“Mills?”
“I told you they met when she was a guest professor in Moscow. She’s a metallurgist, but also an alchemist. Do you know what they do?”
Beatrice snorted her derision “I know what they’re supposed to be able to do—turn dross into gold.”
He rubbed his neck and nodded. “ ‘Dross’—I like that word; it’s very medieval. But, yes, you’re right—that’s what they do.”
“But there’s no such thing, Mills, and don’t pretend there is. I know nothing about it, but I do know alchemy is more myth than anything else. People have always tried to transform worthless stuff into gold. But it’s a metaphor—a nice one—but it’s not real.”
No longer smiling, Mills said, “Oh, it’s real. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen. I saw her do it more than once.”
“Stop it, you’re teasing me. But, listen—I am completely gullible about these things. I believe what people tell me. That was half the problem with my husband—I always believed him and you know how that ended.”
Mills rubbed his neck again and looked at Beatrice a long few moments. It was clear he was carefully considering what to say next. “We met back in seventh grade. I was the first boy she ever slept with.”
“Who is this? Who are you talking about?”
“Her name is Heather Cooke. Alchemists aren’t made, they’re born. It is an inherent talent. Contrary to what most people believe, you can’t study to be an alchemist, any more than you can study to be a violin prodigy or sports star. Studying makes you smarter and practice makes you more adept, but neither is able to create the divine spark that flares into genius. It’s either within you from the beginning or not. That’s why all those geniuses so accomplished at other things—Paracelsus, Isaac Newton, Saint Thomas Aquinas—failed at alchemy.
“Heather always had the gift. But the irony was she didn’t want it; didn’t want any part of it. The ability was thrust on her like a physical handicap. She once even said she would rather have been born blind than possess the ability to do alchemy. But too bad—that was her burden.”
Beatrice listened to Mills rattle on, half expecting him to start chuckling at some point, pat her on the shoulder, and say he was kidding—this was all a joke. But he didn’t and as his cockamamie story went on, she became more and more engrossed in it.
“She would never tell me how she did any of it, not that I would have understood or been able to duplicate the process even if she had. Heather said anyone can find and mix ingredients but the last most important element is the touch, whatever that meant. I asked if she literally meant physical touch but she said no, it was something far more abstruse than that. She made it plain that she didn’t want me to ask more about it.”
“You actually saw her do alchemy—change dross into gold?”
“Yes, twice. But there are different kinds of alchemy. Not just—”
“Can you tell me about them?”
Mills took a deep breath and both cheeks puffed when he let it out again. “The first time we made love we were fifteen. Heather’s father died when she was a child. He was a draftsman for an architectural firm. One of her prize possessions was an expensive Yard-O-Led mechanical pencil he owned. She carried it with her everywhere. That first night we were at her house because her mom was out playing bridge. The pencil was on the desk in Heather’s bedroom. I’d admired it earlier. When we were done, she excused herself and left the room. Before she did, she stopped at her desk and picked up the pencil. Then she smiled at me over her shoulder.
“A few minutes later she came back and said, ‘This is for you.’ She handed me a solid gold mechanical pencil, that mechanical pencil. She wanted me to have it as a keepsake of that night.”
“But how did you know it was the same pencil?”
“Bite marks. Her father chewed on his pens and pencils when he was working. That one was no different. All over the top of this beautiful heavy gold mechanical pencil were bite marks.”
The waitress brought Mills his glass of wine. Neither of them spoke after the woman left. Beatrice kept waiting for him to give her a sign—a smile or a wiggle of the eyebrows, something that said OK, I am teasing you. But his face looked even more serious than before.
“Heather had told me about the alchemy before but that was all—she never made a big deal of it. Only said she could do this weird thing and that sometimes her mother asked her to do it if there were unexpected bills to be paid; nothing more than that. When I asked what alchemy really was, she made up some kind of boring bullshit explanation that had to do with science and metal and math. But I was a boy and way more interested in her breasts than her math talents, so I didn’t ask again.
“She and her mother certainly lived modestly, just the two of them in their little house. God knows with that gift, they could have been rich as Croesus and lived a hell of a lot better than they did. But her mom didn’t want it. She had a job that made them enough money to live OK. Heather was very smart and got a full scholarship to the state university and then one to graduate school at the Colorado School of Mines.
“After a while we went our separate ways in high school although we always remained friendly and helped each other out when we could.”
“She didn’t stay your girlfriend in high school? She gave you her virginity and a solid gold pen as a thank you, but you left her? God, Mills, you were incorrigible even back then.”
The lawyer shook his head. “Wrong—she dumped me. Absolutely broke my heart, but she said she wanted to date other guys and play the field. Remember that old phrase ‘play the field’? I haven’t heard it in years, but those were her exact words when she told me it was over between us. Heather could be very cold and single-minded about things when she wanted. Said we’d always be friends but you know what that means, especially when you’re a teenager and a hormone rodeo.
