Most Unnatural

by Liam Llewellyn

  “Was Amelia conceived by in vitro?”

  “Did she listen to classical music in the womb?”

  And there was nothing he could do except ignore it all.

  Predictably, all the hullabaloo over Amelia died out about a week after it started—people went back to focusing on reality TV stars and shitty “musicians” who’ve never known a song without an equalizer and Autotune and couldn’t write their own lyrics to save their genitals from mutilation.

  Cordo regained much of his lost peace. Then a little more than a month after the Amelia craze, businesses, companies, corporations, and conglomerates started contacting him through his office at The Times. They asked to meet with Cordo and Amelia if he’d approve, to discuss “Amelia’s future” and how they could help her and Cordo.

  Cordo made appointments with representatives and they met at Cordo’s office or one of the plethoric coffeeshops downtown, even on a pleasurable voyage on the Seattle-Bainbridge Island ferry.

  In short they discussed Amelia’s interests, both current and long term, her affinities, skills, what careers she might be interested in. They proposed making arrangements for the reps’ employers to pay Amelia’s way through school, both under- and graduate, in exchange for a written commitment to later on come do research on our behalves. Additionally, they offered Cordo compensation as well and any other benefits you think would be appropriate, Mr. Tendler.

  One of these meetings was with a Mr. Carter from Titus Pharmaceuticals. Titus was a 50-year-old publicly owned chemical and pharmaceutical corporation that did more than $10 billion in business a year.

  Cordo and Carter walked along a paved nature path heavy with vegetation on either side.

  “Titus is familiar with your late wife’s work, Mr. Tendler, through reading of her articles in botany and plant biology journals. Quite a brilliant woman.”

  “Really? I thought Titus would have been familiar with my late wife’s work because she worked for them.”

  Carter was unmistakably caught off guard by this.

  “I don’t know about that,” he said.

  “Yeah, during the investigation after my wife’s disappearance, it came to light apparently they—you—had given her a grant for graduate school so she would do research for you.”

  “Then you know how generous we can be.”

  “No, actually, I don’t, she didn’t tell me anything about it.”

  “Well I assure you we can be very generous. Does your daughter intend to continue Lourdes’ research?”

  “That’s what she’s said but she and I don’t talk much about it.”

  “The research your wife was involved in has great economic potential. Everyone involved could stand to make quite a bit of money.”

  “Before you start on your whole bit, I might as well tell you we’re going to reject any offers made to us.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Are you familiar with Titus’ history?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Well I wasn’t until I found out—after the fact—that my wife had worked for them. Then I did some digging, found out how Titus was under investigation about 20 years ago by the SEC, which resulted in the CEO and CFO being arrested for accounting fraud and insider trading. This in turn led to Titus getting kicked off the NYSE.”

  “We’ve since gotten onto the NASDAQ.”

  “Yes, you finally wore them down after 10 litigious years, in which Titus was fodder for the media.”

  “I miss your point, Mr. Tendler.”

  “I greatly admire Titus’ tenacity in rising from the dead—the pink sheets, then the OCTBB, to get onto the NASDAQ—but here’s what I see coming in the near future: As dark pools continue to absorb much of the world’s equities volume, Titus will want to move into bigger markets, will try to get back onto the NYSE. Despite their listing guidelines being quite similar to the NASDAQ’s, you’ll be rejected pursuant to a rule under Section 8 of their listing manual, goes something like, ‘Any condition that makes listing on the NYSE inadvisable.’ You’ll sue and it may take even longer than 10 years for the courts to come to a decision, during which time national media, including myself, would be obligated to cover every development. Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of dollars will be invested by both sides, it’ll become a prominent court case, likely with a controversial conclusion at last. So, for reasons of conflict of interest, we must say thank you but no thank you to Titus.”

  “Perhaps we could arrange for you a better-compensated position in our public-relations department.”

  “I like my job.”

  “I see. Mr. Tendler, this would be a wonderful opportunity for your daughter.”

