8. Another Lady of Science
With Leslie out of the tidy picture of his daily life once again, things returned to normal for Sheldon over the next year. He worked and he slept with no more interference than what he had come to expect from the lesser minds around him. They asked ridiculous questions or forced him to do trivial things, but he found comfort in eating with them crowded around his spot, talking and laughing and always inadvertently teaching him a thing or two about average people and average lives.
Fall came around and Sheldon listened with one ear as his compatriots discussed the weather, the flock of new faces, and the likelihood of achieving physical intimacy with them. As usual when faced with the prospect (however slim) of sex, Howard had been fidgeting with energy all day. It fascinated Sheldon that Howard could be so addicted to the rush of dopamine released over synopses. Sure, it was thrilling, but it should hardly be allowed to interfere with one's day to day life so easily.
"Hey guys," a female voice of lower register than most cut into Howard's pathetic display of his weakness. Leslie approached the table, holding her usual cup of coffee. After the failed attempt to begin a real relationship with Leonard, she'd stopped wearing skirts and dresses, returning to her casual jeans and sweater. She spoke to Sheldon.
"So, dumbass, I heard you made a grad student throw up last night." She said, with something almost like amusement. It was true that Sheldon had been talked into speaking to a class of grad students, but only at the resort of using blackmail. He had agreed for the sake of Batman, told the class the honest truth, and left.
"The truth can be a finger down the throat of those unprepared to hear it." Sheldon replied, "But why should I cater to second rate minds?
"Because first rate minds call you dumbass?" She asked with a smile. Sheldon twitched, "Oh, yeah? Well— you're a mean person."
How many times had she made him feel ten years old in a schoolyard in Texas? It was not right how easily she got under his skin.
Leslie opened her mouth to retort, but suddenly someone tall and wearing bright colors was standing beside the table as well. A second, higher-pitched and over-all sweeter voice cut in.
"Excuse me, Dr. Cooper?"
Ramona Nowitzki had been at his talk the night before and showered praise on him. Leslie left with a comment about nausea that did not miss on Sheldon as an insult for both he and the smiling red head.
Howard sprang up out of his chair and introduced himself. Sheldon silently noted as he ate that if Howard had been hoping for coitus, he probably should not have mentioned his space toilet; as Sheldon understood it, parading one's failures was not a way in which to garner respect and affection. He recalled the stain the meatloaf had left on his ceiling and was thinking about ways in which they could clean it when suddenly Ramona Nowitzki was sitting beside him with her whole body turned in his direction and her torso leaning towards him.
She was talking fast, praising him. He focused on his food. A red flag had gone up. The parameters of previously set up rules of logic had been passed and he was entering into territory dangerously close to an experience he was not willing to replicate.
His PROCEED WITH CAUTION lights flashed in his mind as he allowed her praise to make his shoulders relax. Oh, how he enjoyed being recognized for the truly miraculous creation he was.
Ramona Nowitzki was talking about his most recent work—and intelligently. He looked up from his food and at her for the first time, smiling. It was one thing to be praised by mediocre minds, another thing entirely to be praised by an intelligent one.
PROCEED WITH CAUTION.
Ignoring Howard's attempt at flirtation and Ramona's second display of displeasure, Sheldon sat up straighter explaining to his newest fan about his coming breakthrough in showing how neutrinos emerge from a string-net condensate. She gushed with true understanding of the magnitude of his work.
PROCEED WITH CAUTION.
He shrugged, "It's what I do."
She giggled and then Howard was talking about his space toilet again. Finally, her disinterest was beginning to sink into the tiny Jewish man and he backed off.
Ramona stated that she would love to hear more about how he intended to add the neutrons. PROCEED WITH CAUTION. He turned down her offer for coffee, but her offer to talk about him over dinner was appealing, but he had no interest in going to a strange place. PROCEED WITH CAUTION. Strange places with strangers—in this case, the intelligent, smiling, and smelling-of-jasmine, Ramona Nowitzki–would lead to undesirable situations.
"What if I brought food to your place?"
His place was a comforting idea, an acceptable idea. He arranged for her to come tonight, Monday night, Thai food night, and placed his usual Siam Palace order. She impressed him by not needing him to repeat it as others would have done and darted off.
