Page 77 of Love and the Laws of Motion
“Right.It’s your class.”For reasons he didn’t want to examine too closely, that was a relief.School.She was going to school.
“It’s not really teaching.The students have to do a lab as part of their class.I keep an eye on the equipment, help them calibrate the telescopes, that sort of thing.”
“Hold up.Like, actual telescopes?Looking at the sky?”
“That’s what astronomers do, you know,” she said with a smirk.“We look at the sky.”
“Very funny.Where is the lab?At Adams?”
“No, it’s off campus, all the way out in Mill Basin.”
“How do you get out there?”
“A subway and two buses, which is why I have to go.”
“Why don’t you drive?John has a car, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah, but I don’t drive.”
Nick burst into laughter.“You don’t drive?”
She prickled defensively.“Tons of New Yorkers don’t know how to drive.”
“Iknow how to drive,” Gemma interjected as she poured a beer at the taps.“Jessknows how to drive.”
“Nobody asked you, Gem.”
“You seriously never learned?”Nick pressed.
Livie shrugged and Gemma answered for her.“Dad tried to teach her, but she chickened out.”
“Hey!”
“Livie, were you scared?”
“No, I wasn’tscared.There was a lot to keep track of.And other New Yorkers drive like crazy people.”
“Well,Iknow how to drive, too.Want me to drive you out there?”
Livie turned her big brown eyes back to him.“You’d do that?”
He shrugged, reaching for her hand.“For you?I’m willing to do a couple of special favors.”
“It’s this way,” she said, heading across the street to a ramshackle wooden shed.
Nick locked John Romano’s car and followed her.The streets, lined with well-kept single-family homes, were empty in this quiet little far-flung residential neighborhood of Brooklyn.A wooden construction fence lined a small lot on the corner, the door to the shed seemingly the only access.
“Adams leases the lot from the city,” Livie explained as she wrestled with the stubborn lock on the door.“It’s the darkest spot we can find in the borough, since we’re this close to the water.”
“We are?”
“Mm-hmm.On the other side of the lot.It’s still too light for serious stargazing, but they’re undergrads in an intro class.It’s more about learning to use the equipment and finding their way around the night sky.”
The door gave way, screeching open on rusty hinges.Livie flipped on a light and a weak, red glow from a single bare bulb washed the small room with an eerie half-light.
“Cozy.Is this where you dismember the bodies?”
“Funny.The light has to be dim so it doesn’t interfere with the telescopes in the field.And red light is least intrusive.”
