by Scott Britz
“Yes, sir.”
“And you took the Berlin Marathon last fall as well, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Gifford faced the bleachers, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Today we aren’t going to do the full marathon, but Mr. Korongo has kindly agreed to run the eight-hundred-meter—two laps of this track—against our contestant. Eden Pharmaceuticals has put up a twenty-five-thousand-dollar prize, to be donated to the charity of the winner’s choice. That’s a lot of money, isn’t it, Nelson?”
“Yes, sir. It’s very good money.”
“And you’ll be sure to put up your best effort for it?”
“I will.”
“You won’t be swayed by the fact that your challenger is seventy years old? You won’t lighten up on him?”
“No, sir. He has very good legs.”
Gifford patted Korongo on the back. “Good, good! You’ve both had a chance to warm up now, so go to your marks and get ready.”
Cricket knew East Africans well enough to see that, despite his obsequious tone, Korongo was smirking. Clearly, he regarded his opponent and the race itself as a farce.
Gifford set his microphone down on a small table in front of the bleachers and picked up a starter’s pistol. With the gun pointing aloft, he waited as both contestants finished a brief ritual of stretching and then crouched down, feet planted firmly against the pedals of the starting blocks. For a moment no one in the bleachers breathed. Then—a loud crack, and the two men shot forward.
Korongo took a big lead from the push-off. The track was his going into the first turn, and he ran as though he were on parade. Twenty feet back, Adam was having trouble finding his rhythm. Cricket noticed that the lengths of his strides were all over the place. He’s trying too hard. He’s just pushing his legs as fast as he can. But then, in the long straightaway after the first turn, something clicked. Adam fell into a long, reaching stride, pulled his head down, and started swinging his arms hard, like a swimmer pulling himself through water. Korongo turned his head, saw what was happening, and began to run as if he were actually in a race.
The second turn. Adam tramping on Korongo’s shadow. Both men in a deep, smooth rhythm. Korongo sweating. For a long time, no change in position. Adam sticking to Korongo like a wingman. Then the third turn. Halfway down the straightaway, Adam tilting his head back, pulling in massive gusts of air through his big, aquiline nose and shooting forward as if on afterburners. Korongo left behind in a whoosh. Now Korongo goes all out, fighting to close the distance. Nostrils flaring like a stallion’s. Chest heaving. Onyx skin glistening with rivers of sweat. The last turn—Korongo, with the cunning of experience, clings to the inside track, gaining a nose-length lead. But not enough. Adam has the stride of a racehorse—covering eight or nine feet each time his toes touch ground. The finish line—only yards away. Adam makes three incredible leaps that hurtle him past the gasping, grimacing African. Hurrahs and camera flashes as he wins the race by a foot and a half.
History! The bleachers emptied onto the field. Over the clamor, Cricket could barely hear Niedermann announcing that the winning time was one minute forty-six seconds—five seconds short of a world’s record. Gifford stood beaming, jubilantly pumping Adam’s hand into the air, and then, as an afterthought, plucked the dazed Korongo out of the crowd and lifted his hand, too. The three prodigies glistened like metal in the glare of the photographers’ flashes.
“Look at Charles!” Hank laughed. “I think he’s as astonished as anyone by the way things turned out.”
Down on the field, Gifford was trying to make himself heard above the ruckus. Rising up onto his toes, he waved his hands until Niedermann passed the microphone to him over the clamoring heads of the press. “Please! Please! Dear guests!” Gifford shouted, panting as hard as the runners on either side of him. “Give us space.”
Gifford repeated his plea several times, without effect. “There will . . . there will be time for everyone to meet Adam and Mr. Korongo. Photos . . . autographs . . . interviews . . . tables in the tent. But now . . . now I need you to bear with me for just a moment longer. I have an announcement . . . an important announcement to make about the Methuselah Vector.”
At these last words, as if at an incantation, the crowd suddenly stilled. Gifford backed off to gain a little breathing room. With Hannibal twirling nervously beside him, he raised one hand into the air.
