Phoenix Heart

by Carolyn Nash

  I finished the article on Seattle and turned to a two-page spread on finding the right pet sitter. There were some cute pictures of a long-haired mutt laughing up at his mistress just before she was to leave him at a kennel. The kennel looked several steps in grade above my own apartment.

  Someone swished through the curtain behind us and Dr. Richard’s hand tightened on his knee until the knuckles were white. He ducked his head and tugged at the brim of the cap until the black-haired flight attendant passed and had gone through the curtains in front. I looked down at my magazine again, no longer seeing the pictures.

  Maybe he is in some kind of trouble. Maybe real trouble.

  A man rose from a seat behind us and made his way forward toward the toilets. Andrew drew away from the aisle and pressed his hand to his forehead as if nursing a miserable headache. I looked around the small compartment. A man of the size and appearance of Andrew Richards was going to find it tough to hide. If he had traveled to San Francisco often, some of these people might remember him. I knew the women would, even through the sunglasses and the tacky tourist outfit.

  The curtains parted in the front and the black-haired flight attendant backed out, pulling a drink cart being pushed by a steward. Andrew took a deep breath and tried to hunch down in the seat further, but he was too tall for it to do any good. I didn’t give myself a chance to think why. I just reached over and touched his arm. “Trade seats with me,” I whispered.

  “What?”

  I nodded at the approaching flight attendant. His eyes widened, then he nodded quickly, and I raised the seat arm, slid across, and he stepped over me. He dropped down into the window seat, adjusted his cap, turned over on his shoulder, and closed his eyes. I flipped the magazine open again and bent over it.

  “More champagne, Miss?”

  “Oh, no. No, thank you.”

  The flight attendant reached down and took the glass from my hand. “Oops,” she said. “Forgot to collect this, didn’t I?”

  I smiled and shrugged.

  She looked toward Andrew. “Something for..?” She stopped when she saw that he appeared to be sleeping. “Oops, again,” she whispered. She smiled, shrugged and she and the steward moved the cart on to the next block of seats.

  I turned the magazine page slowly, and then pivoted to look around the seat down the aisle. The steward was handing a juice box to a little girl, the flight attendant a bloody Mary to the girl’s mother. I looked back at Andrew. He was watching them through the division between the seat backs. “Thank you,” he said in a low voice.

  “No problem.” I turned back to the magazine.

  “I don’t know why you’re helping me after that idiocy in the car.”

  I shrugged and turned the page. “It’s nothing.”

  “Melanie, I wish you’d give me a chance to explain. You deserve an explanation, and frankly, I need you to know. You know who I am, you know where I’m going, and I need you to understand why so that later, when you see the newspapers, you won’t tell the police.”

  I dropped the magazine and it slid off my lap into the aisle. I fumbled it back into the seat pocket. “Police?” I cleared my throat. “Newspapers?”

  He took off his sunglasses and fiddled with the earpiece, staring down at his reflection in the slightly mirrored surface. He folded the glasses, hooked them over the neck of his t-shirt, then looked at me. “Yes, I’m afraid so. Will you listen?”

  I studied his face for a long moment. “Yes,” I said, “I will.”

  He sighed. “Good. Thank you. Look, I am sorry I got you involved in any of this. I don’t usually drag my students into my personal life, especially into a mess like this.” He inched around, pulled up on the denim of his jeans, and drew up one long leg so that he could sit looking directly at me. Through the window the sun had lowered to the south and west. The light coming in behind him picked up the gold highlights of the red-blond hair on his arms.

  But I was too involved in what he was saying to notice.

  He lifted his cap, raked his hair back and rubbed briskly at his scalp, then tugged the cap back down again. “You know, it’ll help to talk about it, to lay it all out, get it straight in my mind.” He looked beyond me for a minute then continued. “It started long before this morning, really, now that I think about it, in grad school. You know anything about my work?”

  “Some. I’ve read your books, but start at the beginning.”

