Dante's Poison

by Lynne Raimondo

  Still, I wasn’t naive about my state of mind. Hope is a powerful stimulant, and when the e-mail came announcing the US trial of a new drug that had shown promising results in the Netherlands, I was on the phone before I even reached the end of the subject line. To say I bullied my way into Melissa’s study was putting it mildly. I called in every favor I was owed, including a major arm-twisting campaign by my boss, Sep, who played golf with half the hospital directors in the city. He wasn’t wholeheartedly in favor, but couldn’t say no after getting me involved in a case that had almost cost me my life. My friend Josh was even more downbeat, concerned it would undo all of the progress I’d made over the last year.

  “Aren’t you going to feel like shit if it doesn’t work out?” he’d said to me recently on one of our Sunday forays to Jewel, the supermarket being one of the few places where I capitulated to the advantages of being guided. “You’re better these days than I’ve seen you in a long while. You’ve got a great kid and an ex who’s talking to you again. You have more work than you can handle, especially with all the lawyers knocking at your door. Why take a chance?” He pushed our grocery cart forward.

  “You do realize that we’re talking about something that might let me see again?”

  “Maybe. I read the journal article put out by wooden-shoe people. The results for guys like you weren’t so impressive. You want some of these apples? They’re on sale for ninety-nine cents a pound.”

  “Sure,” I said, letting him place my hand on the bin. “Anyway, a twenty-three percent success rate sounds pretty damn good to me.”

  “Here’s a bag. Twenty-three percent made it all the way to 20/800. You’d still be taking cabs and wearing headsets at movies.”

  I selected a few of the fruit that didn’t seem worm-eaten and popped them into the plastic. “You’re really trying to talk me out of this?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just that I remember what you were like . . . back then. Aren’t you just a teensy bit worried about taking it on the chin again? You’re going to be under a lot of pressure, not knowing whether the drug’s doing any good, never mind whether the pills you’re taking are made of sugar. If it were me, I’d be seeing all sorts of things that weren’t really there.”

  Josh moved ahead and I followed along, hanging onto his elbow. “I’m a shrink, remember? I think I’ll know it if I start hallucinating. And my expectations aren’t that high.”

  “Forgive the look of skepticism on my face.”

  “C’mon, Josh. You know why I have to do this.”

  “Louis is not going to love his father any less because he can’t read a newspaper.”

  “Yeah, but maybe he’d prefer somebody he can play ball with when he’s older.”

  “Speaking of which, how’d the last visit go?”

  I’d just returned from a weekend on the East Coast, where my son and former wife lived. It was only the third time we’d been together since he was an infant.

  “I don’t know. Annie’s still balking about leaving us alone together. She thinks I’m not going to notice if Louis lets go of my hand and runs out into traffic. That’s another reason I have to try. Maybe a change, even if it’s a small one, would help win her over.”

  Josh couldn’t argue with this and let the subject drop for the duration of the shopping trip. But I could tell he wasn’t finished and had been going out of my way to avoid him ever since.

  I was still thinking about our conversation when my phone played the first few bars of The Letter—the Box Tops version, not that I have anything against Joe Cocker—signaling an incoming text. I fished it out of the holder on my belt, slipped on my Bluetooth, and ran my finger over the glass until Weary—my nickname for the factory-supplied voiceover—chirped “Messages.” I double-tapped the icon to open the program. It was Hallie Sanchez, reminding me I’d agreed to accompany her to the theater that night.

  “Pick up your office 5?” it said.

  I turned on the latest bit of start-up wizardry, a touch-screen program that intuited what I meant to say even if I hit all the wrong keys, and wrote: “Better say 5:30. Late start today.”

  A minute later Hallie texted a response. “OK but be on time—for a change. Curtain goes up at seven.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I thumb-typed back, before hitting Send and replacing the phone in its holder.

