OMEGA

by Patrick Lynch

  Yes, Ford understood. His experience with Lucy Patou had taught him. But then, he was a part of a professional team, an employee. According to Helen Wray, Novak was retired. So which people could he be talking about? Ford wondered if he could draw Novak out by telling him about the Shark and the possibility of vancomycin-resistant staphylococcus at the Willowbrook. It would be very unprofessional, of course, but Novak wasn’t going to go to the press with a scare story. Thinking this through, Ford suddenly realized that Novak was saying good-bye.

  “I’ll be in touch in the next couple of days,” he said.

  “Professor Novak?”

  But it was too late. He had hung up.

  When Helen finally arrived, just before eight, it was Sunny who got to the front door first.

  “Hi!”

  They were shaking hands, smiling broadly when Ford reached them.

  “This is Sonia, my daughter,” he said over the top of Sunny’s head.

  “And you’re Helen, right?”

  “That’s me,” said Helen with a big grin.

  They went through to the living room. Helen took a seat on the couch next to Sunny. She had pushed her hair up into a soft knot, revealing a slenderness, a fragility that was surprising. Dressed in her corporate shoulder pads, she came across as so strong, so dynamic, she looked as if she might be an aerobics nut—all freckles and sinew—but the sleeveless black cocktail dress she was wearing revealed a paleness, a pearly sheen, that struck Ford as exotic, distinctly old-world. She was like some beautiful French courtesan. For a moment he could only stare. Helen smiled.

  “We’ll have to go pretty soon. They won’t hold the table for long.”

  “I’m ready when you are,” said Ford.

  “You might want to put on some shoes,” said Helen, pointing at his feet.

  “And maybe some socks,” said Sunny.

  Ford stared down at his naked feet, and suddenly Helen and Sunny were laughing.

  He shrugged.

  “What? What’s so funny?”

  “Oh, Dad.” Sunny tried to catch her breath. “It’s you. You’re so…” She looked at Helen, hoping for some help.

  But Helen was staring at Ford, smiling warmly.

  “Perfect,” she said.

  He left them on the couch, still laughing. When he returned five minutes later, they were getting to know each other, Sunny obviously struck by Helen’s sophistication. As he entered the room, they both turned to look at his feet.

  “I hope those socks are matching,” said Sunny.

  4

  “You know, this was the first proper restaurant I came A to in LA,” said Helen, once they were installed in the intimate back room of the restaurant. “And I saw Andie MacDowell sitting at that table right behind you.”

  “No kidding.”

  Ford looked round. The back room seemed to be the preferred area for couples. Not counting the odd bottle of I-love-you champagne, Ford guessed that Chianti did its real business out front in the cucina section, where it was brighter and noisier and where there were big groups.

  “That was actually a year and a half ago,” said Helen. “I’ve been wanting to come back here. I love pasta, and this place has the best.”

  “But you only live a few miles away,” said Ford.

  “I know, I know.”

  “Do they keep you that busy at Stern?”

  “Most of the time, yes. But that isn’t the only thing.” She shrugged. “I mean, it’s the kind of place you go to on a date, isn’t it? Not just when you’re hungry. It’s a place you dress up for.”

  This was a signal even he could pick up: she hadn’t been out on a date for eighteen months. He had been thinking that she was maybe on the rebound, looking to replace in a hurry someone she’d lost, and that was why she had asked him out. But after eighteen months? And the way she was looking at him … Every time he spoke, her dark eyes drifted down to his mouth.

  “So you don’t like dressing up?” he said innocently, trying to make it seem as if he drew no inference from her words.

  “Yes, I like to dress up,” she said, smiling. “I just haven’t had any one to dress up for. Not since I got here. You needn’t look surprised, though I appreciate the gallantry. To tell the truth, it hasn’t been a priority.”

  “Did you…?” Ford hesitated, unsure whether he should be candid just because she had been. “I mean, were you involved with anyone before you came here?”

  “In New York? Sure. The last four years. His name was Ted. Worked for the Wall Street Journal.”

  “Four years,” said Ford. “That’s a long time.”

  “Long enough.”

  “What went … Sorry, I shouldn’t—”

  “What went wrong? Nothing really. Nothing dramatic. I wanted to take the job out here. It was a big step for me. I’d worked hard for it. He didn’t want to come with me. I mean, things were starting to work out for him on the Journal, so … well, we decided to call it quits.”

  Ford didn’t know what to say. She was so open about everything that it was disconcerting. And yet there was a soft-spoken weariness in the way she talked about her life that touched him. It was as if she were tired of pretense, of trying to make a good impression, as if she just wanted to be honest about everything from the word go, so that no one could say they’d been deceived later on. Maybe his being a doctor helped.

  “Does that seem terrible?” she said. “To split up because of a job?”

  “No,” said Ford. “It just … It does seem a little sad, after four years.”

  “I don’t know. I probably could have been persuaded to stay. But as soon as I talked to Ted about it, I mean that was it. He wouldn’t even think about moving out West with me. There was no way he was going to take a chance with his career just because it suited the little woman. You know. He even had the gall to say I’d probably give up work once I was married, so what was the point? Not that he was offering, of course.”

