Just a Couple of Days

by Tony Vigorito

  Tynee’s office was also an enormous studio apartment. He lived and worked in a single room converted from an entire floor of classrooms. I wandered aimlessly around as he dressed, mildly impressed by the arsenal of military antiquities that decorated two of his walls. They were displayed with an air of imperial majesty, framed by a trellis overgrown with the same wall-crawling ivy that covered the outside of the building. Masses of simple, deep green leaves dangled around and between the various swords, axes, daggers, and maces, perhaps, I thought, intended to emphasize the age of the weapons.

  “Better wash your hands.” Tynee spoke from behind me.

  “Sorry?”

  “Leaves of three, let them be, Doctor. That’s poison ivy.” I looked at him incredulously. “Don’t worry,” he continued. “If you wash off the oil within an hour you won’t have any reaction.”

  I did so immediately, even though I couldn’t remember whether I had touched any of the leaves. Angrily, I asked him why he had poison ivy growing in his office.

  “To keep people from touching the steel.” He spoke as if it were perfectly self-evident. “This,” he carelessly reached past some leaves and picked up a small amber bottle near the base of a crossbow. “This is pure urushiol, the toxin in poison ivy. I had a severe case of it when I was five, all over my body, in my eyes, ears, nose, mouth, everywhere. It itched like a son of a bitch, for over a month, no matter how much calamine lotion my mother slathered on me. She cut my fingernails short to prevent me from scratching my skin off, and the only way I could get any relief was to smack or scald the skin where it itched. It itched down to my bones and out the other side, completely took over my body.” He stood a little more erect, apparently proud of his ordeal. “But I survived, and I’ve never had it since.”

  “So you grow it all around you?”

  He nodded and continued without explanation. “It covers the outside of this building, too. I had it planted when I first accepted this position years back. Had to pay the landscapers time and a half, too. Haven’t you seen the signs posted?”

  “But why?”

  “There was a student demonstration and some monkey hippie climbed up the exterior wall and started pounding on the windows. I had them replaced with high-density, doublethick glass.”

  “You’re not afraid of getting poison ivy again?”

  “I’m immune,” he said, plucking a leaf triumphantly. “I have been ever since the first time. No doctor has been able to explain it to me. I don’t even react to mosquito bites.” He paused a moment, and chewed the stem of the leaf pensively. “When I was a child, though, and my little sister would get mosquito bites, I used to scratch them when she wasn’t thinking about them just to make them itch again.” He tossed the bottle into the air and caught it. “But poison ivy is an entirely different type of itch. Did you know it’s one of the most potent toxins on Earth?” He shook the jar ponderously, speculating on his unholy botanical alliance, and his voice took on a tone resembling that of a necrophiliac singing the praises of rigor mortis. “What’s in this bottle, one ounce, is enough to give every human on this planet a rash they’d never forget. Can you imagine that?” He chuckled and appeared to be lost in reverie, no doubt carried away by his fantasy of a global orgy of orgasmic itching, and perhaps slapping. After a few moments his faraway grin fell slack, and he abruptly changed his demeanor. “Anyway,” he hissed, “I have an assignment for you.” He led me to the far side of his poison palace in silence, to the Ping-Pong table. He tossed a paddle at me, apparently expecting me to play.

  “Genetics,” he began, serving the ball with a vicious spin on it. I succeeded only in swinging my paddle clumsily through the air after the ball sailed past me and across the room. “I have a client who is interested in genetics,” he continued as I chased after the tiny plastic orb.

  “What about genetics?” I grunted as I reached under the pool table to get the ball.

  “I’m getting to that,” he growled. “My client is interested in viruses and their utility for altering biological processes, specifically brain chemistry.”

  I tossed the ball to him. He gave me the same serve again. This time the ball bounced across the refinished hardwood floors and landed in the Jacuzzi.

