Justin gives me a blank stare. “Call who?”
“The server, the one who slipped you her number.”
“What’s it to you?”
His abrupt withdrawal triggers a peculiar sense of loss and I finish my soup in a miserable, jealous silence.
“Did you bring the log notes?” he asks, pushing his empty plate away.
I nod, fishing them out of my handbag and handing them over. His face is expressionless as he flips through them.
After only a few seconds, he looks up with a frown. “I told you not to get personal.”
“What are you talking about?”
He taps a page. “You’re getting attached to one of the dogs. Heck, you’ve even named him.”
“I’m not calling Turbo number six-seven-five,” I insist.
“Look, I don’t like it any more than you do, that these dogs are identified by numbers. I know it’s difficult, but you need to remain emotionally distant.”
“I can’t,” I whisper. “I’m not a machine. I love animals. That’s why I’m here, doing this horrible job that I hate. They can’t be onlynumbers to me because then I’m exactly like the people I work with in the lab.”
“Your attachment is going to interfere with your job,” he warns.
“It won’t.” But even to my own ears my promise sounds weak and shaky.
The server clears away our plates, brushing up against Justin in a way that has me sitting on my hands to stop them from shoving that woman away.
“You want something else?” he asks me.
Not particularly, but I don’t want our meeting to end so soon either. I tell myself that what’s keeping me in my seat is the thought of doing something different on a Friday night. I almost believe the lie.
“Iced tea, please,” I answer finally.
Justin orders another coffee. When he offers the server no comment on the piece of paper she slipped to him, a look of disappointment flashes across her face and she turns away sulkily. I sit up straighter.
“Your log recordings end yesterday,” Justin points out, flicking through my notes. “You want to update me on what happened today?”
Nois the word hovering on my tongue. Right here, right now, I don’t want to be working undercover at SolomiChem, pretending to be someone I’m not, deceiving my coworkers and my family.
Instead, I want to be a woman on a date with a handsome guy, eating great food and laughing freely while exchanging life stories and flirtatious glances. Except even that would be an illusion because Justin and I are oil and water, divided by our differences.
So I take a fortifying breath and I tell him about Turbo and the rest of the beagles in room 220. I tell him about some of the other experiments. Not once does he interrupt me. He listens to my halting account with an intentness that leaves me self-conscious. WheneverI falter over a particularly difficult retelling, he nudges my iced tea with an index finger and I take a sip, grateful for the reprieve. When I finally finish talking, I feel drained.
Justin is quiet, a faraway look in his eyes. After nearly a minute of silence, he says softly, “You have to wonder if we’ll ever make a difference, if all this suffering will ever end.”
I’m silent. I have nothing to offer him, because it seems we’re both haunted by all the terrible things we do to one another. To the animals. And to ourselves.
He gives a tired shake of his head, pushes away the coffee he’s barely touched, then stands decisively. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Startled, I look up at him. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” he mutters, gathering his helmet and jacket. “But I know we both need a break.”
In the parking lot, Justin guides me toward his bike and alarm flutters in my stomach. “You’re not seriously thinking I’m getting on that?”
“Relax, I’ve got a spare helmet.” He pats the colorful helmet strapped to the back seat.
