I

stopped abruptly and re-ran Leah’s sentence through my head an uneasy feeling spreading over me as random scenes from yesterday’s events replayed themselves. Stein in the teachers’ room eating lunch rushing off. Her bottle the one I’d inadvertently swapped with my own. The labwork an hour prior….

To Do List:

How much does Yaakov Berger get paid were those really food stamps his wife was using in the grocery and if so how did they pay for their Costa Rica vacation???

Find out if Zissy Rubin is expecting or if she just put on some weight. “When are you due?” I’ll ask casually gauge her reaction.

What is Leah’s password for zivugmate.com???

Three days earlier

“Ready?” Dr. Petrushky asked.

V12 squirmed. I fixed one double-gloved hand over the rat’s neck and front paws and a second over the hind legs spreading my hands tightly so its torso faced the lead researcher in the lab. “Go ahead.”

Dr. P deftly injected the regulator in the peritoneal cavity. Then he removed the syringe flicked the needle into the waste receptacle fitted the syringe with a fresh one and nodded at me. “Okey-dokey! Next.”

I carefully released V12 back into its cage securely latching it before moving on to V13.

Leah our graduate student volunteer strolled in to observe. “Need help? That’s the dopamine gene thingy activator right?”

“Official name for gene it is DRD-4 ” Dr. Petrushky clarified his accent thick wiping his hands on his too-big lab coat. I caught a glimpse of his pink-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt underneath. “Dopamine receptor D-4. Some people they having variant of gene is shown in birds to be much inquisitive yes and in humans to ask many questions—”

“The Yenta Gene!” Leah slipped on a lab coat from the rack behind her as Petrushky explained the study protocol. I worked part-time as an assistant in his neuro-psychobiology lab and had spent the last five months reviewing the research for him. We got a bunch of rats some with the 7R variant of the gene and some without and were studying the mutation’s systemic effects on hormone levels.

We finished 15 rats over the next hour injecting them with a DNA methylator of the DRD-4 gene to activate its expression. Dr. Petrushky left to teach instructing me to store the remaining activator in the lab refrigerator. Leah and I cleaned up the injection area and since I still had some time before leaving for my second job teaching AP biology in a local high school I helped her and the other student volunteers dish out rat chow in little glass jars to place in each cage. “Watch out for that one he’s feisty ” I warned as she unlatched V21’s cage.

“Sure. I wonder how the Yenta Gene works in humans!” Leah reached her gloved hand inside. “Like if you have the mutation — yeeeooooowwwwwww!”

A ball of white fur shot out from beneath her hand tumbled to the floor and streaked like lightning across the room.

Another technician slammed the lab room door shut so V21 couldn’t get too far. “Near the window!” Leah yelped dashing in that direction. The rat raced along the window sill and leapt onto the table knocking over the remaining vial contents — oh shoot I’d forgotten to refrigerate it — and dove to the floor. Leah and I both lunged for it.

“Ouuuuch!” we shrieked in unison our heads colliding. Then from Leah: “Okay got his tail.”

My heartrate slowed to normal as Leah carried the squirming rat back to its cage and secured it shut.

“Ugh, the vial spilled. And—” I checked my watch, “I need to go. Dr. P probably doesn’t need the solution anymore because we finished all the rats, but spoon up what you can and leave it in the lab fridge, just in case. I’ll tell him about it tomorrow.”

I headed to the faculty restroom to change into teaching clothes, returned to the lab to grab my bags and refill my water bottle, and dashed off.

I bumped into Mrs. Stein in the teacher’s room while she was eating lunch; she lived next door to me — Leah was on the same block, too, but farther down — and taught hashkafah. The girls all loved her, mainly because she was English and her accent was fabulous. We made small talk over lunch, then she gathered her leftovers and left.

That evening, when I dug through my tote, I found a Mayim Chaim seltzer bottle in my bag. My own water was gone. I pulled out the seltzer, examining it closely.

Not mine. I don’t drink seltzer and I definitely don’t wear that shade of pink lipstick.

Mrs. Stein’s, probably.

I tossed it into the garbage.