Elixir

by Charles Atkins

  ‘Where are you? I’ve sent you like ten texts. Aren’t you planning to do rounds at the hospital this afternoon? And you know we have a game at four.’

  ‘I’m at the Brookline police department.’

  ‘Oh shit, Frank. What do you need?’

  ‘It’s good … at least I think it’s good. I’m helping the detective go through Jackson’s files. Like a consultant.’

  ‘Be careful.’

  ‘He said it was a robbery and that the guy who did it pawned some of Ruth’s stuff, and then overdosed.’

  ‘Then why go through Jackson’s files?’

  ‘Sean said it’s to be thorough.’

  ‘Sean?’

  ‘Yeah, the detective.’

  ‘First names … he cute?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Wedding ring?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Gay?’

  ‘Can’t tell.’

  ‘You into him?’

  Silence.

  ‘OK, nerd boy,’ Grace said. ‘Do something.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Ask him for coffee.’

  ‘He already brought me some.’

  ‘God, for someone with your IQ you are the dumbest person I know.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Ask him out for coffee.’

  ‘He’s looking over here. And it’s already two thirty.’ How did it get to be so late? ‘I got to go.’

  ‘Do something. And if you’re going to make it to the game on time, you’re going to have to do it fast.’

  ‘Right,’ and he disconnected. Grace’s instructions rang in his head. But any way he ran the script he couldn’t make ‘you want to go out for coffee?’ sound right. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck, and with every step Sean took towards him, the saliva drained from his mouth. He swallowed. ‘Sean, I got to go.’ And this is where he pulls out the cuffs.

  ‘I hadn’t realized how long I’d kept you. Sorry about that.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ Frank grabbed his knapsack from under the table, hoisted it over one shoulder. He stood but miscalculated the distance between them, and nearly clipped Sean’s chin as he stood. He backed away and tripped on a chair leg.

  Sean reflexively grabbed him by his shoulders to steady him.

  Frank’s pulse raced. He berated himself for his utter lack of cool. With his five-inch height advantage he looked down into Sean’s clear cool gaze.

  ‘You OK, big guy?’

  ‘I’m a clutz.’ He didn’t back away and Sean didn’t loosen his hold.

  ‘You’re allowed.’ He let go. ‘I didn’t ask how Killer and the bird are doing?’

  ‘My place is too small for a four-hundred-pound tortoise. And I’ve already gotten complaints from the downstairs neighbor about Harvey’s swearing.’ Ask him for coffee. Ask him for coffee. ‘Not to mention Caesar and Lavinia.’

  ‘Who are they? Cats? Dogs? Norwegian Rats?’

  Frank started.

  ‘Right,’ Sean said. ‘And that’s when you were saved by the bell. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want … but I’m thinking Caesar and Lavinia aren’t your average rats.’

  ‘They’re not.’ Frank’s thoughts spun hard and fast. If he’s read my work, what else does he know?

  ‘I’d like to hear it,’ Sean said.

  Was that an invitation … or an interrogation? ‘If you need more help with Jackson’s computer …’ Frank offered as the moment slipped away. He’s probably not gay. The odds are small. Even if he were, someone this smart and good looking, he’s got someone. How could he not? And does he know about my mother? About me? About my shit luck with guys?

  ‘Naah, you’ve been more than generous with your time. But I’ll call if we get stuck. Chances are good that when we get the rest of the forensics back on the dead junkie, I’ll close it out.’

  ‘Right.’ Frank slipped his other arm though the backpack. ‘You play baseball?’

  ‘Not since college, why?’

  ‘That’s where I’m headed. It’s a LGBTQ team, but it’s not a requirement,’ he added. ‘And we’re always down a player or two. No uniforms. We do have jerseys.’ Shut up. ‘We’re The Nimble Nerds, mostly lab rats and researchers.’ He held his breath and forced himself not to look away. He couldn’t read Sean’s response.

  ‘Wish I could, but it’s one of my long days. Some other time, maybe.’ His smile didn’t waver, he didn’t break gaze.

  ‘Right.’ The moment was gone. Time to go. He headed towards the door.

  ‘You taking the bus?’ Sean asked.

  Frank looked down. ‘It’s not far. I was planning to run.’

