shoot the messenger, right? LOL. I was wondering, could you make your classes more fun? Maybe we could watch a few Quantum Mechanics movies? Just some advice.

Best,

Alan from Quantum Mechanics

Mrs. Hannaway,

What do you mean, federal law prohibits you from discussing my son’s grades with me? I pay for his tuition. I demand to know whether he’s doing well. This is unacceptable.

Karen

Hi Ms. Elsie,

If I skip class to bring my dog to the groomer, does it count as an excused absence?

Halle

PS: I wouldn’t ask, but he really needs a haircut.

I roll my eyes, and that’s when I notice: Jack’s no longer typing. Instead he’s leaning back in his chair, those arms that probably have their own Wikipedia entry (top read in all languages, all day, every day) crossed over his chest. His tattoo remains an obscure mystery, and he stares at me silently, as cloudy and impenetrable as usual. How fitting.

I glance at the clock on the wall and inadvertently take in about half of the office, which is large and sunny and tastefully furnished. There’s a cactus by the window. Hmph. I’ve been here for three minutes.

“Are you bored?” he asks, with his stupid, beautiful voice.

“No.” I smile, murderously pleasant. “You?”

He doesn’t answer. “I believe we’re meant to use this time to interview.”

“You seemed busy. Didn’t want to interfere.”

“I was replying to an urgent email.” I doubt it. I think he was writing the next great American novel. Making a grocery list. Messing with me. “We’re supposed to get to know each other better, Elsie.” My name. Again. From his lips. That tone, timbre, inflection. “How am I to make a decision on your hiring otherwise?”

Everyone knows exactly where you stand when it comes to my hiring. I almost say it, but I don’t want a repeat of last night in the bathroom. I don’t want to lose control. I can be calm, even in the face of Jack’s portentous dickishness. “What would you like to talk about?”

“I bet we can find something. Blood type? First pet? Favorite color?”

“If you’re trying to hack my online banking security questions, you should know there isn’t much to steal.”

His mouth quirks, and I think something nonsensical: I’d hate him less if he weren’t so handsome. Even less if he were as charming as a morgue. And even even less if I could read him, just a little. “If you’d rather use the time to rest, feel free.”

“Thank you. I’m not tired.”

“Really? It seems tiresome, being you.”

I frown. “Tiresome?”

“It can’t be easy”—he taps his finger lightly against the edge of the desk—“this thing you’re always doing.”

This thing I—what does he mean? He’s not referring to . . . He doesn’t know about the APE. About the different Elsies. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

He nods affably, like I said exactly what he expected me to, and disappointed him in the process. He doesn’t break eye contact, and as usual, I feel he’s stripped a layer of skin off me. Naked, in the worst possible way. I find myself adjusting the hem of my skirt—which is already at a perfectly acceptable length. It was fine this morning in Dr. L.’s office. It was fine on a yoga ball. Why do I feel weird now? “Relax, then. My grads tell me that chair is quite comfortable.”

“Is Cole one of your grads?”

“Cole is, I believe, Volkov’s.” He must notice my surprise, because he adds, “But I wouldn’t worry. The Feynman sex quote really had him.”

The way he says it (Feynman sex quote), all perfect vowels and hard consonants, makes me hot and cold and wanting to look away. Which I stubbornly refuse to do. “This is a comfortable chair.” I lean back, mimicking his pose. I’m not intimidated. You’re not intimidated. We’re both unintimidated.

“I slept in it once, after a forty-eight-hour experiment.”

“I’m not going to fall asleep.”

“You could.”

“Yeah. And you could take out a permanent marker and scribble something on my forehead.”

His head tilts. “What would I scribble?”

I shrug. “ ‘Do not hire’? ‘Albert Einstein sux’? ‘I hate theorists’?”

He steeples his hands. “Is this what you think? That I hate theorists?” He finds me amusing. Or boring. Or pitiful. Or a mix. I wish I could tell, but I shall die in ignorance.

“Your students sure seem to.”

“And you think I’m the reason?” He sounds genuinely puzzled by that. The audacity.

“Who else?”

He shrugs. “You’re discounting a simpler explanation: students interested in experimental physics are both more likely to have preconceived notions about theory and more likely to choose to take a class taught by me. Correlation does not equal causation.”

“Of course.” I smile politely. I’m calm. Still calm. “I’m sure the fact that someone they look up to—you—notoriously hates theorists has no impact on their view of the discipline.”

“Do I?” His head tilts. “Notoriously hate theorists? I regularly collaborate with them. Respect their work. Admire several.”

“Name one.”

“You.” He pins me with his stupid, hyper-seeing look. “You are very impressive, Elsie.”

My stomach flips, even though I know he’s lying. I just . . . didn’t expect this specific lie. “I doubt you know anything about my work.”

“I’ve read every word you’ve written.” He looks serious, but he must be mocking me.

What do I do? Mock back. “Did you enjoy my middle school diary?”

A hint of a crinkle appears at the corners of his eyes. “It was a little Justin Bieber heavy.”

“You broke into the wrong childhood bedroom—I was all about Bill Nye.”

His mouth twitches. “One of the popular kids, were you?”

“Not to brag, but I also played the tuba in the marching band.”

“Lots of competition, I bet.” He has a dimple. Only one. Ugh.

“Tons. But I had an in. Through the D&D Club.”

His laugh is soft. Relaxed. Lopsided. Different from the unyielding expression I’ve come to expect from him. Even more breaking news: I’m smiling, too. Yikes.

“I bet you weren’t half as cool,” I say, pressing my lips together, assessing him. The broad shoulders. The strange, striking eyes. The casual confidence of someone who was never picked anything but first during PE. Jack was no marching tuba. “You held the heads of people like me in the toilet bowl. Occupied the janitor’s closet with the cheerleaders.”

