Ellis Tesla stepped out of the elevator.
Allow me to repeat: Ellis smoking-hot-rockin’-sex-god-and-star-of-my-most-fevered-fantasies Tesla stepped out of the elevator.
I did a quick assessment to see if I’d been thrown into a parallel dimension, but the clock on the wall didn’t show lost time and everyone around us was still speaking English and wearing the same clothes. No one had any extra limbs or was walking on the ceiling.
Ellis Tesla said to Quinty, “I thought I’d have to drag you out of your office.”
My brain felt like it had driven off a freshly paved interstate and down a steep embankment when Quinty said, “Hello, Ellis. Meet our newest recruit, Ms. Walters. Ms. Walters, this is Ellis the fourth. My family is not very imaginative with names. Ellis—Dr. Quintal—runs a science school in Jersey. He takes after his mother, who taught physics.”
Quinty was E. Charles Quintal III = Ellis Charles Quintal III. So Ellis was teaching science instead of working in the family business.
“Hello, Ms. Walters,” Ellis said with a brief smile. He still had that appealing roughness to his voice.
I was FREAKING OUT because I didn’t know if he recognized me, and I didn’t know if I wanted him to recognize me in a quaint suit. His deep chestnut hair was still thick, and his eyes were still the mutable browns and golds of autumn leaves. His face was still ruggedly handsome, as if he was the ideal genetic offspring of pirates and lumberjacks.
He still had those broad shoulders that a girl could hang on to while he held her by her hips and shoved her up against a wall and made her scream for more.
He wore a navy suit and a pale blue shirt. His one concession to quirkiness was his tie, which had an atomic structure motif.
My throat constricted so tightly that I could barely choke out, “Nice to meet you.”
When Ellis shook hands with me, all I could think of was the delicious things he’d done to me with those long, strong fingers. I was SO FREAKED OUT that I felt like unsweatable parts of my body were sweating, like my teeth and my kneecaps.
I tried to keep my voice steady and said, “I haven’t actually been hired yet.”
“Sure you have. It’s just not official.” Ellis turned to his father. “Dad, ready for lunch?”
“Give me a minute.” Quinty said to me, “Scientists are selfish with their time because they don’t bill by the hour,” and he left us in the lobby.
Ellis hadn’t really focused on me yet and was glancing down the hallway. “Ms. Walters. Are you the Ms. Walters who used to be in the DA’s office and at GLKH?”
He could say absolutely anything in that voice, which sounded like he’d been swigging tequila and gravel since preschool, and it would seem like a perverse and irresistible proposition.
“Guilty as charged,” I said, trying to sound blasé, and feeling relieved—or was I?—that he didn’t remember me. I could start fresh, and he’d see me as a successful professional and not a drunk coed dancing in front of the stage at a concert.
“You’ve tried some very high-profile cases,” he said.
“I wasn’t looking for publicity. I was looking for justice.” Agh! I sounded dull and pretentious, which wasn’t a significant improvement over drunk and slutty.
“Really?”
I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic. Whatever it was, I felt a bead of sweat slide down my spine, but I wasn’t finished proving that I was both tedious and prissy. “It’s the duty of those with access to power and privilege to protect and defend the rights of the common man, or woman, or children, those who have no voice…”
I wished to heavens that I had no voice, but I could not stop, even though I saw Ellis’s smile drop away, and he turned to face me straight on. I kept telling myself, shut up, shut up, shut up! but I continued to jabber and at the same time I was thinking about him naked. I was remembering the taste of his mouth and the touch of his hands. I may have glanced down at the front of his pants.
Ellis took a step toward me and said quietly, “Genevieve?”
My brain short-wired. I said “Uh, uh,” and then I said it some more.
Ellis gave me a slow smile that made me feel as if my panties had just vaporized. “Those green, green eyes. Ginny, from the party at Caltech. That weekend.”
Someone shut a door, and the noise knocked me out of my short-circuited loop. I nodded and my voice came out in a whisper. “Jenny, not Ginny. Jennifer Walters.”
“No wonder I couldn’t find you. I checked USC law school, looking for you.”
