Lessons in Chemistry Read Online Free PDF Page A

gasped, holding his stomach. “I hope so.”
    “It was probably just something you ate,” she said. “Food poisoning.”
    “Oh,” he moaned. “I’m so embarrassed. I’m so sorry. Your dress. I’ll pay for the cleaning.”
    “It’s fine,” she said. “It’s only a splatter.” She helped him onto his sofa, where he collapsed into a large heap.
    “I…I can’t remember the last time I vomited. Much less in public. ”
    “It happens.”
    “I was on a date,” he said. “Can you imagine? I left her there.”
    “No,” she said, trying to remember the last time she’d even had a date.
    They were silent for a few minutes, then he closed his eyes. She took this as her cue to leave.
    “Again, so sorry,” he whispered, as he heard her make her way to the door.
    “Please. There’s no need to apologize. It was a reaction, a chemical incompatibility. We’re scientists. We understand these things.”
    “No, no,” he said weakly, wanting to clarify. “I mean about assuming you were a secretary that day—about telling you to have your boss call me,” he said. “I am so sorry. ”
    To this she had no response.
    “We’ve never been formally introduced,” he said. “I’m Calvin Evans.”
    “Elizabeth Zott,” she answered, gathering her things.
    “Well, Elizabeth Zott,” he said, managing a small smile, “you’re a lifesaver.”
    But it was clear she hadn’t heard.
----
    —
    “My DNA research focused on polyphosphoric acids as condensing agents,” she told Calvin over coffee in the cafeteria the following week. “And it’s been going well up until now. As of last month, I’ve been reassigned. To an amino acid study.”
    “But why?”
    “Donatti—don’t you work for him, too? Anyway, he decided my work was unnecessary.”
    “But condensing agent research is critical to further understanding of DNA—”
    “Yes, I know, I know, ” she agreed. “It was what I’d planned to pursue in my doctorate. Although what I’m really interested in is abiogenesis.”
    “Abiogenesis? The theory that life arose from simplistic, nonlife forms? Fascinating. But you’re not a PhD.”
    “No.”
    “But abiogenesis is PhD territory.”
    “I have a master’s in chemistry. From UCLA.”
    “Academia,” he nodded sympathetically. “It got old. You wanted out.”
    “Not exactly.”
    A long moment of uncomfortable silence followed.
    “Look,” she started up again, taking a deep breath, “my hypothesis of polyphosphoric acids is as follows.”
    Before she knew it, she’d talked to him for more than an hour, Calvin nodding as he made notes, occasionally interrupting with elaborate questions, which she easily fielded.
    “I would be further,” she said, “but as I mentioned, I was ‘reallocated.’ And before that, getting the basic supplies to continue my real work proved nearly impossible.” That’s why, sheexplained, she’d been reduced to stealing equipment and supplies from other labs.
    “But why was it so hard to get supplies?” Calvin asked. “Hastings has plenty of money.”
    Elizabeth looked at him as if he’d just asked how, with all those rice paddies, there could possibly be starving children in China. “Sex discrimination,” she answered, taking the number-two pencil she always wore either behind her ear or in her hair and tapping it with emphasis on the table. “But also, politics, favoritism, inequality, and general unfairness.”
    He chewed on his lips.
    “But mostly sex discrimination,” she said.
    “What sex discrimination?” he asked innocently. “Why wouldn’t we want women in science? That makes no sense. We need all the scientists we can get.”
    Elizabeth looked at him, astonished. She had been under the impression that Calvin Evans was a smart man, but now she realized he was one of those people who might only be smart in one narrow way. She studied him more closely, as if assessing what it might take to get through. Gathering her hair in both hands, she wound