“As I said, Subject Adam is but the first. We are now prepared to open the Methuselah Vector for wider human trials. Because of the extraordinary nature of this drug—because of what you yourselves have witnessed here today—we cannot possibly conduct these trials in the usual manner. The demand for the Vector would swamp our resources.
“We have therefore decided to take the unprecedented step of holding a Grand Lottery. Anyone over the age of sixty who wants a chance to receive the Methuselah Vector may submit an application to the corporate offices of Eden Pharmaceuticals by midnight Thursday. There are no excluding medical conditions. None whatsoever. All that is required is to show up for the drawing, and to agree to one year of follow-up at any one of twenty-four participating university medical centers. At precisely noon on Friday, on the Lower Plaza of Rockefeller Center in New York City, we will draw at random one hundred names out of the Lottery pool, and those lucky people will each receive one injection of the Methuselah Vector, on the spot.”
The crowd erupted once again. Even with the microphone, Gifford had to shout to be heard. “Mr. Niedermann here has the details for you,” he proclaimed, as Niedermann waved a stack of blue handout sheets. “I hope to see you in New York.” With the throng converging on Niedermann, Gifford hastened off the field toward Weiszacker House.
Rounding the corner of the bleachers, he stopped abruptly as he saw Cricket in his path. “I’m so glad you were able to stay,” he said with a cracking voice. “I really wanted you to see this.”
Cricket kissed him on the cheek. His skin had a salty taste, the taste of tears. “It’s remarkable, Charles. Daddy would have been so proud.”
“Do you think so?”
Cricket nodded. “Thank you for remembering him.”
“He deserves the credit. Damn, it seems so strange not to have had him here for this.” Gifford cocked his head and grinned. “But we have you. Do you have to go? There’s a select little banquet in a few hours. I’d love to have you there.” His eyes pleaded with her.
“Okay, Charles,” she said, surprised by her acquiescence. I owe it to Daddy.
“Good, good. Yolanda, could you come with me? I need you.”
Yolanda nodded demurely and blushed. Silently, she followed him toward the mansion, dragging Bonnie and Chuck by the hands as she struggled to keep up with Gifford’s long, rapid strides.
Cricket watched them go. Had she not just witnessed a miracle—the dawn of a new era for mankind, as Hank had touted it? She was surrounded by euphoria. Yet, something inside her held back. She felt the same faceless apprehension she had had that morning driving up to the gate of Acadia Springs. What was wrong? Were the little shield-shaped pills wearing off? Was it envy at seeing Charles Gifford reap the field that her father had sown? Or was it just her ingrained habit of looking every gift horse in the mouth? She didn’t know. She couldn’t trust her feelings these days.
She hadn’t told Gifford what she really thought. She wanted him to enjoy—and deserve—the triumph she had seen. But what if it was too good to be true? You’re moving too fast on this, Charles is what she should have said. It’s got to be more complicated than you know. When the whole world tells you you’re right, double-check your math.
She sighed and tried to shake it off. The Methuselah Vector was Charles’s problem. Hers was Emmy. That’s what mattered—the blond-haired, blue-jeaned girl walking just in front of her—beautiful and fragile like a rose, and just as full of thorns. Cricket wasn’t going to let anything
distract her from what she had come to do.
She would put in an appearance at the banquet, and then that would be it. Tomorrow, she and Emmy would be in Atlanta. Tomorrow they would begin the long, hard work of making peace.
Tomorrow.
She felt the hairs on her forearms stand on end, as though lightning were about to strike from the cloudless sky.
Seven
YOLANDA SMILED AS SHE TUCKED BONNIE into bed for her afternoon nap. The curly haired little girl was restless, fidgeting with her legs under the covers of the unfamiliar bed. “Be good, Bumblebee,” the young mother said, bending down to kiss her daughter on the cheek. “Go to sleep, and I’ll come back for you in an hour.”
