Side Effects

by Harvey Jacobs

  “I know the two of you don’t get along,” Polly said. “But he is attractive even if he is a crappy person. It’s hard to explain why I decided to go with him so I won’t try. If things were different . . .”

  Simon discharged a string of slow, deliberate bubbles.

  “Well I can’t help it if you’re sort of off the charts. And why do you call me Placebo?”

  “It’s hard to explain,” Simon said. “It goes way back. I once heard Dr. Fikel . . . hey, let’s forget it. Just be happy that you’re an amazingly healthy girl.”

  Simon had never told Polly Moon anything intimate about his own medical history or shared restricted information—a contractual requirement—about his treatments with Aquathaline.

  Aquathaline

  Trade name: Zepharia

  A new star in the Regis Pharmaceuticals Galaxy

  33

  Twice a week, Simon went to Dr. Fikel’s office where a dose of the pasty drug was dissolved in a solution of bicarbonate of soda, fortified with sugar and infused into his feeding tube. Every treatment gave him biting cramps. Dr. Fikel noted his reactions on tape.

  “The subject shows signs of cyanosis. He passes copious quantities of gas while complaining of intestinal distress. There are indications of gastroenteritis. His pulse rate touches 160 and his blood pressure fluctuates significantly. Some mental confusion is evident under questioning.

  “Symptoms subside in a matter of minutes. I would infer that the immediate effects of Aquathaline are well within the parameters defined as Normal and Acceptable in the accompanying literature (pages thirty-four through forty-six) and that no lasting damage is in any way evident. The patient sometimes experiences extreme vertigo but is otherwise unaffected. He returns to ordinary activity after receiving the mandatory caution about operating heavy equipment or indulging in excessive physical exertion.

  “There are encouraging signs of improvement and reason for cautious optimism. The dorsal gill trench seems to be filling with fatty tissue even as our subject’s lung capacity shows no further deterioration. His ability to breathe outside his jug has increased approximately 34 percent to nearly two minutes since treatments commenced.”

  Simon had mixed feelings about any change for the better. He was eager to shuck off the burden of tank, tubes and monitors before starting high school but leaving the realm of the extraordinary was not all roses. He was adjusted to things as they were.

  Simon enjoyed having Rowena refill his well every night, although she complained that the job gave her the creeps. She told Robert J. it was like changing diapers and hinted more than once that it would be nice for him to take a more active role in his son’s maintenance. Rowena felt that watching ball games was insufficient bonding between a father and son and that it was blatantly unfair to leave the messy jobs to her.

  If Robert J. left most of those mechanics to his wife, he did enjoy showing off Simon at Quikpix where an autographed picture of ex-President Nixon was prominently displayed under crossed flags. Simon’s notoriety had increased business, no question. Many customers asked for photos of themselves shaking his hand or pressing their noses against his bottle.

  Simon’s relationship with Polly Moon was on shaky ground since she’d accepted the prom date from Assman. He did his best to understand her position—better a jock than a freak for an escort at an event as important as the Middle School prom—but there was a residue of bitterness. His meetings with Placebo had become cooler and more casual but, pride be damned, playing brother and sister was better than nothing. But not much better.

  The evening of the big dance, Polly called him to ask for a meeting at Arch of Angels Memorial Park, where the bones of passing pioneers, hunters and trappers mingled with the dust of Glenda’s early settlers. Simon was still reeling from a treatment earlier that afternoon but he couldn’t say no.

  While Rowena and Robert J. watched All in the Family, he snuck out of the house and managed the five blocks to the Arch of Angels gate then headed for the grave of Jabez Pine, a licensed pirate who’d chased down six British frigates during the Revolutionary War. His ship, Rachael, named for his wife, was battered by a storm off Rhode Island. Rachael Pine transported her drowned husband to Glenda when it was no more than a frontier trading post. Her second husband, who sold guns and whiskey to Indians in exchange for furs, didn’t object when the widow Rachael, a sentimental woman, brought Jabez Pine west along with her modest dowry. Now Rachael and Jabez rested together under an elaborate statue commissioned by Glenda’s citizens—a great marble eagle preening on the prow of a stone ship, its wings protecting thirteen eaglets with open beaks. That shrine was one of Polly’s favorite places.

