“I’m okay. Areyou?”
“I’m quite all right, thank you. It’s—pardon me for saying so, but it’s odd to see you here,” he says, gesturing at the dark cityscape. “If you know what I mean.”
“I do.” A dig is so vivid that the rest of the world feels monochrome by comparison. “Oh, James. Your glasses,” she says, spying a lump of white tape at one side. She catches herself reaching for them, then pulls her hand back.
He carefully pushes his wobbly handiwork higher on his nose. “They fell victim to the fracas in the ballroom, I’m afraid. As of twenty minutes ago, it was still rather a scene in there. You, erm, dropped quite the bombshell.”
“You led the way.”
He waves away her praise. “If you want to come back inside, I could introduce you to some people who’d very much like to meet you.”
Ripley winces at the thought. “Thanks, but I already got kicked out of there once today. I don’t think I have any more crime-ing in me tonight.”
He looks down, nodding, his fingertap-tap-tapping his pocket. Ripley finds herself straining to catch the metallic sound of his pillbox, but it’s lost in the wet hiss of tires from a passing SUV.
“Tomorrow, perhaps? I wouldn’t ask for myself; I promise I will never ask you for anything for myself ever again, Ripley. They might be able to help with the birds, is all.”
“Oh. Yeah. I could stick around for a day or two, if it’s for the birds. Thanks, by the way,” she adds. “You kind of went down in a blaze of glory tonight.”
The streetlights are just bright enough that she can catch the flush that mists his cheeks. They’re both getting damp out here, everything ending the way it began.
“If I’d known you would be there, I wouldn’t have done anything without asking you first. It was simply the only right course of action. For science,” he says.
Except to Ripley’s ears, when James Smithson saysFor science,it sounds likeFor you.She both loves and fears the tiny sprout of hope that unfurls high in her chest.
“Did they kick you off the planning committee?”
“Oh,immediately,” he says, the tiniest twitch raising one corner of his mouth. “But I would have stepped down if they hadn’t.”
“Was it pretty rough in there? The crowd sounded unhappy when I was on my way out.”
He stares at her for a moment, his brows drawn down. “Peoplewereunhappy. Most of them because they were watching an incredibly brave woman get dragged out of the room for daring to blow the whistle on corruption. Granted, some were unhappy because they don’t want changes to a system that has benefited them at others’ expense. And some were unhappy because they had stories of their own to tell.” He pulls out his phone, taps the screen, and hands it to Ripley.
Trending: #freethebirds
There are jumpy videos of Ripley’s speech at the gala. Calls for Will to submit his specimens to an independent lab for testing. Again and again, a photo of Ripley’s hand clutching the poster of Beauty, the rest of her obscured by a swarm of security personnel. There are links toNational Geographicarticles about how the #MeToo movement hasn’t yet made a mark on academia and photos of male scientists who’ve deflected multiple accusations of harassment, sexual abuse, fraud, and worse. The trend is spilling from paleontology into physics, engineering, medicine.
“There’s so many,” Ripley says, amazed.
“You touched a nerve.”
“Apparently. But I don’t know that it would have had as much impact without you.”
He shrugs, tapping his finger. Whatever’s in his pocket, it doesn’t make the clinking sound Ripley’s heard before. “It was the least I could do after—after everything.”
Ripley feels every molecule of the distance between them, every unchanged reason they can’t be together.
“Do you believe in past lives?” he asks suddenly.
“Heck of a conversational left turn, Professor.”
“Indulge me.”
“Okay,” she says, curious. “Sure I do. In my past life, I was a tyrannosaur.”
“Oh, really.”
“Yes. And you would have been some cute little herbivore. Very bite-size.”