  The server came then and slid a plate onto my table. It smelled good, and my taste buds lit up like the Fourth of July. “Careful with that, it’s hot,” he warned, loudly enough so you could hear him across the street. I didn’t recognize the voice, so I figured he was new.

  I smiled up at him and winked. “I hope so. At $14.95 a pop I’d be upset if it were cold.”

  He didn’t respond and just stood there while I gathered up my knife and fork. When he hadn’t moved off a few moments later, I lifted my head again. “Is there a problem? Don’t tell me there’s a fly in my soup.”

  “It’s, uh, not soup,” he said in an even louder voice. Evidently a Millennial who’d never heard of the Marx Brothers. I took pity on him. “Relax, son, I was only joking. I know it’s a pizza.”

  He continued to hover over me. “You sure you don’t need anything else?”

  “No, thank you. This is more than enough for one and my drink’s still full.”

  “What I meant was, it’s not pre-cut.”

  By this time, I was sure every head in the restaurant was turned our way. It was becoming clear this wasn’t going to be one of my good days. “All the more reason to eat it with a knife and fork,” I said. To show him how it was done, I carved off a chunk and ate it.

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, that’s amazing.”

  “Not as amazing as being left alone to enjoy my meal.”

  “No, I mean how you can do that by yourself.”

  “Why?” I said, my patience at an end. “Do I look like I’m two years old?”

  “No.”

  “Or senile?”

  “You shouldn’t—”

  “Shouldn’t what?” I growled.

  “Talk to me like that,” he whined self-pityingly. “I was just trying to be helpful. Why do you people always have to be so bitchy?”

  You people. Before I could stop it my hand shot up and fastened on his shirt collar. I pulled him down to my level and hissed in his ear. “Listen, pal, I’m assuming you haven’t met anyone like me before. Either that or your mother didn’t teach you any manners. But this isn’t Scent of a Woman and I don’t need to be babysat by a punk who only just started shaving. So why don’t you get the twist out of your Hello Kitty boxers and go back to sexting your boyfriend before I rip that cute little ponytail out of your head.”

  The point finally sunk in. He twisted out of my grip, and took off, stage-whispering, “Asshole!” before pausing and snarling for even greater effect, “And I don’t have a ponytail!”

  Definitely not one of my good days.

  When I got back on the street it was nearly two and I was in a foul mood. As I was leaving, the manager had come up and offered his apologies, but it was just as much my fault as the server’s. In the blind community, snark is generally looked down upon as a way of dealing with rude behavior. It just reinforces the notion that we’re all miserable cripples who melt down at the slightest reminder of how bad we have it. I knew this, but cheerful acceptance of stupidity has never been one of my strong suits, even if overreacting to it inevitably causes me pangs of regret later on.

  I pulled on my ’69 World Series hat to shield my eyes from the sun, and set out walking south. It was a hot, late summer day, and the tourists were out in droves, gawking at the designer temples on the Mag Mile or getting fleeced in one of the horse-drawn carriages for hire by the Water Tower. Every so often a contingent of them clopped by, followed by a string of cars leaning on their horns. I tapped back and forth with my cane, idly ticking off landmarks as I went: a bicycle rack halfway up the seven hundred block of Rush, a dip in the sidewalk where it crossed the loading
bay of a swank hotel.

  I’d learned cane travel from a petite dictator named Cherie who’d been blind from birth but had never let that stop her. When I hired her she was working on a PhD in mathematics and teaching orientation and mobility on the side, primarily to newly blinded adults like me who thought a residential program sounded like a stint at Camp Grenada. Cherie had started me off light with a spine-tingling journey around the block, gradually ramping up the pressure over the course of months until I could go most places I wanted without puking in fright. I’d chosen a cane over a dog partly because I don’t like the animals and partly out of convenience—canes don’t need to be bathed or fed, and they never try to steal someone’s dinner—and had even come to enjoy, in a Dora the Explorer sort of way, hiking around using a combination of sound, tactile clues, and memory for guidance. Of course, the cane drew plenty of stares, but the good news was I didn’t have to see them.