  “Before I got into administration,” he continued, “I studied neuropsychology. It’s a fair statement to say that the mind, thinking, perception, everything that goes on in your brain can be reduced to electrochemical reactions. Electrochemical reactions, Doctor, are occurring in my head right now as I explain this to you, and in your head as you understand what I’m saying. We call these electrochemical reactions thinking, or dreaming, or whatever else. The point is that such electrochemical activity produces the consciousness you experience. Psychotropic drugs like antidepressants, for example, alter the electrochemical environment and consequently change your perception of the world. Now, there are also viruses and bacteria that alter the electrochemical activity in your brain. Syphilis, if left untreated, can leave you insane. A simple fever can make you hallucinate. Our client is engineering a virus, a truly remarkable virus, to work as a sort of gene therapy.”

  I retrieved the bobbing ball from the swirling whirlpool, wetting my sleeve in the process, and tossed it back to him after drying it off. He caught it and served immediately, before I even got to my side of the table. The ball bounced away toward the door. I paused, not wanting to chase it, and hoping he would just continue with his exposition. Tynee looked at me with incredulous hostility. “Get the goddamn ball already! The score is three-zero. Play to five.”

  I retrieved the ball once again, feeling more like a dog playing fetch than an opponent. This time it lay nestled on a velvet cushion on his antique sofa as if it were a Fabergé egg. Tynee continued with his explanation of my assignment, which, in spite of everything, was beginning to intrigue me. “Our client has been attempting to create viruses that elicit predictable psychological effects.”

  “Who’s the client? And what are the effects of this virus?” I waited until I reached my side of the table to toss the ball to him this time.

  He caught the ball and paused, frowning. “Everything you need to know is contained in the memo you will receive. Rest assured that this research is proceeding according to established protocols. As a matter of fact, one of your colleagues in the former Philosophy Department is currently developing a paper exploring the ethics involved in such research. Feel free to contact her. I can’t recall her name, but she’s the philosopher we retained for the new Humanities Department.”

  “Dr. Carthorse?” He was talking about Blip’s wife, Sophia.

  “That’s the one. I always get her and the historian confused. She’s a woman, too.” Without warning he served the ball, this time giving it a backspin. It curved crazily after it bounced and I managed to catch it to avoid having to give chase once again.

  “What the hell was that, Fountain?” He barked at me like a high school gym teacher.

  “Sorry.” I tossed it back to him and ignored his abrasive manners.

  “You know,” he snapped the ball out of the air after it bounced. “I’ve always had a knack for this game.” He fondled the ball as he vaunted on about his Ping-Pong heroics. “It’s like an inborn ability with me. My body is somehow congenitally outstanding at table tennis.” He paused his thrasonical throes, waiting for my response, but my intellect was preoccupied. When it became apparent that no kudos were forthcoming, he tossed the ball back to me. “Score’s four-zip, Fountain. Game point. That means it’s your serve.”

  My serve was clumsy, but it made it over the net. Sneering, Tynee spun it back to me with a broad stroke of his arm. My mind, however, was not on the game, but rather was rapt with curiosity, turning over the possibilities of the assignment. Consequently, I reacted to his volley with no conscious effort, returning the ball in a neat bounce off the corner of the table on his side. I was momentarily stunned, as was Tynee, only I was surprised at my own sudden unpracticed skill, and he was vexed t
hat I had denied him a sweep and easy victory.

  “Well.” He abruptly checked his watch. “I’ve another meeting. The details of your assignment are in the purple envelope by the door. Beware of academic espionage. I expect a reply by Friday.” He placed his paddle on the table. “We’ll just say I won.”

  6 The institution of the university was transformed long ago from a center of learning into a center of earning. The pursuits of wisdom, truth, knowledge, and freedom are as antiquated as the masonry monuments that bear such academic platitudes, having given way, respectively, to the corrosive pursuits of profit, efficiency, technical expertise, and employment. Ivy-covered buildings shelter the bespectacled neurons of technocratic consciousness, department after department attracting grant money to generate research to create new industries and professions to make more money. Status competition keeps us racing to publish, and if we fail in that regard, punishment is swift and severe: teaching. Dr. Blip Korterly taught full-time, though his employment was considered part-time. I, on the other hand, have not taught a class in over five years. I, Dr. Flake Fountain, molecular geneticist, have been a willing and well-paid servant, a slave butler who gets to wear fancy clothes and sleep in the mansion, but a slave nonetheless, and subject to beatings if I don’t cower with a bow.