Standing in his kitchen, Ramona laughed shrilly at his illustration of mirror symmetry by likening it to the Flash playing tennis with himself in the draft of his latest paper. While the laughter wasn't pleasant, he did enjoy the rush of being rewarded for the little joke. Usually his jokes received looks of confusion from strangers, and among his friends the looks were usually of offense.
Talking fast again, Ramona proclaimed one section to be, in her words, "physically exhilarating."
Eight years was a very long time, and Sheldon had not until right then felt it. Suddenly he felt like smiling and holding his chest out a little more and in a flash he wondered what she would look like with all of her red hair loose form their pig tails.
He swallowed, comparing the only two instances in his experience and reaching a conclusion, and his answer when he stated aloud, took on a tone of pride.
"My hypotheses tend to have that effect."
Ramona listened attentively as he discussed the work. When they had finished the Thai food, she cleaned up after them, insisting,
"No, no, no. You tackle that Nuetrino issue, I'll get this."
She was so thoughtful.
"I do not think of my work as a tackle, per say," he admitted aloud for the first time—no one else had ever seemed interested, "In my mind it is more of a fencing match—skill and perseverance over the rather thuggish and blockhead implications of tackle."
"You are so right," she gushed. Sheldon smiled and got to work.
She was smart, insightful, and her constant praise suspended him in a state of perpetual comfort through the whole night. She never asked stupid questions—always the perfect question—and she encouraged him to work, something his friends never once attempted. If anything they took pains to distract him. He found being with her a unique and refreshing experience.
The next day, she volunteered to stand in lunch lines for him, an offer which he graciously accepted as he was confident she would remain vigilant as she watched them prepare the food. She did not let him down. She continued to impress him like that, and she didn't stop there—she laughed at all of his jokes, shrilly but genuinely.
When Leonard seemed confused that she would do him the service of standing in line, she explained, "Lines take time away that he could be using to tackle work.'
"Ramona," he said, "I've already told you. We do not tackle a problem, we fence with it. En guard! Repost!" He sliced his butter knife in the appropriate fashion. He was having such a great time laughing with Ramona that he did not notice Leslie Wrinkle approaching with coffee and a bran muffin until she spoke.
Leslie had been on her way out of the cafeteria when a shrill laugh had pulled her from her work. She'd glanced toward the source—one of the new grad students with Leonard—and had been only four steps away from the door when she'd heard a second laugh join the shrill first one. She'd stopped and looked back at the table. With closer inspection, Leonard seemed only to be another bystander in the phenomenon that was happening. The grad student was sitting beside Sheldon…and they were laughing—openly.
Leslie had blinked. She couldn't believe her eyes. There was the most arrogant physicist in the world, his work pushed casually aside, his cheeks dimpling as he smiled and fenced playfully with a skinny… bimbo.
Leslie's legs had begun moving before she knew which way was up, carrying her to the very table where she'd first sat as a grad student—ironically in the very seat the ass-kisser was sitting in now, praising Dr. Cooper like someone Leslie used to know. Growling to herself, she noted the papers once again and smiled cruelly as she reached Leonard's side.
"I see you're organizing your papers for the Smithsonian Museum of Dumb-Assery."
Before he could even try to formulate a response to that, Ramona turned to face her and delivered, quiet calmly,
"There won't be any room until they get rid of the permanent Leslie Winkle exhibit."
"Oh good one!" Sheldon cried, awe clear in his voice. Leslie became suddenly annoyed. She sneered at the red head and said to him,
"I see you got a grad student to fight your battles for you. I'll let you keep your lunch money today."
"Dr. Cooper is on the verge of a breakthrough. If you are going to stay you will have to be respectable and quiet." The intensity of the young woman's tone made all who heard believe there would be severe consequences if anyone broke the new rule.
Leslie stared at the girl for a drawn out moment as she thought of the hundreds of cruel things she could say—about Sheldon, about his work, about his tendency to use naive grad-students—but that, Leslie knew, though intended to be an insult for the girl, would land as more of a safety precaution, and she didn't feel like protecting the skinny little tramp against the manipulative Dr. Dumbass—because she didn't care.
She didn't care what, or who, he did.
She left without a word, but the rest of the day's work wasn't her best. She couldn't stop wondering, in the back of her mind, when the dumbass had grown up and started acting like a man.
