The Chemist

“But… you must have met people outside of work. You got vacation time, didn’t you?”

She smiled. “Not very often. And it was hard for me to talk to people outside of the lab. Everything was classified. I was classified. I couldn’t be myself in any way or talk about any part of my real life with a person on the outside. It was too hard being some imaginary character. I preferred isolation. It embarrassed me to try to play a role. Ironic, isn’t it? Now I have a new name every other week.”

He put his hand on her knee. “I’m sorry. It sounds horrible.”

“Yeah. It frequently was. That’s why I’m so backward when it comes to interpersonal relations. But on the plus side, I got to do some really cutting-edge work with monoclonal antibodies – I’m talking about sci-fi stuff here, the kind of thing people don’t believe exists. And I had essentially no limits on my practical research. I got everything I wanted in the lab. My budget was amazing. I’m responsible for a larger chunk of the national debt than you know.”

He laughed.

“So was your ex-wife smarter than you are?” she asked.

He hesitated for a moment. “It doesn’t bother you to talk about her?”

“Why would it? You didn’t get jealous over the eternal flame I will always carry for Roger Markowitz.”

“Good point. Well, Lainey was very bright in her own way. Not book-smart, but clever, shrewd. When we met, she was so… vivid. She wasn’t like other women I’d dated, easygoing girls who were content with easygoing me. Lainey always wanted more – from every aspect of life. She was a little… contrary. In the beginning, I thought she just had very firm opinions and wasn’t afraid to disagree. I loved that about her. But then, over time… well, she wasn’t really opinionated, she just loved the drama. She would argue if you told her the sun rises in the east. It was always exciting, at least.”

“Ah, so you’re an adrenaline junkie. This all starts to make sense now.”

“What makes sense?”

“Your attraction to me.”

He stared at her, blinking owlishly the way he did when he was surprised.

“Admit it,” she teased. “You’re just in this for the thrill of the near-death experiences.”

“Hmm, I hadn’t considered that.”

“Maybe we should forget this gig in DC after all. If I eliminate my hunters and life gets all safe and boring, you’ll be out the door, won’t you?” She sighed theatrically.

She couldn’t tell if he was serious or playing along when he answered, “I was never fond of this plan to begin with. Maybe it is smarter to run.”

“On the other hand, if I do a bad job in DC, it’s going to get a lot more dangerous. You’ll love that.”

He gave her a bleak stare.

“Was that over the line?” she asked.

“A little too close to home.”

“Sorry.”

He sighed. “Your theory is incorrect, though, I’m afraid. See, I got over my love of drama early on. It was still exciting, but so is drowning in quicksand, I’d imagine. Exciting is not the same thing as enjoyable.”

“But you didn’t leave.”

Daniel stared at his hand – curled tensely around her thigh now – as he answered. “No. I thought… well, this makes me sound like a first-class sucker. I thought I could fix her. She had a lot of issues from her past, and I let those issues be the excuse when she did things to hurt me. I never blamed her; I always blamed her history. Cliff – that’s the man she left me for; what a fantastic name to be left for, don’t you think? – Cliff wasn’t her first fling. I found out about the others later.” He glanced up at her suddenly. “Was that all in the file?”

“No.”

He stared out the windshield. “I knew I should give up. I knew I wasn’t holding on to anything real. The Lainey I loved was just a construct in my head. But I was stubborn. Stupidly so. Sometimes you cling to a mistake simply because it took so long to make.”

“It sounds miserable.”

He looked over and smiled at her weakly. “Yes, it was. But the hardest part was just admitting none of it had ever been real. It’s humiliating, you know, to be duped. So my pride was hurt worse than anything else.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And I’m sorry, too. My stories are so much less entertaining than yours. Tell me about another boyfriend.”

“I have a question first.”

He stiffened a little bit. “Go ahead.”

“That story you told the hooker, Kate, what was that about?”

“Huh?” His eyebrows pulled together in confusion.

“The one who was supposed to plant your tracker. Kevin said you told her your divorce wasn’t final. But he also said this conversation happened two years after you split. You didn’t contest the divorce, it went through in months. So why did you say that?”

Daniel laughed. “Thank you, seriously, from the very bottom of my heart, for not voicing that question in front of Kevin.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Yes, the divorce was ancient history by then. But this girl… girls like that did not wander into the dive bar where I used to hang out. And if one happened to, I would not have been the guy she approached.”

“What was she like?”

“If memory serves, she was stunning. And predatory. And oddly… frightening. I never believed for an instant that she was really attracted to me. I could sense there was an agenda, and I didn’t want to fall for it. I was a little sensitive, at that point, to the idea of being duped again. But of course I didn’t want to be rude, so I went with the politest refusal I could think of.”