by Penny Reid
“Oh, they’d care. But if any picture of me not looking uptight and professional were leaked, I’d never live it down. It would be ‘Girls gone wild, rocket scientist edition.’ Women—especially women in science, or politicians—aren’t allowed that freedom without lasting consequences. It’s not just my male colleagues who will judge me, it’s everyone. And that’s just the way it is.”
I felt like putting my fist through a wall, growling, “The way it is sucks.”
“I agree. But—” I could hear her breathing, it had quickened, like she was working herself up to say something difficult, and a spike of alarm had the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. Before I could interject, she finished her thought, “Abram, we live in two different worlds.”
My bitterness morphed into anger, making me seethe. “I refuse to accept that. We live in the same world.”
“Our paths are—they’re very different.”
“No. They’re not. They’re the same. We’re on this road together, Mona. We’re on this path together. And I want you—I want you to feel empowered, because you are powerful. You. Are. Powerful. Someone should be telling you that, making you believe it, every damn day. You feel like you have to hide part of yourself and it pisses me off. So, yeah, I need a minute here. Because I need to mourn the fuc—” I stopped myself, taking a deep breath, grinding my teeth, telling myself to calm down. “I need to mourn this world in which we live, where gentlemen and ladies exist who are less, so much less than you. And yet, because of how a flawed system is built, they get to decide how and when you share yourself with me.”
“Abram! Are you on the phone?”
I glanced up at the sound of Ruthie’s shrieking question. She stood just inside the doorway, holding a tray.
She also wore an impressive scowl. “That better be your priest, because Imma kill you now.”
Suddenly tired, I gave my guitarist a quelling look and turned away, lowering my voice to a whisper. “Listen. I have to go. We have a—a thing. Stuff to sign and this interview later.”
A few seconds of quiet, and then Mona said, “Okay. See you soon.” She sounded distracted. I didn’t like it.
“Hey. See you soon. I lov—” I’d wanted to say I love you, but she’d already ended the call.
Cursing under my breath, I turned to the table and sat down in front of the tray, ignoring Ruthie’s death stare and navigating to my texts.
* * *
Abram: I love you. I don’t need a picture, I just need you.
* * *
I didn’t need a picture, not if it would be a source of anxiety for her, but she was wrong. We were in this together. If something affected her, it affected me. Reading back over the message, I decided to send one more.
* * *
Abram: What you have to deal with is complete fucking bullshit completely unacceptable. I wish I could do something to help and I shouldn’t have ranted at you. I’m not mad at you, but I would like to punch some physicists right now.
Abram: Not you, obviously.
Abram: I miss you. You’re incredible. I’m awed by you.
* * *
Staring at my phone, I waited for Mona to respond. Ruthie cleared her throat. Obnoxiously. I ignored her. Charlie came back in, took a seat, and began signing photos. Still, I stared, my stomach slowly sinking.
After a few minutes, I set the phone face down on the table and glanced at the tray. A mug, a teapot, cut up wedges of lemon, packets of honey, and a plate with some kind of cookie covered the surface. Ruthie must’ve been a butler in another life.
I poured myself tea, unable to shake a nagging sense of doom. Ruin set up residence in my chest, distracting and tight, telling me I’d fucked up.
But I’ll make it right in New York. I’ll—
“Do you like the tea?” Ruthie asked, somehow making the question sound like a threat.
“Yes. Thank you,” I whispered, so as not to further provoke her ire.
“You’re welcome. The cookies are sugar free and paleo,” Charlie said. He reached for one of the cookies, shoving the whole thing in his mouth. “I made the tea. She assembled the rest and carried it.”
“Fucking paleo asshats,” Ruthie mumbled. “I hate those people.”
“What? Why?” Charlie asked around another bite of a cookie. “Their snacks are pretty good. Clever. I like that they use dates in energy bars.”
Blowing steam off the surface of the tea, I checked my phone again. Nothing. Now my throat not only hurt, it was full of glass shards of regret, making it nearly impossible to swallow.
“No, Charlie.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m talking about people from the paleolithic time period. I can’t stand those fuckers. With their stupid pet dinosaurs.”
Charlie and I shared a look, because sometimes Ruthie was odd, and we couldn’t tell if she was serious or joking. This was a woman who hated the most random things—like the word chartreuse and all-natural history museums—so there existed a very real possibility she actually hated people from the paleolithic time period.
Rubbing my sternum, I took a sip of the tea, set it down, and picked up a marker. “Pass me a photo.”
“No talking, Abram,” Ruthie chided, giving me a whole stack of photographs. “When you finish these, Charlie and I will take turns giving you more.”
I nodded, grimacing, because the ache in my chest hadn’t eased. Was this our first argument?
No. Our first argument had been in Aspen. This definitely wasn’t that. I wasn’t upset with her. I was upset with a system that rewarded hypocrisy.
My phone buzzed. Immediately, I snatched it up, almost knocking over the tea. A text.
* * *
Mona: I was saving this for New York, but I thought you’d like a sneak peek.
* * *
I frowned, reading the message again, searching for a hidden meaning. Then a picture came through and I almost dropped my phone.
