René
As he had assured her he would Dr. Jacobs called Verna from the same number he had used to call to set up the initial interview and the news had been good. Background checks take little time when the individual doesn't have a criminal record. Whatever had happened at the conclusion of the interview to turn his mood chilly towards her seemed to have thawed. That inherent good humor he had exhibited in the beginning had found its way back into his voice by the time he called to set up a time for her to come down to see the place.
After giving her directions and ensuring she could in fact make it down in the afternoon Jacobs had thanked her and then hung up the phone.
Cut to Thursday afternoon.
It's a cloudy day and warmer than one would expect from a March afternoon in the western plains. Even so the skies are portents of a coming snowstorm. The directions Jacobs gave her take her out past the tech center and nearly into the suburbs. A mostly commercial area that looks as if it would be well-lit at night. This particular street has an equal mix of warehouses and office parks as well as apartment complexes and single-family homes.
It is nowhere near the downtown campus where she met Jacobs for the interview. One of the universities has a campus in Aurora. It's a grant-funded research project. They must have to take what they can get.
When she arrives at the street she can see the building he'd described almost immediately. It is a two- technically three-story building that was painted a rosy shade of pink once but has since gone ashen and chipped with age. Trees line the property and the parking lot is not in amazing shape. The asphalt is holding up as best it can. Only one other car takes up space in the lot.
Jacobs is leaning against the trunk of a blue-gray 2009 Volkswagen Passat. His suit jacket has been discarded as he had when he waited for her before the interview and he's smoking a cigarette. The picture of end-of-the-week weariness. When Verna arrives and he notices her he peels himself off the trunk and extinguishes his cigarette.
"Ah, Miss Gardner," he says. "Hi, hello. You found it okay?"
Verna
She looked up the place on Google Maps to get directions earlier, and... well... had a moment of questioning about that drab pink warehouse. Still, hadn't Dr. Jacobs told her that they were A: on grant funding, and B: just starting up?
Does. Not. Matter. It will be a lab someday. Perhaps she's looking at things through overly-rosy glasses (or maybe that's the warehouse's color scheme) but someone's just been stuck at that dead-end of a job for way too long to care much about peeling paint.
She drives up to the place in a blue Ford Focus, and she is not wearing her interview suit today. No, black slacks and a jewelly-deep purple turtleneck sweater are what she decided to go with for today's tour. And when they get around to the actual job of unpacking, this will likely devolve even further into jeans if allowed. She is, however, wearing those same sensible heels.
She gets out of the car, taking a bit of care with the uneven parking lot cracks to make sure she doesn't get one of those heels caught and land on her face (how embarrassing) and smiles at Dr. Jacobs. "Of course, it wasn't difficult. Large pink warehouse," she says, and gestures to the place, as if to say 'how could you miss it?'
René
"Uh huh."
His tone of disdain has less to do with her attitude towards finding the place and more to do, she realizes, with the building in front of them. Given that he appears debonair even when he's left half of his suit in the car and a full beard grown on his face it may just be latent European snobbishness at work.
He hates this building but at least he doesn't have to see it every day. It doesn't sound as if he has much involvement in the project in any capacity other than personnel management.
"Okay," he says, like to snap himself out of his own reverie. As they start to walk towards the building he plunges his left hand into his pocket. Something jingles. It's a ring of keys on a black plastic wrist coil chain. His wedding band is dull even in the sunlight. It does not glint as he hands it to her. "These are the keys to get into the building. The big one--" He points to a sturdy gold key with a square base. "--opens the back door. This one--" He points to a smaller silver one. "--opens the doors you'll need to get into once you're inside."
He leads her around the side of the building and lets her use her copy of the key to open the back door. It's then that she may notice that half of the windows on the ground floor are completely covered.
Verna
"So," she says, trying to make small talk on the walk to the door. "You said the lab isn't set up yet, and we need to do a lot of unpacking?" Meaning, she isn't expecting much out of the warehouse, really. But then, he is handing her the keys.
