The Condition

by Jennifer Haigh

  “Frank?”

  He looked up too quickly. That lush voice, warm and throaty: his ear was trained to its frequency. Working late in his fourth-floor office, he’d swear he could hear her in the street.

  “Do you have a minute?” Cristina Spiliotes, one of his postdocs, stood in the doorway holding a drink.

  “Excuse me,” Frank said to Margit. He rose and followed Cristina down the hall. Today she wore a thin blouse the color of eggplant, the top three buttons undone. Two buttons was her usual. She hadn’t undone three buttons in months.

  “What’s up?” After months of practice it was second nature: he fixed his gaze on her nose, her shoulder—away from her lush mouth, the dusky skin of her chest.

  “I have a draft of the paper,” she said breezily, handing him a manila folder. “Can you take a look?”

  “Whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. Don’t you think you’re jumping the gun?” He grinned affably, though he was taken aback by her nerve.

  She waved away his objection. “Of course you’re right. There is more work to do. I simply want to be prepared when the time comes.” Again she offered the folder. “Please?”

  Frank blinked. Ambitious postdocs were nothing new. In the course of his career, he’d hired dozens of them; many years ago he’d been one himself. But Cristina was different. Her ambition overlaid a bedrock of arrogance. Or so it seemed to Frank.

  “I may have some time over the holiday,” he said. “I’m not promising anything, but maybe I can take a look.”

  “I know it’s early, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.” She gave him the folder, her hand brushing his. “Thank you.” Her fingers were startlingly warm, her eyes velvet brown like a deer’s.

  “I can’t promise I’ll get to it,” he repeated.

  “Of course,” she agreed. “But, you know. Just in case.”

  She had worked in Frank’s lab for just over a year, each day a torment. He had hired her on a whim, his judgment clouded by loneliness, doubt and despair. Deena Maddux, his girlfriend of six years, had left him for a tenure-track job at Berkeley. Twenty years younger, she was desperate for children; only a marriage proposal would keep her in Cambridge. When none came, she drove up in a moving van. The house and furniture were Frank’s, but Deena had bought the rugs and curtains, the sheets and comforters, the decorative pillows. Now she took these with her. The rooms were stripped of everything soft.

  The place echoed without her. “Take some time alone,” Margit advised. “It will be good for you.” But he slept poorly without Deena beside him. Female company was essential to him, like water or oxygen. He had never lived like a monk, and he was too old to start.

  A few friends, all married, set him up on dates. The women were fiftyish, or a bit younger—at any rate, past the age of clamoring for what Frank wasn’t prepared to give. There was the Harvard professor, the vegetarian chef, the third-world economist from the Kennedy School of Government. Not one but two members of the clergy, a Methodist minister and a Reform rabbi. Accomplished women, sophisticated, ridiculously well educated. He dated each one a few weeks or months. He bought dinners, gave back massages, took a Tuscan cooking class at the Cambridge School of Adult Education. He tried Rollerblades and snow shoes, went candlepin bowling, browsed through street fairs and, God help him, the Brimfield Antique Mart, where he’d narrowly escaped an awkward encounter with his ex-wife. For six months, a year, he had a great deal of middle-aged fun. Except for the vegetarian chef, he liked all the women immensely. He kissed and cuddled them. But, to his horror, he did not desire them.

  His dick—up to now so hyperactive that it sometimes got him into trouble—had gone inert and sulky. Like a moody teenager, it wanted to be left alone. The women, naturally, did not understand. Attempts were made. After five sexless dates, Rabbi Kleinman proposed a weekend at a bed-and-breakfast in New Hampshire. The room was outfitted with a whirlpool tub and a complimentary bottle of domestic champagne. There was no television. Cornered, Frank pleasured the rabbi twice a day; on a rainy weekend in rural New Hampshire, there was little else to do. Twice, half hard, he managed to penetrate her. She feigned satisfaction. They drove back to Cambridge singing Beatles songs with the radio. Days passed. Finally she sent him an e-mail: she was reconciling with her ex-husband. Mortified, he sent a message of congratulations, grateful that he would not have to face her again.

