Beginner's Luck

by Kate Clayborn

  But when the afternoon grows late, he checks the time on his phone and says he really does have to be on his way. He’s picking up pizza for him and his dad and Sharon, and since he does the bedtime routine with his dad, he doesn’t want to push it too late. Weirdly, I feel a pang of loneliness when he describes these plans, which are probably pretty exhausting for Ben. But since I was planning on eating a Lean Cuisine and online shopping for bathmats, pizza with a convalescing salvage yard owner sounds pretty great.

  I thank him, maybe a little profusely, for his help. He waves me off, all handsome nonchalance, but—it was a really kind thing for someone to do, and even though over the last hour I’d decided that moment in the bathroom was only a blip, nothing to think twice about, now, out here saying goodbye on the porch, my thoughts go right back there. Here’s this nice guy, this hot as hell guy, who spent the afternoon with you.

  “You’re not going to get much time to miss me,” he says, his voice low and teasing. “Seven p.m., tomorrow. You, me, and that microscope you like so much.”

  Oh. I feel my face heat a little in embarrassment. Brilliant, he’d said, but of course he’d said that, this guy who’s recruiting me for a job I don’t want. I’d forgotten, a little. I’d forgotten the guy I met in the suit, the corporate guy with all that undeserved confidence, replaced him temporarily with the Ben who makes toilet repair look sexy. And it’s deflating to think I’ll have to deal with the other guy tomorrow.

  “Right,” I say, a little flat, and he seems to hear it, or maybe I just imagine that little shift he does with his shoulders.

  “Looking forward to it,” he says, heading down the steps. At the bottom, he pauses, looks back up at the house. “It really is a beautiful house, Ekaterina.”

  I’m too dumbfounded by the compliment, by the way he’s said my name, to respond. So I wave and duck back into the house, more than a little confused about the day.

  Chapter 6

  Ben

  I’m on the second floor lining up a bunch of shutters that came into the yard this morning. It’s dusty, frustrating work; they usually come in a huge heap, and so you’ve got to keep an eye out for matched sets. Dad is downstairs teaching River how to run the cash register, which I think is the worst idea in history, so my being up here is probably a smart move. Anyways, I’m distracted, worked up thinking about Kit—about getting to see her again tonight, about the time I spent with her yesterday.

  Liking a client is an asset, really—some of my best recruits are also good friends, people I’ve kept in touch with as they transitioned into their new posts. The way I recruit, it’s essential that I get to know people, figure out what’s important about their lives aside from the work. But the way I feel around Kit is a liability. Yesterday when I’d seen her outside Jeff and Eric’s house, I hadn’t thought at all about Beaumont. At first, I’d mostly thought about her legs in those shorts, but even after I’d schooled myself not to look (much), I’d focused on her house, how I could help her with it, what things she could use from the yard, what stuff I could fix easily for her.

  Even I knew that was entirely counterproductive. If anything, I should’ve been warning her about how she was just as likely to bankrupt herself on such a big project as she was to actually enjoy herself planning it. I should’ve been telling her things that would force her to imagine a different life, one in Texas. But the problem was, it didn’t feel like she was a job. It felt like she was someone I wanted to know more about, independent of work. It felt like she was interesting and smart and a little goofy, and she was sexy as all hell, and if I’m not mistaken, there’d been a moment there, up in her bathroom—a moment where she’d looked at me as if she was interested, and I don’t mean in the job I’m offering her. I’d resorted to toilet tank repair to stop from kissing her.

  My phone rings as I’m slotting in the last shutter, and I’m a little grateful for something that’ll get me out of my head. Jasper’s voice is impatient, excited. “I need a few minutes. Can you take a break?” We haven’t talked much by phone since the day he’d called to tell me about Kit, and I knew he still felt a little guilty about railroading right over everything I was dealing with here.

  “Yeah, sure,” I say, taking a seat on one of the grated metal stairs headed down to the first floor. “What’s all that noise?”

