Your Heart Is a Terrible Research Partner

How it begins

The roses began vibrating during the murder scene.

Sofia Bell watched a pink petal tremble against the sensor, checked the time, and wrote THEATER in the margin with enough pressure to break her pencil.

Across the hedge, an actor was dying for the fourth time that morning. He was taking longer about it on each attempt.

"Could you die more quietly?" she called.

The dying stopped. A man carrying a coil of cable appeared through the garden gate.

"He's doing his best," he said.

"His best is invalidating six hours of measurements."

"That makes two of us. Your irrigation pump sounds like a tractor learning the cello."

Sofia looked at the small brass plaque beside her experimental beds. Coastal Botanical Research Partnership. Beneath it, someone from the theater had taped a handwritten addition: PLEASE DO NOT REVIEW THE PLANTS DURING REHEARSALS.

"You put that there."

"Arun Adler," he said, offering a hand that smelled faintly of warm metal. "Acoustics."

She considered making him wait. Then she saw the careful way he'd looped the cable so it wouldn't trail across the path where volunteers brought wheelchairs through.

She shook his hand.

Behind him, the actor began a fifth death.

Arun closed his eyes. "That one's considerably less convincing."

Sofia laughed before she could stop herself. He smiled, not triumphantly, which made the situation worse.

"Show me the readings," he said.

"Why?"

"Because if we spend the summer shouting through a hedge, neither of us will get any work done."

She led him to the monitor. He leaned close enough to read the smallest figures, then shifted his body so his shadow wouldn't cover her notes. It was such a minor courtesy that she distrusted how much she liked it.

The roses trembled again.

This time, Arun watched them with her, as though the answer might be something neither of them had thought to ask.