by Haylen Beck
“I have been,” Anna said.
“I know,” he said, smiling. “I just want to be sure you understand the importance of candor. There’s no judgment.”
“Okay.”
“What drugs have you used in the past?” he asked.
“A little pot when I was in high school, but not since then. That’s all.”
“Have you ever smoked cigarettes, real or electronic?”
“I tried it once when I was, like, fourteen or fifteen. I didn’t like it.”
“You said you were a social drinker. How often do you drink alcohol socially?”
“When I get a night off, maybe twice a week.”
He gazed at her, a benign expression on his face, his eyes hard, seeing all.
“Please be honest with me,” he said.
Anna felt a chill, her mouth drying. “Maybe more than that,” she said. “I might have a glass of wine or a beer after work, just to unwind. But just one or two, and not every night.”
Mr. Kovak smiled. “Thank you for your honesty. I think that’s it for the questions.”
“Can I ask one?” Anna said.
“Of course,” Mr. Kovak said.
“What is it you want from me?”
Mr. Kovak exchanged a glance with the nurse.
“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that right now. If you’re selected, you’ll be fully informed of the service that will be asked of you, with no obligation to continue. Now, if you don’t mind, Barbara has one last thing to attend to.”
Barbara went to a table by the window and lifted a tray covered with a linen cloth. Anna hadn’t noticed it before, and the sight of it troubled her. Barbara brought the tray to the coffee table. She pulled aside the linen cloth, revealing a high-sided plastic tray containing three empty vials, a small band like a belt, a sealed packet containing what she recognized as a butterfly needle, and a barrel for taking blood.
“You’re taking blood samples?” Anna asked.
“I’m afraid it’s a necessary step,” Mr. Kovak said. “You’re free to refuse, of course, but that will end the application process.”
Anna looked at the needle, how thick it seemed. She hated giving blood samples. The pain was never as bad as she imagined, but she hated the idea of being pierced, even in a treatment room, let alone a hotel suite.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“It’s entirely your decision, Anna,” Mr. Kovak said. “Please don’t feel under any pressure.”
She looked up at Barbara, who smiled down at her.
This isn’t right, Anna thought. Not right at all.
“If I pass, what will you pay me?” she asked.
Mr. Kovak shared another look with Barbara before saying, “I can’t disclose the amount. But I can tell you it will be substantial.”
Anna closed her eyes and made her decision. She opened them again, rolled up her sleeve, and said, “All right.”
On the drive home, she stopped at the Superior Marketplace. She went to the T.J. Maxx, promising she would spend no more than one hundred of the five hundred dollars. In the end, she went over by five bucks and some change, but she got a new winter coat, along with a pair of wool-lined boots and some nice underwear.
She returned to her single-wide feeling content and convinced that even if Mr. Kovak called to say they had accepted her application to whatever the hell it was, she would tell him to shove it up his ass.
17
MR. KOVAK SAT ON THE edge of the bed, listening to the dial tone. Checking his watch, he sighed at the knowledge that he would not be able to fly home that evening. At least not a direct flight, anyway. Barbara, the nurse, had gone home thirty minutes ago; she did these gigs on a freelance basis. It was a good day’s pay for not a lot of work. He debated whether he would eat in his room or venture out. There was a Hard Rock Café just a couple of doors down; hardly fine dining, but it would do.
Eventually, Dr. Sherman answered.
“Yes, Mr. Kovak, I was just about to have dinner.”
“Sorry to disturb you, Dr. Sherman.”
Mr. Kovak suspected that Dr. Sherman possessed no medical qualifications, but he had long since decided not to press him on that matter.
“All right, but what is it?”
“I wondered if you’d had a chance to review today’s candidates yet?”
“Just briefly. Jocelyn Mathers and Anna Lenihan seemed the standouts to me.”
“Yes, Jocelyn Mathers is an excellent candidate. That she’s done it before is a plus.”
“True. I don’t have a client match for her just now, but we’ll certainly sign her up.”
“Anna Lenihan, though,” Mr. Kovak said.
“What about her?” Dr. Sherman asked.
“This would be her first child.”
“You know I don’t factor in previous pregnancies.”
“Maybe we should start. It’s the norm with other agencies.”
Dr. Sherman audibly bristled. “The Schaeffer-Holdt Clinic is not ‘other agencies.’ We serve specific clients with specific needs and we must have the widest possible field of candidates. And can I remind you, Mr. Kovak, that it is not your job to set clinic policy.”
“Of course,” Mr. Kovak said. “But I think she’s trouble. She strikes me as…willful.”
Dr. Sherman chuckled. “Does she, now? Thing is, she’s an excellent match for a client I have waiting. I mean, the resemblance is extraordinary.”
“A strong resemblance won’t help you if she causes problems.”
“That’s where you earn your money, though, isn’t it, Mr. Kovak?”
“I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t give you my honest opinion,” Mr. Kovak said.
“And I do appreciate that,” Dr. Sherman said. “But perhaps you should defer to my judgment on this one.”
