I set Lauren’s cup in front of her on the table. I slid a napkin under it, so it wouldn’t make a ring on the surface. Wendy had once told me that we would know RTA was in the big leagues when they swapped the oak conference table for rosewood.
“What did you mean about a client ‘like this’?” I asked Lauren. “Is there something about Dr. Crystol’s work that’s more complicated than usual?”
“How honest do you want me to be?” she asked levelly.
“Very,” I said.
She shrugged. “Well, initially the work is fairly predictable.” She gestured at the piles of paper on the table. “We get her a lease on a suite of offices and some laboratory space. We do the paperwork to deal with the water purification issues, health code compliance, et cetera. We look over her Mexican real estate transactions and go over them with our colleagues in Mexicali. We get the tax guys to review everything to make sure we haven’t missed anything. It’s complicated, but it’s straightforward, if you understand what I mean.”
It seemed like keeping a dozen balls in the air at once to me. “If you say so,” I told her. “Go on.”
She spread her hands wide. “After that, it really depends on what Dr. Crystol does next. Is she going to limit herself to speaking, or is she going to dispense medications and nutritional supplements? If the latter, she has to make sure she meets FDA regulations, and sometimes that means walking a fine line legally.” She sighed. “And that doesn’t get into issues like what if someone feels cheated because he didn’t get eternal life, or boundless energy, or whatever it is she’s hawking, and decides to sue for malpractice. The possibilities are virtually endless.”
“You sound less than thrilled with Dr. Crystol’s life-extension theories,” I said. She rarely made a negative comment about anyone, so I was curious.
“I have no idea what her theories are,” she said. “It’s Dr. Crystol I’m less than thrilled with.”
“Oh, dear.”
“She’s a client, Becky, so we cut her a lot of slack. We aren’t a big enough firm to turn that kind of business away. Don’t worry. I just didn’t take it kindly when she waltzed into my office and said that if I worked on my attitude I might be able to walk again.”
Oh, God. “Oh, Lauren. She didn’t.”
She laughed ruefully. “When you’re in a wheelchair, you’re a magnet for this kind of thing. It’s like being pregnant—you attract a lot of loonies along with the well-wishers, but nobody feels any reticence about jumping right in.”
“Is Dr. Crystol a loony?”
“She is if she thinks ‘healing waves’ or whatever are going to fuse together a spinal cord severed by a bullet,” she said.
A bullet? I was speechless.
“Thank you for not asking,” she said. She paused a moment and went on. “Anyway, even if Dr. Crystol has the noblest and best intentions in the world, things can get screwed up. There can be unintended consequences. That’s where you, the drafter of documents, the adviser and expert, come in. You have to do the long-term thinking about heading off undesirable outcomes. And that isn’t always easy. Particularly not with a loose cannon like Bobbie Crystol.”
“‘Unintended consequences.’ I like that. It’s the story of my life.”
“It’s the story of everybody’s life,” she said soberly. “But as a lawyer, it’s your job to try to make sure all the consequences are intended.”
“How can I do that?” I asked her. “How can I control Bobbie Crystol?”
“You can’t.”
“So what do I do?”
She laughed. “You worry.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. Also, you protect your ass, and the firm’s ass too. You make sure Dr. Crystol is aware of the consequences, and you get your advice in writing. Then you have to do what she wants.”
“Or quit,” I said.
She made a face. “Get real,” she said. “Your job is to help the client do what she wants, as long as it’s legal. Period. After that, you get to obsess all the time about not screwing up. You have to internalize it till it becomes like a mantra. I will not screw up. I will not screw up. You aren’t really a lawyer—certainly not a good one—till you wake up at two in the morning going over every step of your last deal or whatever to make sure you did it all right.”
“Oh, Christ. Doesn’t that get any better after you’ve been practicing a while?”
She shook her head. “No, it gets worse. Now you have a history—a whole backlog of things that might come back to bite you. Sorry, Becky. It comes with the territory.”
I laughed. “So basically, if I do this right, what I have to look forward to is no affordable scruples, no sleep, and a lifetime of obsessing over details, right?”
“Don’t forget outrageous malpractice premiums.”
“Isn’t there any juridical joie de vivre?” I asked her.
She narrowed her eyes and gave me a dry little smile. “Not at the office,” she said. “Not if you’re smart.”
There were no secrets at the law firm.
“I heard a certain partner is taking you to a meeting tonight,” Wendy said in a conspiratorial whisper as I was washing out the coffee cups in the sink. “And a certain associate has her nose out of joint.”
I dried them carefully and put them down on the strainer, the Sisyphean task of the coffee room. Tomorrow they would reappear magically with dark encrusted rings. “I don’t suppose it would do any good to pretend I don’t know what in the world you’re talking about,” I said.
She grinned.
“It’s just a business event,” I told her.
“I know that,” she said. “But our Miss Peters isn’t so sure. You should have seen the look on her face when Ryan told her.”
“Ryan should mind his own business,” I said.
She shrugged. “The way she dishes it out, he can’t resist the opportunity to stick it to her when the opportunity presents itself. For that matter, neither can I.”
“She’s not that bad,” I said. “Maybe just a trifle too confident for comfort.” I laughed. “And anyway, I doubt she’s worried about me in any sense whatsoever.”