  If his dick was depressed, perhaps the rest of him was too. It was not implausible. He was under pressure at work (though this was not unusual; he’d been under pressure for thirty-five years). And Deena’s defection had wounded him more deeply than he’d realized. Depression could strike anyone: a teenager, a young buck of twenty. Age had nothing to do with it. And, with the new serotonin drugs flooding the market, his condition could be treated rationally, without the indignities he’d suffered years ago, in the final days of his marriage, when Paulette dragged him to a therapist. If Time magazine were to be believed, every other person he passed in the street was swallowing Prozac. Any GP could write him a scrip.

  He made an appointment with his internist, a smart Harvard guy named Cheng. The word, impotence, proved impossible to pronounce. “My sex drive is off,” he said instead, his heart pounding. “I’m just not interested.”

  Cheng cut him off with a wave of the hand. “Listen, Frank.” He was a Chinese Texan who spoke with a twang. “The last thing you want is Prozac. It’s a great drug, but that’s the number one reason guys stop taking it. Inhibited sexual desire. Sometimes the whole deal stops working.”

  “The whole deal?” Frank repeated.

  “I mean they can’t get it up.” Then, seeing his look: “Relax, will you? For every problem there is a solution. The Brits have a terrific impotence drug in the pipeline. Very promising. If it pans out, we’ll all be popping wood into our nineties.”

  “You’re joking,” said Frank.

  “Mark my words,” said Cheng.

  Frank swore off women. Shaken by the Kleinman debacle, he feared further humiliation. Someday, perhaps, a magic pill would save him; but in the meantime, a man in his condition was better off alone. He threw himself into his work: weekends in the lab, nights on his office couch. He’d gotten funding for an additional postdoc. A single posting yielded a hundred applicants; he had his pick of the brightest young scientists in his field. All were qualified; a half dozen were veritable stars. Frank settled on a prodigy named Kevin Cho, a twenty-something whiz kid with a newly minted PhD from Stanford. He was about to make Cho an offer when Betsy Baird handed him yet another CV and cover letter. “This came today. Squeaked in under the deadline.”

  He glanced at the letter, looking for, but not finding, the familiar names: Stanford, Harvard, MIT.

  “Forget it,” he said, handing it back. “I’ve got my man.”

  “You could at least meet her.”

  “What for?” he asked, genuinely puzzled. “Cho’s the guy. Why waste everybody’s time?”

  “Okay,” Betsy said, in the mock-patient tone he hated. It meant that she considered herself a step ahead of him, which was often the case. “I have the voluntary declaration forms.” She paused significantly. “Should I send them upstairs?”

  He recalled a recent flurry of memos about hiring practices from Steve Upstairs—Steve Zeichner, the director of the institute, who occupied a top-floor office with a striking view of the Charles. For reasons unknown to the staff, Steve Upstairs was suddenly vigilant about hiring, or at least interviewing, applicants from underrepresented groups. At Grohl—run by white and Asian men—that meant blacks and females. When the first applications rolled in, Frank had been surprised by how many—30 percent, it turned out—came from women. This was his first and last thought on the matter. Without Betsy’s prodding, it would never have dawned on him that all six of his choices were male. That he hadn’t interviewed a single woman.

  “Oh, shit,” he said.

  “Light dawns over Marblehead.” Betsy handed back the letter. “Take a look.”
<
br />   Frank skimmed the first paragraph. Cristina Spiliotes had done a PhD at Baylor under Alan Manning, whom Frank knew by reputation. Manning was a leader in the hot new field of apoptosis; he’d been an early proponent of the theory that, under specific conditions, cells committed suicide—and that when this mechanism went awry, disease followed. Too many cell suicides, and you had the damaged blood vessels of ischemic heart disease; too few, and defective cells multiplied uncontrollably into tumors. The field was only a few years old, but its potential seemed boundless. If scientists could learn to control the genes that triggered apoptosis, promising new therapies—for Parkinson’s, cancer, heart disease—could result. To Frank, the possibilities were dazzling. He was a traditional oncogeneticist; he’d made his reputation by discovering a specific oncogene, XNR, and its role in tumor-cell signaling. He had no background in apoptosis, but devoured the literature on the subject. Instinct told him that this could be the next big thing. Of course, it was a young man’s game, dominated by kids like Cristina Spiliotes, who’d spent the last few years at one of the hottest apoptosis labs in the country. If an old dinosaur like Frank wanted to break into the field, this could be his chance.