  At Superior, I turned left and headed east down the short block to Michigan, where I stopped at the crosswalk and listened. I usually planned my route so that I was traveling in the same direction as one-way traffic. Idling cars to my side meant the light was still red. When they started to roll I went with them, hustling ahead of slow-moving pedestrians so I wouldn’t get stuck on the center island when the light changed again. The roadway was simmering in the afternoon heat, and I was relieved to get across without spearing a pile of gooey asphalt. The building I worked in was two blocks farther on, fronted by a series of rectangular tree boxes. I slid the cane tip along their bases until I reached the blast of air-conditioning coming from the door. Just before entering, I paused to check if my friend Mike, the Streetwise seller, was still around, but he must have sold out his stock for the day because he didn’t call out his usual friendly greeting.

  At the guard station inside, I stopped to register my new government ID with the security officer, a sleepy-eyed fellow named Richard who was reputed to be the building’s first Kush practitioner.

  “The old picture was better,” he commented after perusing it. “This one makes you look like Doctor Strangelove.”

  “Vielen Dank. The guys at the Secretary of State were in a particularly surly mood this week.”

  “Yeah. I bet the latest clean government act is cutting down on their tips. So you’re five-foot-ten?”

  “Nine and a half. I fudged it some.”

  “And a hundred fifty?”

  “That too.”

  “In my opinion your eyes are more hazel than green.”

  “Next time I’ll bring you along to help me fill out the forms.”

  “I’d sooner spend a day having toothpicks shoved up my nails. OK, your papers are in order. Vee can let you in. But don’t go sabotaging the elevators. They break down enough as it is.”

  “We’ll meet again,” I said, giving him a stiff-armed salute.

  I maneuvered over to the bank on the far wall and listened impatiently to the chimes of the cars moving at a snail’s pace through the floors above.

  “Well, well, well. What have we here?” came a voice from behind.

  I sighed inwardly. It was Graham Young, the ever-friendly and ever-present manufacturer’s representative from Atria Laboratories, one of the big drug companies headquartered in the northwest suburbs. I’d known Graham B. B. (Before Blinkdom), so his looks were no mystery. He was in his late twenties, with a linebacker’s build, a toothy smile, and a thick shock of auburn hair that invited comparison to Howdy Doody.

  I gave him a tepid greeting.

  “Just back from lunch? Or catching some rays? Can’t say I blame you. Wish I had time for it myself. But you know how it is. Miles to go before I sleep.”

  “I didn’t know you were a poetry fan.”

  “Yeah, love that guy. Especially the one about the road not taken in the snow. So inspirational. Can I help you with that button?”

  “If I’m not mistaken, it’s already lit.”

  “Well, now, so it is. Can’t put anything by you. I always tell the other reps, watch out for that Doctor Angelotti. Sharp as a tack despite the bad peepers. How’re we doing today? Keeping out of trouble?”

  “Everything except the trouble that usually wants to follow me around.” The elevator door opened, and I stepped aside to let the departing passengers out.

  “Ha, ha, ha! You’re not including me, I hope,” Graham chortled. “Here, let me give you a hand.”

  I shook off the arm he offered and followed him in. As far as I could tell, we were the only two in the car.

  “You headed up to your shop? On ten, if I remember correctly.” This was an obvious charade. A day didn’t go by when Graham wasn’t hanging around the halls of my practice suite, pitching his wares to everyone who hadn’t remembered to set the automatic lock on their door. Josh called him “Elmer” in reference to his adhesive qualities. The name I’d coined for him couldn’t be printed in a newspaper.

  I leaned over to push the button. “Why don’t you give me your pitch while we’re going up. That way we can get it over with.”

  “You don’t mean an elevator pitch, do you? Ha, ha, ha!” he crowed again.

  “That’s exactly what I mean. I have a lot of work to get done this afternoon.”

