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“Listen, I know you won’t want to hear this, but Virgil did offer to help you, and he’s?—”
“No, thank you.”
“Al, I totally understand why you don’t want to accept help. I get it. Really. What The Liar did was super shitty. But we’ve known Virgil for ten years. He’s not a glory-seeker. He’s not the kind of guy who will take the credit for your work. He just isn’t.”
I let out a long sigh. “I know this doesn’t make any sense to you, Gwen. I get it. I seem like a crazy person, but I’m not. I’ve been scorched once and I am never letting that happen again.”
“But what if all you need is a little tiny bit of help from a trusted coworker and all your career dreams will come true?”
“That would feel like cheating,” I say, my gut tightening at the thought of bringing someone in on my research.
“It’s not cheating. Everyone needs help once in a while.”
“All the greats work alone—Einstein, Goddard...”
“Not true,” Gwen says. “Einstein was constantly boring his wife with all his ideas, and Goddard only worked alone because he was so far ahead of his time that the other yahoo scientists were constantly shit-talking his theories on spaceflight. But I bet if he had had another physicist who said, ‘Hey Bob, I heard you’re having a little trouble with that multi-stage rocket you’re building, let me have a looksee,’ he would have been more than happy to show him.”
“Come on, nobody called him Bob.”
“You don’t know that.”
She’s right. I don’t. “And you don’t know that he would’ve accepted help.”
“He most definitely would’ve because the work was far more important to him than his reputation.”
“Well, I’m not Robert Goddard, okay? I’m Allie Cammareri, woman on a mission. And I refuse to let some man take credit for my work ever again. And yeah, I know kindly old Virgil isn’t going to try to take credit for it. But you know the truth? He’ll get it anyway because in my acceptance speech at the National Space Society's Space Pioneer Awards, I’d have to mention him, and the rest of the dudes out there will be all, ‘Oh, we knew a man had to be behind this.’”
“Okkaaayyy...” Gwen says, her tone conveying how crazy she clearly thinks I am.
“You know what? I hear it. I do. I sound insane,” I admit. “But honestly, Gwen, I’m about as sane as they come. I started this whole thing alone and I’m going to finish it alone. And I’m going to do it ahead of Lando and his team of hacks. And I’m going to do a much better job, too.”
“In that case, I’d better let you go so you can get back to work.”
“Yeah, I really need to concentrate because as of tomorrow morning, my life is going to get a whole lot more complicated.”
We say goodbye, then I end the call and sit back in my chair with a long sigh. The next six weeks of my life are going to be hell. Not just because I’m so stressed out I could cry. Not just because my niece ate all my gnocchi or because my biggest dream feels like it’s about to slip through my fingers like dust on the moon. It’s because I’m going to spend the next six weeks in the same room as one of the hottest men alive (and not just according to me—according to People Magazine), and he isn’t going to so much as notice I’m there.
That’s the cold, hard truth. And there is really no getting around it.
5
The Lies, the Witch, and the Wardrobe…
Hudson
“You don’t think this is a bit much?” I stare at myself in the mirror while Gershwyn and my stylist, Nola, look on.
We’re in the hotel condo in Palo Alto that the studio rented for me, and I’m dressed in a pair of tan slacks, a light blue button-up shirt with a navy cardigan over it, and fake glasses. I crook my left arm and stare down at it. “Leather elbow patches? You didn’t happen to bring a pipe, did you?”
Gersh snort laughs while Nola shoots me a dirty look. “You can’t reinvent your image in the same clothes you wore to convince the world you were a surf bum.”
“But I am a surf bum.”
“Nobody wants to see a sixty-year-old surf bum. That’s just sad,” she says, wrinkling up her nose at the idea.
“I’m thirty-nine.”
“Exactly,” she tells me. “Which means we need to get on this now.”