  “Well, you know if you’ve read my books that developmental biology fascinates me. How and why does one cell--the human egg--divide and in dividing differentiate to become lung, bone, heart, brain? Of course, we know the pattern is in the DNA, but how is it read? If all cells have the same chromosomal information, why does this cell become lung, but it’s sister cell becomes liver? Why does this cell become blood vessel, and not just any blood vessel, but one that feeds this section of this heart muscle? How can anything as intricately designed as the human body come from what is really just a single, tiny sack of organized chemicals? And why does something sometimes go so terribly wrong and a cell begins to divide uncontrollably until it chokes the life out of the body it was once meant to support?”

  I was nodding and grinning involuntarily. This was it. This was why biology had drawn me to it, and why I had headed for the University after reading Dr. Richards’ first book.

  “If you can decipher even the tiniest portion of the puzzle, that portion can become a key. Find out why a cell turns on, and you can turn it off if things go haywire and it becomes cancerous. Find out how a liver becomes a liver, and maybe when someone comes in to a hospital with damage caused by disease, or accident, no problem! Just zip in there, correct the problem, and let the repaired cells gradually and naturally replace the damaged ones. Oh, I know this is simplistic, but it’s the dream.”

  “And?”

  He grinned. “Yes, there is an ‘and.’ It appears that we’ve found something.”

  His voice was casual; his eyes were not.

  I leaned forward. “So, are you going to tell me, or do I have to shake it out of you.”

  “Now, there’s the Melanie I’ve seen at the lab with Chuck.” He started to laugh, but it caught in his throat, and he turned away.

  “What?” I asked.

  “My lab,” he said. After a long silence, he continued: “The explosion took out all of the files. All the lab notebooks are gone. All the records. The sprinklers took out the computers.”

  “Oh no,” I said, remembering the sodden, blackened papers and the twisted metal that were all that remained of the file cabinets.

  “A device, a bomb was planted in the files.”

  “I heard it was a bomb. But why?”

  “Well, the police think I did it in an attempt to destroy my work to cover up the fact that there was no work. That it had all been a fake. That I’m nothing but an empty-headed rich-boy playing at being a scientist. That… Well you get the idea.”

  “But that’s absolutely outrageous!” I said. “I mean, I haven’t known you long, but even I can see that that’s patently ridiculous. So what if you’re rich and look like a Greek go...” I stopped, blushed a shade between bright scarlet and purple and turned forward.

  Oh God, I’ve never asked for anything before. I’m asking now. Please, please let the plane crash.

  There was a long, awkward silence.

  “Melanie.” Dr. Richards cleared his throat and started again. “Thank you for, well, believing that I couldn’t have done it. After the day I’ve had...”

  Oh good. We’re going to pretend he didn’t hear.

  “Of course I believe it,” I said. “What I can’t figure out is why anyone would think you would plant a bomb in your own lab. The entire idea is ludicrous. Why would anyone blow up a biology lab anyway?”

  “I’ve been thinking about nothing else,” he said. “I told you we’d found something. We’ve isolated a clone of a gene that appears to be significant in the control of the development of blood tissue. If we
’ve found what I think we’ve found, we’re talking about a major discovery. Chuck and Lance and I have been working on it for a year and a half now, keeping it quiet because I didn’t want anything to get out prematurely, you know, Cure for Cancer Found, The Secret of Life Discovered. I get enough garbage from the tabloids without that.”

  I nodded. I’d seen the spreads, not so many at first, but since he’d started dating Caren Granzella, he couldn’t look cross-eyed without some checkout line throwaway splashing it across the cover. He was right. If this got out, they’d have a field day.

  “Besides that, the first drug company that gets their hands on this could make millions, billions even. That much money makes people forget a lot of things.”

  “But who did it then? Who else knew about your work?”

  Dr. Richards started to speak, but he couldn’t seem to get the words out. He pulled his leg down and turned to face forward again, a look of utter weariness on his face.