  “But no patients scheduled. I checked with Yelena before driving down from Barrington.” Yelena is my “assistant,” the title now used in preference to the archaic and patently misogynistic term “secretary,” except that assisting me in most things—including keeping Graham at bay—seemed to be outside her job description. “That’s quite a gal you’ve got there,” Graham continued. “I can tell how dedicated she is. Always picks up the phone on the first ring.”

  Unless it happened to be me trying to reach her. “I agree she’s special. So what snake oil do you want to tell me about today?”

  “Well,” Graham said in a confiding tone, “I was hoping you’d have time for a little PowerPoint presentation I put together on Placeva.”

  Placeva was the latest iteration of a popular antidepressant that was one of Atria’s biggest sellers. The drug was about to come off patent, meaning that the period when Atria could set an exorbitant price for it was nearing an end. Meaning also that Atria was in a scramble to cut off the cheaper generic competitors that would soon flood the market. Drug companies often did this by making minuscule alterations to the product in the hope of persuading the Food and Drug Administration to start the clock running again.

  I said, “Let me guess. You’ve added a timed-release feature.”

  “How did you know?”

  “And instead of little yellow pills, they now come in blue.”

  “Right again. And in an oblong tablet that’s easier to swallow.”

  “Well, that’s certainly a breakthrough.”

  “We think so too. And get this—our latest studies show fewer side effects than in previous versions.”

  “You mean no hard-ons that last for hours?”

  Graham tee-heed. “You betcha. And on the flip side, almost no decrease in sexual function, which as you know is the number-one reason men stop taking their medication.”

  “That’s good to hear. The next time I get depressed I’ll know what to take.”

  “And if you do, uh, ever have that kind of problem, I have a Viagra substitute that might interest you. It comes in a liquid version, so you can literally pour yourself a stiff one.”

  It pained me to think how often he had used that one.

  “That’s great, Graham. I’ll be sure to mention it to my urologist when I next see him.”

  The door to my floor finally opened and I exited, with Graham still stuck to my side.

  “So can I come by your office and show you the presentation?”

  “Why don’t you e-mail it to me? That way I can really take my time with it.”

  “OK, but how about a few samples to go with?”

  Free samples were the dirty little secret of the medical profession. Drug company salesmen handed them out like wa
mpum at Plymouth Rock and for largely the same reason. Softened up this way, doctors could usually be counted on to return the favor the next time they reached for their prescription pads. I didn’t normally accept them, though I occasionally broke my own rule if a patient couldn’t afford a brand medication that seemed to work.

  I gave Graham a baleful look. We went through the same Q&A every time he managed to corner me.

  “How about some office supplies then? I have pads, pens, prescription forms . . . whatever you need.”

  “No thanks. I’m pretty much running a green operation these days.”

  “Oh, I guess that’s right. Well, I guess I’ll take myself off then.” He continued to linger by my side. “Unless . . . I don’t suppose you’d be interested in coming to one of our events? I have a really good one coming up two weekends from now at the Crystal Lake Resort. A full day of continuing education credit and all the golf you can handle.”

  “Thanks for the offer, but no. I’m afraid my handicap isn’t what it used to be. On account of the present one, if you get my drift.”

  “You sure?” Graham persisted. “The food will be great and Dr. Frain will be speaking on one of the panels.”

  As if that was some kind of inducement. “Graham . . .” I sighed loudly.

  “I know, I know. Well, thanks for the time anyway. I’ll be around again in a few days to check on you.”

  “Don’t go to any heroic measures if you can’t find me,” I said, finally making my escape.

  I stopped by Yelena’s desk to see what might be cooking, but she was apparently off on one of her afternoon intelligence-gathering missions. When I got to my office the door was shut. I turned the handle to find someone inside. “Yours truly,” Josh called out from the direction of the couch. The cushion wheezed like an accordion as he heaved himself into a sitting position. I braced myself for another lecture about Melissa’s study.

  “Catching up on your beauty rest?” I asked, removing my jacket and hanging it on a hook behind the door, along with my cane.