The She-Hulk Diaries (32 page)

I gussied up (why had Ellis inspired Gramma’s vocabulary?) and wore a scarf to be consistent with my claim that my neck sometimes got cold. Keeping up falsehoods took so much effort that I didn’t know why people lied without a compelling reason.

Sven’s driver picked me up and took me to his house on East 91st.
House
is not the right word. House is a three-bedroom ranch with a Weber grill on the flagstone patio, like my family’s old place. This was a frickin’ old-school magnate’s mansion of white limestone, red brick, arches, balustrades, and even a garden surrounding it. I’d always assumed this building belonged to the Smithsonian.

A butler opened the door and told me that Dr. Stunning was waiting for me in the conservatory. Jeeves or Alfred or whoever led the way down a hall and to a magnificent indoor garden with a leaded glass dome overhead. Exotic plants grew lush and tall, and vivid tropical flowers scented the air.

Sven was standing by an enormous telescope, and Dahlia would have commented on the symbolism. The telescope wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen, and it had extra mechanisms that buzzed and hummed softly.

“Jennifer, I’m so pleased you could come,” he said, coming forward and taking my hands in his. He gave me a kiss on each cheek, and I felt as if we were well on our way to serious discussions in our luxury canopied bed.

“Your house is so beautiful,” I said, and I noticed that an intimate table was set for two beside brilliant red ginger plants. “It seems familiar.”

“Like the surrounding buildings, this was a home before it became a museum, and now I have returned it to its rightful state.”

My mind was whirring away, trying to figure out what this would have cost, when Sven said, “One of my patents provided me with the ability to finance what must seem like an extravagance for a single man.
However, restoring beauty is a passion of mine, and this building is exquisite.”

He went to a drinks cart and poured wine for us. Handing me the glass, he looked at me intently and said, “What we interpret as beauty is actually nature in symmetry and balance, and balance is, of course, the guiding principle of all sciences.”

“I’d never considered that correlation.” I sipped my drink. “I’ve known scientists, but some assume that I intuitively understand their motivations, and others think no one else is capable of comprehending them.”

“Yes, I know about your client Tony Stark,” Sven said with a sardonic smile. “A most remarkable fellow with such excellent hair!”

I laughed. “Dahlia, whom you met at Club Nice, thinks so. Joking aside, Tony’s creative mind is astounding. But you’re an inventor, too. Is your lab here?”

“I require advanced facilities for bioscience experiments, but I keep a workshop here for tinkering. This device,” he said, pointing to the telescope, “is an innovation of mine.”

He kept looking at me, making me feel jittery, and I glanced around. “You’re a stargazer?”

“I’ve always been fascinated by the worlds beyond our own, Jennifer, but my Timescope does more than a standard telescope. Come see.” We went to the instrument, and he made a few adjustments and then said, “Look now!”

I peered into the eyepiece and saw a star that flared intensely and then went black. “What is that?”

“You have just witnessed the last seconds of a dying star. Perhaps you are the only one who has seen it in all the galaxy.”

It brought back a memory. “You’re trying to make me feel special, but light takes so long to travel to us. The star died out long ago.”

His smile was unnerving, or maybe I was already unnerved. “The image was transmitted through a fissure in the space-time continuum, and that star died the very moment you saw it die. I wanted to give you an exceptional experience because you are an exceptional lady.”

Just then a servant came in with a rolling cart, and Sven and I sat down for a delicious French seafood dinner. I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been thinking about the night that Ellis Tesla and I had stared out at the sky and talked about the stars. Ellis hadn’t talked about stars dying. As my mind wandered, I became aware of the rhythm of Sven’s speech.

He had a singular, melodious voice, yet there was something in it that bothered me slightly—like a scratchy tag on a shirt collar that once noticed couldn’t be
unnoticed
. I found myself trying to figure out why it seemed both familiar and wrong—like waking up in an alternate universe where the sun gave off a different kind of light. No matter how often that happened, it was always ooky.

Dr. Alvarado would ask me to ask myself why I was being overcritical of a stunning, available, brilliant man who’d just gifted me with a unique experience. That’s why people are always eager to lawyer-up and not shrink-up. When my clients hire me, they get not only expert answers to specific inquiries, but also useful advice.

When Sven and I finished our after-dinner brandies, I hoped he’d offer a tour of his lab, but he didn’t. Maybe he was saving it for another date. He took my hand and kissed it, which is super-elegant! I am going to buy a book on manners and practice my etiquette, which will count toward culture points.

Once home, I found Crane’s note cards that a GLKH guest had left in the loft, and I wrote out:

That’s where I stopped because I was still his attorney and I didn’t want to sound too datey. I could thank him for the delicious meal. Or should I thank him for his time? Or both, or maybe for showing me the purported last seconds of a star?

I spent fifteen minutes writing cards and used them all up except the last, where I wrote:

That sounded right—not too flirty, but warm and businesslike. When Dr. Stunning and I are a couple and I have a real address, I will order engraved stationery in whatever style the etiquette experts say is best for a top professional lady. “Lady” sounds old, like “ma’am,” but Sven called me an “exceptional lady.” Hmm, it sounded better when he said it with his suave accent.

Ellis used the word “lady,” too, but in an entirely different way.