  “He sounds a little … unreconstructed.”

  “That’s one way of describing him. I can think of some others. The way I look at it, my going for this job kind of smoked him out. I found out what our relationship really meant to him.”

  “I see. Do you still keep in touch?”

  “He sends birthday greetings on E-mail. Now I heard he’s going with some girl from the Christian Science Monitor, can you imagine?”

  “Not really.”

  “Blonde. Twenty-four. Loves to cook. It’s a perfect match.”

  “Oh,” said Ford. “That’s too bad.”

  “No, it isn’t. I made the right decision. I put my work first, and it’s paying off. My boss may be moving out to Europe in a few months. It’s not in the bag, but with a little luck I think I could be taking his place. At this rate, three more years and I could make the executive board. It beats baking bread and changing diapers.”

  The waiter brought them their starters and the bottle of chardonnay Ford had selected from the more expensive end of the list.

  “Well,” he said, raising his glass, “here’s to—what shall we say?—the executive fast track.”

  Helen watched him as she drank. Ford felt suddenly self-conscious, as if it were now his turn to open up, to explain his circumstances. Instinctively he reached up and tugged at the neck of his sweater. Helen’s look softened.

  “I know what you think,” she said. “You think I’ve got my priorities wrong.”

  “Not at all. I—”

  “It’s okay. I mean if money was the important thing for you, you wouldn’t be at the Willowbrook. You’d be raking it in at Columbia Health Care or somewhere.”

  “You’re assuming they’d have me.”

  “Yes, I am, because they would.”

  Ford reached for his knife and cut into the succulent crostini on his plate.

  “All right, maybe so. But that’s a decision I made. A career decision. You moved out to LA because there was a job you wanted to do here. So did I. Maybe the Willowbrook do
esn’t pay as well as other organizations, but it pays better than the army did, and in its own way—I mean in trauma—it’s a leader in its field. Almost everywhere else is a step down.”

  “Sure,” said Helen. “I can see that.”

  “I don’t mean it’s the number one in terms of technology or even necessarily expertise—though I think we have the best of both—but in terms of experience. We deal with just about the biggest range of injuries and emergencies you could think of. And every one is different, every day is different. So we’re constantly developing new techniques and responses. That to me, as a trauma surgeon, is worth one hell of a lot. I guess in the end it’s just a question of what gets you out of bed in the morning.”

  Helen looked at him, a smile forming on her lips.

  “Nice try,” she said. “But that’s not the whole story, and you know it. I heard your speech at the conference, remember? I got the impression that it was, I don’t know, a cause for you—I mean, in a good way. You felt you were fighting for something.”

  Ford frowned. “I was trying damned hard not to make it sound that way. I was trying to stay factual.”

  Helen shook her head. “Sorry, Doctor. It got pretty obvious, I’m afraid, the way you felt, especially once you stopped reading from your notes. You became pretty polemical, as a matter of fact. People started to sit up.”

  “People started to leave.”

  She laughed, tilting her head back.

  “I think that was just too much to drink at lunchtime.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Well, maybe some people thought you were a little too … political.”

  “Political? What did I say that was political?”

  Helen reached for her wineglass, rotating it gently by the stem.

  “With a small p, everything.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’re entitled to your opinions. Anyway, I like that, I really do.”

  She fixed her eyes on him, and he felt it like a physical pressure, as if she were sending a thought wave across the table.

  “But I’ve never taken the slightest interest in politics. I just think…” Ford sighed. She was forcing him to explain feelings, instincts that until that moment had never been put into words. “Maybe it’s all those years in the army, I don’t know, but…”

  “But what?”

  “But I still believe in this country. I can’t put it any other way. I still believe in a United States. You know, one nation and all that.” He gave a shrug. “Listen to me. It probably sounds a little old-fashioned.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  He leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table.

  “The way I see it, we’re all of us immigrants here. Our ancestors came from every corner of the earth. Out of all that diversity they built one country. They didn’t roll out the barbed wire and divide the place up. Yet today, I see exactly that happening, bit by bit, don’t you? The gay community, the African-American community, the dog-owning community. I mean, with all those communities what happens to society? You stay on your side of the fence, and I’ll stay on mine. I wonder what kind of future we’re making.”

  Helen frowned.

  “I don’t know. I guess I’ve never really thought about it.”

  “No one seems to think about it. Or if they think about it, they don’t say very much. All you hear about is rights—my rights, my freedoms—but you never hear anything about responsibilities, about duty. Those are always for the other guy.”

  Helen watched him closely. Ford looked down at his food, beginning to feel self-conscious again.

  “You really believe all that stuff, don’t you?” she said. “Ask not what your country can do for you…”

  “Yes. More or less. I think a lot of people do. It just isn’t very fashionable to admit it.” He laughed, trying to lighten things up a little. “I guess I’m not a very fashionable guy. Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize,” said Helen. “I’m not sure I like fashionable guys.” Suddenly she was serious. “It’s rare to find someone who actually believes in something. I think it’s great.”