I was confused because I knew I’d given him my phone number. To the best of my recollection. “I went to UCLA, not USC.”
He laughed and said, “I was pretty ripped when you told me. But not too ripped to forget… that was some weekend, wasn’t it? I didn’t recognize you at first because you weren’t dressed.” He hesitated so long that in a movie calendar pages would have been flying by, and then he said, “Like this.”
He talked like that, all suggestive pauses for me to fill in. He still had something that was more a smirk than a smile, but a fantastic smirk, sexy and confident. I was caught in his gaze and we stood looking at each other for long seconds.
“Your hair was lighter, shorter, and…” Agonizing pause. “I didn’t expect to see you in this context, here in New York.”
“My hair gets lighter with the sun,” I said, and suddenly remembered one of Dahlia’s early coloring and cutting experiments. “I’m sorry Fringe Theory broke up.”
“That happens. Our song still gets airplay on top cult hits shows.”
Did “our” mean his band’s song, or our song?
“I’ve heard,” I said. “Do you still, uh, play?”
“Yeah, I play [significant pause] for fun. I like to do things for fun. My work is lots of fun. What about you?”
“Uh, I like fun, too.” It was official: I was an idiot.
“So glad to hear that,” he said with a lowered voice that made me have the mad thought that he’d grab my hand, drag me into a stairwell, and rip my clothes off. Which probably would not have been appropriate après-job-interview behavior.
I realized that he could easily find me online now that he knew my name. And if I got hired by QUIRC, I’d see Ellis when he visited his father. Even if I didn’t get hired, he could look me up if he wanted to. “My full name is Jennifer Susan Walters,” I said. “Jennifer S. Walters, Esquire.”
He dropped his head closer to mine as he asked, “So what kind of things do you do for fun, Jennifer S. Walters, Esquire?”
Out of the vast wasteland that lay between my ears, I heard the faint echo of Dahlia’s advice to me once: Play it cool, but not too cool! “I’ll tell you the next time I see you, and you can tell me more about your music and your teaching. It’s really nice running into you, Dr. Ellis C. Quintal, the fourth. Well, I’d better be going.” I punched the elevator button.
“Next time then,” he said. “Jenny.”
He made me so nervous that I punched the down button again.
A female voice said mockingly, “Trying to escape so quickly from QUIRC?”
I looked to see Amber, who’d put on a black wool trench with fur trim. Quinty was escorting her toward us.
“Hello, darling!” she trilled, because she had the sort of voice that trilled like birdsong, as she went to Ellis and kissed him.
At this point, any remaining circuitry in my brain immediately fried. I could practically smell the burning insulation as Amber slipped her arm through Ellis’s and told me, “Ms. Walters, I see you’ve already met my fiancé. Now, don’t get any ideas about poaching because he’s already turned me down about handling legal matters for his business.” I thought she must be saying this to make him feel more important about SAT tutoring, or whatever he did.
Sexy, flirty Ellis Tesla was instantly replaced by a more formal man, who said, “I have a longtime relationship with my attorney.”
Quinty looked at me and said, “His college roommate is his
lawyer. He knows Ellis’s dirty laundry.”
Was I part of Ellis’s dirty laundry? Did he still have my panties? Agh!
“He doesn’t have dirty laundry anymore,” Amber said with a cool smile. “Like many men, all he needed was a weekly cleaning service to rid him of detritus.”
Was Amber talking in code about groupies? Had I been a groupie? Ellis’s expression remained impassive.
I didn’t trust myself to speak again, so I smiled pathetically. I know it was a pathetic smile because when the elevator arrived and we entered, I could see it reflected on the mirrored door. On the floor below, a large group got in, and they shoved me to the back of the elevator.
The stuffy air and the combination of damp wool, fur, and someone’s overpowering aftershave made my nose itch. A lot.
I really, really tried not to sneeze, and I thought I had subdued my urge. Isn’t that how it always is—you think you’ve got something under control, but you don’t.
My sneeze was explosive. And not ladylike. And right on the back of Amber’s coat. I swiped at it within the confines of the elevator, saying, “Sorry! Sorry!”