It was Mona.
Standing in front of a full-length mirror.
Wearing a white string bikini.
It didn’t matter that I had no voice, because I was now speechless, with profound lust.
“What’s wrong with you? You watching porn or something?” Ruthie leaned toward me. “Who is that?”
I yanked the phone back, pressing it to my chest, glaring at her.
She immediately reared back, her eyes wide with surprise. “Sorry, sorry. Don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here hating paleos and signing photos, as one does.”
Standing, I paced away from the table and toward the window, peering at the picture of Mona again, hungry for it. God, she was so fucking beautiful. So gorgeous. Her expression, smiling, confident, but with a hint of challenge, like she dared someone, anyone to make this picture of her something shameful. And her expression erased any worry I might’ve had that she’d felt pressured into sending it.
I loved it. I needed hours with this photo.
You’ll have hours with her, and the bikini, in less than two days.
Two days.
Just two days.
Two days that stretched in front of me like an eternity.
8
The Magnitude Scale
*Mona*
Usually, if I’m booked on a flight and the airline offers a voucher to take a later flight, I am the first person to give up my seat. Discounts on air travel excites me more than well-timed puns and cookies combined.
Vouchers. Vouchers. Even the word sounds seductive.
But not this time. Nothing would induce me to give up my seat on the overbooked flight from Frankfurt to New York for a later flight, not even $800 in travel vouchers. Such was my commitment to arriving in New York as soon as the laws of thermodynamics would allow.
My plane was set to arrive around 9 PM. The plan was for me to check into our hotel, reserved under the names Abram and Mona Harris, and wait for his flight to land at approximately 6:00AM the following morning. Using the aliases had been his idea and made sense given h
ow nuts the paparazzi had been over him in the last several months. Our hotel, called Inn New York City, wasn’t one with which I was familiar, but he’d insisted on the location. I honestly didn’t care, just as long as we were together.
The flight itself was uneventful, albeit slow, further buoying my theory that feelings influence perception of motion and the space-time continuum. Perhaps feelings were the key to unraveling the mystery of quantum gravity. Hmm.
Eventually, we landed at JFK safe and sound, and I immediately switched off the airplane mode of my phone, wanting to text Abram as soon as possible. I’d just opened my messaging app when a series of texts came through, the first one sent just after my flight had taken off, but the second one was from less than a half hour ago.
Abram: Can’t wait to see you.
* * *
Abram: Call Marie at this number when you land.
Marie?
Frowning at the last text, my heart fluttering anxiously, I called Abram’s number as instructed and turned toward the window at my right in order to achieve maximum privacy despite being packed into the very back of coach like osmium.
Three rings later, a female voice answered, “Mona?”
“Uh, yes?”
“Hi. It’s Marie Harris, Abram’s sister.”
MARIE! How could I have forgotten awesome Marie?
Oh jeez. I quickly tested my breath, and then abruptly stopped myself when—obviously—I realized it didn’t matter if my breath smelled bad. Unless they’d invested in olfaction-phonics and updated my phone without telling me, the status of my breath didn’t matter.
“Hi, hi! Hi, Marie. It’s nice to, uh—” SCHRÖDINGER! And all his cats, dead or alive. I couldn’t say, It’s nice to talk to you again, because when we’d first met, I’d been Lisa. Damn lies. Clearing my throat, I said the first thing that popped in my mind, “How may I be of service?”
“Uh, yes. Well, Abram asked that I call. He’s here.”
“In Michigan?” my mouth asked, just as my brain thought it.
“No. In LA. We’re at the hospital—”
Hospital. Hospital. Hospital. Why did that word feel like being hit on the back of the head with a large, heavy, blunt object? All concerns about my previous lies vanished.
“—found him this morning. His fever was quite high, and an ambulance was called. Leo called me as soon as he found out and I arrived just an hour ago. They’ve been able to bring down his fever, and he’s tested positive for the flu. The doctors were worried about a secondary infection, but the CT scan and blood work came back okay. The doctors say he looks good to be discharged tomorrow, but they want to keep him overnight for observation.”
Hospital. Oh God.
My throat was choking me. “Is he okay? I mean, I know he has the flu, but is he—I mean—will he—is he—”
“They think he’s going to be fine.” Marie’s voice was infinitely patient and reassuring and was exactly what I needed to hear. “Just to be safe, they’re keeping him overnight and plan to get another blood draw in the morning. But, yes, he seems to be okay. Cranky, obstinate, and giving me dirty looks from across the room, but okay.”
“He’s there? Can I—is it okay for him to talk?”
“Yes. Absolutely. I just wanted to explain the situation first, answer any questions, to save him from having to speak unnecessarily, since he is very sick.”
I swallowed around a lump of guilt. I wanted to talk to him—desperately—but not if it would endanger his recovery. “If he’s too sick to talk, I completely understand. It’s obviously more important that he recover than—”
“No, no. It should be fine if you two talk. I just wanted to remind my brother that he is very sick and—under no circumstances—will he be performing tonight or flying to New York this evening. Here, let me put him on.”
