I actually have no idea. I try to think back to my first meeting with him, but I can’t remember it. It must have been on my first day of grad school, when Tim and I joined Sam’s lab, but I have no memories. He was vaguely hostile to me well before the incident in Sam’s office, when he declined to collaborate, but I can’t place the start of it. Interesting. I guess Tim or Annie might know. Except that I’d rather slowly perish from cobalt poisoning than ever speak to either of them again.
“I’m not sure.” I shrug. “A combination?”
“Is Levi’s dislike related to the fact that I just spent a week on TikTok because I don’t have a decent computer to work on?”
I plop down in my chair. I suspect the two things are very related, but it’s not as if I can prove it, or know what to do about it. It’s an isolating situation. I’ve considered talking to other people here at NASA, or even at NIH, but they’d just point out that Levi needs me to make the project succeed, and that the idea of him self-sabotaging just to sabotage me is preposterous. They might even think that I’m the one who’s in the wrong, since I haven’t proven myself as a project leader yet.
And there’s something else to consider. Something that I don’t want to say out loud, or even think in my head, but here goes: if my career is a sapling, Levi’s is a baobab. It can withstand a lot more. He has a history of completed grants and successful collaborations. BLINK’s failure would be a bump in the road for him, and a car-totaling crash for me.
Am I being paranoid? Probably. I need to lay off the coffee and stop spending my nights plotting Levi’s demise. He’s living rent free in my head. Meanwhile, he doesn’t even know my last name.
“I don’t know, Ro.” I sigh. “They might be related? Or not?”
“Hmm.” She rocks back in her chair. “I wonder if pointing out that his revenge plan is harming not just your career prospects but an innocent bystander’s, too, would help. The innocent bystander is me, by the way.”
I bite back a smile. “Thank you for clarifying.”
“You know what you should do?”
“Please don’t say ‘stab his abdomen sixty-nine times.’ ”
“I wasn’t going to. That’s too good advice to waste on you. No, you should ask @WhatWouldMarieDo. On Twitter. You know her?”
I freeze. My cheeks warm. I study Rocío’s expression, but it looks as sullenly bored as usual. I briefly consider saying “Never heard of her,” but it seems like overcompensating. “Yeah.”
“I figured, since you’re a Marie Curie stan. You own, like, three pairs of Marie Curie socks.” I own seven but I just hum, noncommittal. “You can tweet at Marie with your problem. She’ll retweet and you’ll get advice. I ask all the time.”
Does she? “Really? From your professional Twitter?”
“Nah, I make burner accounts. I don’t want other people knowing my private business.”
“Why?”
“I complain a lot. About you, for instance.”
I try not to smile. It’s very hard. “What did I do?”
“The vegan Lean Cuisine you always eat at your desk?”
“Yeah?”
“It smells like farts.”
That night I drag a chair out on the balcony and stare at my depressingly deserted hummingbird feeder, trying to formulate a question as vaguely as possible.
@WhatWouldMarieDo... if she suspected that a collaborator has a vendetta against her and is sabotaging their shared project?
When put into words it feels so stupid, I can’t even hit send. Instead, I google whether I’m within the age of onset for paranoid ideation—shit, I am—and call Reike to update her on current events.
“What do you mean, you almost died? Did you see your life replay before your eyes? Did you think of me? Of the cats you never adopted? Of the love you never allow yourself to give? Did you un-fence the Bee-fence?”
I’m not sure why I persevere with telling my sister every little humiliating thing that happens to me. My life is mortifying enough without her ruthless commentary. “I didn’t think about anything.”
“You thought of Marie Curie, didn’t you?” Reike laughs. “Weirdo. How did The Wardass manage to save you? Where did he come from?”
That’s actually a good question. I have no idea how he was able to intervene so quickly. “Right place, right time kind of thing, probably.”
“And now you owe him. Your archnemesis. This is delightful.”