The Baby Merchant

by Kit Reed

  He heard himself shouting, “I’m not like that!”

  Sasha Egan finished as the sun came up.

  “God.” Staggered, he wanted to jump into the box and pull the woman out. He wanted to grab this girl Sasha Egan and shake her until she looked into the center of him and saw who he really was. He was hurt bad and shouting, “Oh, lady. Let me explain!”

  But he had to take the baby to Washington. Contact Zorn and set this up for Friday night.

  Stabbing at the air with the remote, he flipped her rage into oblivion. He had to research!

  After what he had just heard, the still, predictable images on his laptop came as a relief. He didn’t even know he had a plan until he started lining up equipment he never dreamed he would have to use. What is he going to do with it once he’s … That will have to wait until he plays this out. Choosing equipment, he began by locating computer stores in the D.C. area. He needed the best, the one with all the necessary supplies. For the efficient organizer, need ran ahead of the details. She had to know the truth about him no matter what. He would do this, he had to do this, step by step. Spell out what you have to do the way you do everything, Starbird, with great care. You are nothing if not meticulous. Take it step by step and maybe you can figure out what comes next.

  He’s as good behind the wheel as he is at everything else he does and he paid top dollar for the car he drove out of Myrtle Beach Friday morning— a gray Volvo, steady at high speeds. He left on time and proceeded on schedule, everything carefully planned. Once he rolled onto the Interstate he rode the fast lane all the way up the coast. That put him in the D.C. area by late afternoon in spite of scheduled pit stops to feed and change disposable diapers on the product, with a little something extra in the formula so it would sleep. At the designated rest stop north of Raleigh, North Carolina, he made the call to Zorn. MapQuest put driving time at seven plus hours; he made it in closer to six. He waited out the D.C. rush hour in Computer Warehouse in Alexandria, Virginia, where he scored the necessaries. Big place. Latest technology. Everything he needed in stock. Excellent. That left him with an hour to find his hotel and check in, plus an hour alone with the baby. No. The product. Time enough to bath it, feed and change and— Starbird, what the fuck is this?— hold it a little, just a little, before Zorn and the wife came and he handed it off.

  33.

  If the baby Jake says his contact is arranging had come right away, said arrangement might be tolerable, but time drags and questions rush in to fill the space. Something’s wrong; Maury knows the signs. A guy like Jake never just waits. He won’t answer questions, either. Like a seasoned scam artist, he’s too busy creating a diversion— in this case, his celebrated upcoming expose.

  Where she should be excited and happy, Maury is tense. She wants to talk about the baby. All Jake does is talk about the show. She doesn’t know who his newest target is, exactly, but she knows that look: wily predator, grinding his jaws. Woman, is all he’ll say, Nobody, really, but wait for the show. Writer you’ve never heard of. Look, I’m doing her a favor. When I’m done her books will sell like poppers at a rave. His verve makes Maury tremble. Whoever she is, Jake will hunt her down and nail her hide to the wall after he’s flayed her alive on TV. At night he crouches over the display on his laptop. If she speaks he jumps like a cat surprised in the jungle, glaring over its half-eaten prey: don’t bother me. Her laughing, ambitious man, who wants life to fit the patterns he draws, is grappling with problems beyond his control.

  Use his name the way you do, like a weapon. “Jake, what’s going on?”

  He slams the laptop shut. “Don’t! You made me lose my thread.”

  “At least tell me how much longer we have to wait.”

  Anger flares. “I told you, I don’t know!”

  Maury started out hopeful; she starts out hopeful every time, but every new day diminishes her. This is in the hands of a real professional, expert, tops in his field, Jake tells her. Lay back, you’ll have your baby soon. She was happy and excited; it was like being stoned all the time, or out on one of the drugs they gave her the year she completely lost it and tried to off herself. With a baby so close her world expanded like a fresh, green field dotted with flowers. With a baby this close, she floated through perfumed air like a new mom in a commercial, happy and minty-fresh, unless she was freshly minted.

  Hope. You can only travel so far on hope.

