Meet-cute
The person she assumes is Dr. Abigail Yates is looking at her, confused, from the pile of circuitry she is elbow deep in at a lab bench.
Is she smiling too wide? Too many teeth? She dulls her million-watt smile by precisely two teeth.
Oh… that didn’t help. Maybe it was too few teeth. She cranks it up four teeth. Net gain – two teeth.
Not helping. Is she grimacing now? Where is the line between smile and grimace? Maybe she should just close her mouth…
That definitely didn’t work. Say something… anything. Seriously, why aren’t you saying something?
She quirks an eyebrow, seductively. That was an insane move, Holtzmann… this is an interview not a bar!
Abby smiles indulgently. Good choices. You are making good choices.
The silence draws out, Abby smiles less.
“Come here often?” Holtzmann quips. Jesus, that didn’t even make sense, this is her lab, of course, she comes here often. Where is this shit coming from? More importantly, why now?
She leans casually, or at least she hopes it appears that way, against the doorjam.
“I’m Jillian Holtzmann, the answer to all of your postdoctoral prayers.” Her eyes pop out a bit, crossing slightly as she realizes what just came out of her mouth. Well, this is not going as planned. She fiddles with her necklace, centering herself for a moment with the sensation of the cool metal against the exposed tips of her fingers.
“Oh!” Abby’s eyes brighten with excitement and understanding. “Welcome to the lab!” Abby answers, smiling and hopping up from the lab bench. “Come on in, I’ve been looking forward to meeting with you.” Offering her hand to the blonde engineer languishing in her doorway. "I'm Abby! Yates... Abby Yates!"
Holtzmann abruptly removes her casually leaning shoulder from the doorjamb and reaches out a partially gloved hand to grasp Abby’s hand tightly, smiling broadly with practically her whole body.
“I didn’t even know Dr. Gorin took Ph.D. students until I saw your CV! I can’t imagine how amazing it must be to work with her. You know, I saw her give that prophetic talk on how susceptible the Large Hadron Collider is to environmental factors. I was totally unsurprised when they brought her in to fix it when that bird with a baguette took it out! I’m surprised CERN hasn’t had its talons in you for years as her protegee!” Abby chatters, showing the engineer into the corner of her lab that functions as a default office, i.e. the only corner of her lab that isn’t occupied by random electronics, none of which appear to be in working order. It is filled almost entirely with an old metal desk and empty Chinese food containers.
Holtz follows, assessing how to best to respond to the immediate subject of CERN.
“Well, they tried but you know how closed-minded physicists can be…. I’m just saying if they want real evidence of the Higgs, they’re going to have to … that weasel came in of his own accord.” Smooth Jillian. That was super smooth. The weasel was definitely why you were escorted from the premises by security. To cap it off, she winks at the now confused physicist.
Abby laughs nervously, knowing that the slight blonde woman in front of her couldn’t have been responsible for shutting down CERN this year. Could she? She offers Jillian a seat at her desk, uncomfortably swiping Chinese food containers into the garbage to make space for her sheaf of interview questions.
Holtzmann takes the proffered seat, leaning back the chair automatically and propping her mangy old combat boots on the now cleared desk space. WHAT ARE YOU DOING HOLTZMANN? You literally just went dumpster diving. She immediately and abruptly changes position, choosing instead to lean against the chair arm. She nervously pushes her yellow tinted glasses to the top of her poof of blonde hair.
Abby surreptitiously straightens her papers observing the woman sitting in front of her, her blonde hair meticulously coifed to appear messy but attractive, intelligent blue eyes, and those dimples... Jesus, Abby you’re hiring a postdoc, don’t think about her dimples like that.
Abby can’t believe she’s sitting on this side of the desk. Just a year ago, she was a postdoc, applying endlessly for tenure-track positions. Even finding a postdoc that would support her research interests had been difficult. But a real permanent position? And now, after four years of undergraduate, three for her masters, six for her Ph.D., and two postdocs, she was finally in a position to provide someone else with a job, to be a mentor. Abby had never even been to CERN, and somehow she had an applicant who was offered a job there. Yet, all she could think about was her dimples? It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t REALLY have funding for a postdoc. She doesn’t really need all the salary they are giving her anyway and she can cobble together the rest from the meager start-up she got from Higgins. Get it together, Yates. Life goals, Yates. You are hiring a postdoc today.
“I’ve read your CV and Rebecca’s recommendation letter speaks volumes on your talent, so I’m just going to jump right into the real question, Jillian.”
“Holtzmann, please” Holtzmann interrupts her, saluting with two fingers, not moving from her casual repose.
Abby grimaces awkwardly “Sorry, Holtzmann… should have asked…” She self-consciously makes a note on the paper in front of her. Stupid. Yates. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Steeling herself, she continues “So Holtzmann… Do you know what I research here?” Well, that sounds weirder coming out of my mouth than expected, but asking if she believed in ghosts would have been worse. Right?
Holtzmann grins at her, radiating interest. She straightens, reaches into the multicolored backpack at her side, and pulls out a dog-eared, battered, heavily annotated copy of a book. THE book. “Oh, I’m aware.” She winks. Again with the winking Holtzmann? It probably looks like you have a facial tick. Serious science happening here, Holtz. SERIOUS SCIENCE. This is Abigail Fucking Yates, Holtzmann.
Abby’s fingers go white-knuckled on the sheaf of papers in front of her. Her heart promptly leaping into her throat at seeing her book in someone else’s hands, clearly well-loved, if a bit singed. I thought Erin burned both copies of it. I guess that one does look like it might have been burned at some point. Don’t cry, Yates. Someone appreciates your work, it’s not that big of a deal. This woman isn’t totally validating all of your career choices or anything. So help me, Abby, if you fucking cry right now… tamp that shit down.
Abby swallows, taking a deep steadying breath, trying to collect all of the emotions pulsing through her. That book was her and Erin’s baby. Four hundred pages of babies. Each word carefully selected to best communicate their complex and radical ideas. At seeing it sitting there, she remembers the day she went to her Dad’s publishing company to pick up the two copies that he reluctantly agreed to make for her. She remembers the pride she felt, checking “Write a book” off of the list of goals she'd carried since childhood. She feels the wrapping paper in her hands as she wrapped the second copy for Erin, the beads of cool water on her shaking hands from the perfectly chilled bottle of champagne in her other hand as she walked up the stairs to Erin Gilbert’s apartment for the last time, her stomach tied in knots.
One of those two copies now sits on her desk. “So you’ve read it?” Abby asks hopefully, not daring to believe that their work influenced the trajectory of the woman sitting in front of her.
“Read it?!” Holtz’s eyes are gleaming now with repressed excitement. “Are you kidding me?!” She reaches back into the backpack, metal jangling inside, this time pulling out a roll of hand-drawn blueprints and slapping them onto the desk in front of her, haphazardly, over Abby's interview questions. “First off, I think your calculations on how to identify psychokinetic energy are…” She loses the ability to express her thoughts and with both hands gestures to her brain with widened eyes and simply says “Poof!” wriggling her fingers. “I broke my brain over them for a few weeks during the last year of my Ph.D. and I am pretty sure I can actualize them into a portable meter.” She is now rapidly rifling through the blueprints, finally settling on the right one, whipping it onto the top of the pile.
“YOU’RE HIRED.” Abby blurts, surprising herself, her eyes never leaving the battered copy of her book now sitting on her desk. “You’re hired.” She reiterates, more deliberately, still attempting to regain some sort of composure. She knows there are tears in her eyes. “When can you start?”
Holtzmann stops, mid-gesture. Still pointing to something on the blueprint, “Now?” she replies.