“How the hell did you land her?” he asked, handing the phone back. “You got some secret trust fund or something?”

“Nope,” he said, waving his hands down the length of his body, “just all this awesomeness.”

“Yeah, right. How did you meet? And don’t say the strip club she worked at, because that would just be sad.”

“No, we met through a mutual friend,” he said. “And she wasn’t a stripper, she was an exotic dancer, and she only did it to put herself through school. That isn’t sleazy, it’s a good work ethic.”

“And where did she go to school?”

“She studied art history at Suffolk,” he said. “She’s an artist in her own right, though, and damn good.” He nodded toward the abstract painting on the wall. “She painted that, you know.”

“You’re kidding.” Jeremiah was glad he’d never thought to mention to Brent that he didn’t like the painting.

“No, Charles Scott commissioned it himself when the place was being decorated. She’s incredibly talented.”

Jeremiah had trouble imagining that Charles Scott would concern himself with something as trivial as the lab’s decor.

“Is all of her stuff abstract like that? You think you might be able to get her to paint something else for me? Like maybe a portrait of my dog or something?”

“Well, I can’t do it now,” Brent told him. “I’m not allowed to talk about you. It’s in my contract. But afterward, I guess, when this is all over, I could ask her. Why the dog, though? I thought you didn’t like that dog.”

“N-no,” Jeremiah stammered. “No, of course I like him. Why would you say that?”

“He doesn’t seem to like you much.”

Jeremiah swallowed hard. He hadn’t meant to say so much.

“Well, he’s really Parker’s dog,” he said. “I thought a painting might make a great gift for Parker when I get back.”

“Sure, I’ll see what I can do.”

“So, does Mel just sit and paint all day? She makes enough money with that?”

“At the moment, she’s working as an assistant in the press department of the MFA,” he said. “But she does okay with her painting. She’s had a few shows.”

“In my day, nerds like you didn’t get girls like her.”

“I think we just sort of complement each other,” Brent said. “Left brain, right brain sort of thing, science and art.”

“Seems like the two things are mutually exclusive,” Jeremiah said, more to himself than to Brent.

“Nah, it’s like a balance. You need a little of everything in you, you know? And if you don’t have it, you gravitate to someone else who does. Opposites attract, right?”

On some level, Jeremiah could understand that. When he’d met Diana all those years ago at college, it was her eccentricity and her absolute dread of the mundane that had drawn him in. In those first few succulent weeks, they’d lie awake in his twin bed talking by candlelight, and he’d listen with eager ears while she ranted about the hypocrisy of the American Dream.