Page 38 of The Botanist's Assistant
She texted Joe Friday night, writing that she had some interesting news to share about her foray into Blackstone’s home territory, and he texted back immediately that he was on his way out of town but that he had news too. He suggested they meet at the campus café at ten a.m. Monday for a debriefing.
She liked the term “debriefing.” It made her feel like a spy or someone in the diplomatic corps.
She arrives at the lab on time and is surprised when Calvin shows up thirty minutes later. He’s in his usual outfit of shorts and T-shirt. This one reads,Fall Out Boy.
What boy and what is he falling out of?
Calvin seems more subdued than normal. Perhaps he swallowed more Xanax than he should or had a run-in at the dog park. Or maybe it’s that he doesn’t know what to say to a woman who wears a bull’s-eye on her back, one he helped place.
Hippomane mancinella, Margaret thinks. The little apple of death. A tropical tree that bears fruit that resembles an apple but will blister your mouth and esophagus with only one bite. She will be as aware of Calvin as she would be of a toxic fruit.
At nine forty-three a.m., she tells Calvin she has an appointment and leaves him to his research (testing the stabilityof the stinging bush’s chief compound under certain conditions: frozen, refrigerated, in solution) and heads for the café.
Margaret’s plan—which she made right after receiving Joe’s text—is to order coffee and be seated by the time Joe arrives. She does not enjoy wandering through a café peering around for someone she has no guarantee will actually be there. She knows what that feels like after her first year of college when a classmate suggested they grab a coffee and talk about a math project with which she was having trouble (Margaret would have done anything to have a friend, even a needy one). She waited in the cafeteria for more than an hour. The girl never showed up.
Margaret’s plan falls apart, however, as she approaches the café and sees that Joe is already at an outside table, two medium coffees in front of him. He’s wearing a red T-shirt, faded jeans and leather sandals. Sunlight makes the scar on his face seem less pronounced, but the T-shirt reveals that the burn marks also extend partway down his arm to just above his elbow.
“I thought it was too nice to sit inside,” he says, and slides a coffee in her direction. “I didn’t know what you wanted, so I got black. I can get cream and sugar from the coffee station if you want. There are syrups too. I always put some vanilla in mine.”
Margaret starts to tell him that she’s perfectly capable of walking over and preparing her own cup but swallows the words just in time. Isn’t this when you’re supposed to let someone perform a service for you?
“Perhaps a little cream,” she says.
The café coffee is stronger than she’s used to.
“Coming right up,” Joe says and returns with three small containers of half-and-half for her cup.
“How was your trip?” she asks.
“It was just what I needed.” He doesn’t offer where he’s been. Instead, he takes a long pull from his coffee. “Tell me what you found.”
Margaret tells him about the lien, the big home remodel and Amy Blackstone apparently sharing that her husband had a big invention in the works. She doesn’t mention the children she saw or that she’d introduced herself as Forsythia.
“Nice work,” Joe says and pulls several folded sheets of paper from his back pocket. “I did some digging too.”
As he’s smoothing out the papers on the table, two female students pass by, slowing to stare at Joe’s ruined face.
Joe looks up. “Cut myself shaving,” he says and the pair hurries away.
“That’s a quote from Jonah Hex, in case you were wondering how I could be so clever and handsome at the same time.”
He grins.
“Does Mr. Hex work at Roosevelt?”
“Oh, no, sorry. He’s a DC Comics character. A bounty hunter with a scarred face and a terrible personality but he lives by a code of honor to avenge the innocent.” He leans forward. “It kind of fits, doesn’t it? Especially the terrible personality part.”
“The grad students all call me Big Bird.”
Why did she tell him this?
“My favorite character onSesame Street.”
Is he joking or does he really like the giant yellow bird?
“Anyway,” he says, “listen to this. Back in the day,Blackstone’s parents filed a lawsuit against Yale, alleging their son was wrongly expelled after being accused of spiking an ex-girlfriend’ssoda with ipecac syrup, causing her to end up in the hospital with severe vomiting. The parents claimed due-process violations and also the fact that there was no proof the vomiting wasn’t caused by some kind of virus. The lawsuit was settled, Blackstone was returned to the campus and the suit was sealed.”
“How did you find it?” Margaret asks.