  Ford looked at her. The pinpoint reflections of her eyes seemed to add to their darkness. It was a darkness, he sensed, that came from depth. Her openness revealed only a surface; it did not open a way to the interior. Yet that was what pulled him towards her. Beauty aside, it was the sense of her hidden self that made her so fascinating.

  Suddenly there was a loud crash from the front of the restaurant. A waiter had knocked over a whole dish of pasta. Another waiter said something as he passed, and a ripple of laughter went round the tables. Suddenly the atmosphere felt lighter, partylike. Helen and Ford exchanged a smile.

  “By the way, I got a call from our friend Professor Novak this evening,” he said, deliberately changing the subject. “Just before you arrived.”

  Helen took the wineglass from her lips without drinking.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. He said he and I were on the same wavelength.”

  “Oh? What did he mean by that?”

  “He didn’t say exactly. He wanted to know all the details of those resistant pneumoniae cases I talked about at the conference.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t really know. I asked him, but he just gave me a lot of hot air about protocols and professional etiquette. He was pretty secretive, actually.”

  Helen sipped her wine, thinking. She was intrigued, Ford could tell.

  “Do you think he is doing some kind of study?”

  “I don’t know. He did say his interest was not just academic. So maybe he isn’t quite as retired as we thought he was.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “You said Novak was a biochemist, right?” Ford asked. “Did research on medicines?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “So epidemiology was never his field in the past?”

  “Not really, at least not directly.”

  “Not directly?”

  Helen put down her glass. Her Parma ham was almost untouched. Ford was about to say something, but stopped himself just in time. He wasn’t out to dinner with Sunny, and Helen Wray wasn’t out to dinner with her father. This was a date. And he was having more fun than he’d had in a long time.

  “Well, at Helical Systems the main focus of research became anti-infectives,” she explained.

  “I remember now, you told me.”

  “That’s right. Actually I did some asking around a few days ago, because all this was before my time. Apparently they started out hoping to make headway against cancer, but switched their focus to antibiotics later.”

  “That’s quite a switch.”

  Helen smiled, shaking her head.

  “Medically yes, biochemically no. You see, the Helical team, the whole venture, was based on research into genetic medicines, medicines that are supposed to work on the genes of diseased cells—like cancer cells—or bacteria. The theory, the biochemical technology was basically the same. The difference was between the type of target.”

  “And bacteria turned out to be easier targets than cancer cells.”

  “They must have thought so, I guess. Or maybe the cancer field was just getting a little too crowded.”

  “Crowded? How do you mean?”

  “I’m just speculating. You see, the theory behind their work had actually been around for a few years. By the late eighties a number of people had started trying to develop these synthetic DNA drugs—antisense and triplex agents they’re called—but they were all concentrating on human cells. Their main targets were viral infections like HIV and various forms of cancer, especially leukemia. That work’s still going on. Nobody ever thought about focusing on bacteria, probably because developing new antibiotics didn’t seem like much of a priority at the time. I think maybe the Helical team saw a gap in the market.”

  “A gap they never managed to fill.”

  Helen put her kn
ife and fork together neatly at the side of her plate.

  “So the story goes,” she said. “I mean, no.”

  “But you’re not sure?”

  She shrugged.

  “Well there’ve been rumors, rumors that Helical had been ready for clinical trials on a new antibiotic. I mean, before the Stern takeover. Expectations were certainly running high for a time. They had a great team there: Scott Griffen, Lewis Spierenberg, not to mention Novak himself, some real hotshots. They were supposed to have overcome some big obstacles.”

  Ford hastily swallowed a mouthful of bread and pate. He wanted to get this straight.

  “Do you know how the drug was supposed to work?” he asked.

  “In theory, sure. These agents all do the same thing, in essence: they interfere with the synthesis of proteins that contribute to disease.”

  “Sounds good. How?”

  “Well, just think back to how proteins are made inside a cell. Every protein is coded for by a particular gene in the cell’s nucleus. For a protein to be made the gene must be copied from the double-strand DNA into individual molecules of single-strand messenger RNA, right?”

  “Right. That’s transcription.”

  “And then conies translation: outside the nucleus the messenger RNA gets converted into the required protein. Essentially a two-step process. Well, triplex and antisense agents are strands of specially designed DNA. They call them oligonucleotides. Triplex oligonucleotides insert themselves inside particular genes, turning the double helix of DNA into a triple helix, hence the name. That messes up the first step, the transcription. Prevents the transcription of the messenger RNA.”

  The waiter reappeared to take their plates. He looked almost hurt at the sight of Helen’s barely disturbed salad, but said nothing.

  “And antisense agents?”

  “They mess up the second step. They’re designed to bind to specific types of messenger RNA. Once bound, the RNA becomes impossible to translate.”

  “To translate … to make sense of, I suppose.”

  “Right. Antisense. So you get no translation. If I remember right, antisense agents were thought likely to be more promising, because they don’t have to penetrate the nucleus, which is quite tricky biochemically. But whether you follow the triplex strategy or the antisense strategy, the result should be the same: the protein that’s causing the problem—spreading the cancer or the virus or whatever—doesn’t get made. The same principle applies to bacteria, except that there you’d be looking to stop the synthesis of proteins that the bugs actually need, to survive or to replicate. That’s it.”