“Nerdy?”
“You know the type.” He flashes a smile, which fades almost immediately. “They fell in love, but he was rich, she wasn’t, and back then things weren’t as simple as wanting to marry someone.”
“His parents separated them,” I murmur. “They were heartbroken.”
“Maybe it was destiny. If she’d stayed in Poland, she wouldn’t have met Pierre. The two of them were very happy by all accounts. The idea of radioactivity was hers, but Pierre helped her out. Kazimierz was a mathematician; he might not have been as involved in her research.” Levi shrugs. “It’s all a bunch of what-ifs.” I nod.
“But he never really got over Marie. Żorawski, I mean. He married a pianist, had children—named one Maria, which is amusing—studied in Germany, became a professor at Warsaw Polytechnic, worked on . . .
geometry, I believe. He lived a full life. And yet, as an old man, he could be found sitting in front of Marie Curie’s statue in Warsaw. Staring for hours.
Thinking about who knows what. A bunch of what-ifs, maybe.” The green of Levi’s eyes is so bright I can’t look away. “Maybe about whatever little personality quirk of Marie made him fall for her a handful of decades before.”
“Do you think . . .” My cheeks are wet. I don’t bother wiping them. “Do you think she used to cook terrible stirfries?”
“I can see that.” He bites the inside of his cheek. “Maybe she also insisted on feeding a murder of imaginary cats.”
“I’ll have you know that Félicette saved my life.”
“I saw that. It was very impressive.”
Carts roll in the hallway outside. A door closes, and another opens.
Someone laughs.
“Levi?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think they . . . Marie, and Pierre, and the mathematician, and everyone else . . . do you think they ever wished they’d just never met?
Never been in love?”
He nods, as though he’s considered the matter before. “I really don’t know, Bee. But I do know that I never have. Not once.”
The hallway is suddenly silent. An odd musical chaos pounds sweetly inside my head. A precipice, this one. A deep, dangerous ocean to leap into.
Maybe it’s a bad idea. Maybe I should be scared. Maybe I will regret this.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Maybe this feels like home.
“Levi?”
He looks at me, calm. Hopeful. So patient, my love.
“Levi, I—”
The door opens with a sudden noise. “How are you feeling today, Bee?”
My doctor steps in with a nurse in tow.
Levi’s eyes linger on me for one more second. Or five. But then he stands.
“I was just about to head out.”
I watch his small smile as he waves goodbye. I watch the way his hair curls on his nape as he steps out. I watch the door close behind him, and when the doctor starts asking me questions about my useless parasympathetic nervous system, it’s all I can do not to glare at her.
• • •
TWO DAYS.
Two days, I’m in the damn hospital. Then the doctor discharges me with a squinty, distrustful, “There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with you.”
Rocío picks me up with our rental (“In ancient Egypt, female corpses were kept at home until they decomposed to avoid necrophilia at the embalmer’s. Did you know that?” “Now I do.”), and is just as squinty and
distrustful when I ask her to drop me off at the Discovery Building—and to please leave the car in the parking lot.
There’s no police tape inside. In fact, I meet several nonBLINK engineers in the hallways. I smile politely, shrug off their curious, intrigued looks, and head for my office. There’s a Do Not Enter sign on the wall. I ignore it.
I walk out six hours later, not quite gracefully. I’m carrying a large box and I can’t see my feet, so I trip a lot. (Who am I kidding? I always trip a lot.) In the car, I tinker with my phone, searching for a good song, and find none I care to listen to.
It’s dark already, past sundown. For some unfathomable reason, the silent lights of the Houston skyline make me think of Paris at the turn of the twentieth century. The Belle Époque, they called it. While Dr. Curie holed up in her shed-slash-lab, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec chugged absinthe at the Moulin Rouge. Edgar Degas creeped on ballet dancers and bathing ladies.
Marcel Proust bent over his desk, writing books I’ll never get around to reading. Auguste Rodin sculpted thinking men and grew impressive beards.
The Lumière brothers laid the foundation for masterpieces such as Citizen Kane, The Empire Strikes Back, the American Pie franchise.