Keys. To a lab. Her smile is rather uncontained, as she takes them and opens the door.
Her head does not even tilt at the covered windows. There is a reason why most physics labs are in basements or other such places where the environment can be thoroughly controlled. There are so many possibilities for those windows, in other words. Stray heat, stray light, these can wreck measurements. Or perhaps the warehouse simply came like that.
René
With her eyes aimed towards the lab and her excitement bubbling up it's easy for Verna to miss the clouds finding their way over the Belgian's visage again. It doesn't result in an hard frost like at the end of their interview. But the more enthused she becomes the less friendly he becomes.
Small talk. Focus on business.
"Yeah," he says, "we're expecting some more, ah, things to come in over the next few weeks but most of the furniture, ah, the tables and chairs, you have here already. It's the unpacking that will take time. Inventory, also, I think, you will want to do."
Oh good the key does work. It's a windowless door with a flat handle that pulls outward. As soon as they walk in they're faced with a somewhat open floor plan. A set of stairs leads up to the first floor and the first wall doesn't present itself until nearly thirty feet away. It's towards the wall that Jacobs leads her. They must have plans for this area that don't involve her.
"You'll be downstairs for now," he says. "Come."
He leads her across the ground floor to the far wall. A door with an inlaid reinforced pane stands between them and a dark corridor. Jacobs flinches when he sees how dark it is and then points out a panel on the wall. The light switch is not a tab but two circles. He punches the one that is not depressed to awaken the fluorescents on the other side.
"The plan is to, ah, renovate the building after the first conference. It's been inspected, there's no, ah, asbestos or anything, you have heat for the winter and air conditioning for the summer."
It's just creepy. He doesn't come right out and say it. Once she unlocks the door they encounter the option of going through another door and descending a flight of stairs. At the bottom is another vestibule with two doors.
The writer doesn't have the patience to describe the gist of the basement layout so she has provided Verna's player with a picture.
Jacobs leads her through the door and turns on the light.
Verna
Verna nods as he explains the coming tasks. Her bubbliness turns down a notch, perhaps because of the strange variance in this man's moods. He will be somewhat difficult, perhaps?
"I should hope we have air conditioning and heat, yes. It would be murder on the equipment dealing with all that heat stress." Murder on the equipment, mind you, she's not complaining for her own sake.
The door opens to the basement, and then? Boxes. Everywhere. Various sizes, shapes. Some look like they must hold long pipes or something similar. Some are rather large. But surely, she'll have help with all this, right? They can't expect her to lift some of this stuff by herself. "How many people do you have on the project so far, Dr Jacobs?"
René
The best she can hope for is that Jacobs will disappear and go back to whatever it is he does for a living once the project is underway.
"We have a grad student, ah..."
Shit, what's his name.
"Carmen. Background check is taking a little long, international student, you know. That always takes a while. Hopefully he'll be in tomorrow to get his keys and finish his paperwork."
He clears his throat. His tone seems to have leveled out now that she's restraining her enthusiasm. He is not a still man. Since they're not sitting down he starts to talk with his hands.
"What you can do, I think that would be helpful for you, is, you know, whenever you decide you want to start, is just take a few days and inventory everything. I expect to have details for you from Doctor Andr ssy on what you're actually going to be doing so you can, ah, plan ahead. Let me know if you need anything."
Speaking of:
"Until we hire someone to manage the project, you call me for whatever you need. Yeah? You have my number. I don't expect the research assistants to be here past five o'clock. You're welcome to work more hours than that, you know. You are on a salary. We pay you biweekly. But, eh, sundown? When it gets dark? This is not a good neighborhood. If you're gonna be here past sundown... you don't have a reason to stay, in the first place, but if you get caught up, you know, I encourage you, leave before sundown, but if you can't. And you don't feel safe here in the building, you don't feel safe to walk to your car, call me, and I'll come over. We don't have security hired for the building yet, you know, because we don't anticipate you being here after dark. So you call me if that happens. But it shouldn't happen."