Chuck junior was Bonnie’s opposite. That boy could fall asleep before his head touched the pillow. Looking at his curly blond locks, Yolanda was amazed how much he looked like his father. She prayed at mass and sometimes at night, too, that he would grow up to be truly his father’s son, strong and patient. Brave, too—only not too brave. Not brave enough to run into a booby-trapped house to save a couple of wounded comrades.
Yolanda picked up the two empty milk glasses and the saucer with cookie crumbs and headed for the door, stopping once in the middle of the room to look back at her two precious jewels as they lay in the big poster bed. The maids said that Cricket Rensselaer-Wright had grown up in this house and that this had been her bed. How strange and wonderful it must have been having had a bed like this, with wooden pillars beautifully carved in the shape of corkscrews. No one had anything like it in the slums of La Perla in San Juan where she had grown up.
Yolanda hooked her elbow around the doorknob to pull the door shut, then hurried down the rear servants’ staircase to the huge kitchen, where half a dozen cooks were at work preparing dinner for that evening. They were too busy to notice her as she set down the saucer and glasses and stole off into the long, narrow pantry. At the far end she knocked on a door—the secret entrance to Charles Gifford’s office.
As soon as she opened the door, she pulled it back again. In the center of the room stood Jack Niedermann, with his back to her as he talked to Gifford.
She was afraid Niedermann had heard the knock and would turn his head to see her. Since her husband had died, Niedermann had been pestering her—trying to give her foot rubs, or to kiss her neck or the inside of her elbow. He gave her expensive bottles of wine that she poured down the sink. Once she slapped him. After that he quit, but he turned cold toward her. If he saw her with Gifford now, she knew how jealous he would be. She did not want to lose her job. It gave her an independence that she prized—something that she had worked hard for, and that her mother and grandmother and aunts had never known.
But Niedermann had not heard the sound of the door. Through the crack, Yolanda watched as he went on speaking. He sounded angry.
“What’s this page about, Charles? I really haven’t got time right now. Subject Adam has interviews going on with the press and I need to make sure he doesn’t go off track.”
“This won’t take but a minute. I just got off the phone with Phillip Eden. He watched the whole rollout on TV. ‘A resounding triumph,’ he called it.”
“For which he’s taking credit, no doubt.”
Gifford shook his head. “You’ve got him all wrong, Jack. He’s tickled to death with what you’ve done. I think this is a superb opportunity for the three of us to come together.”
“The three of us?”
“To talk about your ideas. For the Vector and for the company. I’m sure he’ll be receptive.”
“Are you nuts?”
“I want you to call off that emergency stockholders’ meeting. You haven’t announced it yet, have you?”
“No.”
“Then don’t. Let’s try this other approach first.”
Niedermann paced and kicked at the carpet. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”
“As the second-largest shareholder, I’m going to insist.”
“Jesus, Charles.” Niedermann threw his hands up into the air. “If you’d have looked at those documents I brought you this morning, you’d know this is absolutely fucked-up.”
“Will you do it? Will you call off the meeting?”
“I don’t have a choice, do I? Without your proxy, there is no meeting.”
“Good! Then you’d better get back to that press conference.”
Niedermann stalked toward the door—the official door, which led to where Mrs. Walls had her desk. With his hand on the knob, he stopped and looked back. Yolanda shuddered. Could he see her peeking? She was directly in his line of sight. But he looked only at Gifford. “You’ll be sorry, Charles. I swear.” Then he went out and slammed the door.
As soon as Niedermann was gone, Gifford hurried toward the secret door. He had known Yolanda was there all along. “Thanks for coming,” he whispered. “The kids okay?”
“Napping. What’s with Jack?”
“Stress. We’re all pretty stressed-out this week.”
“He snapped at me this morning over the guest list for the banquet.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll all get back to normal after Friday.”