“Whatever you say, Dr. Sherman.”
“Good. Now, if there’s nothing else, I’d like to eat before my food gets cold.”
“Nothing else,” Mr. Kovak said.
They exchanged good evenings, hung up, and Mr. Kovak decided he would get drunk tonight. He would get drunk, expense it to Dr. Sherman, and just let him try to query it.
* * *
—
MR. KOVAK COULDN’T help but smile when the freight train came into view.
He’d taken a table right at the back of the restaurant. A middling blues-rock band played on the stage in the main dining area, but there was a separate section that overlooked the point where the Ohio River forked into the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. He had ordered a burger and fries, and he’d already killed one beer and was halfway down his second.
Mr. Kovak only drank when he traveled. Even then, he tried to stick to beer, or a glass of red if he happened to have a steak. He didn’t often eat American steak, finding it too bland, the cattle having been fed on processed corn. Unless the menu boasted that the beef was grass-fed, he usually gave steak a miss. So, beer it was. A Dancing Gnome Amarillo, to be precise, and it was going down nicely.
Aside from the quiet, another reason Mr. Kovak liked to sit in back was because the train line ran past the window, between the restaurant and the water. He particularly enjoyed the freight trains because their extraordinary length was a wonder to behold. One could note the time when the engine first passed, and at least ten minutes would slip by before the final car came into view.
He looked east down the track and smiled again when he saw the light drawing closer. He checked his wristwatch as it drew level with him. Two minutes past nine, precisely.
“It’ll take twelve minutes,” the waitress said as she placed his food in front of him.
“Exactly?” he asked. “Or give-or-take?”
“At this speed?” She placed her hands on her hips, watching the first few cars go
by. “I figure twelve minutes fifteen seconds.”
“Care to make it interesting?”
“Maybe,” she said. “What did you have in mind?”
“How about…if you’re within fifteen seconds, I tip you a hundred. If not, I eat for free.”
She tilted her hips, gave him a crooked smile. “Or how about, within fifteen seconds, you tip me the hundred. If not, I let you buy me a drink after my shift.”
He looked up at her and said, “That doesn’t seem equitable.”
“Oh, it is,” she said. “Depends how you look at it, of course.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “I’ll take that bet.”
She pointed to his glass and asked, “Another?”
“Please.”
He thought about Anna Lenihan as he ate. His gut screamed at him not to let her sign the contract. She was trouble. He could smell it on her the moment he met her in the hotel lobby. But Dr. Sherman would have his way. It was not Mr. Kovak’s place to make these decisions; he could offer advice, opinions, which he had done, but that was all.
He knew at his core that he would regret the day he ever met her.
But so be it.
Mr. Kovak finished his food, and his beer, as the last car of the freight train passed. Twelve minutes and twenty-two seconds.
He left seventy to cover the meal, and two fifties for the tip, and went looking for a dark and quiet bar where he could drink his fill.
* * *
—
DAWN LIGHT PIERCED the gloom of his hotel room and snapped Mr. Kovak into awareness. He found himself seated in a chair in the corner, cold and stiff through his neck and shoulders. A deep ache slithered behind his eyes. His tongue bound to the roof of his mouth, dry like coarse paper. Nausea followed.
He thought: What did I do?
His knuckles stung, with a darker underlying pain through his fingers and hands, down to his wrists. He had punched someone. Or something. He hoped it had been a wall, a bathroom stall, even a window. It took some effort to look down at himself, but he managed it, and saw the blood on his shirtfront, the spatters of it on his cuffs.
“Oh no,” he whispered.
His suit jacket lay bundled on the floor. A miniature whiskey bottle on the table beside him, half of it gone. He must have helped himself to a nightcap but passed out before he could finish it.
Think, he told himself. What did you do?
Mr. Kovak remembered leaving the restaurant and walking the short distance to the Smithfield Street Bridge, which he crossed on foot, and into downtown Pittsburgh. He wandered the streets until he found a bar that wasn’t too busy. He opened a tab and had his first hard liquor in a month.
After that, things became hazy. He remembered the bartender asking if he’d like some water, which he accepted. A vague recollection of a gang of college boys entering, from Duquesne, he guessed. They were egregiously loud in the way groups of young men tend to be. Like they needed to be heard, to be seen, like their presence was more important than whatever peace you’d found for yourself in whatever quiet corner.
It had to have been one of them.
The restroom. A memory hardened in his mind. Encountering one of the boys in the restroom, exchanging words, pushing the kid into the stall.
Everything after that was a blur of colors and sounds and sensations. Bright red. Gurgling, choking. The crushing of cartilage beneath his fist.
“Jesus,” Mr. Kovak said, bringing his hand to his face, covering his eyes.
It had been a long time since he’d done something like this. He’d kept a lid on his rage for at least a year now. But he had slipped. Stress, maybe. The job did grind on him. Pressure building, his control scraping away until something had to give.
“No more,” he said, meaning it every bit as much as he had the last time.
18
A WEEK PASSED BEFORE THE PHONE rang.