  “I’m at Waterwall,” he says, referring to the uptown park in Houston not too far from our office. It’s only two p.m., so if Jasper’s out of the office, something’s up. “Your dad’s doing all right?” he asks, but it’s quick, a formality.

  “Sure,” I say. “What’s up?”

  “You remember Hamish Beck?”

  “Hell yeah,” I say, smiling. Beck was an early recruit for Jasper and me, a German scientist working for a car manufacturer. He was a total nightmare, making insane demands for his contract, one of which included that Jasper and I each drink three tiny bottles of Kuemmerling before he signed. But he was also a genius. He’d gone to Beaumont’s Rochester division and designed a catalytic converter that made millions for the company. He’d left Beaumont last year when his contract was up, going out on his own to make money hand over fist for himself, but it’d still been one of our most profitable jobs.

  “He’s in Houston for meetings, so I met up with him last night.”

  “So you’re hungover, right?”

  “Oh, man,” Jasper groans. “You don’t even know. I’m never drinking again.”

  I laugh, sorry to have missed it. Hamish was a pain in the ass, but he was hilarious too. Somehow he could always cajole you into doing crazy shit, like singing “Angel of the Morning” at a karaoke bar in Munich.

  “Anyways, he wants to invest. I told him about what we’ve got planned, and he’s on board. He says he can name at least fifteen people, right off the top of his head, who could use the kind of representation we’d be offering.”

  “Oh,” I say, with what I know is decidedly less enthusiasm than I should be showing right now. This feels so far away from what my life is at the moment. It’s not easy for me to slip right back into thinking through all the complexities of what Jasper and I have planned. “That’s great.”

  “Great? It’s fucking incredible, Tucker.” He goes on, telling me more about what Hamish is willing to do—and the thing is, it is incredible. Hamish is offering enough to fund our entire startup, whereas Jasper and I had been planning for at least a few months after leaving Beaumont to pursue investors. We’ve both been shoring up our accounts for unpaid time. With what Hamish is offering, we could put all that right into the running of the company.

  “You think he’s for real?” I ask.

  “I’m sure of it. And there’s something else too. I think we could get Kristen to come with us.”

  Now that—that’s big news too. Kristen is one of Beaumont’s attorneys, specializing in H/R law, and we’ve worked with her in putting together several of our employment contracts. Kristen would be a huge asset to our startup—she knows the law inside and out, and she’s great with clients, easy to talk to and completely above board.

  “Holy shit, Jasper. How’d you manage that?”

  “You’re not the only one who can recruit,” he says, but there’s maybe a little something in his voice. Jesus, I hope he’s not sleeping with her. Seeing as how Jasper has never kept a relationship going for longer than three months at a time—not that I have room to talk—I don’t want things getting complicated. “I’m not sleeping with her,” he says, because I guess my silence spoke volumes.

  I take a deep breath, run a hand through my hair. “Things are really moving on this.”

  “Yeah. So, listen. We need out of that non-compete. Greg is set on Averin—she’s part of a really small pool who has what we need, Tucker. Where are you on that?”

  I’m at the place where I’ve seen her in shorts. Where I’ve noticed that I like the smell of suntan lotion on
her skin. Where I’ve fixed her toilet so I could hang around her for longer.

  “I’m on it. I’m meeting with her tonight at her lab.”

  “Good,” he says, and the confidence in his voice, which would normally be a compliment, is an albatross around my neck. “You’ve got to make it happen.”

  “Yeah,” I say, standing. “I told you, I’ve got an in with her tonight.”

  “What’s she like, anyway?” Jasper says. This is why I’m better at the actual recruiting. Jasper’s taken over a week to ask this question, when really, to be good at this, what’s she like is the first question you ask.