She felt Gifford’s arms encircling her waist, and closed her eyes as he kissed her. It was a long kiss, alternately teasing and mashing her lips, probing along every part of her mouth. No one but he had ever kissed her like this, in such an examining way. Perhaps it had something to do with his being a doctor. She was embarrassed that the kiss did not arouse her. Her head was throbbing and it felt as if she had a sunburn at the corner of her mouth.
“Yolanda, I need you so much!” Gifford caressed her back with his strong, knowing doctor’s hands. “Now more than ever. Today . . . especially today. We need to celebrate this moment. Did you see how it went, Yolanda? Did you see how it went?”
“Yes. I was so proud of you.”
“I feel like I’m going to burst.”
Taking her by the hand, he pulled her across the room and dropped back onto the leather button sofa, drawing her against his knees.
Yolanda sniffled. “I was ready to cry for that man when he won the race. It was a miracle.”
“It was. It was.” He squeezed her hand and tried to pull her onto the sofa, but she resisted. She wanted to be there for him and to satisfy him, but she was afraid that her headache would show and she would only be a disappointment.
He pulled her again. This time she gave in and let herself fall upon the squeaky leather. He knelt over her, keeping one knee between her thighs, as he began kissing her in that place where the collarbones came together at the base of her throat. She knew he liked that special spot. “Give me your love, mi corazón,” he said, “before I devour you altogether.”
She knew little about science, but she understood that something important had happened that day that would make people live a long time, perhaps forever. It was the greatest possible luck for her that the genius who had made this possible begged to share his triumph with her. No one could ever take away this honor. The great doctor Charles Gifford had desired her. It was like being the mistress of Beethoven or Einstein.
Over the three months that they had been intimate, his demands had always been great. He might ask for her at any hour of the day or night. But in the past few days, he had needed her as never before—sometimes several times in a day. She wondered what it meant. Was it possible he was falling in love with her? She was ashamed of her pride in thinking so. The woman, Doreen, whose picture stared at her from over the mantel—that woman was not common. She had not come from a slum. But what of it? There was more than one way to be worthy of a great man.
So she did not refuse him. As he began to kiss her throat, she clasped her legs about him, sighing and moaning to show her receptiveness. He moaned back. It awakened her own desire. Pulling her dress over her head, she offered her breasts to him an
d kissed him with wet, hungry kisses until even the headache did not matter anymore. She implored him to enter her. She didn’t make him use a condom. They had used one at first, but there seemed no reason for it. Charles said he hadn’t had sex since his wife died. She herself was on the pill. But today the act felt strangely uncomfortable—burning inside her. She dared not tell him. It would have spoiled his triumph. So she called upon the woman’s art—pretending. Had she not done so, he would have gone on for hours, waiting for her pleasure to come first. It was his way, a kind of pride that he had.
Stirred by her sounds of mock pleasure, Gifford came to his climax with a tearful fierceness that frightened her. “I want you, mi tesoro! God, how I want you!” he exclaimed. She moaned back, calling him papito over and over and begging him to take her. Even from on top, he had the strength to lift her with a single arm, holding on to her so tightly with the other that she could scarcely breathe. It was as though he were not making love to a woman, but to the whole world. When he was done, he lay upon her with all his weight, spent and panting. It was the only time she had ever seen him so exhausted.
Afterward, when she went into the small bathroom of his office to clean herself, she was shocked when she looked into the mirror. What she had thought was a sunburn was something else—a cluster of tiny bubbles on her skin, right at the edge of her mouth. When she touched them, they were painful. They frightened her so much that she went back to where he lay on the sofa and showed them to him.
“It’s just a cold sore,” he said, looking at it by the clean light of the window. “Nothing to worry about. I’ll write you a scrip for it.” He went to his desk and wrote some lines on a small block of paper. “This is for docosanol cream.” He tore off a sheet and handed it to her. “Take it down to the infirmary and give it to the druggist. Just rub in a dab of cream once in the morning and again at night.”
