The Visit

1 August

I’m standing in the lobby of BMS, waiting for the Director to meet me. I stare out of the two-story window, watching the trees sway, a UN flag flying, a company flag snagged on its pole, shadows of hawks over the impeccably manicured azaleas. The cavernous foyer is empty save for me and two receptionists. Above the stairs behind those walls people must be working intensely. I imagine rows of scientists in lab coats silently hunched over benches, exactly the way I’ve never seen. Penn is never this empty except maybe the week the university closes after Christmas, and I’ve never been around to see it then.

A tall man a few years older than I am, if that, approaches. He’s the Director of Glenn’s group and he starts to show me around. First the cafeteria, empty. “Nobody eats lunch at 2 p.m.?” I ask. I remember my two-week stints at NIVA in Oslo, where lunch was at 12:30 for everyone and that was that. The Director explains that the company is on summer hours: work ten hours Monday through Thursday and you can leave early on Friday. Now it all makes sense. My visit won’t disrupt anyone’s work, but I won’t get to ask anyone about nitty-gritty lab details either.

He asks me how I know Glenn, and when I tell him we bike together he says he’s a biker too.

He takes me upstairs, down a hall, and around a corner. The corporate façade disappears. I’m thinking, “Now this looks like lab space.” The Coke machine against a bare wall gives it away. Behind closed doors are darkened, windowless equipment rooms. Down the bright hallway two women are talking. The Director pawns me off on one of them, who gladly shows me around her lab. The inside is as bright as the hallway, with windows (very important). There are offices facing outside, too, and she has one. If there are desks next to the benches I don’t notice them.

What I do see is not a single instrument, tool, or box out of place. This lab could be a museum. Compare this to where I work now, where three of the six benches are invisible under pipette boxes, ice buckets, journal papers, tissue culture plates, pipettes, discarded gloves, aluminum foil, and a stray coffee cup begging to be noticed by Radiation Safety. Walk into the lab where I work and pipette tips will crunch under your feet. One student’s bench is so bad that the student makes a habit of migrating to the next bench over to get work done. Many mornings I will spend the first five minutes removing trash from common space, picking tips off the floor, and sterilizing the tissue culture hoods. Many other mornings I don’t even bother; the lab will be a mess again by noon. Then there’s the Philly dust.

But I digress.

I’m led to a room full of microscopes, each outfitted to perform a specific task. The room is taunting me. I miss doing microscopy, and here are half a dozen ’scopes sitting unused.

We go back to the Director’s office and she leaves me there. I look in and Glenn is standing in the doorway. I greet him with “Hi, stranger,” which isn’t very professional but I’m feeling at ease. I’ve come in with the rule that if I can’t be myself I shouldn’t work here. I never feel comfortable being myself where I work now. I’m a different person at work. I don’t think my lab mates would know what to do with my true persona.

Someone asks how Glenn and I know each other and the whole biking thing starts up again. There are two other high-level scientists in the room, one man and one woman. The Director says he found a beastly hill north of the Sourlands along the river. It sounds like the one we climbed on the Halloween ride. I don’t mention the murder house at the top.

The woman is embarking on an AIDS charity ride soon. The Director pulls $20 from his wallet. I mention the ACS ride and how not a soul from my lab donated. Glenn gestures towards me. “She did a century. It was only 94 miles so she felt compelled to ride an extra six.”

“Well, I had to,” I offer. Hmm. I go the extra mile, so to speak. That’s gotta look good.

The Director asks us if we know which muscle gets stressed the most while riding. He asks each one of us in turn. “The quads,” someone says. “Back of the neck,” Glenn offers. The Director looks at me. “The heart,” I suggest, thinking out of the box and of my recent bout with overtraining. We’re all wrong. He names a muscle between the glutes and the hamstring that I’ve never heard of and a stretch for it. Next thing I know he’s on the floor demonstrating, the woman on the floor beside him trying it out.

Should I get down on the floor and stretch too? Do I have to be flexible to work here? What if I split my chinos? That wouldn’t be good. I look up at Glenn and say, quietly, “This is a very interesting interview.”

The Director, Glenn, and I go into the Director’s office. He answers some questions I asked earlier and shows me how his group is organized. I look from him to the chart and back again. Glenn is looking right at me. A wave of unease ripples through me. Is he expecting me to say something? Searching my face for a sign of intelligence? (Good luck with that.)

I have to ask about layoffs, of course. I’m told that those who don’t perform are the ones who are cut. What does it mean to perform? I can’t ask that; I can only wonder if I would be able to perform to their satisfaction.

A college writing professor once said to me, “Laura, you're the most interesting combination of confidence and lack of confidence I’ve ever seen.” That was 21 years ago. Not much has changed, apparently. My response then, to my friends, was “She deserves to be baffled.” Now I wish I’d just knock it off already.

Anyway, there aren’t any jobs in this group right now. Glenn and the Director brainstorm names of other head scientists who run labs here I’d fit with. They’ve already sent my resume to a handful of people. To my surprise, the fact that I’ve bounced from lab to lab so much is working to my benefit. I’ve done so many things over the past fifteen years that I could fit in a lot of places. “I’m highly trainable,” I offer.

They tell me that it might be four months or more before things open up. Turnover is low. I take that as a good thing. It means people are happy here. I can wait indefinitely. While things could be better at Penn, I’m in no hurry to leave. I could drift along forever where I am (and that’s the problem).

The three of us walk out together. “See you tomorrow,” I tell Glenn. He’s working at the Pinelands Nursery rest stop for the Event. The century passes through there twice. If anything comes to mind between now and then I know where to find him. And a hundred miles is time enough to mull things over.

But for now I’m going to put it out of my mind. Let my subconscious work on it while I wait for something to happen. Let something I didn’t know I was thinking bubble to the surface. Meanwhile I have to focus on the job I have now. And tomorrow’s century.

I get to sleep at a reasonable hour.

I’m in the lab. It’s cluttered and crowded. My computer’s monitor is lying wedged into the top of the CPU. I have to get that monitor working again, or at least do something with it.

My boss is sitting on top of a shelf. “What should I do about that monitor?” I ask him. I have to remind him because he seems to keep forgetting about it.

He shrugs. “Put it on the windowsill.” He clearly doesn’t want to be bothered to think about it. His response is what I expected it to be, but it annoys me nonetheless.

This monitor was expensive. I think maybe it was something I did that made it stop working. I pull it out from the CPU and turn it on.

Inside a light flickers like a strobe, bright white. My hearing aid is inside. At each flash I catch a glimpse of it. It’s eyes, beady and green, blink and squint with each flash. Its mouth contorts in a grimace, the light too bright and too sudden. I’m not surprised and I don’t know why my hearing aid would be either.