Verna
"Carmen," she says. "Can't wait to meet him." Sincere, because 'can't wait' is pretty much the label that could be applied to any of Rene's interactions with this one.
She nods, "I have been in charge of inventory at a lab before. I'm sure I can manage." Pah. Manage? This one appears so organized she probably inventories her purse, Rene.
He proceeds to go on and on and on about the dangers of nightfall. Typically, places that are unsafe at night are also unsafe during the day. The man is going over sundown over and over again like the streets suddenly turn into a hail of bullets at 8PM sharp every night. Perhaps there's been a recent murder or something, and that's what has him so upset? Maybe it's just because she's the only woman. Protective, much?
Still, it is a bit worrisome. "You don't think... I mean, during the day someone could break in as well?"
"But," she says and nods carefully. "I'll watch that I don't stay too late, if it will make you feel better."
René
Jacobs shakes his head quick, the expression on his face a clear No no of course not when she mentions the possibility of someone breaking in during the day.
This is a personal reason for him. Something happened to him, maybe to someone he was responsible for. A loved one. Transient post-traumatic survivor's-guilt projection. He was rooted in the present but something about nighttime and the unaccompanied walk to the car. That's worrisome for him.
He's old enough to have a daughter her age. Just because he wears a ring on his finger doesn't mean he's still married. Who can even tell something like that looking at a person. It could be just about anything that had him rambling on like that over something so simple as Don't Hang Around After Dark.
Her tone is a reality check for him. Rein it in, Jacobs. He nods and clears his throat again. A furrow between his brow like he's remembering himself.
"Right," he says with a buoyancy in his tone. Let's move on. "Good." He drums his fingers on the wall behind him and turns to guide her through the door on the northern wall. Clicks on the light as he goes. An old chalkboard is screwed to the wall and the moving crew dumped chairs haphazard wherever they could find room. A long table is folded up against the far wall. "This in here is a good place for a, ah. A lounge, yeah? Break room? We can install something for mailboxes, to put your paychecks in. Anything else you want for in here, you let me know."
He didn't ask her this during the interview but the thought occurs to him now.
"You have questions I haven't answered yet, or...?"
Verna
Oh there are so many questions. Most of which involve the actual work, the diamonds, the imperfections. Are they making their own via vapor deposition perhaps? But Dr. Jacobs seems to be more interested in the business side of things.
"How often are we to get paid? Monthly? Bi-weekly? And when will the checks start?" Boring, boring, questions. But necessary ones, for rent purposes. She needs to know how much she has to scrimp before the first paycheck of the dream job comes in.
How much? That would also be a good question. But... ahh, of course he will get to that eventually. Paperwork needs signing and all.
René
"Ah, shit."
The invective is so light and reflexive born on his accent that it almost doesn't sound like vulgar language. The beauty of speaking French as one's primary language perhaps. He looks like he can't believe he forgot that minor detail.
"I'm so sorry, I meant to tell you."
Nothing anyone ever has to say after something like that ends up being good but the way Jacobs says it he really did just forget to go over something as minor as how much she was getting paid.
"It's thirty-four a year. Eh... benefits we can offer you after six months, health and dental, depending on where we are at with the budget, that will be on top of your salary. Biweekly, you get the check. First one is next Friday, if you start Monday."
Verna
Although Verna would never use such vulgar tones herself, she smiles a bit to put Rene at ease. No, it's okay, don't be sorry.
"Ahh, yes, good. Well before the end of the month. My rent will be fine," she muses. Her eyes graze around the scenery as if she is not seeing boxes and dank dark basement, but rather -- possibilities.
And, let's not mention, it's better a salary than she can currently boast. It will definitely be fine.
She looks back to Rene sharply, a genuine smile then. Not even the delay in benefit arrival seems to have affected her.
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