“We mathletes often do,” he murmurs, a little cryptic. “Your models are elegant and grounded. It’s clear that you have a very intuitive grasp of particle kinetics, and your theories on the transitions to spherulitic structures are fascinating. Your 2021 paper in the Annals, in particular.”

My eyebrow lifts. I don’t believe for a second that anything he’s saying is true. “I’m surprised you read the Annals.”

He laughs once, silent. “Because it’s too advanced for me?”

“Because of what you’ve done to Christophe Laurendeau.”

The detached nothingness of his expression slips. Morphs into something harsh. “Christophe Laurendeau.”

“Not a familiar name? He was the editor of the Annals when you pulled your stunt. And, more recently, my mentor.” Jack’s eyes widen into something that looks beautifully, unexpectedly like shock. Splendid. I exploit my advantage by leaning forward in the seat, resist the temptation to adjust the hem of my skirt, and say, “No theorist has forgotten about the article. It might have been fifteen years ago, but—”

Wait. Something doesn’t add up.

Jack’s three years older than Greg, which makes him about five years older than me. Thirty-two or thirty-three. Except that . . .

I study him narrowly. “The hoax article came out when I was in middle school. You must have been . . .”

“Seventeen.”

I shrink back in the chair. Was he some sort of wunderkind? “Were you already doing your Ph.D.?”

“I was in high school.”

“Then why—how does one submit a paper to a higher education journal at seventeen?”

He shrugs, and whatever emotion he was showing a minute ago has been reabsorbed into the customary blank wall. “I didn’t know there were age limits.”

“No, but most seventeen-year-olds were too busy begging for hall passes or rereading Twilight—”

“Twilight and Bill Nye, huh?”

“—to focus on cloak-and-dagger ploys that involved writing offensive, unethical parody articles whose only purpose is to deceive hardworking scholars and slander an entire discipline.” I end the sentence practically yelling, nails clawing the armrests.

Okay. Maybe I’m not super calm. Maybe I could use some deep breaths. De-escalate. How does one de-escalate? I don’t know. I’m usually already de-escalated. Unless Jack’s around, that is. Jack, who’s sitting there, relaxed, all-knowing. Punchable.

I close my eyes and think of my happy place. A warm beach somewhere. No one is fair haired and massive. Cheese is heavily featured.

“You know what puzzles me?” Jack asks.

“The entire gamut of human emotions?”

“That, too.” I look at him. Take in his self-deprecating smile when there isn’t a single self-deprecating bone in his body. “But here’s the thing: whenever the article comes up, what everyone asks is how I could do such a horrible thing. Why did I write it? Why did I submit? Why did I set out to humiliate theoretical physics?”

“As opposed to? What chianti vintage you celebrated your evil triumph with? The breed of the mandatory supervillain white cat you were stroking? The decibels at which you cackled?”

“As opposed to why it got accepted.”

I know exactly where he’s going with this. “It was a fluke.”

“Maybe,” he concedes. “But here’s the thing: if a theoretical geologist wrote a bullshit article saying that the inner core of the earth is made of nougat, and the foremost authority in the discipline, say, the New England Journal of Rocks, decided to publish and endorse the article, I wouldn’t be so quick to chalk it off as a fluke. Instead I’d investigate whether there is a systemic problem in the way theoretical geology papers are assessed. Whether the editor made a mistake.”

I swallow. It goes down like broken glass. “I am willing to acknowledge that the system is fallible, if you stop pretending that you acted out of concern for the injustice of the peer-review system and admit that you maliciously exploited its loopholes because you wanted to . . . You still haven’t answered, actually. Why did you do it?”

“Not for any reason you think, Elsie.”

I bite my lip to not bark at him to stop using my name. “Not to pull an epic prank and become famous among the lab bros?”

“No.” I wish he sounded defensive or offended or—anything at all. He’s just matter-of-fact, like he’s saying a simple truth.

“And not the same reason you want to hire an experimentalist over me?”

He draws back, looking surprised. Disturbed, even. “You think I don’t want to hire you because you’re a theorist?”

I almost snort and say, Yes, of course, but then I remember my first meeting with him, back in the summer. The way he looked at me a little too hard, hesitated a little too long before shaking my hand. “Well,” I concede with a small shrug, “I suppose you do come by your dislike of me honestly.”

He huffs out a laugh and shakes his head. “Again, with this supposed dislike.”

“I heard you talking to Greg about me.” I ignore the way his eyes widen, almost alarmed. “Asking him how quickly he planned to get rid of me.” I pull on the hem of my skirt again, and his eyes dart to my knees, lingering for a moment before ricocheting away. I should probably stop doing that. I need a new nervous habit. Nail biting. Fidget spinners. I’ve heard great things about crystal meth.

“I’ve never said—”

“Oh, it’s fine.” I wave my hand. “You have every right to your opinion of me. You think I’m not good enough for him. I don’t care.” Much.

He bites the inside of his mouth. His paw-like hand reaches out to play with something on his desk—a 3D-printed model of the Large Hadron Collider. “You make lots of assumptions about my thoughts,” he says, setting it down. “Negative assumptions.”

“Your thoughts are clearly negative.”

“It might be connected to the fact that you’ve been insincere with my brother for months.”

I sigh. “We can navel-gaze about how abominable a girlfriend I am till Betelgeuse explodes, but there are a few things you don’t know about me and Greg, and until—”

“There are many things I don’t know.” He drums his fingers on his desk, slow, methodical. I cannot look away. “I spent hours last night trying to home in on this, and I’m not any closer to sorting you out. For instance, why would you lie about your job? You’re an adjunct, not Jeff Bezos’s accountant. And the fact that not only are you a physicist, but you’re interviewing here . . . My first instinct would be to assume that it has something to do with me.”

“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.”