  I surprise myself by not wanting to answer. I don’t want him to know anything about her. “You know,” I say. “Typical mad scientist.” This feels so disloyal. It makes me physically restless to have said it. I thunk the side of my fist against one of the shutters I’ve slotted in place. But I know that it’s Jasper to whom I owe my loyalty; it’s to this plan we’ve been developing for the last few years. It’s not as if I’m trying to ruin Kit’s life. I’m trying to give her a high-paying job doing exactly what she loves.

  I’ve got to get my head straight before tonight.

  * * * *

  Kit’s not in her office when I arrive a few minutes before seven, but she’s stuck a note on her door with an arrow pointing down the hall and what looks to be a hastily scribbled: Ben, I’m in room 006.

  It’s dismal down here, more so than it was upstairs in the lab—even though there’s no windows to let in outdoor light anyway, somehow being here when night is falling makes it seem darker still, more institutional. I make my way down the hall and knock on room 006, and after a minute or so Kit opens the door, her smile wide and excited.

  “This is going to be great,” she says, but then she looks me over and frowns. “Oh.”

  “What?” I ask, looking down at my jeans and t-shirt.

  “I thought you’d be wearing—you know, your suit or something?”

  “Well, despite our first meeting, Kit, I don’t generally want to wear that stuff unless I have to.”

  She waves a dismissive hand. “I don’t care about that. It’s just that you’ll probably be cold. We keep the temperature low in here,” she says, thumbing over her shoulder. I notice for the first time that she’s got a bulky, wrap-around sweater on over her clothes. “Wait here.”

  She comes out of the dark room she was in, letting the door shut behind her, and hustles down to her office. When she comes back, she’s carrying a purple sweatshirt that she holds out to me. “Uh, I don’t think we wear the same size,” I say. That’s an understatement. I am huge compared to Kit, to the point where in my dirtiest thoughts I’ve wondered whether I’d crush her if I ever got her into bed.

  She rolls her eyes. “It’s a large.”

  “A women’s large?”

  “It’s unisex,” she says, shaking it in my direction. “You’re not worried about your masculinity, are you?”

  I widen my eyes in mock outrage. “I’m man enough to wear purple,” I say, taking it from her and tugging it on. Tugging is really the right word here, because this thing is tight all over, especially across my chest and shoulders. I’ll probably lose circulation. “This can’t be a large.”

  She has the decency to try and stifle her laugh.

  “Does it make my biceps look huge, though?” I joke, flexing theatrically.

  “Oh my God. You’re an idiot.” But she’s laughing, those dark eyes bright, crinkled at the corners.

  Focus, I scold myself, remembering what’s on the line here.

  Before she reopens the door, she turns to look up at me, her expression serious. “Have you ever seen one of these before?”

  “Seen a microscope? Sure.”

  She shakes her head. “I mean this kind of microscope. A probe-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope.”

  “In person? No. I’ve seen images of our microscopy labs, though.” In my car, I’ve brought some of those images, plus lists of all our microscopy equipment, a lot of which I’ve memorized so I can tell Kit about it if she asks. Her eyes brighten again. She looks so excited to show this to me.

  “Okay,” she says, as we walk into the anteroom—it’s basically a small, dimly lit office, with a set of cabinets and countertop along the back wall and the microscope’s LED screen and control panel dominating most of the room. I know enough to know that the microscope itself is behind the door in front of me, and that Kit will manipulate it and watch her images appear from here. “So,” she says, pointing to a seat distractedly, and I sit, eager to watch her. “First things first, before I take you in there to see it. The Titan—that’s what we call it—allows you to look at anything from 1000 times magnification to millions of times magnification. You can image anything from cells to individual atoms. It’s incredible.” I’m keeping up, but then she says, “You can also use it to manage or measure chemical composition with electron energy loss spectroscopy.”

  “Uh, right.”

