Time (Laws of Physics #3)(26)

I closed my eyes, smiling to myself. She did this. Every time we spoke, she answered with a hey, and then a barrage of questions. I loved it.

“I’m free. I’m better now. I can’t talk long. You didn’t interrupt me. But, Mona—”

“Abram. Your voice sounds bad, and you sound stuffy.” She said this around a yawn. “Are you sure you’re okay? Are you sick?”

“No.” I cleared my throat, trying to deepen and firm it. “I’m not sick, I just need to rest my voice. What’s going on with you? You sound tired.”

“Should we be talking if you need to rest your voice? We can text instead. Have you seen a doctor? What does Melena say? Are you drinking your tea?”

“Stop. Listen to me. I want to ask you something. Actually, two things.”

“Oh. Okay.”

I could almost see her face. Her eyes were probably wide, a wrinkle between her eyebrows. Maybe she was biting her lip.

Her lips.

“First, have you been sleeping?”

She replied, “Yes.”

That’s right. I needed to ask specific questions. “Let’s try this a different way. When was the last time you slept?”

“Uhhh, yesterday. I think. Wait. What day is it?”

She needed to take better care of herself. “Here it’s Friday midmorning.”

“So that makes it—”

“Friday night in Geneva.”

“Then, yes. I slept Wednesday.”

“Yesterday was Thursday.”

“Then I slept the day before yesterday.”

I shook my head, a frustrated grin on my face. “Mona. You have to take better care of yourself.”

“I can’t help it. I only get so many hours with the LHC, and then I have to go through the data. It’s too much to backup, and my project isn’t priority. And then there’s the inevitable white whale hunt, which only seems to yield anything of value when I’m exhausted and my brain stops overcomplicating everything.”

White whale hunt was what she called her process of choosing which hunch to follow, how to prioritize her time and energy searching for answers to the unknown, something about understanding or explaining quantum mechanics within the frame of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Although, maybe that wasn’t it? Most of the time, when she spoke of her research, it sounded like a different language.

Over the last several weeks, I’d come to the conclusion that Mona didn’t sleep enough. She worked herself until she was exhausted or manic with exhaustion, and this was because Mona DaVinci both was and was not her genius.

Her genius was a paradox, terrifying in its complexity and beauty, but also severe, punishing, rigid in its demands of her. It didn’t care about the frailty of the body. It didn’t care about her relationships, even with herself. It explored, relentlessly, dragging her along—sometimes willingly, sometimes not—often at the expense of her health and wellbeing-.

“I understand the urge to work through the night and into the next day. I get it.” I paced to the window, staring at the blue sky. “I’m not going to tell you what to do—obviously—I’m just going to say, as someone who cares deeply about you, I hope you get a chance to take a night off the whale hunt.”

“I will. I’ll be sleeping in tomorrow. I already packed, so I’ll wake up, catch my flight, arrive in New York Saturday evening, and then I’ll see you early Sunday.” The unmistakable smile in her sleepy voice encouraged me to smile.

“Sunday.”

“Yes. Sunday.” She yawned again. I didn’t take it personally. “I can’t wait. But—uh—was there something else? You said two things?”

“Oh yeah.” I nodded, almost forgetting. “I asked you to send me a picture of yourself, and you sent your faculty headshot from Caltech.” I couldn’t stop my smile from growing. When she’d sent it, I’d laughed on and off for an hour. I wasn’t even mad. It was such a Mona thing to do.

It did, however, leave me unsatisfied. I’d sent her a few shots of me lying in bed, wearing nothing but my boxers, and she sends me a picture of her in a lab coat, smiling with no teeth. I wasn’t looking for reciprocation, but, man, a candid maybe? A genuine smile?

She was quiet for a beat. Then she cleared her throat. “You didn’t like the picture?”

“You are sneaky. You know what I mean.”

“Are you saying it’s a bad picture?”

Sometimes she was too fucking smart, especially when we debated. I loved it. I also hated it.

“It’s a great picture, as you know. I’ve seen it in magazines, next to interviews of you. But I was hoping for something a little more candid.”

“Candid? I can do that.” The offer was made too quickly, which made me suspicious.

“Let me be clear. No pictures of you in a lab coat or at work. Or at school. Or doing anything for your charities.”

She made a sound between a huff and a growl. “Those are the only pictures I have of myself.”

I bit back a laugh, covering my eyes with my free hand. “God, Mona. I mean candid like, send me a photo of you, taken right that minute.”

“Right that minute?”

“Yes. What are you doing now?”