  When Simon got there he found her gazing up at a luminous sky. “I’m sorry we ever walked on the lunar surface,” she said.

  “Is that what you wanted to tell me?” Simon said. “Because I’m not the least bit sorry. I wouldn’t mind being up there right now.”

  “The reason I called is to say how sad I am about going to the prom without you. I’ll be dancing with Albert but I’ll be thinking about Simon.”

  “I’m against all forms of dancing anyway. I’d have every dancer killed except for a few Rockettes to keep frozen or stuffed in the Smithsonian. So forget about Simon and have a good time.”

  “Simon?”

  “What now?”

  “Let’s get naked and cuddle.”

  “Are you serious, Polly? In Arch of Angels? What happens if somebody comes along to hang a wreath or something? I can just see the front page of the Express.”

  “We’ll skinny dip under the stars. Jabez and Rachael would love it.”

  “I have mixed feelings about this. How would the dead feel?”

  “I know this is sanctified ground,” Polly said. “I wasn’t talking about anything like penetration. Just lying together and looking up at the beautiful ornaments adorning our little universe.”

  “You’re some girl,” Simon said. “You’d get naked with me and later you get dressed and go galloping with what’s his name. I don’t know, Placebo, I just don’t know.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Sorry,” Simon said.

  Polly pulled off her no nukes T-shirt and unhooked her bra. There were her naked breasts swinging full in the wind like Jabez Pine’s sails as she reached for Simon’s belt.

  “There’s a lot of tubing and an auxiliary pump down there,” Simon said. “Before we connect you’ll have to disconnect. And later, re-connect.”

  “Don’t be frightened,” Polly said. “I have a flair for fixing things. I once did a toaster-oven I found in a dumpster. It worked like a charm.” She stroked a long, rubber tube that ran from Simon’s bottle toward his groin. She unbuttoned his shirt, pressed her body against his bare chest, unbuckled his belt, slid open the zipper on his fly and laughed when his jeans got caught around his knees in a tangle of wires.

  “You think that’s funny?” Simon said. “I’m knotting up.”

  Simon heard the snaps on Polly’s skirt explode like popcorn popping. She kicked off her sandals, then helped Simon get rid of his pants and shoes. They helped each other with their socks. Polly dropped her blue polka-dot panties and draped them over one of the statue’s baby eagles.

  “Could I slip off your tank, just for a few minutes?”

  “No way,” Simon said. “Just pretend it’s not there.”

  “Difficult,” Polly said. “But I’m trying.”

  Simon felt her fingers cup the bulge in his jockey shorts. She snapped the elastic over that last obstacle. “This is prom night,” Polly said. “Let’s dance on our ancestors,” She hummed “I Write The Songs,” switched to the music from Jaws, then settled on “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.”

  They danced.

  Simon felt he was embracing a creature fashioned of snowflakes. Every ounce of his blood changed course and flooded toward his sex, dragging his brain, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, spleen and soul in the torrent. Th
at river of blood left a meringue of love, lust, gratitude and astonishment along its banks. The only thing left of him were his genitals packaged in a throbbing pouch of burning skin.

  “A magic wand,” Polly said, grabbing Simon’s penis. “Can you believe I never touched one of these before? He feels so swollen and angry. Is he angry?”

  “No,” Simon said. “Something like it, though. I don’t know. This is all new to me.” Feeling between Polly’s long legs he said, “This is so incredible. Between you and me, I thought a lot about what went on down there but I had no idea girls were filled with honey. Or is it maple syrup?”

  “Just let’s lie down in silence,” Polly said. She found a patch of soft grass and stretched her body on hallowed ground. Simon let out a muffled yell, flapping his arms like the marble eagle’s wings. He bent to join her but suddenly felt himself losing control, about to gush, so he jackknifed trying to hold back the rising tide. He lost that battle and came, off balance, falling head first against Captain Pine’s sepulcher.