  “Don’t worry if that doesn’t make sense right now.” She takes out a diagram of what I assume is the inner workings of the microscope and sets it on my lap, wheeling her own chair closer to mine, so that our knees are almost touching. I can smell her shampoo, herby and yet sweet, and—I really need to pay attention. She gives me a brief but—to my mind—still damned complicated explanation about the basic parts of the microscope, how it works, and I impress myself by being able to make enough sense of it to ask a few questions. When I do, she seems to relish it—she does this little bounce in her seat that I find completely distracting.

  “So the Nature article,” she says, and it takes me a minute to remember what she’s talking about, to remember how I goaded her into this. “The authors used a high angle annular dark field mode.”

  “That sounds awesome. Like something from Star Wars.”

  She rolls her eyes. “It’s not awesome! I mean it is, but—okay, remember what I told you. The probe on the microscope is focused to a point and then rastered over the sample. The probe hits an atom, and the electrons scatter.” Here, she clenches her fists and the spreads her fingers wide, “scattering,” I guess, and I can’t help but smile at her enthusiasm, at how absorbed she is in explaining this to me. “In a high angle scattering, the way they did it, you’re collecting only electrons that hit heavy atoms. But in a structure that contains a high concentration of light atoms such as oxygen, carbon, nitrogen—a lot of information can be lost if you only look at heavy atom scattering.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Plus,” she adds dramatically, “since the probe is focused to such a sharp point, the scattered intensity can change as you change the depth of focus of the probe.” She looks up at me. “If you make a probe joke, you have to leave.”

  “I didn’t say anything!”

  “I sensed it. I sensed the probe joke. I have to show this machine to undergraduates all the time, and you can’t imagine the probe jokes I get.”

  I drop my eyes. “Okay, I kind of wanted to make a probe joke.”

  She shakes her head, smiling, but continues. “The Nature authors were going for maximum contrast, but they’re only looking at essentially one layer of atoms. If you want to see more, you have to take a focal series. You have to change the focal point in relation to the surface of the material in order to get a full picture of the volume of the material. It’s—okay, say you have a stack of pages. If you only take one page out and look at it, that doesn’t tell you what’s going on in the rest of the book, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I say, nodding, because actually, the metaphor helps. Probably I should ask her to go back to the beginning and explain it all that way, but honestly, I like hearing her talk so much jargon. I like how fast she’s going, how her body is moving in all these subtle ways—the shifts in her seat, the motions of her hands—as though she’s trying to rele
ase all the energy she contains.

  “And then, there’s the sample.” From the counter, she takes two tiny Ziploc bags, each with what look to me like very similar minuscule, thin metal disks. But no way, she explains, and for the next ten minutes it’s all about the ferromagnetism and sample polishing and the focused ion beam system she thinks they should have used. “This kind of sample,” she says disdainfully, holding up one of the bags, “is going to make it like you’re looking through a bent mirror and trying to describe the way someone looks.”

  Kit then explains to me the way she prepares her own samples. “How long does it take?” I ask, and she gives me such a wide smile that I feel my heart trip over itself.

  “Well, most people would maybe take two, two and a half hours to do this. But I’m really good. I can do it in one.” She flushes, and then says, “Not to sound arrogant or anything.”

  “You don’t,” I say. “You sound amazing.” And I mean it. She does sound amazing. I’ve met a lot of scientists, spent a lot of time talking with them about their work, but Kit has this—I don’t know—joyful quality about the way she talks about it. She loves the science—that’s as clear as a bell.

  Over the next hour, she takes me in to show me the microscope itself, which reminds me of one of those free-standing panic rooms. It’s a big gray box taller than I am, lined with sound absorbers and dotted with various temperature controls that Kit shows me. Then she shows me how she sets up the beam direction, how she changes the magnification. It’s interesting in and of itself, the rational part of me knows this. But I also know I’m finding it so interesting because it’s her telling me, because I feel as if I’m learning some of the most important stuff about her by being here. When I’m sitting next to her at the control panel, watching as she brings up various images on the screen—to me, they’re just white polka dots on a black background—I feel strangely close to her, in a way that I know isn’t good for the job.