Imani shoves her hands under her thighs like she’d rather use those same hands to shove the new curator out the door. “Of course.” One of her hands comes out from underneath her skirt, a finger extending towards the cookies. “Look. Cookies.”
Graham’s eyes find the cartoonT. rexesspread across the tray for the first time. He makes a noncommittal noise before reaching forward and picking up the puke-green one, inspecting it from behind his glasses like it’s a real specimen sitting in the lab.
Finally deigning to move, Scott leans forward and takes the purple one, brow cocked when he sits back, eyes laser focused on me when he bites off the head. He chews, thoughtful, and I try to give him a hard stare, but he swallows, holding up the headless dinosaur. “These from you, Ren?”
I don’t miss the way he emphasizes my name. The lack of formality, the lack of any type of anything important associated with it.
“No,” I mumble, glancing down at the curved edge of the table as it starts to blur.
“Oh, I brought those,” Dev, the vertebrate exhibit developer, says with a grin, sliding the chair beside me out. It screeches across the floor, but he doesn’t seem to notice, swinging it around so he can sit, arms folded across the back.
He doesn’t seem to notice Graham’s look of thinly veiled displeasure at the lack of formality, either, reaching forward and grabbing a cookie at random, and chomping down on the head with significantly less ire and finesse than Scott.
Graham clears his throat, mouth pinching into a straight line, and he widens his eyes at the back of Dev’s chair.
Dev looks down, grip on the blueT. rexslackening, cheeks puffed out, when he mutters, “Sorry, Graham,” through a mouth full of cookie, scrambling to straighten his chair and sit properly without choking.
Mollified, Graham abandons his own cookie and starts pulling out folders from his briefcase, the sleeves of his tweed jacket it’s significantly too hot for buckling.
He’s only forty-three, but he looks like he walked off the set of a television show about the most stereotypical paleontologist to exist. Flaxen hair, horn-rimmed glasses, tweed year-round, a stern set to what could be handsome features if he’d just relax, and a penchant for rule-following I should have remembered when I reached for a job I wasn’t qualified for on paper.
“Thanks, man.” Scott lifts what’s left of his cookie towards Dev in some sort of salute, an easy smile sliding into place.
Dev recovers, grinning widely. “Anything for the guy who found the oldestT. rexskull ever known in Hell Creek.”
Imani scoffs, but a quick cut of Graham’s eyes turns that scoff into a sputter, and she sinks lower into her seat.
Scott doesn’t bother to look at her, or me for that matter, but he does smile politely at Dev, and then Graham when he accepts the pile of manilla folders from him to hand around the table as the rest of the staff file in.
My cheeks flame when mine reaches me and I see the embossed sticker sealing the envelope.
TMLB, shining and written in gold like it’s stitched across the jerseys.
Toronto Major League Baseball.
Graham waits until everyone has one in their hand before he starts to speak. “Before we get started with our regular agenda, I’d like to take a moment to welcome our new assistant curator to his inaugural staff meeting. Scott Saunders joins us from ...”
I stop listening. I look off into the corner of the staff room and study the paint, peeling where the wall meets the ceiling.
I could name all of Scott’s credentials and accomplishments better than Graham.
They’re tattooed somewhere on me anyway, a bit like a brand.
Graham doesn’t say the one that matters most though.
Scott Saunders, PhD. Better than Ren Jacobs.
A smattering of polite applause and a dig from Imani’s elbow into my rib cage bring my eyes back to my folder, and I start clapping, too, a beat too late.
My skin burns and I try to swallow the sting of embarrassment and shame and ignore how it feels when Scott’s gaze settles on me.
“Welcome, Scott. I have no doubt you’ll fit right in.” Graham smiles tightly before tapping his own manilla envelope. “Which brings me to our next item before we move to grants. Our new philanthropic partners for the summer season, who were kind enough to host us last week.” He holds up the envelope. The logo flashes under the dim lighting, and I can feel the phantom spread of a margarita across my blouse. “Obviously we’re off to a collegial start, seeing as the star shortstop didn’t seem to mind taking time out of his day to help Ren out.”
Graham thinks he’s telling a joke we’re all in on, not reliving something at my expense. It’s the lack of nuanced understanding of social cues.
Imani says he spends too much time arguing about sauropod anatomy and why the brontosaurus deserved its name the whole time.
And she’s probably right—but that doesn’t save me from the sort of congenial laughter ringing out around the table, or Dev knocking my shoulder with his fist, laughing when he says, “Imagine? Ren’s the one who gets Miller CB to settle down?”