  “Indeed it would be, which is why I agreed to meet with Amazon, with Starbucks, several others. With Titus, however, I only agreed because I wanted to see if anyone actually worked for them. Because after my wife disappeared, I tried to talk to anyone at Titus who might have known her, had contact with her. For six months I tried. And never got any answer. And I don’t know what I wanted to ask them. I haven’t come up with anything since then. So now I know. Titus does have people working for them—thieves and cowards.”

  Carter was speechless.

  “Once Amelia’s 18 she can make her own decisions. Until then I must decline on her part.”

  Carter was silent for a moment.

  “Then I suppose that’s all. I’m sorry we couldn’t come to an agreement.”

  “As I am.”

  They shook hands, then departed down separate paths in the park.

  Tom brought his boyfriend, Mark, to meet and have dinner with Cordo and Amelia on a Friday night during Amelia’s spring break. As they were making introductions in the front entrance, Tom introduced Mark as his “friend.”

  “Dad said he was your boyfriend,” Amelia contradicted.

  The three adults were still and silent.

  “Your dad was right,” Tom said.

  “So why did you only call him your friend?”

  Tom smiled. Cordo put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Sweet—”

  “Because I forgot not to treat you like a child, Amelia.”

  Amelia nodded.

  “You don’t need to tiptoe around me,” she said. “I understand homosexuality, at least as far as its social aspects are concerned. Biological and/or psychological causes are still mysteries, as they are to the rest of society.”

  The three men were silent again, Cordo starting to perspire. Mark chuckled, blushing.

  “Lovely to meet you, Amelia,” he said. “Tom talks about you as though you were his own daughter.”

  “When he talks about you, it’s like a parent gushing over how wonderful his or her child is. I’m fairly certain he’s in love with you.”

  Tom stood frozen, Cordo stifled laughter, and Mark blushed more.

  “Thank you, Amelia,” Cordo said, pulling her off into the living room toward the kitchen “Let’s move on.”

  As they four moved in farther, Mark smiled privately to Tom and squeezed his arm.

  Throughout dinner Cordo and Amelia asked Mark about his job as a social worker and how he and Tom had met—through a student of Tom’s, for whom Mark was making adoption arrangements, who had invited them both to her wedding.

  After talking for a while after dinner, Amelia excused herself to go back to studying.

  “What are you studying?” Mark asked before she made it out of the kitchen.

  “Latin and modern Swedish.”

  “Oh.”

  “Why?” Tom asked.

  “To read Linnaeus’ works in their original languages.”

  “Of course.”

  Then she was gone to her room, door closed. Cordo retrieved then a bottle of Cognac from a kitchen cupboard, poured for himself and Mark but Tom was driving.

  “She’s a sweet girl. Very adult,” Mark said.

  “Too adult,” Cordo said.

  “More adult than adult,” Tom added.

&nbs
p; “Has she ever been tested for autism?”

  “She’s been tested for everything,” Cordo said. “Her diagnosis is: She’s too damn smart.”

  “Could be worse, I guess.”

  “I guess,” Cordo said. “It’s no picnic though. Can’t talk to her about her interests because I can’t understand them.”

  “I don’t think you have to,” Tom said. “Just listen.”

  Cordo shrugged.

  “It’ll get better,” Mark said. “Her IQ may be higher than everyone else’s but her emotional intelligence is still a child’s. She’ll grow out of it.”

  “Let’s hope,” Cordo said.

  They were quiet a moment, sipping. Mark looked into the living room and spotted a framed picture of Lourdes.

  “That her mother?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Mark looked at it longer, though Tom and Cordo didn’t—they knew what Lourdes looked like.

  “There’s an amazing resemblance,” Mark said.

  “Between Amelia and Lourdes?” Tom asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Cordo and Tom idly nodded, the way you would after hearing for too long how smart someone else’s child is. Then they both looked up at each other, wondered.

