A new job is opening up in her lab, and Ms. Einstein has made the many photocopies and done the never-ending paperwork to apply for it. Not that she expects to get it, and anyway she’s otherwise preoccupied with various mind-bending algorithms. Still, something in her knows she’s far better qualified than the others, and she allows herself to think that if she does get it, she won’t have the dreadful worry every year that she might be tossed out like old Kleenex. She might count for something, maybe she’ll even be able to work openly on her microbe-battery. If she gets it.
But she’s not going to get it. I could have told her it was pointless to waste her time filling out all those forms and collecting those notarized statements to confirm she has blood-colored blood and fingernails at the end of her fingers. You didn’t need divine insight to figure it out, logic would suffice: the job will go to the new PhD (female) in the lab, who’s only been around for a few months but has already earned the protection of the lab director. She hasn’t gone to bed with him; rather, her winning move has been to plant a glimmer of hope while not having sex with him.* It’s also true that she resembles a hot young showgirl seen on TV, a fact that has given her a distinct edge in the grueling job selection process—while Ms. Einstein brings to mind a horse that’s grown weary of grazing the same pastures.
* It’s a solution that works for everyone, for in fact even he doesn’t want an affair. Or rather he wouldn’t mind the pluses but he wants to avoid the minuses, the danger, first of all, that he’ll be found out by his German spouse, who heads a fierce volunteer association protecting battered wives.
But all these goings-on behind the scenes are invisible to her, taken as she is by her clandestine research. She’s getting excellent, convincing results now, and many distinguished international scientists have shown interest—that fact alone would disqualify her in the eyes of her roving-eyed boss, if he knew. She’s on her way to becoming a sort of Joan of Arc, agog in mystical adoration of Science, ready to wade into battle with her superiors and put herself in danger. She seems to have forgotten all about Casanova and his nighttime kiss. Or rather, every once in a while she does think of him, the way a TV viewer will summon up a few faded memories of a show that didn’t leave much of an impression. But you know and I know that little by little she’ll soon decide she is attracted to him, then in love, then truly in love for the first time. (To use the accepted rhetorical formula, although it seems to have no correlative in human physiology.)
He, meanwhile, thinks about her day and night. This time it’s not just a genital thing, it’s more than that, he’s certain. The more he thinks about her, the more inebriated he becomes, the more she seems desirable. By conventional standards she’s not beautiful, but in fact, she is, he thinks. His catastrophic take on climate change has grown less aggressive, more joyful, even slightly ardent. Despite that multiple fracture of the elbow. Unfortunately, the first time they set his bone, the gods of the operating theater were fooling around, and the lad had quite a bit of pain afterward. Human beings are so delicate physically, there’s not much you can do about it.
Not that their wandering hands affect me one way or another, although I can’t avoid knowing everything they get up to. If they want to marry, have fourteen children, commit joint suicide: it’s all the same to me. There are billions of other humans I have to keep an eye on, billions and billions of every type of animal, billions and billions and billions of fascinating stars. Not to mention numerous wars, ruthless terrorist acts, famines and other natural catastrophes whether connected or not to climate change, malaria and cholera hot spots, refugee odysseys, and so forth. It astonishes me that such an intelligent person—so far as intelligence goes, she’s smart, no doubt about that—simply does not realize that young Casanova will quickly grow tired of her after he’s gotten what he wants, he’ll begin paging through his cell phone address book again. And she will be royally screwed, to put it crudely. No job and no boyfriend either.
Casanova meanwhile thinks it’s time to split from short stuff. The more he thinks about it, the more he finds her ecological fetishes and her dreams of playing the medieval peasant intolerable. But it’s a delicate situation; he’ll have to move carefully. If he does everything properly, he thinks, she won’t cause him problems.
Truth is, she’s already smelled a rat, because when it comes to this type of thing, the antennae of a human being can out-sense those of a cricket. She saw the games he was playing to stay close to the tall one on the night of the toads, she noticed his testosteronic turmoil when he reappeared, she concluded he’d probably kissed the other, just as he’d kissed her a couple of years ago, as he’s kissed many others even while they were together, swearing when found out, never again. She ought to be jealous, maybe she is even a little jealous, but much, much less than she had expected. She has to admit she’s the first to be surprised.