  Time works like acid, eating it away.

  If Jake’s connection had made the match within that first week their mysterious arrangement would have flown, no problem. Who has time for questions with a new baby to love? But days went by. Weeks.

  Maury hates being this person but she is too intelligent to take the story at face value. The questions she tried so hard to avoid pop up like hatching aliens in a science fiction movie, proliferating until they fill all available space. Who is this supplier Jake’s found, and why can’t she meet with him? Are they hiding something? Where’s this baby coming from, who’s the birth mother and why is everybody so close-mouthed? What are the legal ramifications, really. Are there legal ramifications?

  Don’t go there, Maury. If you want your baby, you can’t even afford to look.

  Instead she zeroes in on questions she can ask. About the timing. The secrecy. Why the man she knows and loves treats her like a stranger, fobbing her off with that grin. This is a business arrangement but so far Jake hasn’t touched on the money, only that it will be a lot, don’t ask, Maury. Just don’t ask. So far in her childless life Maury Bayless has been through grief and disappointment and a string of medical indignities; she’s been through humiliation and bloody horrors and come up smiling, but the secrecy is eating her alive.

  She may get a baby. It may be here soon, barring the unforeseen. Jake won’t tell her anything about the arrangement so she can’t even guess what might go wrong. If she knew, she could plan. If he’d only tell her she could deal in terms of contingencies, devising Plans B and C, but the more this drags on, the less she knows. The less she knows, the harder it is. She may never have a baby and this is bad, but it’s not what Maury fears most.

  She’s afraid she’ll get her baby and somebody or some thing, some unforeseeable accident will rip it out of her arms.

  Maury does what you do when you don’t know what’s coming. You prepare. This time she is beyond ready— oh, there have been so many times! The baby’s room is freshly painted. Again. Bad karma, she thinks with a visceral twinge, but the baby could come any time, and the room has to be pitch perfect. With babies, stability is important because they can’t tell you what they need. Whatever her baby needs, she has it! The crib is ready— blankets, mobile, God’s plenty of stuffed toys washed or carefully vacuumed and inspected for choking hazards. The little changing table is loaded with wipes and diapers and cotton balls and Q-tips and Kleenex and talcum and ointment and baby oil; safety belt so her baby can’t roll off while her back is turned. The dresser’s filled with caps and bibs and onesies— everything the books say a baby needs— all freshly washed, which is a given. She has velvety towels and baby washcloths, tiny socks and nighties in graduated sizes because you know how fast they grow. On top of the dresser, of course, she has her shelf of how-to’s for new mothers, and a little library of soft books, printed on cloth stuffed with cotton— no sharp edges anywhere. Everything’s in place: self-warming baby bathtub, baby monitor, bottle warmer and music box, night light.

  In the absence of a functional uterus Maury Bayless has all the right equipment. You don’t have to carry a baby and give birth to know how to love and take care of one. Nature doesn’t make you a mother. The baby does. She loves him so much! Jake says it’s a boy.

  Even though she works long days Maury comes home at night and cleans in an excess of energy that precludes thought. Her house is in order, bathrooms immaculate and the kitchen shining in spite of the fact that inside, she’s wrecked. She is walking under water, dragging memories like chains— ghosts of babies past warning her
not to hope too much. She is home less and less now as the wait drags on because at work, at least, she can pretend this is a world she can control. When everything else is at risk the law is stable, with its rule of precedents and provisions for every contingency. Even when clients are volatile the practice of law has its set parameters, precedents, inviolable rules; in an unstable world it offers a series of probable and possible outcomes. A range of events that can be prepared for because they are expected.

  When they run into each other in the daylight, fully dressed and standing, Jake flashes that swift, vulpine grin that worries her because there’s no telling what it hides. He hurries past to keep her from asking questions: Don’t slow me down. Slow him down and he’ll have to think. Jake always says a moving target is harder to hit. For the first time Maury knows exactly what he means. They don’t talk but in bed at night they are voracious— sublimated hunger, she supposes, unless it’s denial.