  My department attracts millions of dollars to the university, and only the football program generates more revenue. Many of my colleagues believe, with the peculiar pride of a master’s pet slave, that we will overtake the TU Turkeys within a few years. They are probably correct. Only four years ago, we seceded from the Biology Department and formed the Department of Molecular Genetics. There had been considerable hostility between the ecologists, drawn to biology via the essays of Emerson, Thoreau, and Muir, and the molecular geneticists, drawn to biology via the promise of research stipends the size of sequoias. Our new department, though in its infancy, is already well larded by a smeary smattering of government agencies, private foundations, and corporate sponsors. Piggish and raised on the blubber of bureaucracy, we show no signs of shedding our baby fat.

  My specialization is recombinant genetics. I have found my tasks challenging, and have gotten a thrill from attracting grant money to the department. Just last year, I received the largest grant yet. The windfall came from a venture capitalist who was financing the formation of a start-up biotechnology corporation. He wanted me to break the thirteen-mile-per-hour barrier in tomato harvesting. The problem was that when corporate agriculturists harvested their still-green tomatoes, they could not shoot them into the truck any faster than thirteen miles per hour without the skins splitting. This constraint incurred significant product loss, not to mention costs in time and ultimate profitability. If we could develop genetically modified tomatoes with more resilient skins and his company could own the patent, he could dominate the market for tomato seeds sold to large-scale agribusiness. We succeeded wildly, pushing tomato skins to withstand sixteen-mile-per-hour collisions, and new strains showed promise of even greater durability.

  Blip scoffed at this project, and accused me of contributing to inappropriate technology. If genetic engineering is only explored for the purpose of making money, he argued, we’ll end up with bigger, longer-lasting, tougher, and less nutritious fruits and vegetables. He’s right, of course. Nutritional content is not a primary profit concern. Size, shelf life, cosmetic appearance, and herbicide tolerance are. I was not unaware of these things, nor was I unaware that the pursuit of knowledge had become more twisted than a double helix. Much to the chagrin of Blip, however, I could not be persuaded to care.

  7 Such were the hallowed hallways of academia I slithered through daily. On this particular day, I left my meeting with Tynee and drove around half the circumference of the university to the city jail. It was located directly behind the Physical Facilities Department, in a new building. The site had been chosen because little NIMBY resistance was expected from campus-area residents. Indeed, if students knew about it at all, they did not care, since they would be gone in four or five years anyway. The university asked only that the building match the local architecture, and so it looked like any other dormitory but for the exceptionally narrow windows.

  Upon entering, however, all architectural pretensions ceased and were replaced by an unsoothing din of dingy irritability. Owing to the unexpected brevity of my meeting with Tynee, Sophia was nowhere to be seen, so I approached the desk sergeant barricaded behind the fenced-in reception counter. A roundish police officer, wearing a nametag that read wilt, glowered out at me.

  “Excuse me,” I cleared my throat. “I’m looking for a Dr. Blip Korterly. He was arrested earlier today.”

  After staring at me for a few seconds, Sergeant Wilt took a deep breath and shoved himself on his wheeled office chair across the room to a computer. “Can you spell his last name?” he hollered at me over his shoulder as if he were saying, “Can you stop putting that blade of grass in my ear?”

  “K-O-R-T-E-R-L-Y,” I called back to him loudly.

  After a few moments, he coasted back to the reception desk and said, without looking at me, “I can’t release any information on that arrest.”

  “Is there a reason?” I asked, once it became apparent that he wasn’t going to volunteer one. He stopped tapping the stack of papers on his desk and held them in midair for a few seconds before responding.