Amber looked over her shoulder at me and said coldly, “Leave it. I’ll send it to the cleaners.” The elevator reached the first floor and the doors opened.
“Please let me pay for the cleaning! Send me the bill,” I said, following Ellis, Quinty, and Amber into the marble-floored main lobby.
“That’s a very nice offer, Ms. Walters,” Amber said and smeered. “But not everyone needs public assistance.”
It’s generally a bad sign when my skin begins to change colors. This time I felt it going hotly pink.
Quinty let out an exasperated breath and said, “Ellis, Amber, I’ll see you two at the restaurant.” He gave me a more patient look and added, “Ms. Walters, I look forward to talking to you soon,” and he strode away.
Amber slid off her coat to inspect the back of it. Her mouth went down in disgust. “I can donate it to charity.”
Ellis said, “Come on, Amber, it’s not like Ginny has contagious necrotizing fasciitis.” I saw an oh shit! expression flash across his face, and he quickly said, “I meant Jenny. I meant Jennifer. It’s not like Jennifer has the flu.”
But it was too late. Amber laser-focused her icy blue eyes at me. “You’re the Flesh-Eating Bacteria girl?”
“I must be going,” I said. “Very nice meeting you, Ms. Tumbridge, Mr. uh, good-bye.”
8:30 P.M.
I’m ignoring Dahlia’s phone call because I’m in bed with the blanket over my head thinking about everything that happened today and remembering the night I met Ellis.
I’d been a Fringe Theory fan ever since high school, when Bruce had given me a mix of their songs, my favorite being “I Wanna Be Your Frankenstein.” (“I’ll put you together/my very own creature/I’ll lovingly suture/Your limbs and your features.”) I went to their site and crushed on the lead singer, Ellis Tesla, the hard-rocking PhD chem student, with his beat-up jeans, vintage nerd T-shirts, and smoldering sardonic stage presence. Brains and brawn, he was my ideal man.
When I heard that the band was touring the West Coast’s premier science programs, I begged a Caltech acquaintance to get me into the sold-out show.
The Fringe Theory concert ended with fireworks, a two-story waterslide, and lots and lots of their signature Rocket Fuel shots. I felt like Ellis was singing right to me as I danced in front of the stage in a cami and cutoffs. It was a sultry Pasadena night, and when someone sprayed a hose at the crowd, I let the water rain down on me.
A homemade missile whizzed into a Porta Potty, setting it ablaze. A siren wailed, and a few minutes later, squad cars and fire trucks roared up, eager to shut down the party. When cops rushed the stage, Ellis reached into his pocket, took out something, and threw it in the opposite direction.
In the instant that brilliant flames licked out and smoke billowed, he leapt off the stage, grabbed my hand, and said, “Come on, babe! Run!”
And we ran until we were far from the crowd. We hid in someone’s yard, and Ellis pulled me close and said, “You’re quite a stretch of a girl, aren’t you? I like that.”
I was breathing hard from the run and the excitement. I asked, “What was that you threw?”
“Magician’s flash paper. Because sometimes I need to divert attention while I steal away with a gorgeous girl.”
Then he kissed me, and the warmth and solidity of him made my knees weak. The slip of his tongue into my mouth sent pleasurable currents through my body.
When he said, “I’m staying nearby,” I said, “Okay.”
I remember a rambling wood-shingled house. We stumbled upstairs, kissing and grabbing at each other.
Then we were in an academic’s room, with books, computers, papers. Moments later, we were naked. Being with Ellis Tesla felt like a dream where I was someone other than a dutiful, serious, lonely grad student. I was wild and shameless as we did things I’d fantasized about and things I’d never imagined.
While taking a breather between filthy hot sex, Ellis held me in his arms and said, “I want to write a song for you. Name a subject and I’ll write a song about it for you.”
I was feeling OMG! amazed that I was with the hawtest geek in the most rockin’ geek band of pranksters in the nation. “Really?”
“Anything you want, babe.”
I saw a book titled Flesh-Eating Bacteria: Conquering Necrotizing Fasciitis on the desk, and I said teasingly, “Write a song about flesh-eating bacteria.”