  “Bring her in Friday,” he told Betsy.

  “You’re booked all day.”

  “It won’t take long. I’ll meet her for lunch.”

  He wondered, in retrospect, if that had made the difference. Every other candidate, Kevin Cho included, had come to his office, shaken his hand across his cluttered desk. Cristina Spiliotes had suggested a restaurant he’d never heard of, a little Spanish place on a side street near Harvard Square. She was waiting when he arrived, her dark hair loose. She wore tiny pearl earrings and a silky white blouse. Her legs were hidden by a sweep of flowered tablecloth.

  He’d been charmed by her warmth, her slight accent, her musical laugh. To his surprise she ordered a glass of wine. “The tapas here are really wonderful,” she said. “Would you like to try them?” Small plates arrived: olives, garlicky mussels, fried things from the sea.

  As they ate Frank questioned her about her science. For three years she had studied a specific gene—an X-linked inhibitor of apoptosis, or XIAP. She had already done the molecular biology, developed reagents to shut off the gene in vitro. Her next step was to breed a transgenic mouse, genetically altered so that XIAP was knocked out in all its cells. If, as Cristina hoped, switching off XIAP made the mouse resistant to tumors, the case was clear: this gene, her gene, played a role in cancer development.

  Frank nodded, fascinated. His ex-wife had called him a poor listener, and he knew it was often true; but when a scientific question engaged him, his concentration was boundless. Cristina spoke rapidly, her lovely hands flying; she wore an armful of silver bangles, but no ring.

  Her words captivated him; so did—why pretend?—her bare throat, her glossy hair, the astonishing suedelike texture of her skin. Like good science, feminine beauty always got his attention; but it was rare to find both in the same package. Listening, watching, he was aware of the muscles in his arms and legs, the blood warming his face, the simple pleasure of his beating heart.

  When the paella arrived, the subject changed. They talked about politics, the price of real estate, a new photography exhibit at the MFA. Cristina had interviewed that morning at Harvard, with Frank’s old nemesis Otto Mueller; certain he’d make her an offer, she’d already begun looking at apartments. (At the time, Frank found this confidence appealing. Later it seemed evidence of her arrogance.) She’d seen a terrific place in Cambridgeport, but was concerned about the safety of the neighborhood. “I have to be careful,” she explained, lowering her voice, “as a single woman.”

  Frank took note—he couldn’t help it—of the word single.

  She ordered a second glass of wine.

  “Let’s get a bottle,” he suggested, which made sense: it was cheaper than ordering by the glass. Over his second glass, he found himself alluding to his breakup with Deena Maddux, and Cristina’s eyes widened in sympathy. Her bra glowed beneath her blouse—a white bra, he guessed, much lighter than her olive skin. When the flan arrived she rose to excuse herself. Her skirt clung to her backside, round and cloven, like an apricot.

  He was lost.

  She started immediately; she would take time off later, they agreed, to settle into her new apartment. Frank felt invigorated. Cristina was a hit with the other postdocs; passing their shared office, Frank often heard her laughing with Martin or Guei. Her science was stimulating; so—he admitted it to himself—was her simple presence. Though his conduct with her was perfectly proper, he observed her discreetly, and made exhaustive mental notes. On certain days she wore her hair in a bun, exposing plump earlobes; often a dark curl escaped, trailing down her bare neck. She favored silky button-down shirts in deep colors; she left the first two buttons undone, and sometimes the first three. When summer came, he discovered another feature of these shirts: in an air-conditioned room, they did not hide her nipples. Without ever seeing or touching it, she had revived his limp appendage. What Rabbi Kleinman, with full use of hands and mouth, had barely achieved, Cristina unknowingly brought about several times a day. His condition was cured.