  Days, she hides in her work. With her life in flux, the only safe place is the office.

  Or it was.

  She’s in the middle of a settlement meeting when a tick on the plate glass distracts her. Looking up, she sees Jake hulking behind the Levelors outside the conference room. Sliver of Jake through the slats. Jake, don’t you see I have clients sitting here? She jerks her head in the direction of her office. Wait. He taps again. This won’t wait. Maury can’t excuse herself, not at this stage in the negotiations. Her eyebrows shoot up. Please. Jake’s brows draw their own line: that scowl. As the meeting proceeds she sees Jake’s restless shadow stalking in tight circles, a blur of compressed anger crowding everything else out of her head.

  When she excuses herself and goes out he pounces like a hawk on an owl. He is laughing. “Let’s go. Let’s go!”

  “Jake, I’m due in court in ten minutes.”

  “Hell with that. I need you now.”

  His bark brings her head up so fast that her neck snaps. “Is something wrong?”

  But her Jake is grinning, triumphant hunter-gatherer bringing home the biggest trophy yet. “Hurry. I’ve booked the shuttle.”

  “Shuttle!”

  “We’re going to D.C.”

  “Washington.” Yes Maury is playing for time, repeating Jake in an attempt to understand. She can’t decipher the subtext unless she makes time to absorb the details here.

  “Maura, come on! Cab’s waiting. We have to go.”

  “Jake, I can’t go to Washington, I’m due in court.”

  “We’re due in Washington tonight.”

  “You go ahead.” She is calculating. Times. Possible flights. “I can be there by nine.”

  “I need you now.” He grabs her arm. “You have to come.”

  Now he is giving her orders. Disturbed, she pulls away. “I don’t have to do anything, Jake. Why all the pressure?”

  All his breath comes out in a rasp of exaggerated patience. “Maur, our baby’s in Washington. He’s waiting. Are you coming or what?” When she does not move Jake says grudgingly, “He wants you to come.”

  Stalling, she repeats, “Our baby.”

  “I thought you would be more excited.”

  “I am, I’m just …”

  “You don’t sound very glad about it.”

  “ … scared.” Fall down and land in a rose garden. Touch the petals and wonder why they are decaying. Use his name again the way you do, like a weapon. This is Maury today, unseated by suspicion. “What are you not telling me, Jake?”

  “Not now, Maury. There isn’t time. We have to go.”

  “What’s the matter here?” God why am I so careful. “Why can’t you be straight with me?”

  Jake shakes his head. He is beyond answers. Seizing Maury’s hand, he tugs her like a large child. “Are you coming or what?”

  God why do I hate myself. The group in the conference room is waiting. They are due in court within the hour. She says, “I need you to explain.” Pull away from him, Maury, even though you want this baby more than anything. Pull hard. Make him let go. Don’t let him see you cry when you have this to do. “Let go.”

  “Honey, the baby’s ready, you have to come!”

  The possibility of joy is terrifying. Lawyers are trained to look for hidden flaws. Her voice is tight with pain. “Not until you tell me where this is coming from.”

  Jake lets go. In that second Maury looks deep into her mate and sees his soul stripped naked, bleak as an unfurnished room. Do we even know each other? Shuddering, she thinks, Did we ever? After a pause that is too long for what it does, Jake says grimly, “Believe me, you don’t want to know where this is coming from.”

  “At least tell me why.”

  “Don’t do this to us, Maury.” Jake fixes her with a look so compelling that in that second they are connected. “Not now.”

  Shaken, she falls into the old courtroom stance, masquerading as a lawyer: question-question-question, spraying him with doubts. “You wouldn’t let me meet him and now you’re trying to make me meet him, what’s going on? What is it, Jake?”

  “It’s our baby, Maury. That’s all you need to know.”

  This stops her dead. Yes she’s angry but there’s more to it than that: the dread that runs in on the heels of joy. She is suspended over a fresh area of vulnerability, skating on risk. What if she sees the baby and they don’t let her have it? What if somebody rips it out of her arms? Shivering, she says, “You started this without me, Jake. You finish it. You go bring the baby home.”