  Simon’s glass bottle smashed to smithereens. Three gallons of distilled water spilled over him but didn’t cool him down. He shook a shower of splinters out of his hair and kissed Placebo’s puckered lips. Their tongues tangled. It didn’t matter that in a few minutes he’d be a doomed dolphin suffocated on the dunes of Polly Moon’s breasts.

  Simon remembered her invitation to cuddle but things had gotten more complicated. His penis hadn’t signed any contract agreeing to terms and conditions. He felt ready for another explosion, climbed onto Polly and spread her thighs apart. Instead of saying no, no, please don’t but meaning yes, yes, take me, like the girls in major feature films, Polly Moon pushed him away.

  “You bastard,” Polly snapped. “You tricked me. You nearly raped me. And you don’t have any protection. Jesus. Everything about you is a sham!”

  “Meaning what?” Simon said, suddenly defensive. His startled organ went limp along with his startled heart.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you, Simon Apple. You can breathe like the rest of us.”

  “Look, Polly, I swear I didn’t know,” Simon said. “I mean, I still don’t know. What I’m saying is, I have no idea how long I can last on regular air. They came up with this drug, Aquathaline. I admit I’ve been taking treatments, but there were no guarantees. So where’s the problem? This is good news for us, my darling. You should be happy.”

  “You never once mentioned any treatments.”

  “I wasn’t allowed to. Besides, I didn’t want to jinx myself. Even Dr. Fikel told me not to expect too much.”

  “I feel so cheap,” Polly said, standing up, searching for her briefs and bra. “There I was thinking about you all alone by yourself while the rest of us carried on at the prom and all the time you were, what’s the word, fully functional.”

  “At the moment, yes, fully functional, give or take, but that could pass in a minute. I might be dead by prom time. Polly, I’d never deceive you. Not in a million years. And why should you feel cheap? This was a marvelous experience. It was your idea.”

  “Fritzel was right about you, Simon. She warned me about you.”

  “Well, my Victoria didn’t exactly love you either.”

  Simon watched the naked Placebo disappear into her clothes. There was no chance for damage control. She climbed onto the bicycle she’d left propped against a wind-erased marker and peddled away.

  A mountainous cloudbank drained all light from the sky. Simon had enough of a problem gathering his dangling hardware together. When he couldn’t find his underwear in the dark, he left his jockey shorts in Arch of Angels and headed in the direction of an exit, thinking that if things had worked out differently he would have pressed that underwear between the pages of his yearbook.

  The damp cemetery air smelled sweet. Every gravestone was a milestone in Glenda’s long history. Technically, Simon was still saddled by his virginity but now it hung by a thread. He marveled at the thought that virtually every person buried under his feet had experienced the astonishment of fusion and now he practically belonged with that crowd.

  Robert J. and Rowena were ecstatic when they discovered that Simon’s need for waterworks was possibly a thing of the past. They phoned Dr. Fikel who told them to rush Simon to his office.

  In the car, Simon wondered if the cause of his cure was Aquathaline or Placebo’s sweet alchemy. Lying about how his bottle broke—a white lie; he said he tripped on a rock—left Simon feeling a little guilty but his sins of omission and emission hardly seemed relevant in light of the broader picture.

  Once again, science had triumphed. Simon’s affliction was vanquished by a drug designed to outwit a side effect caused by a product that stymied another potentially lethal side effect caused by a substance developed to thwart a canny virus whose genesis remained a mystery.

  “There’s the individual, there’s you, and there’s society,” Dr. Fikel explained as he drew blood from Simon’s finger, the same finger anointed from browsing Polly Moon’s silky cavern. “And there’s a constant tension between an individual’s needs and those of the community at large. That clash of interest often leads to tragedy. We’re all synchronous swimmers in this muddy pond of a world, but too often we’re out of sync. It’s a messy situation at best, so when a situation arises where one young man’s amazing rehabilitation coincides with the public good, it’s time for a party.”

  The only party on Simon’s mind was the recent prom. He wondered if Albert Essman had cradled Placebo in his simian arms or got her drunk enough to get into her panties. Knowing Polly’s taste for irony she might even have suggested a visit to Jabez Pine’s monument after the ball was over. If that happened, Simon prayed that Assman slashed his smug dong on a pile of glass chips.