  “If there is a worst part of this whole mess--besides what happened to Lance--that’s it,” he said finally. His voice was low. “There was only one other person who knew. My major professor in grad school has been working on the same project. We’ve been collaborating, sharing resources. I’ve been confiding in him, asking his advice. I’d heard rumors in the last year or two that his ethics weren’t what they should be, but I defended him at every turn. John Philip Harrison was only one small step from sainthood, as far as I was concerned.”

  “Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head. “Wait, Dr. Richards.”

  “Andrew, please.”

  “Andrew. You’re talking about J. P. Harrison. I mean, he almost won the Nobel Prize a couple of times, didn’t he? I’ve seen him on talk shows. He just couldn’t be, I mean, he just isn’t the type. Look, maybe it was someone else who found out about your work somehow. Somebody in his lab.”

  “Melanie, I’ve known J.P. for about seven years now: four years grad school and three since. For the last several months, well, something has been different, wrong. All of a sudden J.P. had a new Mercedes, was taking flying trips everywhere, showing up at fundraisers where I knew good and well that the tickets topped a grand, hobnobbing with very wealthy people. At first I thought, great. The guy deserves some fun. But it escalated and then I started hearing little comments, choice little remarks about me that appeared to come from him, questioning the value of my work. I tried to talk to him after I’d heard four or five things, but he was always unavailable, always had just stepped out, or just gone into a conference.”

  “Maybe it was just coincidence.”

  “Was it coincidence that it all started, after the discovery? After I’d FedExed him thumb drives holding the bulk of our results?”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, ‘oh.’ So, I stopped sending him any information. And after a couple of weeks, he called me.”

  “And?”

  Andrew shook his head. “I was straight with him. I told him I’d heard some disturbing things, and that I didn’t feel that it was right to continue our collaboration until we’d had a chance to talk. He blew. He started accusing me of holding out on him, trying to steal the thunder, to steal his work.” Andrew looked at me. “It was my work.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “But that’s not what you were thinking.”

  “I wasn’t thinking anything,” I lied.

  “Right,” Andrew said.

  “I wasn’t!”

  “You see?” he said. “And you know me, at least a little. You think anyone’s going to believe me against J.P. Harrison?”

  “Look, I don’t know you at all,” I said truthfully and with a little temper. “Do you expect me to just automatically believe everything without any doubts or questions?”

  “I guess not,” he said after a few moments.

  “Okay,” I said. “Besides, you haven’t told me anything beyond the fact that Dr. Harrison was spending a lot of money and maybe told some people some things about you. Hell, maybe a relative died and left him a packet.”

  “Granted,” Andrew said. “It could have happened that way, but it didn’t. Two weeks ago somebody broke in my lab and stole my lab notebooks. Thankfully, it was my copies of my graduate school notebooks that disappeared and not my current journals.”

  “But why do you think it’s Harrison?”

  “Why?” He smiled a smile so painful that I had to look away. “Because this morning, it was J. P. who denounced me to the police. He told them that he had carried me through grad school, that I’d barely squeaked through my post doc, that my research at the University had been a sham, that I had stolen his work and was about to pass it off as my own. My mentor, the man I respected more than anyone, attempted murder and then accused me of it.” I stared at him in horror, at an absolute loss for anything to say that could be anything more than totally inadequate.

  “Could I offer you an hors d’oeuvre?”

  I nearly screamed. The voice had come from right behind me, and it was everything I could do to keep from leaping out of my seat. Somehow I’d completely forgotten that I was on a plane full of people. The black-haired flight attendant stood just behind me, holding a tray.

  “Sorry if I startled you.”

  Andrew quickly slid his glasses on and raised a hand to rub his forehead as he turned toward the window.

  I laughed. “No, no it’s fine. And nothing for me, thank you.”

  “Something to drink?”

  I smiled. “Nothing thanks.”

  “What about you sir?”

  Andrew ignored her.

