The irony of it all was that Albane had nothing — at least as measured by modern tabloid standards — worthy of hiding. She was born in Paris, the only child of a doctor and a pastry chef. She attended an all girls’ school during her early years, which she loathed, and then later was accepted into the Sorbonne where she concentrated her study in language. When she was twenty-six, she moved to New York City and attended Columbia University to earn her MA in psychology.
As a child, Albane exhibited an unnatural proclivity for language, excelling in English at a level three years ahead of her peers, and learning Latin from her father and his collection of medical texts. She loved her father, and he returned her love unconditionally. Nine days after Albane’s fourteenth birthday, François Mesnil was mugged on the way home from the hospital and bled to death in the middle of the street, alone. For the next five years, Albane retreated into herself.
The impact on her mother was catastrophic. An intense woman, whose self-destructive tendencies were kept in check by the rock-solid presence of Dr. Mesnil, Albane’s mother fell into a dark depression after her husband’s death. One morning, Albane awoke to a silent and empty apartment. On the second day, she notified the police of her mother’s absence. On the third day, she was informed by a solemn man with a gray face and gray overcoat that her mother had committed suicide. The police had found her mother’s body floating face down in the Seine, bloated and waterlogged. At sixteen years old, she had to face the Parisian media alone, arrange the funeral, sell her mother’s patisserie, and take control of the family finances. All of these things she did, and did alone.
During the happy years, her parents loved to entertain, and threw lavish parties at their flat in the city. Already famous in Paris for her desserts, Noëlle Mesnil’s parties drew the crème de la crème of the Parisian elite. But by the end of the night, it was always young Albane, and not Noëlle, who had enchanted the room of intellectuals, socialites, and local politicians. The Mesnils would joke that Albane was the world’s only eight-year-old sophisticate, displaying the grace and wit of a seasoned hostess. When it was her bedtime, Dr. Mesnil would escort Albane up the stairs to her room, where his young daughter would tell him what she thought of every monsieur and madame she had met during the evening, all in exacting and vivid detail. “Her intuition and perceptiveness are uncanny,” he would tell his wife as they undressed for bed, “I think she is the best judge of character I’ve ever met.”
During primary school, her teachers observed that young Albane was fearless, cowing to neither challenge nor bully. Even so, she was shy around her classmates and preferred the company of her teachers and adults. Albane had a way of reaching inside adults to find the substance and purpose beneath the façade. From a ten minute interaction, sometimes less, she would know everything she needed to know about a person. Not in a historical sense, but rather in an intuitive way. She could read motives, sense emotional cues, detect intellectual profundity, parse through words and find purpose beneath, all without effort. Moreover, her moral compass was finally tuned, and in a blink of an eye she could accurately sense the character of any adult she met. But when it came to children, her gift failed her. So as a child, she kept to herself.
As a teenager, life hurled more challenges at her. At age fourteen, she experienced an aggressive pubescent growth spurt, her body lengthening six inches in one year. With the arrival of her new, longer arms and legs, came an embarrassing clumsiness that she did not grow out of until she reached university. At a time when blonde bombshells were plastered across the silver screen, Albane became acutely self-conscious of her dense, long black hair and rail thin physique. Even though she had gained twenty pounds with her growth spurt, her hips were still narrow and her bosom flat. While the other girls were dancing with boys, Albane was dancing alone with her self-loathing.
At seventeen, the swan inside her began to emerge. Her body blossomed, and suddenly her height and her raven black hair, qualities that had been a liability at fifteen, now gained her favor with maturing male peers. She quickly recognized the power that her physique gave her over men. Men of all ages stood up and took notice of her wherever she went. At first, it was disconcerting for her, but gradually the bold and captivating confidence she’d once possessed as a young child reemerged. During her university years, she became conscious of her gift for reading people. She was a good listener, a rarity that made people flock to her. Despite pressures to pursue graduate schooling in psychology, Albane yearned to see the world. For all the languages she had learned, she had never left France. She had been prudent and miserly with her parents’ small fortune, and she decided that the time had come for her to go on her first adventure. She would explore the world, meet its peoples, and embrace them in their native tongues. And so on her twenty-third birthday, she left Paris, never to return.
“This is for you,” Albane said, handing AJ a white business card.
AJ looked at it.
August Jameson Archer
Laboratory Director
Motion Genetics, LLC
“Therapeutic Genetic Solutions for the 21st Century”
ajarcher@motiongenetics.com
“What is this?”
“Your business card… in case anybody asks,” she replied, and then added, “Remember the CA you signed this morning? We don’t talk with anyone outside the firm about the work we do in The Tank. Especially girlfriends.”
“It’s not a serious relationship; I’d describe it more like friends with benefits.”
“No matter,” she said, cutting him off. “You get my point.”
He recoiled at her curt response, but he didn’t argue. “Motion Genetics?” he said, his eyes flicking to the card. “What do we do at Motion Genetics?”
“At Motion Genetics, we develop therapeutic genetic solutions for the twenty-first century,” Albane said with the tone and inflection of a television spokeswoman.
“Anything else I should know about the company?”
“Motion Genetics is a start-up biotech firm that recently secured second-round venture capital funding. You have been hired as the lab director in charge of early-stage animal testing of a viral delivery mechanism for a promising gene therapy aimed at suppressing debilitating auto-immune diseases.”
“How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Expound complete bullshit so eloquently off the cuff like that?”
“I’m an RS: Social. That’s what we do.”
He smirked. “Point taken. Is orientation finished for today?”
Orientation, yes. Work, no,” she said. “We have a three-thirty briefing in the Founder’s Forum. And after that, I have a feeling it is going to be a long night.”
AJ glanced at his watch, 3:53 PM, and the meeting still had not started.
“What is this briefing about?” AJ asked Albane, swiveling his chair to face her.
“I don’t know.”
“You have no idea?” he tried again, certain she knew more than she was letting on.
“No, AJ, I don’t.”
To his left, he heard the man who had tersely introduced himself only as “VanCleave, RS: Technical” snicker under his breath.
To his right sat Kalen Immel, the guy who had pickpocketed him in the Public Garden. After a quick exchange of pleasantries, Kalen quickly became lost in his handheld — furiously thumb-typing emails. Likewise, VanCleave was hard at work coding a simulation on his notebook computer for a client he chose not to divulge. This left only Albane to talk to, and AJ sensed she was beginning to grow weary of his company. He decided to stop trying to make small talk and just wait for something interesting to happen.