by Craig Nova
“Yes,” said Blaine. “I remember.”
“Well,” said Stone. “How can one explain that? I have tried, but I can’t. And even now, in the midst of worries, I can see you are still thinking about it.”
“Worries?” said Blaine.
“The panic,” said Stone.
“What?” said Blaine. “Oh that. I guess.” Blaine closed his eyes. “Yes. You are right about it being piercing. Please give her the message, will you?”
“If I get a chance,” said Stone. “Good day, Mr. Blaine. It was a pleasure to see you.”
Blaine took a step and then turned back.
“She admires you, doesn’t she?” said Blaine.
“Sometimes,” said Stone. “Yes.”
Blaine nodded, looking at Stone carefully.
“You know, people have dismissed you as washed up,” said Blaine.
“I know what people say about an old man,” said Stone. “But that is the beauty of being old. You don’t care so much.”
Blaine went on staring.
“Well, I wanted to tell you they are wrong,” said Blaine. “For what it’s worth. Good afternoon, Mr. Stone.”
CHAPTER 3
April 24, 2029
THE SALESMAN drew on his cigar, and under the ash at the tip, the dull coal came alive for an instant and then faded away. A stream of smoke leaked from his lips and curled in the air. Then the salesman flipped up the lid of his briefcase, reached inside, and brought out the shrink-wrapped materials. Briggs watched them rise, as though they were levitating, and as he reached out for them, he was already in his mind turning them over to see the batch number and the expiration date, which he supposed couldn’t be faked. But the salesman pulled them back a little. He looked at Briggs and said, “We’ve got an understanding, right? If you are up to something that you can’t talk about, that’s fine. But if it gets funded, big time, then you are going to put an order in through me, right?”
“Yes,” said Briggs.
The salesman drew on the cigar, the coal glowing like some living thing.
“Here,” said the salesman. “From Sandoz, no less. You see that?”
Briggs nodded.
“It looks good,” he said.
“Well, that’s what I was trying to tell you, you moron. I’ve got the goods. See?”
“Thanks,” said Briggs.
“Well, it’s not like you won the lottery or something, for Christ sakes.”
Briggs put them in the pocket of his jacket.
“It’s hard to say about that,” said Briggs.
The salesman lipped the wet end of the cigar, which had the color and shine of a stuffed grape leaf.
“No kidding?” said the salesman.
“In a manner of speaking,” said Briggs.
“No kidding,” said the salesman. “Well, all right. Just remember me when the time comes. When you can put in a big order.”
The salesman got up and left, leaving a long strand of smoke behind him. Briggs looked at the materials again, turned them over, and glanced at the expiration date. Still good. He got up the original analysis and started searching through it until he came to the pathogen prompt. He put these proteins aside and went on searching. There was no reason why there would only be one new disease, and if there were many, he was going to have to have more biotic materials. He waited while the machine searched, and when it was done he looked at the pathogen, and then turned to the manuals.
He went downstairs, into the basement of the building. It had the sharp fragrance of peat moss, as in a potting shed, and the walls were moldy. He guessed he could do it here. Sterilize the place, get some antibacterial lights set up, order some basic stuff. Put a lock on the door. Then he sat down on the floor, his back against the wall. He guessed he’d have to start tonight.
CHAPTER 4
April 25, 2029
KAY SAT in front of the mirror of the dressing table. She put a hand to her hair, and as she did, she thought, What if Briggs has another girl, someone he likes and is seeing every night, right now? Maybe she comes to his apartment and he fucks her. Then she tossed her head, as though to get rid of this idea, but it came back. She wished she hadn’t thought of this, since she couldn’t shake it, and mere mental repetition of such a notion seemed to imply its validity. She put a little makeup on, not much. You couldn’t see it unless you were very close, and even then you couldn’t be sure. Kay thought, I wonder what she smells like, after she has spent the night with him? Does he like it? Well, let me find the little bitch there sometime. She put on a silk blouse, and as she did, she thought of another possibility: What if Briggs told Kay to go away, that he wasn’t interested, that he had changed his mind and that he didn’t want her anymore? That she was just a freak, a mistake, a monster? Kay put her hand to her forehead as she felt the first hot, damp blush of nausea. This was another one of those ideas that she kept springing on herself. She imagined his voice as he spoke this way, the two of them standing in the street someplace. Maybe she would cry. That would be the best of it. The worst would be after she stopped crying and didn’t know what to do. Maybe the girl Briggs saw was a cheap blondie, like Jack’s friend.
She tried to make a fist, but it was impossible. The knuckles of her right hand were swelling. Her breathing was damp and wheezing, although she tried to pretend it wasn’t important. Jack rubbed one hand with another, going over the swollen knuckles. They had made a tacit agreement: if she didn’t bother him about it, he wouldn’t bother her. She hoped that they would get better, and if ignoring it was how they were going to fight it, why, then that was what she would do. Maybe it was arthritis.
“I thought I might go out for a while,” said Jack. “I got something I’ve got to do.”
“What’s that?” said Kay.
