Robert Lennon - Familiar

She says, “Where could I find Professor Simmons today?”

He blinks, stands up straight. “Uh. Lab?”

“Which building?”

“Or he might be at home. His wife’s like nine months pregnant.”

She waits.

“Downs? Like, right over there.” He points. “I mean, it’s the same building. Just, down the hall and through the double doors.” She’s about to thank him, but he says, “Wait, who are you?”

“He’s working on something I’m involved in.”

The boy blinks. He looks like the bass player from a seventies rock band. He says, “Hold on, I’ll take you.” He continues his search through the file drawer, seems to find what he wants in the form of a sheaf of heavily annotated, equation-covered papers. It is quaint, the idea that somebody would need to go somewhere to gather up some papers, in this electronic age. She likes it. The boy ushers her out into the hallway.

He walks a little too fast for her. She has to sort of run. They pass through the double doors, then another set, and then he stops and asks her to wait before turning to yet another door, this one protected by a proximity reader, in front of which the boy waves a lanyarded ID before entering.

She leans against a cinder-block wall with her eyes closed. The wall behind her is alive with some deep and thrumming energy. She doesn’t fall asleep, or probably doesn’t. When she opens her eyes a man is standing there. He is tall — are they all tall here? — and clean-shaven, with unkempt sandy hair just beginning to go gray. His cheeks are a bit sunken, his chin too long. He’s dressed in jeans and a tee shirt that says, in a flowing script, Choose Rudeness. He says, not rudely, “You were looking for me?”

“Professor Simmons?”

“Yes.”

Elisa licks her lips. “I’m Elisa Brown,” she says. “A friend of yours sent you some things of mine. Some objects.”

Puzzlement. “Who’s your friend?”

“Hugo Bonaventure? He’s at SUNY Reevesport for the semester. That’s where I work.”

The man’s face is friendly, open, but she understands she doesn’t have much time. The name Hugo Bonaventure does not seem to register with him.

“It’s your experiment, correct, with the vibrating metal flange? That is also not vibrating?”

He appears surprised. “Yes, that’s right.”

“This man Bonaventure, he sent you some things of mine. To test. To see if… if…”

Simmons is waiting.

“He said you could determine… where they were from.”

It takes a moment or two for his mind to churn through the possibilities, to decide that she is mistaken or not worth his time. She wishes there were something, anything, she could say to halt the process, go back in time by a minute or two, devise the perfect appeal to make him listen. But no, he’s done with her, he is shaking his head, he is about to say goodbye.

Then he says, “Oh wait — that guy?”

She waits.

“Curly haired guy? From Belgium or something?”

“That’s him.”

Simmons sighs. There’s a bit of sweat on his face, a light sheen, and he wipes it away with his hand. With the other he digs a phone from his pocket and glances at it, at the time.

He says, “Okay, follow me.”

They trace her previous path through the building in reverse, and at equally high speed. At some point the phone in Simmons’s hand rings and he begins talking into it about certain grocery items that need to be bought. “I got somebody here,” he says, and pockets the phone, and then they’re at his office door, which he opens with a key attached to a belt loop by a length of string.

It’s a mess. Elisa is strangely gratified to see an academic office that adheres so completely to type. Books and papers are piled on every surface but two: a chair behind Simmons’s desk, and a chair in front of it. He neither sits in the former nor offers her the latter. He is pawing through a giant pile of mail.

“He sent me some stuff. The guy.”

She nods, though he isn’t looking at her and can’t see it. “He says you’re colleagues,” she says.

“No.”

“But you know him?”

“He teaches here. He’s not a scientist. He’s more of a…” His elbow makes contact with a pile of mail, a different one, and it topples, spilling papers and packages onto the floor. “Fuck. He’s more of a gadfly. He’s in HPS.”

“HPS?”

Simmons has found what he’s been looking for: a brown padded envelope, torn open at one end. He sticks his hand in. “History and philosophy of science. Google him.” He pulls the hand out, and there they are: her lipstick and list. The envelope is tossed back onto the desk. He offers her the objects.

“Guy thought I could test them or something. Or asked me to. Probably I’m just part of some little experiment.”

She takes her things back. The envelope is lying there, still bulging slightly from Simmons’s hand; it is addressed with a marker, in a bold near-scribble. There’s a note inside, no doubt; she wants it. But she can’t bring herself to ask for it. “Experiment?” she says.

“He pokes scientists, tries to make them react. You know.”

She says, “So you can’t test them.”

And now Simmons seems to notice her for the first time. He looks directly into her eyes, scowling slightly, as if in order to figure out what precisely it is he’s got here. She feels like a fool.

“You really think these things are from another world?” he asks.

Slowly, she slides the lipstick and list into her satchel. “I don’t know what I think. Something happened to me. I’m just trying to figure it out.”

He’s nodding, nodding. Elisa is beginning to feel the full force of his concentration. She is attracted to him, to this intensity. It is akin to her own, she feels — or akin to what she once was. “I’m a scientist too,” she blurts. “Or used to be.”

But Simmons just shakes his head. “That guy isn’t going to help you,” he says, and shows her the door.

It’s true, what Simmons told her — Hugo Bonaventure is a sociologist. She finds this out ten minutes later, in the computer lab on the first floor, after Googling him, like she was told to do. He is an eccentric, much beloved among undergraduates. He is interested in metaphysics, mass delusion, and the notion of science as religion.

His résumé is available on the HPS website. It’s many pages long, listing dozens of papers and several co-authored books. Under the heading “Work In Progress” is a study titled “Science Faction: Why We Believe in Alien Abductions, Parallel Worlds, Superpowers, and More.” The names of several collaborators are listed, and one of them happens to be printed on a business card Elisa already has in her satchel, along with a web address, the address of a physics blog she hasn’t yet bothered to visit. She visits it now, and there he is, a collaborator himself. Hugo Bonaventure, collaborator on an ongoing study, “Science Faction,” with Betsy Orosco.

On the plane home she begins shaking. She feels no particular emotion; she’s just shaking, as if she’s very cold. But she isn’t cold. The woman sitting beside her leans ostentatiously away and eventually presses the button to summon a flight attendant.

“Ma’am? Are you all right?”

Elisa’s voice wavers as she says, “I’m fine.”

“Do you need medical attention, ma’am?”

“No.”

“Can I get you anything?”

“No, thank you.”

A few minutes later her teeth are chattering and the hiss of the ventilation system is making her feel sick. The flight attendant comes back with a cup full of ice and a small bottle of gin. Elisa accepts it, pours it. Drinks it.