  “I can’t release any information because there isn’t any information to release.” He tossed the stack onto his desk, sending the papers back into disarray.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know how this kind of thing works, but it seems to me that I should at least be able to talk to him.”

  “Are you his lawyer?”

  “I’m his friend.”

  “Well, friend, I can’t release any information on that arrest.”

  “Could you if I was his lawyer?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Buddy, there isn’t any information to be released. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Look, this is asinine,” I said at last. “Can I at least speak to the warden?”

  Sergeant Wilt grinned arrogantly at me. “The warden?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s no warden here. This is a jail, not a prison.”

  “Oh.” He had succeeded in making me feel foolish. “Well, who’s in charge?”

  “We have a captain.”

  “Can I speak to your captain then?”

  “Captain’ll tell you the same thing I’ve told you.”

  “But you haven’t told me anything.”

  Sergeant Wilt shrugged. “What can I say when there’s nothing to say?”

  “Can I please just speak with your captain?” I glanced around for Sophia, hoping she would show up and tag me out of this squabble.

  Wilt picked up the phone with a tired look on his face. “What’s your name?”

  “Flake Fountain. Dr. Flake Fountain.” I made a witless attempt to pull some rank.

  “Captain,” Sergeant Wilt spoke into the phone. “There’s a Dr. Flake Fountain here that wants to see you.” After a pause he continued, “I don’t know, his friend was arrested earlier today or something.” He nodded into the phone and hung up, then said to me, “Well, Doctor, the captain will see you now.”

  8 Captain Porton Down is a doll of a man. His natural expression is a suntanned, clean-shaven, gaudy grin, and his blond hair falls leisurely to one side. Relentlessly self-assured, he could sneeze with a mouthful of toothpaste lather and make it look charming. He’s a real-life Ken doll, and I reckon his wife drives a pink Corvette.

  I explained Blip’s situation, that he was a professor, and that Sergeant Wilt had refused to release any information about his arrest status. Captain Down’s rosy smile was softened by an expression of frivolous concern.

  “Well, Dr. Fountain, I sympathize with your friend’s situation, I truly do. But the fact of the matter is that my hands are tied.” He showed me his hands, invisible rope hol
ding them fast.

  “Is this standard policy, not to release information?”

  “Oh no no!” He laughed heartily. “Goodness no.”

  “What’s the problem then?”

  “Without going into much detail, Doctor, all I can say is that the mayor has declared a city crisis. We simply cannot risk releasing a potential criminal.”

  “Potential criminal? Crisis?” I didn’t know where to start. “He’s a professor, for chrissakes, and since when is there a crisis?”

  “As of this morning. Mayor Punchinello declared a crisis in response to all the flap over the new graffiti on the bridge. In a crisis situation, there can be no exceptions.” He slammed his palm down on the desk, swatting and missing a fly, and for the instant he attempted the kill, the nearly intransigent smile on his face contorted into a hideous visage of anger and aggression. Then, almost as quick as a housefly’s reflexes, his smile snapped back into place.

  “I didn’t know there was a new message,” I said. Although the dialogue had been taking place on the side of the bridge heading out of town, I was nonetheless surprised that Blip apparently had not yet heard about this new graffiti either. He surely would have mentioned it to me if he had. “What does it say?”

  Captain Down shrugged. “I don’t commute, and I could care less about the scribblings of vandals.”

  “Right,” I hastily agreed, feeling like I was lying. “I don’t know anything about this crisis, but there must be something that can be done for Dr. Korterly. What about his wife or his lawyer? Could they intercede on his behalf?”

  “There can be no exceptions, Dr. Fountain.”

  “I can’t believe this. Declaring a city crisis and suspending civil liberties over some graffiti?” Exasperated, I got up to leave. The purple envelope Tynee had given me caught on the arm of the chair and fell from my jacket’s side pocket. I snatched it off the floor angrily. “You can bet you’ll be hearing from Dr. Korterly’s attorney,” I threatened, pointing the purple envelope at him.