Real Life(64)

Katie does not say anything to him. She does not look at him. She is leaning fully against the bench now and has crossed her feet. There is a repetitive banging in the other part of the lab, the rattle of glassware. Water running. Wallace feels cold. His fingers are stiff.

If he is in Katie’s way, then he will step aside. If he is in Katie’s way, then he will give her what she wants. But she knows as well as he does that the fact that she can perform the experiment better and faster does not mean she has time to do his work in addition to her own. There was a reason the larger project had been divided this way, Wallace taking on the technical work while Katie performed the more rigorous line of experimentation: because she could not do it all. There comes a time when you have to acknowledge your limitations, that the capacity to do something is not a mandate to do it. She is frustrated by this. It’s all over her face, the irritation. She sighs.

“Let’s just get this shit done—I’m tired of waiting,” she says, turning. “Get it done, Wallace.”

“All right,” he says. Her words sting. His head hurts. The lab is piercingly bright. What to do? He scarcely has time to think before Simone emerges from the small break room. When she sees him, she turns and approaches him.

“Wallace,” she says, voice raspy and inexplicably southern, “do you have a moment?”

“Sure,” he says. “Sure.”

“Perfect,” she says, smiling now. “Let’s go to my office.”

Simone’s office is on a corner. It has a view of the bridge in the distance and a row of small but robust trees. There is a juniper bush too, and from this height the tennis courts and even a sliver of lake are visible. The office itself is open and white. There are books and papers scattered over her desk, but it feels tidy, neatly arranged, everything sorted into its particular order. Simone is tall. She has a fondness for crisp lines. Her hair is a stylish bob, and her glasses are prim, like those of a librarian in a cartoon. She pulls a chair aside for Wallace, and she takes one opposite him, crossing her legs.

“So, Wallace,” she says, opening her arms a little. “I hear it’s been rough.”

He takes his time answering that opening gambit. If he agrees too quickly, she will thrust it into his chest. If he deflects it entirely, she will call his bluff, conjure up covert intel from Dana and Katie and others in the lab, or from peers or professors, an unseen army of spies observing his every move. She’s wearing a look of sympathetic grace, waiting.

“It’s been a time,” he says, smiling, trying to match her breezy concern.

“Tell me all about it. I’m sorry I’ve been gone.” Where has she been? Copenhagen, or London. She has an apartment in Paris with her husband, Jean-Michel, who is American but French by birth. There are long parts of the year when Simone is absent from his life. She travels often, giving seminars and talks both on her research—the research of the lab—and on the nature of science itself. She is a bit of an evangelist in this way, and Wallace can certainly understand why. She is good at making you feel like the center of the world, like your concerns, no matter how trivial, are worthy of consideration. The problem, however, is that the same gravity is given to your flaws, no matter how minor. Except for Dana, he thinks, who seems immune to the flip side of Simone’s attention.

“It’s just been pretty messy, I think. My experiments—”

“Yes, your stocks were contaminated.”

“Right. And I lost the summer’s data.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate,” she says, frowning. “I’m so sorry to hear that it’s been hard for you.”

“It’s okay,” he says reflexively. She puts her hands around her knees and nods slowly several times.

“I got an email from Dana last night, and it raised the hair on my neck, I must say, Wallace.”

“Oh?” he asks. “What kind of email?”

“Please do not do that, Wallace. Please do not pretend that you don’t know what the email was about.”

“I see,” he says. “I see. Okay.”

Simone frowns, flexes her jaw. She continues, “I just worry that the two of you are butting heads and it’s creating a toxic environment.”

“I understand why you have that impression,” Wallace says. “That’s not my intention.”

“I cannot have a misogynist in my lab, Wallace,” she says sharply, directly, looking into his eyes, which makes him want to cry, suddenly. The wave of stinging tears comes to the brink of his eyelids, but it holds steady. He breathes deeply, slowly.

“I am not a misogynist,” he says. “I am not.”

“Dana’s email was . . . I have never read something so horrible in my life, Wallace. And I thought, that can’t be right.”

A flicker of hope, a minor reprieve. Wallace nods.

“But I have to take this very seriously. I have to think about what is right for you and for Dana and for the lab. I’m retiring soon, as you know, and I can’t have this kind of dysfunction.” She holds her hands up, separates them, as if to say on one hand she wants him to stay, and on the other hand, well.

Wallace feels a chasm opening up beneath him. He could say what Dana said to him. He could say that she is racist, homophobic. He could say any of the things he has wanted to say since he came here, about how they treat him, about how they look at him, about what it feels like when the only people who look like him are the janitors, and they regard him with suspicion. He could say one million things, but he knows that none would matter. None of it would mean anything to her, to any of them, because she and they are not interested in how he feels except as it affects them.