I remembered when Ellis pulled the curtain back from the window and we gazed out at the stars. He said, “What are you thinking?” and I said, “I wonder if any of them has already died and we’re only seeing the light now.”

“Ah, you’re a star’s-half-burnt kind of girl. I’m a star’s-half-blazing sort of guy.”

I settled back into his arms. “Nothing goes away. It transforms and changes.”

“I thought you said you didn’t like science, but you’re schooling me on physics and [significant pause] biology.”

“I’m not teaching you anything you didn’t know,” I laughed. “I never cared about science until I heard your band. I listened to ‘High School Chem-Mystery’ about a kazillion times while studying for my SATs. I wanted to understand all your allusions and analogies because you made it sound so exciting.”

“It is so exciting.” He was quiet for a minute and then said, “It’s so vast and overwhelming.”

“I want to see it all. I want to get out of LA and see this world and other worlds. I want my experiences to transform me into… into…”

He said, “You’re already naked, so don’t be shy. Into what?”

“Into someone who has the power to make a difference.”

“You’ve already made a difference with me, babe.”

I wiggled happily against him. “You know what I mean—the reason I want to be a lawyer is not the money or prestige, but to advocate for people who need someone to defend them. Except…”

“Except?”

I felt safe enough to confess my insecurities. “How do you do it? How do you get in front of an audience when you know they’re all looking at you and will see any flaw or mistake?”

“Because they really want to be entertained and I really want to entertain them. So it’s not all about me, but about doing everything to give them an awesome experience. There’s that moment when everything connects, and it doesn’t matter if I trip on the equipment or change up lyrics, because it’s all part of the show. It’s what makes that performance different and special. Find your own connection in the courtroom.” He brushed back my hair and said, “You’re not there for yourself, but for those who don’t have your legal knowledge or abilities, so you have to be big and bold and badass to defend them.”

Despite the warmth of the evening, I shivered because his words resonated with something within me, with the years of play-acting in the fields as a warrior on the side of good.

“What about you?” I asked. “What do you want—besides the band, which is amazing.”

“That gets complicated by what others expect of me—to be a certain type of person and fit in their lives a certain way, to join the family business.”

“I can’t imagine you in any family business, unless your family sails under the Jolly Roger. You’re Ellis Tesla. You’re cataclysmic! You’re supposed to make music, and you’re supposed to make people realize how thrilling and explosive science is. You bring the wonder of it into lives. It’s what you do—and it’s why I… I…” I stopped because I knew better than to tell him that I loved him when we’d only just met.

And he’d pushed me back onto the mattress and murmured, “Tell me with your body, green-eyed girl.”

My deadline to respond to Fritz’s offer is tomorrow. Since he hasn’t said anything, I feel no need to rush to a decision.

Finally, other people are noticing the disturbing trend of niceness! A
New York Times
feature got picked up by cable news, and someone in the Department of Tourism leaked a report that tourism has declined because visitors are confused and disappointed. One sweet old matron from Cedar Rapids sobbed, “I asked the man how to get to Jerry Seinfeld’s coffee shop, and he politely wrote down directions instead of saying ‘Fuck you, Gramma.’ I’m never coming back!”

The city is eerily quiet without the constant honking of taxi horns.

I called Sergeant Patty to see if she had any idea what was going on, but she said, “I can’t stand this goddamn niceness; it’s as unnatural as a leftover chicken wing after a football game at my house. At least no one’s seen those freakazoid rats anymore, and criminals are behaving better.”

“Has violent crime decreased?”

“Nah, but murderers are turning themselves in at a higher rate. When we ask them why, they say, ‘It seems like the right thing to do.’ What kind of bullshit is that?”

I agreed that something was wrong. “One last thing, Patty. I thought that Joocey Jooce might be involved with this terrible epidemic, but tests show no additives in the product. You drink their smoothies. Do you feel any nicer lately?”

After a long pause, she said, “I haven’t been hanging up on my goddamn crazy sister so fast. So I might be infected?”

“I don’t know, but you might want to keep away from the smoothies, just in case.”

The city might be nicer, but apartment hunting isn’t. I frequently advise my clients, “Before you begin any negotiation, decide on your ideal outcome, an acceptable outcome, and nonnegotiables. Start from your ideal result and be willing to make reasonable compromises.”

But I can’t start from my ideal, because it doesn’t exist in my price range. I set up appointments for tours of “acceptable” places during my lunch hour and after work.

This is what I have seen:

• An overpriced luxury pad with a stripper’s pole in the master bedroom. I’m sure there’s icky biological material soaked into every surface.
  
• A spacious flat with a sewage stench and rot on the window frames. When I commented on the smell, the leasing agent said it was like the “historic neighborhoods of European cities.”
  
• A duplex with walls covered in dusty fake fur. It would be like living inside of Sasquatch, except that Sas keeps his soft fur impeccably clean and shiny.
  
• A reasonably priced, cozy, immaculate, updated two-bedroom with a rainwater shower, views from every window, and even an office space. However, every entrance and exit from the building is too public for Shulky.
  

The leasing agents all say (nicely, ugh!), “You’ll have to make some compromises,” which I already knew. Needing to talk to someone who I knew wouldn’t be spookily nice, I called my cousin.