“But Ilikethat.I enjoy being a part of other people’s projects. Dr. Singh and I—”
“Right, Dr. Singh,” I say, finding my stride now. “He’s P.I. on nine of your papers, yes?” She looks caught off guard, and I press right on.“I read them all. And you know, I’m going to venture a guess that you’re doing an awful lot of Dr. Singh’s work.”
“Don’t you imply that,” she says, her response angrier than I’d anticipated.“Don’t imply that he’s taking some kind of advantage of me. Dr. Singh and I work really well together. He taught me everything. He gives me opportunities that I wouldn’t have had because I don’t have the PhD, because I’m here as a lab tech. He trusts me completely. He trusts what I know and what work I can do. I’d do anything for him,” she says, and snaps her mouth shut.
That’s a revelation I can use—her loyalty to Singh. But I’m going to hold it in reserve. I don’t want to go there yet. The room feels close, warmer now, even though I’m pretty glad about this purple sweatshirt still.“I don’t mean to offend you,” I say, gentling my voice.“But if you want those opportunities, why didn’t you get the PhD? Why are you here as a lab tech? Kit, you’re fucking brilliant, seriously. You could be P.I. on any one of those papers.” An idea strikes me. Greg said he didn’t want a PhD, but as a bargaining chip, he might relent.“If there was a funding issue for the PhD, Beaumont has job-sharing programs. If you came to work for us, you could start work on a PhD at UT…”
“I don’t want a PhD. If I’d wanted one, I would’ve gotten one. But you don’t seem to understand that I’m perfectly happy here. That I’m not chasing something bigger—”
I hold up my hands, feigning surrender.“I understand. But you’re good enough that the world’s going to chase you, Kit. You have to know that. And I’m only here trying to give you some information, trying to let you see a different version of this.” I gesture around the room.“Let me tell you about Beaumont. If you’ve got no interest at all, then what’s the cost of looking?”
“My time,” she says bluntly, but there’s that look in her in her eye again, that little pulse of fear.
I offer up a crooked smile.“But really, Kit. How bad can it be, to have a little extra time with me?”
She takes me in, suppressing a smile, then rolls her eyes to the ceiling.“Ugh.Yourface.”
“But no suit this time, right?” I ask, gesturing to her purple sweatshirt.
“You can walk me home,” she says, already starting to switch off knobs.“That’s how long I’ll give you to talk about Beaumont, okay?”
“Okay,” I say, but I feel like I’ve just won the Kit lottery.
* * * *
I waste a good amount of my walking time talking about hot dogs, but it is entirely worth it.
When we come out of the basement’s building, it’s muggy, but clear. I can even see a few stars up there past the city lights. Kit tries to beg off having me walk her once she realizes I have my car, but I tell her we’re both going to need the exercise once I take her to eat.
“Eat? It’s nine o’clock! Too late to eat.”
“It’s going to be worth it, I promise,” I tell her, leading the way through some of the campus paths until we emerge at its edges, where the university’s neighborhood intersects with Shaftesbury Park, a small, run-down neighborhood that always managed a little charm with its food carts.“Behold,” I say, spreading my arms wide,“the Wiener Cart.”
“Subtle,” she says, smiling at me.
“I don’t know if that’s its real name. I don’t even know if ithasa name. But this is what my dad and I called it. I checked with him to make sure it was still here before I came tonight. Only reason to come near campus, in my opinion, unless you’re trying to make the case to a genius metallurgist who’s wasting her talent.”
Pretty much Kit is ignoring me at this point. She’s already stepped up to the cart and I’m fairly sure she just said“hot dog me” to the guy working. I admire her adventurousness, and the fact that she gets pickled peppers on hers. I get the same, pay for our food, and we’re on our way again.
“I already knew about the hot dog cart,” she says, chewing.
“Shit! I thought I was giving you some of my expert knowledge here. You teach me about probes, I show you the Wiener Cart. There’s a symmetry in that, if you think about it…”
“Oh my God. First the probe, now this. And you made fun of my toilet joke!”
We head toward her neighborhood, Kit making an occasional moan of satisfaction, and I decide that I am, despite all the knowledge Kit has dropped on me in the last two hours, actually stupider than I was when I began this day, if I thought watching Kit eat a hot dog was a good idea. I keep my eyes determinedly ahead, trying to find a way to start up a meaningful pitch, but it’s taking a minute for my brain to stop ignoring my body.
“What was it like growing up here?” Kit asks, interrupting my thoughts. The question catches me off guard. This weekend, Kit had seemed a little jarred by the brief foray we took into personal things, and though seeing her at the microscope today had showed me more about her than any interaction we’d had yet, we hadn’t talked about anything other than her work.
“I mean,” she continues,“my friend Greer grew up here, so she’s told me a lot. I was only making conversation.”
God, this woman. She is fuckingadorablewhen she gets shy.“Where’d your friend grow up?”
“The west side of town. Cherry Hill.”
I nod, wiping my mouth.“That’s a pretty nice area.Good schools out there. I grew up not too far from the yard, on the south side. It’s kind of an older suburb now, most of the houses built in the early 1980s. Guess that probably doesn’t seem so old compared to a historian like you, though.” She smiles over at me, and I take another bite of my hot dog so I stop thinking about how pretty she is.
“I’m surprised you didn’t grow up in a house like mine,” she says.“Wouldn’t that kind of thing be perfect for your dad?”
