Human (12 page)

Orrin placed a latte in front of Ivy on the stained plastic table.

“So… that wasn't what I expected. Again.”

Ivy smiled, hiding a pang of disappointment. “I keep doing that, don't I?”

“Don't get me wrong, you were actually - brilliant. Really you were.” Orrin sat down opposite her with his own coffee, knocking the refectory table as he did so. The coffee cups wobbled precariously, sloshing across the table. Ivy jumped up but a large coffee stain was already blossoming on the front of her skirt. “Jaysus! Sorry!” Orrin leapt forward to help, knocking the table again. He groaned and clapped a hand to his forehead.

“Aah, shite. I've made a complete haymes of you now.” His smile faltered as Ivy mopped up her clothes with serviettes. “That skirt of yours is really getting abused today isn't it.”

“Don’t worry. Refectory coffee is notoriously cold,” Ivy said. “And to be honest, I'm not one much for skirts anyway.”
Not after today's treachery.
This skirt seemed fated for the bin.

They sat back down to awkward silence. Finally, Orrin spoke.

“You really
were
fierce up there. The protesters were near scrapping over it for you. Those guys in costumes revving up the crowd at the end, well, I sure don't envy the guards; they looked like they were anticipating trouble.” He leaned back in his chair. “Where are they headed now?”

Ivy's forehead creased momentarily with worry as she glanced toward the waiting buses. Streams of students were piling on, encouraged by the continuing war-cries of the orange shirts. “The city. There's a multi-national corporation in Flinders Street that supplies palm oil to some of the big food manufacturers. They've got a petition to deliver. 'Make it sustainable or don't make it at all.'” The first of the buses pulled slowly from the curb. “Don't worry; I doubt there’ll be any trouble. Liam's our head campaigner on the ground - he's enthusiastic for sure, but he can control the crowd.”

“Enthusiastic? Bit of an understatement for that boyo.” Orrin's framed eyes flicked to the buses, then back to Ivy's face as she watched them leave the turning circle one by one. Liam's mop of hair bobbed up and down as he herded more bystanders onto the bus, convincing them to skip class. Ivy grinned, familiar with his tactics. A campus party had undoubtedly been promised.

Orrin cleared his throat hesitantly. “Am I keeping you? I mean, shouldn't you be with them?”

“No. I've got a tutorial later and I'd hate to leave the newbies without their homework.” Ivy flashed him a smile. “Anyway they don't need me, I just lay out the facts, and Liam leads the action. Yin and yang, you know? We’re a good team.” Her mind drifted back to the pulsing crowd, the claustrophobia,
that terrifying voice.
Falling. She felt the heat in her cheeks at that last memory. “I'm not much of a people person to be honest,” she admitted quietly.

“The crowd loved you,” Orrin said. “Liam seems pretty - uh,
enthusiastic
too. Are you…? I mean, are you and Liam… together?” Orrin seemed unable or unwilling to look at her. He ran a hand through his thick hair and laughed nervously. “Sorry, none of my business….”

Ivy paused. “Um, no.
No
, not at all. Just friends, colleagues.” She caught a flash of relief on Orrin's face before he masked it. “God no, I mean, Liam's a laugh and all but he's practically got a conveyer belt of interested women. All far more stunning than me and fresh out of high school.” She raised an eyebrow. “They usually last about two weeks.”

“Fair play,” laughed Orrin, visibly relaxing. “Although, I doubt they could be more stunning than you, age regardless.” He winked at her. Actually
winked
. Ivy snorted with laughter and hid behind her coffee cup.
Deep breath.

“So anyway,” she frantically searched for a subject change. “What brings Orrin James to Melbourne Uni really? Not enough academic notoriety where you were?” This time it was Orrin that looked discomfited.

“Too much actually.” He leant forward conspiratorially. “You know what I'm working on - how important it could be.” Ivy nodded. “I just – I couldn't afford to have the academic board breathing down my neck as their ‘up-and-coming promotional resource’. Their words obviously, not mine. I’m not a damn
resource
. I had to get out. To be honest I needed much better equipment and a wider berth anyway. No one's watching me here. At least not as closely.”

They chatted intently for the next hour, oblivious to the people slowly drifting away from the refectory, heading back to lectures and work. Ivy explained the finer points of her current research to Orrin, and was surprised to find he followed with rapt interest. Usually, she received vague, glassy smiles.

