A long moment passed. Harlan selected a cube of cheese from the table beside him and held it aloft by the toothpick buried in its center. He nodded once, signaling, she supposed, his approval that she had tacitly accepted his edict. He pulled the cheese from its skewer with his teeth and scanned the room as he chewed. She should ask a question, make small talk, but now that Harlan had made it clear he expected her to be brilliant, everything she thought of she discarded as trite.
He turned his attention back to her. She felt the heat of it in her face, in her chest. He gestured to the refreshments, inviting her to join in his assessment of the discount chardonnay and merlot, the perfectly symmetrical cookies that betrayed their supermarket origin, the unripe, outsize wedge of Brie, hacked by a translucent plastic knife. Jackie shrugged. The offerings were forlorn but predictable.
Harlan said, “I hope you don’t judge us by this. Academics can be pointedly lowbrow in their aesthetics.”
She laughed. “Our burning intellects must dull our other senses.” She flashed on a conference she had attended in graduate school, where a female professor had warned her not to appear too put together if she wanted to be taken seriously. “You should look as though you selected your clothes at random because you were preoccupied with more important thoughts.” The woman had only been half joking. It might be an anecdote Harlan would appreciate, Jackie mused, but she wasn’t sure. She did surmise that, concerning Harlan, one ought to be absolutely sure.
He dipped his shoulder, poised to offer her a confidence. She could smell his cologne—grapefruit and something else, like turned earth. “You probably have a few people you need to check in with, per protocol, but after that, if you’re not busy, we could find something palatable.”
Jackie’s standard response to flirtation was to pretend she didn’t understand it for what it was, then make excuses. Men had to lay siege to her defenses before she would consider them head-on, and most men, thank God, didn’t have the energy. She wasn’t playing hard to get; she didn’t want to be got, except on rare occasions, when she gave in to her craving for male company and intimate sex and lowered her drawbridge. During her junior year in college, Jeff Toshack had discovered her in such an unguarded state and pulled her close. A year and a half later, Jackie had retreated inside the fortress of her own making, and Jeff was three thousand miles away and, she assumed, bewildered.
She returned Harlan’s gaze. Was he flirting or only being friendly? Either way, the reception was drab and, having skipped lunch to set up her office, she was ravenous—and intrigued.
She set down her glass. “Give me fifteen, okay? I’ll find you.”
“I won’t be far.”
A kiss on the second date—if the evening of the reception counted as the first—sex on the fourth, sleeping over at his house on the fifth because it was a Friday, all within three weeks. Jackie wouldn’t call it a romance; there was no sense of losing her footing, of sliding or succumbing. If she had felt any of that, she would’ve turned on the sarcasm, stiffened her back, and drowned herself in work until the feeling passed and Harlan dissolved like the others. He was different, however. He was witty and interesting and interested, and, most important, did not appear to be either running away from or running toward her. It was as if they had both come to a standstill in mutual acceptance of their compatibility, although the idea of a perfect fit was itself too imbued with fate for her taste. She was certain Harlan held the same view. They would spend a few hours together and then return to their respective homes for sleep or chores or exercise, or to their labs to work.
As a new professor, Jackie put in long hours establishing her research program, developing curricula for classes, and mentoring graduate students. She had little spare time. As a full professor with an ever-expanding lab, Harlan had even less. Jackie and Harlan became a microcosm of two with limited scope and a predictable routine. They dated twice a week, usually Tuesdays and Fridays, with Fridays extending into Saturdays, though rarely past lunchtime. They never spoke of the relationship, only logistics, which gave Jackie permission to tell herself it wasn’t really a relationship at all. Given her fitful history with men, denying the relationship was the only way she could continue. Love wasn’t on the table; it wasn’t even in the room.
What made Harlan the exception was his focus on her. The first time she had dinner with him after escaping the tedious reception, she was astounded at how she immediately felt at the center of his world. There was no place he would rather be than sitting across the table from her, nothing she could say that would fail to interest him, nothing she could do to lessen her appeal. It was heady stuff.
Her assessment was the same after every date, from the first to the second to the third and on to whatever number they logged years later. When they were together, Harlan’s attention did not waver. In his light, she was smarter, funnier, and more fascinating than she had ever viewed herself. She was also sexier. He wanted her with a candid passion that rendered superfluous the need for lacy lingerie, fuck-me heels, or background music. The sex wasn’t inventive, which suited her, but it was intense, and had the same clarity as all their interactions.
She accepted the version of herself he reflected back at her, and extended this acceptance more generally, viewing her life as he framed it. She was the best of the younger faculty, a rising star, a talented teacher, a writer of unusual lucidity. With his guidance, which he readily offered, she would win grant money, attract the most able students, gain tenure in record time.
And she did.
Now, in her lab office, Jackie takes a final bite of her salad and throws the rest into the trash. She closes her laptop, grabs her coffee mug and the pastry box she picked up from Sweet Somethings, the bakery near her house, and leaves her office. She actually has two offices: her official one on the same floor as the departmental offices and this smaller one in the suite of rooms that constitutes her lab. She prefers the lab office, especially when wolfing down a meal, because she is less likely to be interrupted. It is also quieter, except when experiments are ongoing and a child screams loudly enough to defy the triple soundproofing. Jackie doesn’t mind the screaming; it reminds her that her work involves real people with real emotions and, often, troubled lives.
Jackie walks by the office space shared among the grad students—and her new postdoc, Nasira. The room is empty except for Kyle, her most senior student, hunched and tense over the computer, face inches from the spreadsheet displayed on the screen, long fingers poised above the keyboard, both legs hammering a silent rhythm under the bench. Jackie hesitates, reluctant to break his concentration, but the meetings aren’t optional.
“Hey, Kyle. It’s one.”
He frowns, still glued to the screen, then breaks out in a grin. His fingers drop onto the keys, execute dozens of keystrokes in seconds. He hits save and scrapes back his chair. “That pivot table was a hairy mofo.”
Jackie laughs and leads the way to the conference room, where the others wait: Gretchen and Tate, the other grad students; Rhiannon and Reese, the undergrads; and Nasira, seated to the left of Jackie’s spot at the end of the table with the whiteboard behind it. Nasira wears an oversize white sweatshirt, and her hair is pulled back in an artfully messy bun. Jackie has attempted a messy bun, but hers turn out more frenetic than artful. Nasira looks up from her phone and smiles, her tiny reserved smile. Jackie is reminded of three weeks ago, when Nasira, as a newcomer, presented her study plans to the group. Jackie and Nasira had a pleasant lunch together afterward, chatting about work and how Nasira was settling in. Jackie was optimistic about Nasira’s potential contribution to the lab and felt confident in being cast as a role model for the young woman. They would learn from each other, Jackie thought. Nasira brought neurological expertise to the lab, broadening the scope. Jackie would serve as a mentor, but in a different way than for her graduate students, as was typical for postdoctoral appointments. Nasira would be more like a younger sister, Jackie thought. Women, even very intelligent, capable women, need a hand at their elbow in the male-dominated world of science.