“Anna? This is Mr. Kovak from the Schaeffer-Holdt Clinic.”
She hesitated, then said, “Yes?”
“I’m calling with good news.”
Her knees went weak and she sat down on the bed. It creaked beneath her weight.
“Oh?”
“Anna, your candidacy for our program was successful. I can be in Pittsburgh tomorrow to discuss further details, if you’re available?”
“I…don’t know,” she said.
The five hundred dollars had blown away like dandelion fluff. Seven days earlier, she had felt in control, and now she was as scared as ever.
“There will be a further cash payment of five hundred dollars for your time and travel,” Mr. Kovak said. “And, of course, no obligation to proceed.”
“No obligation?” she echoed.
“None whatsoever,” he said.
* * *
—
THE SAME HOTEL, the same suite. No nurse this time, no needles, only Mr. Kovak and his good suit and his big, meaty workman’s hands. The drive into the city had been more difficult, heavier snow pelting against her windshield, slower traffic, and she had been almost thirty minutes late. Mr. Kovak didn’t complain.
“Please,” he said, indicating that she should sit in the same chair as before. He sat on the couch. No smartphone, no tripod, no video. She noticed small dark scabs on his knuckles, ready to peel away.
“May I have the five hundred dollars, please?” she said, blushing at her own impertinence.
Mr. Kovak smiled and said, “Of course.”
He took a white envelope from his jacket pocket, just like the last, and handed it over. Anna got to her feet as she put the envelope in her purse.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve thought it through, and I don’t want to be a part of whatever this is.”
She turned to the door, and he spoke, his voice firmer than she’d heard it before.
“Anna, I’d appreciate it if you listened to our proposal. I did just give you five hundred dollars.”
She walked toward the door. “You said no obligation.”
“That’s correct, but as a matter of courtesy, I’d like you to hear us out.”
“Us?” she said, turning back to him. “For a start, who the fuck is ‘us’? You know, I looked up the Schaeffer-Holdt Clinic. There’s no such place. It’s just a shell company. I’m not some idiot you can buy with a few hundred bucks.”
“Actually,” Mr. Kovak said, “it’s seventy-five thousand dollars in total. Five on signature, thirty-five on conception, thirty-five on delivery. Plus a generous living allowance for the term, along with accommodation somewhere more…salubrious than where you are now.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“In addition, all medical care will be provided, the very best, both pre- and post-.”
Her hand went to her belly. “Pre- and post- what?”
“Anna, right now, there are couples who desperately need a surrogate mother to help them have a child, but purely because of where they live, they cannot legally get that help within their own state. What we do is act as an agent, an introduction service, if you will, for childless couples and young women who are willing and able to help them. For a fee, of course. And it’s a generous fee, more than fifty percent above market rate. For the right candidate, that is. Like you.”
Seventy-five thousand. The number stretched and tumbled in her mind. Gave off sparks.
“But it’s illegal,” she said.
“No,” Mr. Kovak said, “not illegal. There is no law in the state of Pennsylvania to prevent you from offering this help. But a couple in, say, New York, can’t accept it. We can, however, on their behalf. Please sit down. Please listen. No obligation.”
* * *
—
“YOU DIDN’T SAY yes, did you?” Betsy asked, her eyes wide.
“No,” Anna said.
“Did you say no?”
“No.”
“Jesus, honey, you can’t really be considering this, can you?”
Another box of Coors, but Chinese food this time. Anna had called Betsy and asked her to come over after her shift. It was past midnight, and weariness made the beer hit harder. Anna downed half a bottle, opened another. So far, she was two-for-one to Betsy.
“It’s seventy-five grand,” Anna said. “That, and two hundred a week to live on for the term, plus they’ll get me out of this dump.”
Betsy reached across the table, grabbed her forearm. “But you’ll have to grow a baby, a human being, inside of you for nine months. Then you’ll give birth. And then you’ll have to just give it away. My God, sweetheart, do you know how hard that’s going to be?”
“Sure, it’ll be hard, I know that. But, Jesus, seventy-five thousand dollars. It could change my life. I could start a business. Make something of myself.”
“What kind of business?”
“I don’t know, something, anything, so long as I don’t have to wait tables and live in this shithole. I need to make a change, and maybe this is what I need to do it.”
Betsy took her hand, squeezed it tight.
“Honey, this isn’t a palace, sure, but we’ve both lived in worse. And if you don’t want to wait tables, then work in a store, or go back to school, whatever, just don’t do this. You’re going to get hurt. And this clinic, if that’s really what it is, sounds shady as hell.”
“I haven’t said yes to anything, I’m just thinking about it. No need to get all protective. You’re not my mom, you’re not my big sister.”
Betsy sat back in her chair, and Anna saw the wound she’d inflicted with her words. She let go of Anna’s hand and got to her feet.
“I think I’m okay to drive,” she said.
“Don’t,” Anna said, reaching for her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. You’ve been a good friend to me, and I appreciate your advice, but…”
“But you don’t want to take it,” Betsy said.