Orrin leaned closer. “So what of this ‘usewear analysis’ then? I mean, if you find blood on these stone tools you’re working on, what can you actually do with it?”

Ivy sat forward too, unable to curb her passion. “You mean, what
can't
we do with it! The tiniest amount of residual blood blows our window into prehistory wide open. It's like… having a camera in the kitchen of a cave man - or on the end of a spear. What animals did they butcher? How did they cook their food? Hunt? Make clothing? I can literally recreate the daily lives of humans that have been extinct for thousands of years. I use everything I can find - blood cells, plant fibres, feathers, hell, I can even tell you what poisons they used to tip their arrows.” Ivy's face was like a beacon of light, her green eyes sparkling. “Didn't you ever see Jurassic Park?”

“For sure. But I thought that Jurassic Park stuff was a hypothetical? So you can really get dino DNA, then?”

“Well, not quite,” Ivy admitted. “Sixty-five million years is still a little beyond our reach for DNA repair.
For now
. You see, ancient DNA degrades the longer it spends in the environment. It fragments; breaks down into shorter sections like a microscopic jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces and jumbled parts.
But
we have managed to get DNA fragments of other prehistoric animals. Woolly mammoths, cave bears, reindeer, musk ox…. We've also got genetic material from nineteen plants in Siberian ice cores over four hundred thousand years old!” Ivy leant forward, not even aware she had grabbed his hand on the table.

“That right?” Orrin was beaming.

“Yes! Just imagine - the earth was so different back then! Humans were still evolving,
Homo erectus
were walking the earth, and who knows who else! It's incredible stuff. Did you know that we've already mapped the genetic code for Neanderthals? My hope is that one day; we can use DNA to set our phylogenetic family tree in stone.”

Ivy leaned back in her chair, her cheeks suddenly pink as she dragged her hand back with her.
Oh my god, did I do that?
She laughed nervously.

Slowly and deliberately, Orrin leaned forward, taking her hand again in both of his. They felt strong and warm.

“And?” he prompted. “What about your Flores blood, any chance of resurrecting the little lads?” He let her hand go gently and sat back, shuffling his empty coffee cup instead.

Ivy felt suddenly lost. “Um. Flores? No - no such luck.
Yet
. The bones are pretty recent, maybe 60,000 years old, but they’ve been under some pretty rough chemical and environmental decomposition. They were like mashed potatoes during excavation apparently - it was a difficult process. The DNA breaks down under those conditions. But the stone tool residues were younger, so - maybe? That's what I'm here for.”

When Orrin's questions finally drew closer to her personal life, Ivy stumbled on her answers self-consciously.

“So what’s the craic for Ivy Carter, then? Outside of the little dead people, I mean.”

“Work
is
fun. Did you miss the memo?”

“Apparantly so. All work, hey? So, no boyfriend hidden ‘round the corner then? Waiting to knock me down for spilling my coffee all over you?”

“I could have done that myself,” she smiled. “Still might.”

Orrin laughed. “I don’t doubt it. But seriously, put me out of my misery here-”

“It’s been a long time for me,” Ivy relented. “The longest. I’m not even sure if I have it in me anymore.” She rubbed the coffee stain on the plastic table. “People I love always seem to…”
die…
“leave.”

“That sounds like a story, right there.”

“It’s really not,” Ivy deflected. “There’s nothing much more to it. I’m quite boring actually.”

“I sincerely doubt that,” Orrin said quietly, eyebrows raised in amusement. “Help me out here Ivy. I know there’s something you’re not telling me. I just can’t figure it out.”

“Maybe there's nothing to figure?” Ivy smirked, looking away. But the smile didn’t reach her eyes.

Orrin leaned forward in the plastic chair, his brow furrowed. “Okay, here's what I've got so far. You clearly don't trust anybody, but I get the feeling you'd throw yourself on a grenade for that bonobo, and vise versa, so you must trust her. You've got a head full of your own secrets, but you're digging skeletons out of prehistoric closets for a living and exposing them instead. You don’t seem to like attention, but when the spotlight’s on, you can incite revolution from a crowd.” He pushed on. “Any more contradictions I should know about?” Orrin smirked conspiratorially.

Ivy’s shoulders stiffened and she swallowed hard. This man was dangerous. He wasn't just breaking through the wall she had so carefully built. He was smashing it down.

