The fluorescent hum at Marta’s program was the same fluorescent hum it had been yesterday, and the day before, and probably since the building went up in 1987.
Robby sat at his desk with a stack of intake folders that had grown by three while he was at the coffee shop, and tried to remember whether he’d ever been good at this job, or whether the body’s competence had been carrying him through muscle memory.
The desk was regulation government-issue: a gray laminate top, a drawer that stuck, a computer monitor from the Obama administration.
A three-inch binder sat open at his elbow, the caseload roster printed on paper so thin you could read the page beneath it.
Names, dates, funding codes, notes in his own handwriting that he didn’t remember writing.
He scanned them anyway, letting the details settle into the dimensions of a life he’d inherited thirty-six hours ago.
Marta’s office door was open across the hall.
He could hear her on the phone, her voice a low rhythm of uh-huh and I understand and let me check the numbers, the particular cadence of someone managing a system that was slightly too full.
She’d been doing this longer than he had — longer than the body had, anyway — and the body knew her rhythms the way it knew the coffee-shop door.
His phone buzzed.
A text from a number he didn’t have saved but recognized by the shape of the message.
I googled “Pollack family tree” and now I’m three articles deep.
I think your great-aunt might have been a silent-film actress.
Is that something you knew when you asked, or am I discovering this with you?
Jess.
He smiled at the phone, then caught himself smiling and set the phone face-down on the desk.
The clinic’s website was still open on his browser: the one he’d opened at 6 a.m., before the job’s fluorescent hum had a chance to remind him that he had a life here too.
The earliest available DNA-test appointment was seven days out, in a lab across town, with a phone-call notification window of three to five business days after that.
He’d read the page three times, hoping the dates would rearrange themselves.
They hadn’t.
Seven days.
Seven days of dating inside a question mark.
He pulled up the booking form and filled it in: McFerrin, Robert.
Date of birth.
Insurance.
Reason for test: personal genealogy verification.
The form asked for a second participant’s information.
He typed Jess Day and her date of birth — which he knew from the friend-of-a-friend setup, the normal way, and paused before clicking submit.
One week of waiting.
Then another three to five days for the result.
That’s ten to twelve days of knowing her before I know whether we can keep knowing each other.
He clicked submit.
The confirmation screen appeared.
Appointment 6427, Tuesday at 10:30 a.m., lab 3.
The door across the hall creaked.
Marta emerged with a coffee mug in one hand and a look on her face that meant she’d just finished a call she hadn’t wanted to take.
“That bad?” Robby asked.
“That was County.” She leaned against her doorframe and took a sip of whatever was in the mug: it looked like tea, but with Marta you could never be sure.
“They’re restructuring the intake ratios.
New formula.
Guess who gets to do more with the same budget.”
“How much more?”
“Twenty percent.
Maybe twenty-five, if the draft holds.”
He looked down at the three-inch binder.
The names.
The thin paper.
The funding codes that were all about to get tighter.
“That’s not sustainable.”
“No, it’s not.
But it’s the number we’ve got until the quarter closes and I can fight it.” She tilted her head at him.
“You’re distracted.
You had a date last night, right?
The one you mentioned at the end of shift?”
“It was a date.
It went well.
We’re getting a DNA test tomorrow — no, a week from tomorrow.
To rule out a possible distant cousin situation.”
Marta’s mug paused halfway to her mouth.
“You’re getting a DNA test.”
“On the second date.
Well, the first date was coffee.
The test is sort of date one-point-five.”
“To rule out a cousin situation.”
“It’s a Pollack-side thing.
My grandmother’s family.
Don’t worry, I’m very normal about it.”
Marta looked at him for a long moment, the way she’d look at a client who’d just said something that was either a breakthrough or a detour.
Then she set the mug down on the corner of his desk and said, “Okay.
Tell me more about this normal DNA-test date.”
“There’s not much to tell.
I had a feeling about the last name, I mentioned it, she thought it was weird but charming, and now we’re getting tested so neither of us has to wonder.”
“And if the test says you’re related?”
“Then we have a very funny story and a shared great-aunt.”
“And if it says you’re not?”
He hadn’t let himself answer that question yet.
He could feel it waiting: the way the map in his head was still running its three-week timer even though he’d already diverged from it.
If the test clears, then the relationship is real, and I have to actually be in it.
No foreknowledge.
No map.
Just a guy and a woman who thinks he’s charmingly weird.
“Then I’ll tell you that too,” he said.
Marta picked her mug back up.
“You’re weirder than I thought, Robby.
I mean that as a compliment.
We need more case managers who get DNA tests on second dates.
It builds character.”
“It builds paperwork.”
“Welcome to the job.” She turned back toward her office, then stopped.
“The intake restructuring — it’s not happening this week.
But it’s coming.
I need you present for it.
The caseload doesn’t pause for love lives.”
“I know.”
“I know you know.
I’m saying it out loud so it’s in the room.”
She disappeared into her office.
The fluorescent hum resumed its steady presence.
Robby looked at the three-inch binder, then at his phone, then at the confirmation screen for appointment 6427.
Seven days.
One week of knowing her without knowing.
One week of being present for a job that was about to tighten its grip on him.
He opened the first intake folder and started reading.
The name on it was a woman in her fifties with a housing history that looked like a knot he’d need an hour to untangle.
The notes in the margin were in his handwriting: the body’s handwriting, but his now, and they were good notes, careful and detailed, the work of someone who knew how to listen.
He’d learn to live up to them.