  ‘To Cambridge?’

  ‘Yeah. I run. It clears my head. There’s a science to it, actually.’ He stopped himself from launching into all the neurotransmitters, endogenous opioids, and growth factors that get released during intense exercise and how that stimulates increased synaptic connections and density.

  ‘Got it, and Frank …’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Thanks again, and have a good game.’ His gaze was intense. ‘But something else.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Be careful, Frank. If even a quarter of what you hinted at in your study is true, or if it’s not, and people think it’s true, you’ve got something with serious value. Be careful.’

  ‘You too.’ What the hell did I just say? What the fuck is wrong with me? And before he could turn into a bigger moron, he headed out.

  NINE

  Leona stared up through the magnifying lens into the distorted eyes of her plastic surgeon, Dr Ramon.

  She tried to read his expression and wondered how much Botox it had taken to give his forehead its porcelain-smooth surface. Not a line, not a wrinkle. She avoided her own reflection, magnified and brutally lit in two cantilevered mirrors on either side of the doctor’s head. I hate this. So she focused on her own forehead, just injected and tried to feel her skin. Nothing, just a sea of numb.

  ‘It’s time, Leona.’ He pulled out a black marker.

  Get that fucking thing away from my face.

  ‘Nothing drastic … not yet.’ Without asking her permission, he deftly traced potential incisions under her eyes, chin, neck. ‘Unless you want to.’ His touch felt feather light on the chemically-frozen planes of her skin.

  She forced her gaze onto the magnified horrorshow of her marked-up face. She tried to remember when it had turned from being her best friend, to this … problems everywhere. Like a work of art left out in acid rain. Her mother had not been wrong about how she’d used her beauty. And yes, if she owed Karen anything, it was that. But now … ‘I’m not ready for surgery. I need to think about this. But tell me what you’d recommend. And be specific.’

  An hour later, Leona drove up to her Greenwich estate and took calls. The two-hour drive, traffic depending, was never wasted. She dispensed with a driver, as trust was a problem. Other than Dalton, no one was privy to her plans. And even with him, it was need-to-know. She was demoralized, nothing to be done for it … at least not yet.

  Now on the line was Lydia Finch, VP of marketing, a typical UNICO executive: hungry, ambitious, and aware that jobs in Leona’s executive suite were two-to-five-year stopping points. Do well and bounce up and out to something better; fall on Leona’s bad side and kiss your career goodbye.

  She listened to Lydia’s crisp summation. As she rattled off the highlights of the new campaigns for UNICO’s top selling drugs: Primepop – for erectile dysfunction, Grenadavir – an antiviral for hepatitis C that cost over a thousand dollars a pill and sixty grand for the full course, Renepicide B – a chemotherapeutic infusion agent with recent FDA approval for multiple malignancies, and Serpamaline for anxiety and depression. And as Lydia talked, mock-ups of ad campaigns flashed across Leona’s dashboard monitor.

  ‘Haggard. Get someone younger,’ she said, critiquing the actress sprawled dishabille on a bed for the Primepop ad, then hazarded a glance in the rearview mirror at her own f
orehead. Ramon was right, Botox and collagen were no longer enough.

  ‘And for Grenadavir we’re no longer the only hep C drug in the race. We need a famous face. Someone hip from the sixties. Send the message that if you can remember the sixties you weren’t a part of them. I want marching in rallies, tie dye, dancing naked in the rain, someone passing a joint.’

  ‘Got it,’ Lydia said. ‘It’s cool to be infected. Shows you were relevant, that you cared.’

  ‘Exactly. See who’s still alive from Woodstock … one of those wispy folk singers. We could purchase rights to a song, get them to sing it. Happy scenes of ex-hippie baby boomers running through fields of poppies … with grand-kids and a dog trailing behind …’

  ‘Done and done,’ Lydia said. ‘The insurance companies hate it.’

  ‘Of course they do,’ Leona said. ‘It’s sixty grand out of their pockets and into ours. And with a ninety-eight-percent cure rate, they can’t deny their members. So … go big. Throw three million dollars on the table and see who grabs for it. Go as high as five, for a Woodstock headliner.’

  ‘I’m on it.’

