“Is this about the grant with Lewis?” Vivienne asks, tracking the direction of my thoughts.
“Yeah. That and everything else, too.” I bite my lip, and then the admission finally comes slipping out, the one that has been bouncing around between the walls of my skull since my last grant got rejected. Or maybe even longer than that.
“Vivienne, I love my research, but I don’t know if I can keep it up. I think I’m tired of academia. Of always having to think about the next next thing and feeling like I can never catch my breath.”
She’s silent for a beat, then: “I can try to help. You know, from one academic to another?”
When she said she’d like to be friends all those weeks ago, I didn’t think I’d end up asking her for relationship and career advice, but here we are. Talk about surprise stops along the way.
“How about friend to friend?” I ask back.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I’ve never been a firm believer in Murphy’s Law. The statistics of anything going wrong that might go wrong just didn’t line up for me. But some sources say that aeronautical engineer Edward Aloysius Murphy Jr. meant the words that were later named after him as precautionary advice:In designing any plan, if anything can go wrong, it might.
When I came up with the plan on how to move forward, and with all the chaos of my flight to New York still fresh in mind, I took extra care. I came up with contingencies for anything I thought could go wrong: Book a hotel for the night before, buy flexible train tickets, pack an extra outfit just in case. But despite my plans B and C, Murphy’s showing me the upper hand again. Getting to the Codify offices in Amsterdam for my job interview at Maria’s e-learning start-up has been an adventure, to say the least.
Some kind of track problems delayed my train to Amsterdam, turning the two-hour journey into a five-hour one, which made me arrive past check-in hours. Thanks to an emergency number and a tired but kind receptionist, I managed to getinto my room for a few hours of sleep. This morning wasn’t any better, though. A coffee spill on my blouse led to a last-minute outfit change, which made me run late. Then, on the way over, it started raining and I got something in my eye and rubbed it, losing my contact lens in the process. A half-blurry sprint later, I finally arrive at the offices on the second-to-last floor of a renovated warehouse. I have just enough time to swap my remaining contact lens for my glasses and to pull my drenched hair into a quick braid, which drips cold water onto my neck, before Maria meets me at the reception desk, her HR person Henrieke in tow.
Wary of what else Murphy might be coming up with, I tell myself to breathe when I follow them into the conference room where my interview will take place. I really need this job interview to work out. I’m not sure if a position in Maria’s tech ed start-up is the answer to all of my problems, but it doesn’t involve a move halfway across the world, provides the combination of stability and purpose I crave, and makes me excited about the future. Plus, I’ve started learning Dutch, and now I want to leave this country even less.
“We’re having some problems with the screen in here today,” Maria mentions apologetically.
Of course. But this is an obstacle I can deal with. I smile with relief. “I brought my laptop just in case.”
Despite the IT problems, Maria and I hit it off, like at our first meeting back at the Sawyer’s picnic, and throughout the conversation, I get more and more excited about the job. I can see myself relocating to Amsterdam and building a life here: wandering along the picturesque canals with their crooked houses, riding my bicycle in the crowds of aggressive cyclists, trying out all of the cafés I’ve bookmarked on my phone on past day trips here.
Maybe, if tomorrow goes well, even with Lewis at my side.
When Karo told me a few weeks ago her interview at an audiobook company was scheduled for the same Thursday as mine with Codify, I booked train tickets to Berlin so we could celebrate the changes in our lives together. I’d also made the decision to seek out Lewis at his office the next day—tomorrow. The silence of the six weeks since the Sawyer’s has been brutal and I miss him and I need to tell him how sorry I am, even if he might not feel the same.
My interview finishes without any other complications, and I make the mistake of thinking the statistically unlikely chain of events I’ve dominoed through since yesterday might be over.
But Murphy isn’t done with me yet. Instead, he reveals the final trick up his sleeve.
After the interview, when I’ve packed up my laptop and said goodbye to Henrieke, Maria leads me out of her office and back into the elevator. “Do you have any plans for the weekend?” she asks, leaning against the wall and pressing the button for the ground floor. “I have to say, I was surprised you agreed to today’s interview, what with Lewis giving a visiting lecture in Maastricht. I thought maybe he was there to see you?” When I don’t respond, Maria shrugs and keeps making small talk, the LED screen behind her counting down the floors we’re passing. Six, five. We’re at four when her words catch on.
“What?” I blurt out, mind racing.
What is Lewis doing in Maastricht, the small town I still call home in the southern Netherlands? He has no business there. Soon,Iwon’t have business there anymore.
He has business here, in Amsterdam. So what’s he doingthere?
“Rosanna likes to use me as a sounding board for all her experiments. Or practice for tricky mentoring conversations,” Maria tells me. I guess that’s what she had started talking aboutwhile my mind was short-circuiting, but I’m only half listening while I contemplate what Lewis could be there for. To grow his network in the Netherlands? To show to all my colleagues how his approach to our research topic is better than mine?
Or maybe, a small voice pipes up in a dusty corner of my brain,he’s there for you.
“I’m sorry, I need to check something real quick.” I scramble for my phone in my pocket, have a short but nerve-racking battle with two-factor authentication, scroll down in my inbox, and there, among all my ignored department-wide emails, it is. An announcement for a guest talk byDr. Theodore L. North, research associate at Berlin School for Mind and Brain. In bold, underneath, is today’s date, the location, and the time of his talk.
12 p.m.
Which is in two minutes.
Please RSVP to join the borrel outside the lecture theater afterward, it continues, and of course the link for the drinks and snacks has expired, with the deadline long gone.
Where I am in Amsterdam is about a two-and-a-half-hour train ride sandwiched by two ten-minute bike rides away from where Lewis is lecturing, so even if he talks for a full hour, followed by questions, snacks, and drinks, there’s no way I will make it on time. Not to mention the promise I made to Karo about celebrating the changes in our life together.
“Frances?”