I heard a grumbly, angry voice in the background, and it mollified the sharpest edges of my anxiety. Being well enough to feel and express anger was far better than the worst-case scenarios I hadn’t even realized I’d been imagining.
A brief silence on the other side was followed by the muffled sound of Marie saying, “Yes, I will keep it on speaker. And no, you can’t hold the phone. Fight me.”
And then Abram said, “Mona.”
Suddenly, my eyes stung with a heated rush of disarrayed emotion. “Oh, Abram. You sound so sick. Don’t speak, okay?” I closed my eyes, resting my forehead against the frame of the plane window. “Please don’t worry about New York, don’t worry about anything. Like you said, we have the rest of our lives. Concentrate on getting better and being well. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I winced as he spoke. His rattled breathing and the sound of machines beeping in the background made my chest feel heavy and tight. Very little about his voice sounded like him, but it did make obvious how sick he was.
“We can text. I’ll—I’ll send you pictures, okay? Lots of candid shots.”
Abram made a sound that I assumed was one of agreement or amusement. “No pressure, but that sounds great.”
I winced again, because he’d said a lot of words, and speaking at all seemed to cost him. I wanted him to get better. Overextending himself on the phone—just so I could hear his voice—was not helping.
“Okay. No more talking. Put Marie back on. Go to sleep. Rest. I love you.”
“I love you,” he said, the last word sounding fainter.
A second later, the sound of the machines also faded, and Marie said, “Mona? Hey. Thanks for calling. You’ve definitely improved his mood.”
“No problem, I—” I shook my head, opening my eyes and staring at the tarmac beyond my oval window. “I want to be there,” I confessed, not caring how miserable I sounded, not caring that she was basically a stranger. “We were only going to have twenty-four hours in New York, but now I’m thinking about abandoning all my responsibilities for the next week and flying out to LA.”
“I’m not advocating it, but can you do that? I mean, how big of a deal would it be?”
“I’d have to start my project from almost scratch, which means I might lose my spot in the program, which means I might lose my graduate funding.” I would probably lose at least part of my funding. One of my grants was contingent on presentation of findings at the August conference. The math part was easy, getting time with the LHC was not. If I started from scratch, nothing would be ready for August.
But, strangely, uncovering the mysteries of the known and unknown universe didn’t seem important relative to the reality of Abram being horribly sick.
“He’s in good hands, Mona. I’ll be here in LA until he’s fully recovered. Our parents are coming later today. I promise, I won’t let him do anything that will jeopardize his recovery and we’ll keep you updated.”
“I just—I need to—” I heaved a watery sigh. “I’m sorry. I need to be there. I think we’re almost to the gate. I’ll get a flight to LA as soon as I can.”
“Mona—”
“You’re not going to change my mind.” I’d already been traveling for fourteen hours—Geneva to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to New York—what was another six or seven in comparison? No big deal.
“Take a step back and think about this, be rational. He’ll be fine. You being here isn’t going to—”
“I can’t—I physically cannot—fly back to Geneva. I know myself, and I would regret it so much, the gravity of my feelings might cause the formation of a black hole somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, and then we’re all dead. As such, I’ll text you as soon as I know my new flight data.”
After a brief pause, she asked, “You’re in New York?”
“Yes.”
“Which airport?”
“Uh, JFK.”
“I’ll make a deal with you. If you promise to stay just for the original twenty-four hours, I can get you on a private plane leaving New York in—uh—forty-ish minutes, and a flight back directly to Geneva on the same plane. You’ll have to make a short sto
p in Chicago to pick up my parents, but you’ll definitely get here faster than a commercial flight.”
I wrinkled my nose, pulling my bottom lip through my teeth as I considered her offer. “Whose private plane?”
“A friend’s.”
I shook my head quickly. “No. I can’t promise that. What if Abram isn’t better in twenty-four hours? What if he takes a turn for the worse? I wouldn’t be able to leave then.”
“Okay, if he’s better, then you have to leave, go back to Europe as planned, and get back to work so you don’t lose your funding. If he’s sicker, you can stay.”
A few sounds emerged from the back of my throat, all of which were disbelieving. “I’m sorry, but this doesn’t sound like a deal. This sounds too good to be true.”
“Do we have a deal?”
I didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
Usually, I didn’t accept gifts. And I never accepted anything without knowing the source, definitely not anything as luxurious as a flight on a private plane. But desperate times call for a relaxation of rigid ethical codes. I would have to sort through my overthinking on this subject later. Much later.
“Is that a promise?” Marie pushed, as though she sensed a statement of explicit promise was necessary.
“Absolutely.”
“Good. I’ll text you the details once I work things out with my friend. I’ll also—hold on, Abram is trying to get my attention. Just a sec.”
The phone went quiet for a minute, maybe two, during which I calculated the precise moment I would have to leave LA to make it back to Geneva on time. To my delight, we’d actually end up with more time together than if we’d met in New York. This realization was tempered by the reminder that Abram was extremely sick. I’d prefer less time and him well, not because I felt like I was missing out on quality time with him, but because I just wanted him to be better.