  The elevator comes up. The doors open. Jake tries to walk her inside but he can’t budge her. It kills him to say what he says next. He squeezes out the truth. “I can’t. Not without you.”

  “Why?”

  Look at him. Jake Zorn, husband and provider. Hunter-gatherer, remember? Triumphant only a minute ago. So proud. The strong, weathered face falls apart. Up against the wall now, he makes a terrible admission. In the daily battlefield that is Jake Zorn’s life this is a defeat and he knows it. “Because he won’t do it without you there.”

  She falls back a step. Oh. “Won’t do what, Jake?”

  “Make the transfer!”

  “Transfer?” Oh, this is bad. She won’t ask: transfer of property? He hasn’t said it for a reason. “Jake, are we into something hinky here?

  He wheels. Tears fly. “Maury, do you want this baby or what?”

  And so they have come right down to it. Under the skin Maury is just as hungry and guilty as Jake. Everything inside her goes soft. Helpless now, she flows into him in a stunning act of complicity. “Yes!” “Are you sure?” Jake falters. This is hard for him too; it always has been. He grimaces. “You always want everything aboveboard. You always have.”

  “Aboveboard. I do, Jake. I did.” They are stalled in the hall with the elevator doors rolling shut against Jake’s big foot and then open, shut and open again. Why is it that when you find out you’re just about to get what you want, it makes you feel bad, like happiness is a sin? Guilt, Maury supposes, without knowing why. She has no idea whether it’s for her failure or for whatever crime they are about to commit. In a way, she is grateful to Jake for not telling her. In a case like this you are better off not knowing the details. Ignorance of the … Stop. Just stop.

  He says bitterly, “You’re always such a fucking stickler.”

  “I am.” Maury Bayless grew up believing in sin and in guilt and she knows better than anybody that these can run along with joy even and especially in moments of the greatest arousal. This is what she feels right now: guilty arousal. Their baby’s in Washington and they are flying down to get it, no questions asked, don’t even try; they’re going on the shuttle, Jake has booked it, and as she numbers these items, least to the greatest— their baby is in Washington!— she understands that whether or not Jake ever lets her know the truth of it, they are engaged in something wrong. Helpless with desire, she flows toward him, but in the rhetoric of wrong and acceptance there is always the dubious pause. She finishes, “Just not this time.”

&
nbsp; They are at the ground floor. Jake takes her hands. Urgently, he put the last question. “So you want this baby, no matter what?”

  This is what the hunger does to you.

  In the crunch, intelligent, ethical Maury Bayless is no stronger than anybody else. Need outruns reason and she follows Jake out of the elevator, helplessly excited, guilty and breathless as a virgin on prom night. “No matter what.”

  34.

  Tom Starbird ought to be in orbit by this time, smoothly lifted off the globe. Gone from this place. In mid-ocean on a Polish freighter, on a flight around the world or mysteriously vaporized, vanished from the knowable earth. Because he is the best at what he does, the baby merchant always disappears the second the job is done.

  But here he is. Starbird is holed up in a small hotel in the North-east section of downtown Washington, in a dim neighborhood where questions don’t come up and outsiders know not to ask.

  What’s the matter with him?

  He is hung up in front of a blank TV.

  Even he can’t tell you what’s the matter with him. The transfer of property is complete. The pet carrier he used to transport the product is empty. The product and the supplies he bought to tide it over are gone. Without the baby here the room is peculiarly empty. It’s as though a cold wind just blew in and cleaned him out.

  Except for the sophisticated equipment he bought on his way into the Capitol— digicorder with a 150-gigabyte virtual drive, compatible blue laser DVD burner, blanks big enough to store three hours of video— the room is empty of Starbird, too. There is the Lands’ End bag filled with cash that Zorn brought, but Starbird doesn’t want the money. He’ll leave it in a Dumpster when he goes. There is nothing he wants to take away from this. He wants to start clean.