Amy glanced diffidently as Laura entered the lab.
The dark workspace connected in the corner of the lab. The door closed from the inside. The monitor glowed, and Laura watched microscopy footage of cells dividing, rewound the image and repeated. She wrote a few things down. Things she had written before, more or less, she was aware and continued writing. She paused the cycle and opened a folder, navigating to and opening the document, which she, alternating her gaze, compared to the handwritten work before her. It read almost identically.
In another window, she opened Facebook. Someone had also commented on a photo on which she had previously commented. She scrolled, scanning links to deals on massages and recipes for acorn squash quesadillas and kale salads, massaged, sesame blanched, otherwise. A lab partner from her freshman year at college was engaged. Laura’s cursor lingered on the girl’s photo and over unfriend. She clicked the mouse, thinking, she would have wanted it this way.
He was online, she noticed. She typed how’s your day, and sat for a moment. Amy had turned on the radio, and through the door Laura could hear a throaty voice ask, ―And I have to admit I’m a little embarrassed, but I just couldn’t resist, how did this, this experience of being abducted, affect your, you know, intimacies? She held down backspace.