Ellis reached over and grabbed a guitar, keeping me close. He strummed and hummed for a minute or two and then sang:
She’s consuming me, this long-legged babe
Eyes green as jade, she’s making me crave
More and more, though I know her kisses infect
My heart, my soul, my life, I can’t protect
Because the girl’s unstoppable, like a flesh-eating bacterium,
An erotic juggernaut, she drives me to delirium
I can’t resist her touch, can’t resist her voice
Can’t resist the contagion, I got no choice
My skin’s on fire, she’s all I desire,
So flexible, she’s incredible
So cerebral, she’s chimerical
My gorgeous flesh-eating bacteria girl.
We laughed about the song because, really, what could be less romantic than necrotizing fasciitis, but two months later it was at the top of the charts and it stayed there for weeks. There was lots of speculation about the actual identity of the Flesh-Eating Bacteria Girl. I never told anyone.
And now Amber, a member of the QUIRC hiring committee, knows that I was one of her fiancé’s groupies. Not just any hapless giggling groupie, but the inspiration for his first big hit. I can say good-bye to that job opportunity. It doesn’t seem to matter much, because I’m obsessing about Ellis. I would never have thought a scientific rocker renegade like him would end up with a hammerhead shark in Armani like Amber Tumbridge.
I’ve kept my secret long enough. Tomorrow I’ll tell Dahlia.
Then I realized: this is exactly one of those setbacks that would have stopped me dead in my tracks if I’d made New Year’s Resolutions.
I’m not going to let this get me down. Why should I care about a man who couldn’t even remember my name or bother to call me? If he’s engaged to Amber, he must be a horrible human being. It’s time to let go of my teenage daydream and move on to someone who has actual boyfriend potential.
Like a stripey kitten, I’m going to keep hanging in there!
FRESH START
9:50 P.M.
Now that I have Ellis’s real name, I was able to find him online. I feel pretty stupid for not locating him before—because everyone’s heard of Manic Quantum Mechanics Science Camp. Okay, maybe not everyone, but I remember my cousin mentioning it. Why didn’t Bruce tell me that Ellis owned the program?
Text to Bruce: Did you know that Ellis Tesla of Fringe Theory is Ellis Q
uintal of Manic Quantum Mechanics?
Text from Bruce: Yes.
Text to Bruce: Why didn’t you tell me?
Text from Bruce: Can suggest science camps if yr interested. Do you want practical or theoretical?
Text to Bruce: I was an FT fan. You gave me a mix tape of their songs in high school.
Text from Bruce: So? You lovd Titanic & I dont send updates on oceanography.
Text to Bruce: Nevermind.
Text from Bruce: Already forgotten.
I watched a dozen videos of Ellis and his MQMC team of scientists and engineers leading kids to conduct insane experiments, competing in wild challenges, and even having the president’s wife test-drive a rocket car built with recycled materials and fueled with organic compost and carrot juice. He looked amazing in a wife-beater and cargo pants with a tool belt low on his waist.
He was listed as a consultant for the Institute of Ethics for Science & Bioscience, and I found his social networks. Ellis C. Quintal IV is “engaged.” Everything else is set to private.
I could ask one of the hackers at the Mansion to find out more, but there could be blowback if they decide to find out why I want to know. Do I really want the other superheroes to know that I’m stalking a old boyfriend romantic interest drunken hookup? No.
11:15 P.M.
I’ll never be able to sleep. Checked my aPhone, and Shulky has a message from Trey and Matt. The Book of Mormon cast wants to treat her to “borscht and belly dancing” for saving Broadway from the water sphere attack. Shulky loves both borscht and belly dancing.
JANUARY 21
I thought I’d have to wait until the salon closed this evening to talk to Dahlia, but she answered my a.m. call right away or, as she’d say, stat!
I picked up two lattes and met her at Washington Square Dog Park. The day was freezing and she was trying to get Rodney out of his carrier. She’d dressed him in a bulky orange sweater. Every time she took him out, he’d scramble back in.
The She-Hulk Diaries Page 5