  Leona turned off on the Greenwich ramp. Yes, clear objectives. Either Lydia would bring in a virus-riddled A-lister, or she’d be replaced. ‘And Renepicide … the numbers suck.’

  There was silence.

  ‘Spit it out.’

  ‘Bad spin from the lawsuits.’

  ‘So? Spin it back.’ Annoyed, she glanced at the monitor. ‘Lydia, these layouts suck. Shaved heads and cancer wards? We’re supposed to give people hope. These are fucking funereal. Who did them?’

  ‘Wells and Freeman.’

  ‘Dump them. I don’t want to ever see depressing shit like this with UNICO on it. You need to screen this shit. It makes me question your judgment … your taste.’

  ‘Won’t happen again.’

  ‘Better not. Got to go.’ She ended the call, ‘Gate,’ she said, and turned onto a street of estates, each one different, some with sweeping expanses of glass, others built at the end of the nineteenth century for captains of industry, those on the right, with unobstructed views of Long Island Sound and eight-digit price tags. Hers, at the cul-de-sac’s end on a promontory with two-hundred-seventy-degree water views, was unrivaled.

  Her hand-forged gates opened onto a beech lined cobblestone drive. Left stood a blooming orchard of mature peach, pear, nectarine, and heirloom apple trees. To the right a Carrera marble turn-of-the-century Greco-Roman three-story masterpiece with panoramic views.

  She got out and breathed in salt air, then gave herself a moment to take in the sounds of surf, gulls, bees in the orchard, and her golden retriever’s excited barks. She tried to feel the spring sun against her frozen brow but couldn’t. And as she pictured Dr Ramon’s black pen, her mood sank. That is not going to happen. Her pulse quickened, because she knew, like her beauty, time was not on her side. And like chiding one of her employees, or even Dalton, she berated herself for inaction. Make this fucking happen. You need this and you need it now.

  She headed out back as her golden retriever, Rex III, danced at the outer edge of his electric fence.

  Careless of her cream Prada suit, she braced for his inevitable tongue bath. With a click of her keyring she brought down the invisible fence, and woman and dog embraced. ‘Love you, love you, love you,’ she cooed into the silky softness of his neck. ‘Enough,’ and she pushed him down to where he could lick only her hand. She stroked his broad head. ‘Such a good boy.’ And the two walked back towards a pier built on boulders craned in by the house’s original robber baron owner. At its end, surrounded by water deep enough to moor a yacht, was a weathered marble cupola plucked from an ancient Italian estate. She sat and petted Rex. ‘Who’s a good boy?’ She pulled out a disposable burner phone from her bag and a rawhide dog treat from a bin beneath her chair. She fed Rex a chewy and punched in a number.

  With her free hand, she massaged Rex’s favorite behind-the-ear spot, waited, and her call was answered on the third ring.

  ‘Yes?’ A man’s voice.

  Leona savored the view and pictured the lead attorney in a large class-action suit against UNICO and Renepicide. She’d endured two four-hour depositions and learned more than she’d revealed. Including that the case rested on testimony and illegally obtained evidence from Renepicide’s lead researcher, an annoying little man fired years back when he tried to block the release of the drug. I should have done it then. ‘Dr Malcom Bender. He drinks. Make it look like an accident, an embarrassing one.’

  ‘Collateral damage?’

  ‘Yes.’ Dead and discredited. She stroked Rex’s neck and back.

  ‘Consider it done.’

  Leona met Rex’s adoring gaze. Still perfect. ‘Double if it’s within twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Double it is.’

  The line went dead. She held Rex firm with her left hand, and with the muscle memory from high school and college basketball, she hurled the phone. It splashed and sank into the depths of the Sound. Rex barked and strained, clearly wanting both the swim and the game of fetch. An ender to Doctor Bender, she mused.

  But then she felt something soft and fleshy on Rex’s right rear haunch. She pulled back his fur. Her spirits plummeted – a tumor, not the soft squishy fat ones that could easily be removed, but a malignancy. ‘Ah, too bad boy. I thought it might be you.’