“We traveled in different circles in school so I didn’t see her all that much after we broke up. Interestingly, she liked the wild crowd, the drinkers and druggers and bad boys galore. The kids who were always in trouble with the police or being suspended from school for doing outrageous things. One of Heather’s boyfriends was the first guy in our school to get tattooed. Remember, this was decades ago and back then getting ink was a pretty big deal. Anyway, she ended up with a reputation for many walks on the wild side by the time we graduated.
“She went to one college, I went to another, and that was that until a few years ago when she called me out of the blue. Said she needed a good divorce lawyer and had heard I was one of the best.”
“You are. I’ll attest to that.”
Mills stared at Beatrice a few beats too long before smiling and giving a military salute in thanks. It felt like he was looking for something in her face, something that was there but hard to find. She thought it was an odd reaction to her compliment.
“But here’s where the story gets interesting. A few days after we spoke, Heather came to my office. She looked pretty much like she did in high school, only thinner and more chic. My first impression was she looked European. I was sort of right because it turned out she’d lived in Russia for five years.
“We chatted a while about old times but it was plain she was just doing that to be nice. Eventually I said, Look, Heather, tell me what you need and let’s talk about it. She was getting divorced and asked to hire me because she wanted the whole process over as quickly as possible. I said fine—give me all the details, I’ll contact your husband and his lawyer, and we’ll get things rolling.
“She said no, she wanted to hire me to represent her husband; wanted me to be his lawyer. She already had one for herself and he’d agreed to let her find him one.”
Beatrice said, “I’m confused.”
“So was I, but those were the facts: She already had a lawyer for herself and was hiring me to represent her husband.”
“But, Mills, didn’t her husband want to find his own lawyer? Why would he want someone to represent him who was an old friend, an
old boyfriend, of his wife?”
“That’s exactly what I asked. She said her husband was Russian and didn’t know a good lawyer here. Anyway, both of them just wanted the divorce as soon as possible and they had already agreed on who’d get what. They had no children so that wasn’t a problem.”
“That’s crazy! I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Her husband came to my office the next morning. His name was Vadim Morozov. Kind of a nondescript-looking guy, you’d never notice him in a crowd—thin, maybe six feet tall, balding, a nice face but nothing special. He had a heavy accent but his English was almost perfect. The problem was I already knew he was one very bad character.
Heather had filled me in on him the day before.
“They met at a party her last year in Moscow. He told her he was a businessman, which wasn’t so far from the truth. He was in import/export but soon enough she learned that meant smuggling: cigarettes, liquor, stolen cars from the West, rare Tabriz and kilim carpets from Iran . . . the list goes on and on. Vadim was a very resourceful fellow.
“But Heather was crazy about him and didn’t even blink an eye when she found out what he really did for a living.”
“She didn’t mind that he was a smuggler?”
“Remember I said she’d always liked bad boys. Whatever hesitation or skepticism she might have had, he charmed out of her. She said she was a goner after the first month.”
Beatrice made a sour face and shook her head because it sounded all too familiar—much the same thing had happened with her and her husband, only it had taken a while longer for her to fall completely under his spell.
“Vadim was very upfront with her in the beginning, saying he really wanted to move to America one day because so many Russians had gone and were doing well there. But that was fine with her because she didn’t plan on staying in Russia, and if things worked out between them, she’d happily take him home with her when the time came.
“Whether he tricked her or it really was good between them, by the time she was to leave she couldn’t imagine going home without him.”
“And so, ‘Reader, I married him.’ ” Beatrice said the famous line sarcastically and then shook her head again, disgusted by too many rancid memories of her own failed marriage.
“Well, no, they didn’t get married for a while after they got to America. She was smitten but she wasn’t stupid. Meanwhile Vadim kept a low profile and, as far as she knew, just enjoyed exploring his new homeland.
“He was eager to see America, so that first summer back they traveled for a couple of months: Los Angeles, Seattle, Phoenix, New York. What Heather didn’t know was that in each of those cities when she wasn’t around, Vadim made contact with Russian criminals who were running all kinds of illegal businesses—drugs, human trafficking, illegal weapon sales. And right after they married, he went to work.”
Beatrice touched Mills’s arm and then stood up. “I’ll be right back.” She walked toward the bathroom although she didn’t need to use it. For some unknown reason, hearing this story had opened a floodgate inside her, and now all sorts of really toxic emotions were pouring out. Of course most of them had to do with her ex-husband. Until that moment she thought she’d done a pretty good job of keeping her emotions in check, sorting sanely through the marital disappointments, heartaches, bitter memories, and bad experiences and throwing a great many of them out of her head and heart. But even just hearing this fragment of Heather Cooke’s story got Beatrice raging again—at her ex-husband, herself, at their failed marriage, at what an abysmal waste that part of her life had been. In a final letter to her husband, she had written, “If I could somehow erase every single pixel of our relationship from my memory I would do it without hesitation. Even the good times, even the great—I’d press ‘delete’ in a second.”
In the bathroom now she stood looking at herself in a mirror above one of the sinks. “Loser. How could you have been so naive?” She sighed and closed her eyes. Her brain quickly filled with a mean circus of lousy, noisy memories and images, all jostling around and elbowing each other aside so they could get to the center ring to perform and annoy her.
