Love on the Brain

Levi calls Bee early next morning with an invitation to meet with Boris at 7 AM; he has something he can possibly use to get Boris’s support. He also asserts, to Bee’s surprise, that there is no other neuroscientist he would want more than her on this project with him.

Levi presents Boris with a picture of another helmet prototype currently being designed by a Dutch company called MagTech that supplies equipment to any armed forces and militia that are willing to pay. The prototype displays that MagTech is at the same stage of research as BLINK, but Bee points out that they are making the same mistake with the neurostimulation output. Unnerved by the potential of MagTech overtaking BLINK, Boris agrees to push for the NIH-NASA collaboration, as long as Bee and Levi guarantee to complete the project in the stipulated three months.

Once Boris leaves, an elated Bee apologizes to Levi for having suspected him of sabotaging the project and tells him he is welcome to hate her as long as they are able to maintain a professional relationship despite Levi’s protests that he doesn’t feel that way. Later that afternoon, Levi texts Bee to confirm that her requested equipment is arriving the next day, and that she and Rocío will be set up with official email addresses.

Bee remembers how Curie’s best friend was an engineer named Hertha Ayrton and how they would vacation together to escape the French press when it began tormenting Curie for beginning a relationship with a younger man, a physicist named Paul Langevin, after Pierre Curie’s death. While Bee acknowledges that not all engineers are bad, the ones she is currently trying to collaborate with are terrible: even as she is trying to explain some of the changes that need to be made to the current prototype, an engineer named Mark keeps shooting down her input, saying “Impossible.” However, when Levi arrives, he intervenes on Bee’s behalf and insists that they make the proposed changes despite Mark’s defense that it is not in keeping with the “Sullivan prototype.” Bee wonders about the name “Sullivan” that keeps popping up.

Levi’s presence leads to the other engineers taking Bee more seriously, a phenomenon she privately terms as "Sausage Referencing™.” She relates this to how Curie herself was only included in the Nobel Prize nomination for her radioactivity theory after the intervention of a male Swedish mathematician named Gösta Mittag-Leffler. Bee slips out to fill her water bottle and encounters the kitten from her first day. It disappears before Levi joins her outside, and once again, he does not believe her about the existence of the kitten.

On their way back home, Bee and Rocío discuss their respective workdays, and Rocío makes a startling confession that she hates everything about Kaylee, from her extremely girly appearance to her sweet mannerisms. Bee asserts that they cannot police their colleagues’ appearances and says that Levi feels the same way about her that Rocío feels about Kaylee. Rocío points out that, despite feeling this way, Levi seems to stare at Bee quite a bit.

Bee and Schmac discuss their days; while Bee confesses that things are better, Schmac declares that he messed things up with his love from grad school. They have a lot of history, and in the past, owing to Schmac’s own experience of growing up in a hostile and uncommunicative household, he behaved poorly during their encounter. Although he has made progress, his “brain blanks” every time he talks to her even now. Furthermore, Schmac believes that the woman’s husband may have told her some lies to compound her perception of the situation. Bee, in turn, reveals that she was in a relationship with a chronic liar for a long time, and such relationships never last.

Bee goes running later that day and ends up taking a break in a local cemetery. When she heads home after sunset, however, she finds the gates locked. Trapped inside with a fast-depleting phone battery, Bee calls Rocío, who does not answer Bee’s seven phone calls. Desperate, she calls the only other person in Houston whose number she has saved: Levi. He picks up almost immediately and promises to be there in 10 minutes.

Levi arrives with a ladder and helps Bee climb over the locked gates; he catches her as she jumps, and she feels a twinge of physical attraction but immediately chastises herself for feeling this way about a married man. Levi offers to drive Bee home, and on the way, she is surprised to discover that he has fairly good music taste, very similar to her own. Bee tells Levi about the Couch-to-5K training plan she is trying, which is why she was running in the cemetery; in turn, she discovers that Levi runs the occasional half-marathon.

When they arrive at Bee’s place, she realizes she has dropped her keys in the cemetery. Levi offers to take her to his place, but when she states that she doesn’t feel comfortable, he immediately backs down. She clarifies that she does not feel unsafe around him and ends up accepting the offer. When they arrive at his place, Bee is delighted to find he has a normal, family-friendly home in the suburbs. However, she is surprised to find it empty. She asks about Levi’s family, only to learn that the child from the picture, Penny, is a friend’s daughter; although Levi did briefly date Lily, she has been a single mother for the past year, and Levi helps her out with baby-sitting and school drop-offs.

Bee and Levi discuss the engineers’ reactions to her earlier that day, and Levi reveals that Mark has been officially reprimanded. He also held a meeting with the engineers, reiterating Bee’s authority and expertise as co-lead; Levi acknowledges the misogyny at the workplace, clarifying that he inherited the all-male, all-white team from his predecessor. The only new hire he made after joining was Kaylee. Bee is surprised to discover that Levi has an old black cat named Schrödinger, especially because he was incredulous about the kitten in the Discovery Building, whom Bee has named Félicette.

Bee showers and comes down for dinner, which Levi is cooking and learns that he, too, is vegan. Surprised once again, she recollects that he used to be a hunter in grad school, and Levi clarifies that his family is a hunting family; he was forced to accompany them on trips before he was finally able to say no. As they eat dinner, Bee thanks Levi for everything he has done that day, musing that it mustn’t be easy for him to be so welcoming to someone he despises. He responds saying, “‘You’re right. It’s not easy. But not for any reason you think’” (137).

Bee conducts her first brain mapping session in front of the engineering team. They are initially unenthusiastic, only attending on Levi’s orders, but they are quickly impressed when Bee temporarily causes the test subjects to forget how to count, or speak, or move their fingers, merely through stimulation. One of the volunteers is Guy, with someone else having dropped out at the last minute due to a history of seizures. Bee is impressed with how easygoing Guy is and how close he is with Levi, especially considering he ought to have been the one leading BLINK.

Levi and Guy join Bee for lunch. Guy asks Bee out, but Levi indicates the ring she is wearing, and Guy apologizes for making Bee uncomfortable. Bee lets Guy believe she is married as it is an easy out, although she is somewhat surprised to hear Levi refer to Tim as her husband, wishing he could have made up an imaginary person instead. Bee tells Reike about the interaction, and Reike points out that lying is a bad idea. She questions whether Levi really knows that Bee is not married to Tim, but Bee dismisses this as Levi and Tim are frequent collaborators.

Bee has her first tutoring session with Rocío and realizes that Rocío scored so low on the GRE because she is too smart for the test. The tutoring goes badly, leaving both women frustrated with each other, until Kaylee shows up at the coffee shop where they are holding the session. Kaylee offers to help, and Rocío sarcastically asks her if she is willing to help them “[fight] the hegemony of the Graduate Record Examination” (147). Kaylee responds with an erudite rant about the test, including its datedness and the way it disadvantages women and marginalized individuals.

Kaylee offers to help tutor Rocío, revealing that she has taken it herself and is starting her PhD at Johns Hopkins University in the fall. Bee accepts on Rocío's behalf and is about to leave to use the gym at the Space Center. Before Bee leaves, Kaylee discloses that Levi asked her to change Rocío and Bee’s statuses to team members so they could use the gym for free. Kaylee calls Levi the “best boss” she’s ever had, revealing that he persuaded NASA to give Kaylee health insurance. All of these revelations surprise Bee. As she walks out, she tweets about the GRE being an expensive, poorly predictive, and biased obstacle that prevents a large number of people from accessing higher education.