  ‘Come on.’ She picked up a well-chewed tennis ball hidden under a flowerpot and to Rex’s delight rocketed it towards the house. Sadness welled, but she stopped it. He won’t really die. She’d have him euthanized once his replacement, Rex IV, with several embryos on standby, was ready. This next one will be the one. She watched her beautiful Rex, and thought about Dr Frank Garfield. How long will your magic keep the next one alive? And more importantly, keep me alive? As a scientist, albeit out of the lab for decades, Garfield’s work obsessed her. While a generation separated them, he’d effectively picked up where she’d stopped. But had I known … and how does he do it? What’s the trick, Dr Garfield? Did Jackson know?

  Rex bounded back with the spittle-soaked ball. He dropped it by her feet and nudged it with his nose. She threw it again and headed towards the back porch. Her thoughts were a torrent of anxiety. What if Dalton can’t convince him? What if Jackson was wrong about the process? What if it’s a fake? If he’s a fake? But she’d read the study and knew that Jackson would never have allowed his name to go on anything inaccurate. It was maddening. To know that Garfield had unraveled the key to something amazing, real life extension, and with it the tantalizing possibility of a return to youth. Something she desperately needed. She thought, what if Dalton can’t bring him in? What then? And her back-up, Jackson … no longer an option. And how the fuck did that happen?

  As Rex returned, she knew Garfield was her only shot, others would figure things out but that would be years down the line, years she did not have. ‘Whatever it takes.’ And speaking to her rapt canine audience, she added, ‘Everyone wants something. Garfield wants to heal the children, to be Jesus Christ. Good for him. And I will make that happen. He will make the sick, well. He will give me back my youth, my beauty. And after … crosses to bear.’

  TEN

  Preoccupied, Frank watched from the bench as the pitcher, a Harvard biophysicist, over-spun a curve ball and walked Dirk Carver. They were two down in the first, and Frank, might, or might not make it to bat in this inning. But his thoughts weren’t on the game.

  ‘The cop,’ Grace said, from her spot on his right. ‘Tell me.’ She had her cap on backwards, and her Nimble Nerds T-shirt had fresh stains from a fudgsicle.

  ‘What do you want to know? He hasn’t arrested me.’

  ‘You said, he’s cute and no wedding ring. Did you ask him out?’

  This was pure Grace. The only person on the planet, whom he knew without doubt, had his back. A week ago Jackson had been mostly in that category. But even he, after years of mentorship, still gave Frank unconditional respect … but not support
.

  ‘His name is Sean Brody. I have not yet Binged or Googled him. Around our age. Good looking. Objectively, out of my league. But I asked him to the game. Told him we were a mostly LBGTQ team. He said he couldn’t, but maybe some other time.’

  ‘Ouch. That’s vague. A for effort. But, Frank, your romantic life may now have to be taken off life support and declared dead. Forget him being out of your league, you’re not even playing.’

  ‘People in glass houses, Grace …’ he said, not wanting to rehash his romantic misadventures. Which he chalked up to a simple equation. His work and patients took precedence, and if he subtracted out the recent drug-company moles, the only two guys he’d fallen for had both run off after he’d told them a fraction of his story. There really was no slick way around, ‘yeah, my Mom killed my Dad, tried to kill me, and is locked up – hopefully for life – in a hospital for the criminally insane. Oh, and she still wants me dead. And … when I was a kid I was in a few nut houses myself. But I’m fine, really, sort of …’ After the last one, Dean, bolted and accused him of lying and keeping things from him, it seemed like a no win to even try. Now, he looked at Grace, short, cute, blonde and curvy. While he’d always known he was gay, they had nonetheless shared a few fumbling adolescent make-out sessions, which ended with laughter and the recognition that theirs was not a romantic connection.

  ‘Point taken. But my dating problems are your fault.’

  ‘How’s that?’ He lowered his voice, not wanting their business overheard by their notoriously gabby teammates. But even more, an uncomfortable tingle, like being watched. It was hard to shake, and since Jackson’s death it had been like background noise. Which he knew, based on experience, could blossom into full-bore paranoia.

  ‘I have you and my dad as templates for what a guy can be. Dad is bedrock who in fifty years of marriage has loved my mom, supported me … you, and my sisters. And then I have you.’

  ‘And I mess up your love life … how?’

  ‘Frank, you are thick. Brilliant, but—’

  ‘I know. Give me the remedial and no big words.’

  She jabbed him with her elbow.