JCRM

Jillian

I glanced down at the agenda in front of me. We were on the last item. Once done, unless there was any other business, I’d call the meeting to a close. Then Adrienne and I had a lunch date to keep.

It’d been a very long, hectic week for me. I was so looking forward to discussing all the happenings with her and catching up with what’d been going on in her world. I hadn’t seen her at all this week, a rare occurrence, though we’d spoken daily by phone.

Neither of us were much for long phone conversations. Our chats were more along the lines of touching base, making sure the other was okay and, I suppose, just simple contact. Sometimes, all I wanted was to hear her voice. It wouldn’t have mattered if she’d only recited the alphabet. Ridiculous, I know.

I stole a glance at her, seated down the table. She had what she called her ‘game face’ on. A little furrow between her brows, her concentration intense. Strictly business. Always so very serious at meetings, taking her work as seriously as I, though on the rare occasion, she’d make a statement which caused me to stop dead in my tracks and blink. Her humour could be so incredibly dry and covert, delivered deadpan, that if you didn’t know her, you’d swear she was deadly serious.

I’d never met anyone who picked up on the salient points of a topic as quickly as Adrienne did. Nor did she need an explanation of how it fit into the grand scheme of things. I suppose it was one of the reasons I found our discussions so stimulating. I was fascinated by how her mind worked, the way she saw things, thought about them, expressed them. So very different than what I’m used to.

I noticed it the first time we had lunch together during a conference we’d both attended. I’d made a statement about women returning to the work force after having children. Somehow we ended up discussing the absence of explicit market pricing for housewives, and how the opportunity cost and replacement cost methods were insufficient because price does not always equate to value.

I walked away from our lunch thinking of that issue in an entirely different way. What’s random or disparate to most isn’t for her. She sees connections, all the pieces on the chess board. I’m surrounded daily by great scientific minds. They don’t think like she does. Their breadth of experience…it’s in the lab. Hers seems to touch on so many different areas.

I tease her on occasion, telling her she ought be a teacher. She’s so very good at explaining incredibly difficult concepts in a way that didn’t make one feel like a total idiot. I’d been in enough meetings to experience the browbeating some engaged in as they attempted to assert their intellectual ‘superiority’ over you. Adrienne had no need to crush others to lift herself up. She’d rather just carry you along with her. Help you understand.

Adrienne chose just then to push her chair away from the table and cross her right leg over the left, her hips shifting slightly. A considerable expanse of her leg was now visible, all the way down to the heels she wore. Her stockings were an incredibly sheer black, the tops disappearing under the black skirt. I could feel my body temperature start to rise.

On occasion, I wondered if she did it on purpose. I don’t think it was the case, though. She’d no idea I found her legs incredibly sexy. I’d certainly never said anything. In fact, I’d no idea I found them sexy either until the first time I’d seen her do what she just did.

What a shock it’d been when I’d looked over in a meeting. My mouth had gone dry as my body’s temperature climbed. I’d wondered at first if I was coming down with something then it hit me. I was experiencing sexual attraction. In all of the hundreds, if not thousands, of meetings I’d attended in my lifetime, I’d never looked at someone and had that happen. Sexy to the point of absolute distraction. Never good in a meeting.

I wondered what her Mach number was in meetings. She’d been so earnest early on in our friendship, describing to me how “in her head” she could get and how a friend of hers had come up with a system for classifying it. Seems he’d borrowed the concept of Mach numbers.

“Alistair’s taken to judging how in my head I am by using the numbering system for Mach speeds. Are you familiar with the Mach regimes?”

When I’d answered in the negative, she continued, “It makes perfect sense if you think about it, basic fluid dynamics, really. Simplified, M, the Mach number, is obtained by dividing u, the local flow velocity, with c, the speed of sound in the medium. The local flow velocity is the velocity of my thoughts and the medium is my brain. Take Mach ten, for example. Ten is at the hypersonic/high-hypersonic border of the regimes, or ranges, of Mach values. When I’m at a ten, I’m incredibly focused. I’m in trouble when I go over twenty. Aircraft need ablative heat shielding to protect them at Mach speeds. My brain has no ablative heat shielding, Jill.”

It amused me no end, really, though I must admit I was glad we’d discussed it since it gave me a shortcut to judge how in her head she was. I simply had to ask and she’d supply a number. Very helpful for those times she’d get so focused on one thing, there was no getting through about anything else.

Right now, she was taking notes on a pad resting on her lap, her reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose. Her eyes would shift up every now and then, peering over the top of her glasses at Sloane Harrington, another of the board members. I doubted she was even at Mach 1.

I sat straighter and refocused on Sloane. He was a scientist by training, a physicist, but he’d moved into the world of advertising, now a vice-president at a large firm in London. He was giving a presentation around some public service adverts SEF had funded which would be run prior to the Science Festival in early June. He finished his presentation, took questions then I asked if there was anything else.

Esther Simpson, a computational biologist with a passion for science communication, piped up.

“I’ve one issue.”

“Esther?”

“Sorry, Jill. I was contacted yesterday evening by a chap I went to uni with, Aidan Summers. He’s now with media relations for the Stem Cell Research Foundation. He gave me a bell to discuss a possible partnership around public education. Seems they’ve an issue with a new protest group that’s formed, spreading some kind of propaganda about foeticide. As if,” she huffed.

I almost groaned aloud. That’s the last thing I wanted to hear. “Do you know the name of the group?”

Adrienne’s head swivelled in my direction, canting a bit to the side as her eyes narrowed and focused on me.

“No, he didn’t say. Quite frankly, I don’t think they’ve a clear idea what’s going on yet. He received a panicked call from one of his board members about some leaflet delivered to the board member’s house containing horrendous images of aborted foetuses. He hasn’t seen the leaflet yet.”

Definitely the last thing I wanted to hear. “I see. Do you want to give him my details?”

“I was hoping you’d say that, Jill.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Adrienne’s curiosity was piqued. I know one topic we’d cover in our upcoming lunch.

“Tell him to call and I’ll take it from there.” I made a note on my pad. “Aidan Summers, Stem Cell Research Foundation, correct?”

“That’s correct.”

“If they need anything from us, we can always have a meeting by phone. Does anyone have anything else?” I glanced around the table, extremely pleased when no one else did. Just another twenty minutes or so and Adrienne and I could begin our lunch.