  Cordo looked over at the same picture but it was too dark in the living room and he wasn’t wearing his glasses, so he went over and got it and brought it back to the table and the three of them leaned over.

  “Yeah, look,” Mark said, “the dimples are there, the black hair, the eyes, the crooked front tooth.”

  “Jesus,” Tom said, amazed.

  Mark sat back and then so too did Tom and while they idly remarked on the matter, Cordo replaced the picture, then came back to the table. He and Tom caught each other’s incredulous eyes for a moment, then Cordo switched the conversation.

  After they left with hugs from Cordo and Amelia, Cordo went back to the picture standing upon the entertainment center in the living room and sat on the couch looking at it more closely.

  Scanning for more similarities: the mole beside the left eye, the thin pale lips, the thin sharp chin.

  There really was quite a resemblance…more like a…

  Cordo swallowed, then cleared his throat, replaced the picture, went to clean up the cleaned-up kitchen.

  Some weeks later Cordo went into his bedroom one night and shut and locked the door, Amelia already gone off for the night, though she always stayed up until well past midnight each night, reading and writing.

  He opened his underwear drawer and removed a small stack of pictures, all of Lourdes naked and posing or in lingerie and posing or in the middle of sucking his dick. He’d printed all of these from his own computer and printer, which was the only way he’d gotten Lourdes to agree to have them taken. He turned off the ceiling light, turned on the bedside reading lamp, got naked, and lay in bed and started masturbating.

  Cordo had had no sex since Lourdes died but had masturbated almost daily, sometimes more than once, first to porn on his laptop but that soon stopped working for him, so then he’d gone searching for these pictures in the crawlspace and had used them ever since.

  As he usually did, he laid out the half-dozen pictures in a fan formation on his bed and got some lube out of his nightstand drawer and started. He typically came within three or four minutes after, eyes leaping from picture to picture—Lourdes rubbing her clitoris, licking her nipple, her tongue on the underside of his dick—his breath getting heavier, faster as he sat upon one elbow and seconds before he spurted, he fell onto his back and his toes clenched and his neck arched upward while he buried his back deeper into the mattress and he would groan as his fist and the lube made frictive squishing sounds and then he ejaculated and stifled his relieved exasperated gasping before cleaning up.

  But this time it was different. In such an act, one does not keep track of time, in fact loses any notion of time except in regards to how long a particular clip may run, which is not an accurate timekeeper. But Cordo had some sense that this time it took longer than usual.

  He took a deep breath and tried to focus more on the pictures but soon the arm he leaned upon was numb and he had to lie down flat and rest.

  He looked at the time on the bedside table: 9:44.

  When had he started? How long was it taking?

  At 9:51 he started again, using the pictures, but at 10:17 he had to stop again, face incandescent with sweat, as were his gray sheets soaked dark.

  He waited until 10:22, trying to decide if he would try again. He decided not to, replaced the lube and pictures, and lay on his side in bed, not falling asleep until an hour later.

  The next day he texted Tom to ask if he wanted to get lunch. They met at a Greek place near the university. Cordo had a lamb gyro and Tom moussaka.

  “Remember not too long ago, you suggested I start dating again?” Cordo asked in the middle of the meal.

  “Ah the motive. Sure I do.”

  “All right. How would I do that?”

  Tom chuckled.

  “You find someone you could see yourself having sex with and ask them to coffee.”

  “OK but I meant…How, where?”

  “Is there someone at work?”

  Cordo thought.

  “Yeah, in the advertising department.”

  “Has she shown interest?”

  Cordo thought.

  “Maybe. I think so.”

  “So ask her out.”

  “But she kinda works for me, doesn’t she?”

  “Is the newspaper kept alive by stories or by advertising?”

  “…So I work for her. Isn’t that a big no-no?”

  “Depends on how much you like her, I guess. The other option I see is you sign up for dating websites.”

  “Ah shit.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t wanna do that.”

  “I think that’s how most single parents meet these days. There’s really no taboo or stigma anymore.”