“Oh,” said Jack. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Yes,” she said. She turned her back on him, and her silk blouse swung around in a shimmer of light. “It’s that blondie from the skating rink, isn’t it?”
“I thought I’d take her out for a cup of coffee or a drink or something,” said Jack.
Kay stood up and put on her skirt. Stepped into her high-heeled shoes and turned to look at herself, running a hand over her hip to smooth out the skirt.
“Do you object?” said Jack.
“No,” said Kay.
“Then why are you being so stiff about it?” he said.
“I’m not stiff,” she said.
“Well, you could have fooled me,” he said.
“I’m not stiff about it,” said Kay.
“What’s the problem?” said Jack.
“I don’t know,” said Kay.
“Ah, shit,” said Jack. “You are getting soft.”
“It’s easy for you,” said Kay. “You’ve got your . . . ”
“My what?” said Jack.
“You know what I mean,” said Kay.
“My what?” said Jack. “Are you afraid to say it?”
“You know what I mean,” said Kay.
“My slut?” said Jack. “Is that what you are trying to use? I didn’t think you were a coward. Go on. Say it.”
“I didn’t say that,” she said.
“But it’s what you think,” said Jack. “Isn’t it?”
“You don’t have to stick up for her,” said Kay. “You don’t have to justify anything.”
“I’m not justifying anything,” he said. “Do you think I have to justify anything to you? Or that I have to apologize for her?”
She shrugged.
“I don’t know what I think,” she said.
“You and I could split up,” he said. “If you are so troubled about it.”
She turned and looked at him.
“Maybe,” she said.
She sat down on the edge of the chair in front of him. Their knees almost touched, like two people sitting opposite each other in a train compartment. They looked right at each other for awhile.
“Oh, Jack,” she said. “We
were always good friends, weren’t we, Jack?”
“Yes,” said Jack. “No one was ever a better friend than me.”
“And do you remember when we got to that first hotel? I found some lipstick in the bureau. Do you remember? I put it under my arms.”
“I remember,” said Jack.
“And the stockings. I found those too. Ah, well,” she said.
“You know,” he said. “I always knew this moment was coming. When we were going to face up to things.”
“Did you, Jack?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m on borrowed time with you. Oh, I know it.”
Then he stood up and went over to the closet and opened it up. There in the shadows, he took out a dark violin case. He held it up and said, “Let’s go over to the rehearsal hall.”
Jack turned his head as though he had a crick in his neck. He rolled his shoulders. Kay put on her coat, and the room was filled with the soft hush of the coat lining sliding over her blouse. In the mirror, through the open panels, she saw the shape of a nipple under the silk, and as she drew the coat together and tied the sash, she thought of being pregnant, of the vital weight of it. Then she thought of the cheap little blondie who was probably seeing Briggs. Maybe she had a tattoo, or a sluttish piercing . . .
“What are you thinking?” she said.
He shrugged, remembering the rules for handling a firearm. If you want to make a good shot, squeeze the trigger between your heartbeats. You had to feel your heart. These were the kinds of things he really knew, and now he found them so insufficient, so bald. What good were they when he wanted to try to talk about the mystery of loyalty, for instance, and how caring about another human being felt good.
“Come on,” he said, picking up the case. “Let’s go. I want to show you something.”
They went out into the hall and up to the elevator, which arrived with a squeak, and then trembled as it went down. Kay could feel the depths below, the length of the shaft, and over her head she could feel the dark cables and pulleys, and the electric motor that sat at the top of the shaft, like some mechanical gargoyle from another age. As they went, one floor passing another, the elevator squeaked. In one corner there was a small red box, with a sign that said, IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, PULL SWITCH. They came out, Jack carrying the violin case, Kay with her hands in her pockets.
A kid was in the street, freckle-faced, his shirt dirty and his pants having a hole in them, but he looked up at Jack with a cheerful enthusiasm and said, “Hey. Whatcha got in there? In the case? Yah? Whatcha got. A gun?”
The kid held his hands like a gangster in an old movie and made a rat-tat-tat-tat-tat sound.
Jack stopped to look at him.
“You got me,” he said.
“Then why don’t you fall down?” said the kid.
“Maybe later,” said Jack.
Jack hesitated, standing there with the case in his hand, like a child on his way to a lesson. Down the block a siren began. The kid still held his hands as though he was carrying a gun. Jack stood there, brow wrinkled, staring into the distance. He closed his eyes for an instant. Then he opened them and looked at the kid.
“Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat . . . ” said the kid.
Jack slumped against the wall. Then he sat down on the pavement, one hand on his stomach. In the other he held the case. Jack breathed hard, and he made a sound in his throat, a bubbling, wet respiration as though he were trying to lift an enormous weight but couldn’t really get his breath.
The kid came closer.
“Bang,” he said.
Jack snapped his head back.
“Jack,” said Kay. “Jack.”
Kay put a hand to her mouth and then turned and leaned against the wall. She closed her eyes and tapped her head against the brick.
“Hey,” the kid said, “I didn’t mean anything.”
“I know,” said Jack. “It’s fine. Here.” He reached into his pocket and took out a bill. “Here. Go get yourself a pop. Go on.”
