The truth was, I hadn’t wanted them to think someone else needed the position more than me.
But the way he’s looking at me—I have the feeling he knows. That Ben has told him.
“No,” I answer. It’s firm, decisive.“I do not want to work for Beaumont. Under any circumstances.”Not now, I add to myself, silently.Not after what he’s done.My head is a mess. Beaumont, Ben—it’s all mixed up, and I feel prickles of sweat on my lower back. If I could just call Ben, see if he has an explanation for this—there has to be something. One part of me knows that Ben would never do this. But there’s another part of me, the one that’s been turning things over in my mind all morning, that thinks—you don’t know all of him, though.
“I wish you would have felt that you could speak to me,” he says, and it’s here where his disappointment is, in my secrecy about the offer.
“I didn’t speak to you because I never considered it as a real option.”
He nods once, then leans forward in his chair, rests his now-folded hands on his desk. He takes a deep breath before looking up at me.“Beaumont has offered me a funding package for the fractography project.”
“They—what? What?” I can’t be more coherent about this—this entire meeting has been such a shock, personally and professionally.
“They have some projects that dovetail with my work, which of course I knew. But as you know I had not considered this path, private funding. They feel I could contribute,” he says, and breaks off for a pause.“Of course they would need someone from their own team to run oversight.”
I expect a sarcastic jab to follow, some snarky commentary on how“oversight” usually means total control, annoying interference at every level, impossible hurdles to publication. But instead, he says,“They proposed that you could do such oversight, should you take on a role at Beaumont.”
Oh. It’s at this moment that I notice my heart must have been pounding up to this point. I notice because right here, I think it stops for a beat.
A trade.
Beaumont is proposing a trade: funding for Dr. Singh if I go to work for them. Funding for my boss, my advisor, my mentor, myfriend, who needs the money to keep doing the work that inspired me to become what I am now. The same man I’d said I’d do anything for.
I’d said that to Ben.
For the barest of seconds, I think I might actually get sick, right here on Dr. Singh’s desk. Instead, I straighten in my chair, smooth my hands over my legs, take a deep breath to keep myself together. I think about who I was all those years ago, when I showed up to learn in Dr. Singh’s lab, when I was full of ideas and energy and nerves, and he showed me how to direct them. I think about how he advocated for me to stay on as lab tech here, how much time he spent talking through the job with me, cautioning me—but not condescending to me—about what it would mean to take on this role when I could be thinking of the PhD, of jobs in the field. I think about the way he accepted my decision to stay on, not pushing or judging, and making it easier, at every turn, for me to form relationships in my new role in the department. I think of the way he’s encouraged me, just in the last few weeks, to branch out, to take the lead author credit.
I can’t count all the ways I owe Dr. Singh.
“Do you want to take their funding?” I ask.
What he says is,“I have no interest in bargaining your happiness for funding.” But what I hear—unfairly or not—ismaybe. I swallow twice, a third time, that sick feeling back again.
“I appreciate that,” I manage.
“Let me be clearer about this, Ekaterina.I wanted to speak to you to find out what your reasons are for not wanting to work for this company. I wanted to make sure those reasons were…yourreasons. Not reasons that have to do with your loyalty to me. If you do not want to go work for Beaumont, then I don’t want you to, either. No matter what package they offer me.”
“Loyalty is a good reason for doing something,” I say.
“So is ambition. So is wanting to challenge yourself, or to try something new.”
“I know that,” I snap back, then stand from my chair. What he’s said—does this mean he thinks I should take it?“I’m sorry. This is—this has been a shock,” I say, which is the understatement of the year, and I say this as a person who won the freaking lottery.“I need some time. I need to…”I need to cry my heart out over this, over what Ben has done.“I need to take the day.”
He’s looking at me with such naked concern on his face that I turn, reaching for the doorknob. I’ve hardly ever“taken the day.” Even on the rare occasions I’ve been too sick to come into the lab, I’ve done work from home, called in to walk someone through a scan setup or a repair, kept an eye on my email. But right now, I want to be away from here, to be as far away from Dr. Singh as I can get. To think that he could have this funding, funding that would ease a lot of his professional anxieties, and I’m the one who could solve his problem if only I give up this entire life that has made me the most happy?
It’s intolerable.
I don’t even make eye contact with Marti as I leave Dr. Singh’s office. I’m already pulling my phone out of my pocket, SOSing to the only two people I want to see right now.
* * * *
The inside of Zoe’s condo is something straight out ofArchitectural Digest. It’s all clean lines and white furniture and fancy glassware that makes you feel at first like you should absolutely not touch anything. But what’s funny is that once you know Zoe, you know that she keeps it this way not so you feel you can’t touch anything, but so you don’t feel youhaveto. It’s a place totally free of distraction, of little messes or the chaos of life, and it’s the perfect place for me to be right now, crying it out on a stool at her kitchen island, a mug (white, of course) of tea in front of me, steaming up my glasses.
It’d taken me a while to get the whole thing out to Zoe and Greer. At first, I’d been shuffled into the condo and placed in my current seat, Zoe getting to work on the tea and Greer scooting her stool right next to mine, tossing an arm around me so I could rest my head on her shoulder. After a few minutes of soaking in their presence, letting that high-strung initial response loosen, I’d finally managed to tell them about my meeting with Dr. Singh, about how Ben had tried to trade me for money. I’d also managed—and this had been the worst, sobby, choked-voice part of the whole thing—to tell them about what he’d said to me Saturday night, while we’d danced at his mother’s party.
At first, it’s all the stuff I’ve come to expect from my friends—we do a sort of shared three-minute shock and awe (how could he do this), then we do some collective indignation over it (what a jerk), then we do the thing where I cry and they coo and fuss over me and then make promises to defend my honor (I wish I could punch him right in the dick). It’s pretty much a script we’ve mastered over our years of friendship, anytime we’ve been wronged at work or a social gathering, or anytime one of us has gone through a breakup. But this time, itfeelslike a script. We’re all going through the motions, because I think we all know there’s something bigger happening here, that this is the most upset they’ve ever seen me.
And maybe this is why we cycle through it a bit more quickly than usual, why we’re definitely approaching the stage where we’re supposed to get rational, to get to the part where one of them starts giving out the advice that I’ve come here for anyway.