  Frank McKotch was not finished. He was as virile as ever. The future stretched ahead of him—shorter than it used to be, but promising still. There would be other women. Another Deena, clasping him fiercely; another Paulette breathing his name.

  For months this knowledge was enough for him. Of course it was! His worst fears had been banished, his manhood affirmed. Certainly he expected nothing more of Cristina. She was his postdoc; he was responsible for her professional development, a duty he did not take lightly. And she had already given him the greatest gift.

  Filled with gratitude, he believed this. Believed it right up to the moment when, coming out of a coffee shop, he heard a motorcycle roar into Kendall Square. The driver was young and swarthy. A woman clasped him around the waist. She climbed off and removed her helmet, shaking loose her dark hair. Her round cloven backside could belong to none other. She bent to kiss the driver’s mouth.

  The bike squealed away, running a red light. Frank stepped into a doorway and waited for Cristina to pass. She hadn’t seen him; he was certain. His chest ached; a cold sweat broke out on his forehead. His stomach churned.

  He recognized the symptoms of myocardial infarction.

  It was a preposterous notion: his blood pressure was low, his lipid profile exemplary. But he was not a young man. In those few moments he’d aged twenty years.

  Cristina had a lover. Not surprising: she was a beautiful girl. That the lover was young and vital, a swarthy Greek on a motorcycle, likewise made perfect sense. It was a probable outcome, wholly predictable if he’d been paying attention. He had simply been looking at the wrong data. For months he’d fixated on apricots, earlobes, protruding nipples. Busy counting buttons, he’d ignored other crucial facts. One morning she’d come to work sullen and bleary, eyes swollen as if she’d been crying. The next day a bouquet of roses arrived at the lab; when Betsy Baird teased her, Cristina had blushed.

  It was irrational, this feeling that she’d betrayed him. He recalled, obsessively, that first lunch together: I have to be careful, as a single woman. On some level he’d believed she was signaling him, letting him know that she was free.

  The intensity of his anger astonished him. In the office, the lab, he could not meet her eyes. He saw the truth in all its ugliness: he had hired her because he wanted her. And believed, in some deluded way, that she wanted him too. In weak moments, self-pity overwhelmed him. He began to feel that she had taken advantage of him, his all-too-obvious fascination with her. Unfounded, of course; but the feeling dogged him. Their hour-long weekly meetings seemed interminable; he found excuses to cancel them, which seemed best for all concerned. The sight of her filled him with resentment, and such sentiments had no place in a lab.

  Meanwhile Cristina toiled away on her transgenic mouse. The work proved more diffic
ult than expected. XIAP was not cooperating; she’d had some difficulty turning off the gene in the mouse’s stem cells. Such glitches were common in gene manipulation; but as the months passed, Frank grew nervous. He began to see apoptosis as a long shot, his interest in it a spell of temporary insanity. He’d made lousy hires before, but never for such a contemptible reason. An old dog’s fascination with a beautiful young woman: was anything more pitiful? His motives would be obvious to anyone paying attention; the lab techs and postdocs, Betsy Baird and Margit, all must have seen him for the fool he was. Meanwhile, Kevin Cho had stayed on at Stanford. He’d been snapped up—didn’t it figure?—by Frank’s old buddy Neil Windsor. Cho was studying signaling proteins in the growth pathway—far less risky than Cristina’s apoptosis work. Frank understood that he’d missed a rare opportunity. A blind man could see that Cho was destined for a hit. Cho was as close as Frank had ever come to a sure thing.

  Then, at long last, Cristina’s luck shifted. After months of manipulating stem cells, she succeeded in turning off the gene. She had the knockout! And twelve weeks later, her transgenic mice showed mammary tumors—a direct result, presumably, of deactivating XIAP.

  And in a stroke his judgment was vindicated. Cho had been the safe choice; but Frank McKotch was not timid; Frank McKotch had never shied away from risk. Beneath Cristina’s comely surface was a true scientist, and only he had seen it. The postdocs, the lab techs, even Steve Upstairs: all would be awed by his perspicacity, his uncanny prescience.