“OK, enough.” She ran cold water over her hands, checked her eyes to make sure there were no tears, and went back out to Mills and his story of Heather Cooke, alchemist.
As Beatrice sat down again at the table, a thought raised its hand in her head to ask a question. “Did Heather’s husband know about the alchemy?”
“No, not at the beginning. As I said, it wasn’t something she wanted others to know—in fact, very few did besides her mother. You know those people who are really talented at sports or a musical instrument but rarely play or practice because it doesn’t interest them?”
“My ex-husband. He was wonderful at chess but didn’t play because the game bored him.”
“That was Heather too. She didn’t practice alchemy for a variety of reasons but was certainly a master. As an academic, however, she was able to investigate it without raising suspicion by writing her doctoral thesis on the history of alchemy in America. Not the trendiest topic in the world, but it allowed her to explore the subject for years, and along the way discover answers to some of her questions. She told whoever asked that she’d grown intrigued by alchemy both as a practice and metaphor after having worked for so long in an adjacent field of study. Since her degree was in metallurgy, it made perfect sense.”
“But then one day her husband found out about it and everything changed,” Beatrice broke in, beating Mills to his punch line. As soon as she spoke, she knew it was mean and a result of her mini-meltdown in the ladies’ room. Here she was, half grumpy, half edgy. Should she go home alone and sulk? Some part of her soul was just east of furious now but should she leave it alone and let it run its course, or take some kind of action that might help assuage it? Was that even possible? Can we ever say to our furies when they’re laying siege to our borders that they should take a few deep breaths and back off a little?
Mills, sweet Mills, didn’t bite back with meanness. Instead he just picked up the story right after what Beatrice had said. “But how Vadim found out is a great story in itself.” He was about to continue when he looked more closely at Beatrice. “Are you all right? Do you want to go home?”
“No, but would you mind if we walked a little bit? I’m feeling sort of antsy.”
“Of course.”
They left the café and walked slowly together by the side of the river. Cornbread was off the leash, zigzagging slowly here and there, sniffing the world. Now and then a bicyclist or jogger whizzed by or they passed other walkers but for the most part they had the area to themselves. After a while Beatrice took Mills’s hand. They walked in silence until she said, “OK, I’m OK now. Tell me how he found out.”
“Vadim hadn’t been feeling well for a while so he went to a doctor and had some tests done. They didn’t like what they found so more tests were ordered. Eventually it was discovered he had stage three stomach cancer.”
Beatrice stopped and turned to Mills. “How bad is that? I know nothing about cancer.”
“Bad. Anyone with stage four is a goner, notwithstanding miracles. He came home from the hospital and told Heather he was dying.
“Now this next part is a little foggy because neither of them would tell me any of the details. I had to put their two stories together to come up with a whole.”
“Why wouldn’t they tell you details?”
“You’ll see in a minute. What they did say, both of them, was Heather ordered Vadim to take off his shirt and lie down on the couch. When he asked why, she said, Just do it. She put both hands on his stomach and closed her eyes. The hands stayed in one spot for a long time. Vadim tried to speak but she said, Shut up. When she took her hands away, she told him to stay there and left the room.
“She was gone quite a long time but on returning she had a small bottle in her hand, like the kind of little liquor bottle stewardesses give on an airplane when you buy a
cocktail. She told him to drink it all and then lie back down again. Vadim didn’t know what she was doing but said her voice was one he’d never heard before. It was hard and not to be questioned—‘a teacher’s voice,’ he called it.
“The drink tasted like Coca-Cola, which made it even stranger. He thought, I told her I have cancer and she brought me a soda? But he drank it all and lay back down, as ordered. She put her hands on his stomach again, one on top of the other but this time in a different spot, down much lower.
“Vadim said what happened next he did not feel; he emphasized that—nothing at all. After some time she slowly raised her hands off his stomach. Beneath them, as if it were a fish being pulled out of him on an invisible line, was something alive. It looked like a big black cockroach, or some other kind of giant black insect. Horrified, Vadim tried to sit up but Heather put her hand on his chest and yelled at him to stay where he was and wait till she was finished.”
“Mills, is this true? You’re not making it up?”
“Not a word of it. Everything is true. This is exactly as Vadim told me.”
“My God. Go on.”
“When the thing had fully emerged out of his stomach, it started crawling up his chest toward his neck. Very casually Heather picked it up off his body. The moment she actually touched it, two things happened—the bug stopped moving and then it turned into gold.”
Before Beatrice could protest, Mills put a hand in his pocket and brought out something shiny about fifteen centimeters long. He held it up and she lurched backward because it was a large gold bug, so perfectly detailed and real looking that she expected to see its small legs twiddle in the air.
“Remember we were talking the other day about that TV report describing how dogs can smell different kinds of cancer?”
She nodded but kept her eyes on the gold bug.
“Watch this. Cornbread! Corn, come here.”
The dog was off to the side, head down in a bush. As soon as he heard Mills call, he came right over to them. The man put his hand down and let the dog see the gold object. Cornbread eagerly sniffed it, then whined and shook his head hard. He even stepped away from his master, then shook his big head again.
The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012 Edition Page 27