  “Not in my mind.”

  “Well maybe you oughta get over yourself. You wanna be alone forever?”

  “Fuck.”

  They ate for a minute in silence.

  “So at what point do I introduce Amelia?”

  Tom thought.

  “I think once a relationship becomes serious.”

  “What’s serious?”

  Tom smiled.

  “I suppose sex would be a good indicator of seriousness. Sex and…you know, whether you could propose or not.”

  Cordo nodded, then lowered his head.

  “Fuck, I thought I was done with all this, I was never good at this shit.”

  “I think that’s one of the reasons Lourdes liked you.”

  Cordo smiled.

  So Cordo signed up for two dating websites and scanned the profiles of several women before messaging one. They exchanged messages for an hour and set a date for that Friday evening after Cordo arranged for Margaret to stay late.

  They met at the restaurant, an Italian place on Cordo’s recommendation. Even though it was a Friday, the place was quiet and Cordo found her sitting in a corner booth in a beautiful black dress with her brunette hair curled and down on her shoulders. They shook hands and smiled nervously, ordering a bottle of cabernet, then descending into talks about how they’d never done this before, how embarrassed they’d both been to sign up for the website, to message each other. They talked about previous relationships—she’d been engaged before but never married, her fiancé had broken it off last year rather suddenly, I’m sorry, oh well, he was a few years younger, I guess he just wasn’t ready, what about you? I was married and my wife died, I’m sorry, from what? Breast cancer, I’m very sorry, my grandmother died from that several years ago, I understand how bad it is, yeah, do you have children? Yeah, a daughter, she’s eight, her name’s Millie.

  After they got the wine, they clinked their glasses and toasted to new beginnings. The date went well, very genial, but at the end, as Cordo walked her to her car
, they both agreed there were no sparks. They wished each other good luck, hugged, and parted ways.

  Such went Cordo’s dates for the next three months, never getting past a single dinner and never getting nor giving even a kiss.

  “Not going so well,” Cordo told Tom as they sat on a bench looking upon the spouting of Drumheller Fountain in the bright of a summer day, the campus quiet but windy, the flora around the fountain waving in the breeze, as did Tom’s and Cordo’s hair.

  “How come?”

  Cordo shrugged.

  “It’s all very superficial, everything we talk about. Everything I say I’ve told all the other women, just as they’ve told everything they say to me to other men. Nothing unique or special.”

  “Maybe you have to work up to that.”

  “With Lourdes it—”

  “No, don’t do that.”

  “What?”

  “Compare these women to Lourdes.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are. And if you’re gonna do that, you’re wasting your money on the websites and these women because none of them can hold a candle to Lourdes, not in your mind and not in reality.”

  “All right, so what the fuck do I do?”

  “Judge these women on their own merits. None of them are gonna replace Lourdes but that doesn’t mean you can’t fall in love with them, that they aren’t as good as she was.”

  Cordo sat forward and rubbed his lips.

  “Lourdes is gone,” Tom said. “You’ll never have what you had with her again.”

  Cordo shut his eyes, turned away. Tom sat forward, put a hand on his shoulder.

  “But you can still have something special, significant, meaningful with someone else,” Tom said. “And be happy again.”

  Cordo wiped his eyes, nodded.

  So Cordo kept dating and by the end of the month had kissed a woman goodnight. The relationship lost steam two dates after but Cordo evenly moved on.

  As Amelia entered her second year of college, Cordo had found no occasion yet to tell her about his dating.

  The only episode during this period worth noting was one day in the beginning of September, when Cordo came home one evening and was told by Margaret, who had come home while Amelia was in class in order to do some cleaning, parking in the garage, that she had overheard a great noise coming from outside the kitchen window, which looked out upon the backyard as well as the side of the house, where the trash bin was kept. Pulling open the curtain, Margaret said, she’d seen a man in black clothes and “hat,” though this was almost surely a beanie, furrowing through the trash bags in the bin, intently searching for something.