  A week later, Robert J. showed Simon a clipping from Parade recounting Simon Apple’s Florida adventure and celebrating the pharmaceutical industry’s fast track response in finding a cure for Simon’s malady. There was a quote from Regis Van Clay about American ingenuity and stick-to-it-iveness.

  At the tail end of the story it said the smuggled Chinese, including the child rescued by Simon Apple, had been deported after lengthy hearings by Immigration and Naturalization. Allowing them entry was deemed a slippery slope.

  There was a smiley face photo of Dr. Fikel, Robert J., Rowena and Simon standing outside Quikpix. Simon wore the blue suit he’d gotten for his canceled court appearance. The headline read:

  MEDICAL MARVEL AS BOTTLE BOY IS CURED

  Nixon Given Credit for Research Breakthrough

  “You should write a few thank-you notes,” Dr. Fikel said. “One to Regis Van Clay and another to former President Nixon who’d probably appreciate a pick-me-up.”

  “I’ll do that,” Simon said, and he did.

  There was no reply to Simon’s gracious thank-you notes, but he did begin receiving letters from the Republican National Committee soliciting contributions and a free sample of Surge, a new aftershave cologne “from the caring folks at Regis.”

  34

  “It was good of you to come, Rowena,” Simon said. His stepmother looked a little less juicy than the fuzzy peach she’d been when the fruit was on the vine but she still made a terrific impression. Simon saw how the guard salivated when he gave her the once over.

  “This isn’t easy for me. I know we were never very close but that wasn’t entirely my fault.”

  “Absolutely not. I kept myself surrounded by a moat filled with boiling oil. But you were always supportive and you made a new life for my father. I’m the one who should be apologizing. It can’t have been easy dealing with the media dragons lo these many years for you or your twins.”

  “Your brother and sister aren’t kids anymore. Zack and Rebecca just celebrated their twenty-fourth birthday.”

  “Yes, I meant to send a card. One of the worst things about being locked up on Death Row is that you become disgustingly self-centered. Everything is me, me, me. So, how are Zack and Rebecca taking to all th
is? How do they feel about losing their vicious half-brother?”

  “They’re coping,” Rowena said. “The publicity complicated their lives, of course, but Rebecca is in rehab going the methadone route and thinking of going back to college. She’s interested in communications. I tell her that isn’t the most practical occupation but you can’t tell your sister anything. Zack is still into developing those video games. His last one, Kingdom of Putrid Pus People, seems to be catching on but the market is really tight since the economy tanked. You know he’s getting divorced.”

  “I heard the marriage was troubled.”

  “I’m glad he’s finished with that dysfunctional bitch. I warned him about marrying an actress. You know how they are. Like chameleons. She waited until her implants and the dental work were bought and paid for before she torpedoed poor Zachary. I don’t mind telling you, Robert J. and I footed a major portion of those bills. And that was after her anal surgery.”

  “Right, the birth defect. She had two anuses,” Simon said. “I knew about that.”

  “Actually, three,” Rowena said. “But the surgery was entirely elective. Multiple anuses are fairly common. She had the gall to tell us the anuses were negatively affecting her career. That’s how she put it. Never said anything about a lack of talent, never mentioned to Zack that her mother had several anuses and her grandmother before her. Not that it would have kept him from chasing her from coast to coast.”

  “Love is a relentless magnet,” Simon said.

  “If you call that love. And now she’s asking for half of any Pus People royalties. And watch, she’ll get what she wants. Well, at least we have an adorable granddaughter. Lucy Alice Apple.”

  “Zack is a daddy? That’s fantastic,” Simon said. “Nobody told me. Good for him.”

  “Not Zack’s. Rebecca’s. We kept it quiet. She ended up pregnant after her year in Las Vegas. She doesn’t have a clue as to who the father is. Probably some white trash cocaine dealer. Lucy Alice has the cutest eyes and pitch-black hair; she’s a doll, a real little mongrel. I should have brought a snapshot.”