He held it out. The kid stood there, looking at Jack.
“I didn’t mean nothing,” said the kid.
“It’s okay,” said Jack. He turned to Kay. “Tell him it’s all right.”
“It’s fine,” said Kay. “It was just a game.”
“Go get a pop,” said Jack.
The kid reached out and took the bill, and then turned and ran down the street.
“Kids,” said Jack. “What do they know?”
They walked together for a while, knowing the way perfectly, since they had taken it so often. There weren’t many people on the street, and here and there they walked across shattered glass, which lay on the sidewalk as though an icicle had fallen from the roof. It crunched under Jack’s heel.
“Jack,” said Kay, “do you think it was worth it? You know, getting away and doing this?”
“Oh yes,” said Jack.
“What did you like best?” she said.
“Gloria,” said Jack.
“Uh-huh,” said Kay. “I understand.”
“Do you?” said Jack. “Well.”
They went along for a while.
“There are other things,” said Jack. “I liked the equations, you know, the ones that describe all kinds of things. And then I liked going shopping with you.”
“No, you didn’t,” she said.
“Sure I did,” he said. “When you tried all that stuff on. I liked sitting there, saying, ‘Yeah, that one, no, not that one.’ You looked good. So good.”
“Do you think so?” said Kay.
“Yeah,” he said.
They came up the stairs and into the room where the piano was. Jack took off his jacket and draped it over a chair, just like always, the zipper clicking against the leg. Kay sat down at the piano. The pigeons flew up to the window and spread their wings to stop on the sill, their shadows sweeping through the room. The cleanliness of the room, the pure light that came from the window, the new plaster, the wax on the floor made the room seem ordered and safe.
Jack opened the case, where the violin lay in a red velvet bed, the colors of the instrument like the wood of a racing single. The neck had a gray-black look to it, and the head curved like a fern in springtime. He picked it up and fingered the strings in the moving shadows of the birds. Kay knew what he was doing: feeling the floor with the tips of his toes and trying to maintain a lightness of touch, both on the floor and in the tips of his fingers: a relaxation that was at once complete and perfectly controlled.
They began to play. The shadows slid down the opened lid of the piano. They played Mozart’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in E-flat Major, K. 380. Jack looked at her from time to time, as though saying, “It was worth it. You know that, don’t you?” She played, allowing herself the luxury of enjoying it, not thinking of anything at all, really, aside from the music, waiting for the phrasing to be done in a way that left her certain, and that let her know he was right there with her. When Jack and Kay stopped playing, they heard the pop-pop-pop of the wings of the pigeons as they flew up to the windowsill.
“Well,” he said. “Do you like that?”
“Yes,” she said. Kay rubbed the swollen fingers of one hand with the fingers of the other.
“Do you want to play some more?” she said.
He looked at her hands.
“How badly does that hurt?” he said.
“What do you think?” she said.
“I think it hurts,” he said.
He rubbed his fingers together.
“Mine aren’t so good, either,” he said.
“Do you want to play some more?” she said.
“No,” said Jack. “I think that does it.”
He put on his coat, and Kay put on hers, too. They went to the door and Kay said, “Aren’t you going to take your violin?”
“No,” said Jack. “I think I’m done with it.”
CHAPTER 5
April 27, 2029
THE PEOPLE who worked with Briggs now did what wa
s required of them: they tried to be innocuous, and to suggest that they were only having setbacks in otherwise ordinary careers. They reminded Briggs of people at an AA meeting: a little ashamed, hoping for the best, but certain that the worst had already happened. Perhaps Briggs had this idea because of the odor of the stale, reheated coffee everyone drank here, but he doubted it. And, moreover, the people he worked with had no curiosity. They had no interest in anything that didn’t affect them personally. No one went downstairs into the cellar where there was a locked door, and if someone did, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Who cared about a locked door in a hall that was dark, where the rats scratched and where the cockroaches skittered away when a light came on?
In the hall of the cellar, Briggs walked through the caress of a spider-web. Everything about the adhesive tug of the filaments left him with a dry chill. He pushed the key into the lock and put his shoulder against the door. It swung into the blue light of the room.
The room smelled like a swimming pool dressing room from the Clorox he had used here. The apparatus, which sat on a bench, appeared to be simple: stainless-steel tubes, a central processing section, receptacles for the biotic materials he had managed to get his hands on. He had discovered a hundred or so viruses and bacteria in this room, no matter how hard he had tried to keep it sterile, but none of them were a serious contaminant. Or so he hoped. That was the terror of winging it. No tests with animals, no follow-up studies, nothing like that at all. Soon he would be in a position of trying it or not.
He watched a drop of the silver vaccine form, and on the surface of it he saw the blue shine of the lights behind him and his own shape, as in a wide-angle lens. What he thought was, It is all in the shape of the proteins. He thought of the mistakes he had made in school under conditions that were far better than this, but then he hoped his early mistakes had been those of an immature sensibility, rather than of technique. And, anyway, his technique had gotten better over the years. Then he looked up at the mold stains on the ceiling. They looked like a fossil of some kind that had been dead for millions of years.