  I glanced over at Andrew then back to the flight attendant, and crooked a finger at her. “To tell you the truth,” I whispered as she bent down, “he’s nursing a hangover that would kill three ordinary men. I don’t think he wants anything.”

  “Oh, I understand completely,” she whispered, then she moved on down the aisle.

  When I turned back Andrew was looking at me, his glasses in his hand again, studying my face as if he couldn’t quite figure out what it was he was actually seeing. “Seems all I do is thank you,” he whispered finally.

  “No problem,” I said. It was then that I noticed the disgraceful state of my skirt. I worked for almost a minute brushing off the nonexistent lint, and straightening the already straight pleats.

  “Look, Andrew,” I continued. “There’s no way he can get away with this. The people in the lab will vouch for you.”

  “Yes, but who would you believe, a bunch of probably-bribed grad students or J.P. Harrison? No one else at the University really knows much of anything about my work. I told you, I’ve been keeping it under wraps. “

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, oh.”

  “So, how can I help?” The words slipped out quite naturally. I didn’t really even hear them until Andrew turned to stare at me.

  “You know,” he said. “You are really something.”

  “Ah, shucks, mister. You’ll turn my head.”

  “I’m serious. I’m also very grateful, but you’ve already done more than enough.”

  “I’ve done nothing,” I said. “There must be something else.”

  “No nothing.”

  “I really don’t mind.”

  “Melanie, no!” He stopped, swallowed and looked quickly around the cabin. The buzz of conversation didn’t pause, the flight attendant continued with the hors d’oeuvre tray down the aisle. The sound of the engines and the air rushing outside had covered his voice.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to shout at you. It’s just that it’s too dangerous.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think...”

  “That’s right! You don’t think!” he whispered. He turned away, took a deep breath, and then turned back to me, speaking slowly and deliberately. “You see, you’re right. The story is ludicrous. J.P. knows that it might take time but eventually the evidence is going to clear me. I may not be able to convince everyone, but I can clear myself with the
police. He never planned to have to get away with that story. He knows that ever since grad school, I’ve always been the first one in in the morning. It’s when I work best. Never get in later than 6:30. I was supposed to be in the lab this morning, not Lance. Don’t you see? If you hadn’t been there, Lance would be dead right now, and on an ordinary morning, it would have been me, and not Lance lying there.”

  “Oh, my god,” I breathed. In all that had happened, in all my ups and downs believing this or that, never in my wildest fantasies had the idea of murder crept in.

  “When you left this morning, when the fire captain came up to question me, he told me that they’d received a phone call from J. P.” He rubbed his hands down his jeans and gripped his knees. “And he told me what he’d said.”

  He stopped, cleared his throat, and then continued. “The thing is, the only way J. P.’s going to get through this intact is to finish what he tried to do this morning.”

  I leaned forward. “All the more reason you should let me help you.”

  “Good god, girl! Why in the world would you want to get mixed up in this mess? What do you think you know about handling something like this?”

  “What, and you’re an expert?” I whispered, suddenly furious. “You deal with hired assassins every day? Or maybe you just trained for it.” I lifted my chin, tossed my head haughtily and threw in a preppie accent. “‘But of course, Dad and Mums insisted that Buffy and I pick up courses in Dodging Bullets, Hiding Out, and Evading the Mob.’ Molecular Biology major, minor in Trained Killers?”

  “And I thought you were so quiet. What a mouth.” He arched an eyebrow at me and fixed me with the exact same expression of cynical humor that I’d seen not six weeks before in a layout on the people page of Time.

  And yes, ladies and gentlemen, there she goes again! Isn’t she marvelous! At the drop of a hat she can turn her face three shades of red! Come one! Come all!

  I shrank back in my seat. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Sometimes I think my tongue has a mind of its own.”

  Andrew reached over and picked up my hand. “You are really something,” he said. “I couldn’t ask for a better friend. The very fact that you have offered means a great deal, but, I am not going to let you do it.”