She laughed humourlessly. “I don't know Orrin; you tell me?” She tucked her fringe back carefully and allowed herself a moment to stare right back at him. “Are you such an open book?”
Two can play at this game.

Ivy stared at him deliberately, noticing Orrin’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed under her scrutiny. His jaw clenched slightly and his chin rose. Orrin’s black framed glasses glinted in the sunlight and behind them, his eyes were amused and inviting. Ivy raked her eyes over his body. Orrin’s shirt was fitted across his chest, a single button open at the collar revealing olive skin underneath. She already knew that his hours in the university pool were working to great effect. Short, white sleeves fitted snugly around his biceps and his hand rested casually on the table, strong fingers cradling his empty coffee cup. Once more, she couldn’t help but imagine those fingers finding her birthmark. And other places. Ivy bit her lip to keep from grinning as she brought her attention back to his face; she was surprised to see Orrin actually seemed impressed by her assessment.

He leant forward, lowering his voice to a hoarse whisper. “Oh, that's right. This last one messes with my head the most.” Orrin paused, arresting her eyes with his own. “You deflect me constantly Ivy, but I can't stop thinking about you.”

Ivy's face burned as she looked away, inordinately pleased.

“I think you seriously underestimate yourself Ms. Carter,” he said. “You're captivating.”

Oh God.
Ivy had never considered herself one of those women that fawned over an accent before, but in this case, she couldn’t deny that it made her toes curl. “Yes, well, when you put it that way…” She shook her head at him, laughing at her own defeat. “You’re a long way from home, Dr James. Ireland must miss you. I'm guessing you moved to Australia alone then?” She drained the last of her cold coffee in an attempt to hide her grin.

She expected Orrin to roll his eyes at her perfectly executed deflection, but instead they dimmed.

“Actually, I did. I got divorced a few years ago.” He tried to make his voice light, but Ivy detected an air of regret.

“What happened?”

“The usual, I guess.” The sudden shift in Orrin's mood made Ivy regret her stupid mouth. “My ex-wife is a doctor in Dublin. Medical one, that is. We met at college not long after I moved there; she was a few years ahead of me. She had lots of night work as an intern, long shifts, and I was totally absorbed in my studies at the time. The first few years were fine, we drifted along fairly happily. Young love and all that. Didn't even notice that we were growing apart. Well, I didn't anyway.” He laughed ironically. “It seems she'd had distractions other than work keeping her busy for quite a while. Another doctor – a cute hoor that one I tell you,” Orrin said bitterly. “So in the end, she got the gaff and the dog, and I got the rest of it.” His voice had lost its humour altogether. “I think I'd rather have kept the dog.” The regret in Orrin’s eyes was now unmistakable. He looked away.

“You have a dog?” For some reason, it was the only thing that stuck in her mind.

“
Had
a dog,” Orrin corrected. “I left it all behind. I ran, Ivy.” He stared across the cafeteria grounds, lost in thought for a few minutes before he spoke again. “It was just too hard you know. Seeing what I lost everyday. She stayed in our house. The langer moved in too.
Bastard.
” Orrin took a deep breath. “So I left. Started again. Most of my family are still home in Cork. But one of my sisters moved here about ten years back and married an Aussie. I just thought, ‘Why not?’ So I came over, finished my doctorate and got into research.” He seemed to be talking more to himself than Ivy now, as he watched people pass back and forth through the refectory doors. His jaw clenched with some distant memory as a cloud passed overhead. “It might surprise you to learn that I don’t trust easily either.”

“I'm sorry,” Ivy offered quietly, her face a mess of humility. “I didn't mean to pry, really. It's none of my business.” She cursed herself again, watching his distant eyes.

Orrin glanced back at her. He shook his head as if escaping some internal darkness and seemed to pull himself together. He looked away briefly to take a deep breath then leaned forward across the table capturing her eyes with a beguiling smile. He reached out, grabbing Ivy’s hand and wrapping it up in his own.

“Sure you do Ivy; it's totally your business.” His eyes danced once more across her blushed face, unruly hair and coffee-stained skirt. “The thing is… I want you to have dinner with me this Saturday, and it's not going to work if you're worried about saying the wrong thing. I'll tell you anything you want to know. I'll even try not to spill coffee on you. So what do you say?”