Page 339 - The Love Hypothesis

I laugh. “You’re such a sweet girl.” I squat down to scratch her under

her chin. She nips my finger, a playful love bite. “Aren’t you the most purr-
fect little baby? I feel so fur-tunate to have met you.”
She gives me a disdainful look and turns away. I think she understands

puns.
“Come on, I was just kitten.” Another outraged glare. Then she jumps on

a nearby cart, piled ceiling-high with boxes and heavy, precarious-looking
equipment. “Where are you going?”

I squint, trying to figure out where she disappeared, and that’s when I
realize it. The piece of equipment? The precarious-looking one? It actually

is precarious. And the cat poked it just enough to dislodge it. And it’s
falling on my head.
Right.

About.
Now.

I have less than three seconds to move away. Which is too bad, because
my entire body is suddenly made of stone, unresponsive to my brain’s

commands. I stand there, terrified, paralyzed, and close my eyes as a
jumbled chaos of thoughts twists through my head. Is the cat okay? Am I

going to die? Oh God, I am going to die. Squashed by a tungsten anvil like
Wile E. Coyote. I am a twenty-first century Pierre Curie, about to get my
skull crushed by a horse-drawn cart. Except that I have no chair in the

physics department of the University of Paris to leave to my lovely spouse,
Marie. Except that I have barely done a tenth of all the science I meant to

do. Except that I wanted so many things and I never oh my God any second
now—

Something slams into my body, shoving me aside and into the wall.
Everything is pain.

For a couple of seconds. Then the pain is over, and everything is noise:
metal clanking as it plunges to the floor, horrified screaming, a shrill
“meow” somewhere in the distance, and, closer to my ear . . . someone is

panting. Less than an inch from me.
I open my eyes, gasping for breath, and . . .