Wendy rolled her eyes.
“You know, I don’t think this is what all those women in the sixties and seventies envisioned when they fought for their right to compete in the workplace,” I told her.
She shrugged. “It beats sitting home and wondering what your husband is getting up to with his secretary,” she said. “Which is what law firms were like in 1968, when I first started working.” She sighed. “And anyway, Becky, I know you have better sense than to get involved with someone like Taylor Anderson.”
I wondered what she meant by that. “Or anybody else where you work,” I said, fishing. “It’s just a bad idea in general.”
She looked at me shrewdly. “Granted.” She lowered her voice. “Just remember, secretaries in a business know lots more about you than you realize. If you’re booking two tickets to Miami twice a month, if you’re late with your alimony payments, if you’re a heavy user of a certain florist, well, we know.”
I wasn’t sure what she was trying to tell me. “I’ll bear it in mind,” I told her.
“You do that,” she said.
Chapter Twelve
My mother met me at the door with uncharacteristic energy. Even the cat seemed to have caught her mood; he bolted outside as soon as I opened the front door, running right between my legs and out onto the porch. “Just a sec,” I said, fending off whatever it was she obviously wanted to tell me. I threw down my briefcase and went after Burdick, who was edging out onto the lawn, pursuing his interests in botany and herpetology. I moved slowly. I didn’t want him to run away. Nighttime is when bad things happen to good cats.
“Gotcha,” I said, grabbing him around the stomach. He squirmed in protest. Fourteen pounds of truculent cat is no small handful, but mindful of who opened the cans, he sheathed his claws.
“Got him,” I said to my mother
, unnecessarily. Burdick, affronted, trotted off toward the solace of the food bowl. “What’s up?” I asked her.
My mother put a finger to her lips. “She asked somebody,” she said.
“Already?”
She nodded. “I’m not sure, but I think he said no.”
Oh, God. “Oh, dear. Is she upset?”
My mother rolled her eyes. “She’s in her room. I knocked on the door, but she won’t come out.”
“Well, leave her alone for the time being. If you try to force the issue, she’ll clam up. You know that.”
My mother gave me one of her you-indulge-that-girl-no-end looks and shrugged. Maybe I did, but when I was Allie’s age Mother had demanded that I share my every thought and secret with her, at least when she cared to ask. I didn’t, of course, but I still remembered what it felt like to have the contents of your mind requisitioned for inspection. I probably went overboard stamping out any traces of the same tendency in my own parenting. The trouble with the gene pool is that there isn’t any lifeguard to save you from yourself.
Still, it didn’t take a mind reader to see that my mother was probably right. Allie didn’t come out of her room for the hour it took me to shower and get ready to go to Dr. Crystol’s lecture, and when I went to call her to dinner, I could hear her whispering feverishly into the phone. Peer consultations were burning up the lines. I hoped she didn’t tell too many people; it would just make tomorrow that much harder to face.
“I don’t want any dinner,” she said when I tapped on the door.
I knocked again, waited, and then opened it. “Sorry, kiddo,” I said. “I need to talk to you for a minute anyway.”
She looked unhappy, but in a normal, adolescent kind of way, not anything that signaled a deeper disturbance—depression, drugs, you name it. If you believed the newspapers, you had to be on the lookout all the time. So much guessing goes on in the parent-child relationship in the teen years. It made me yearn for the days when her needs and emotions were more readable, not to mention less complex, the days when she cried and I picked her up, and that was enough.
“I have to go listen to Dr. Crystol lecture on life extension down at the Convention Center,” I told her. “I was wondering if you’d like to come with me.”
She looked blank. “Dr. Crystol?”
“You remember. Human Popsicles? Fountain of Youth?”
She smiled. “Oh, right. No, I think I’ll pass. Thanks anyway.”
“Okay. In that case, here’s Mr. Anderson’s cell phone number in case you need me. We’re going together.” I paused. “Ready to join me in tonight’s boxed offering?”
The moody look returned. “No, thanks. I’m not very hungry.”
“Want to talk about it?” I strove for a gossamer touch. Too heavy-handed, and I’d squash it before it ever started.
She shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”
Right. I waited.
“I just asked this guy to the dance, that’s all.”
“And?” I prompted gently.
She sighed, needing an audience. “I’m like, ‘Are you going to the dance?’ and he’s like, ‘I don’t know.’ And then I say, ‘Would you like to go with me?’” She looked away.
I hadn’t even heard the rest of the story and already I would have liked to kill this person.
“He said he’d have to think about it,” she said.
With a hot poker up his nether regions.
She gave me an anguished look. “He’s a senior, Mom. He says if he goes, he wants to take a motel room with some of his friends and their dates so they can stay out all night.”
With barbs on it.
“Alicia—”
“I knew you wouldn’t let me,” she said, clutching the pillow to her chest in the same fierce way she used to hold on to her Raggedy Ann.
I resisted the temptation to say, “You got that right!” I took a breath, waiting for the inspiration that never comes to rescue you at such moments. “Honey, you haven’t even dated this person before. You don’t want to put yourself in a situation like that. Too many things can go wrong.” Sex! Alcohol! Pregnancy! Drugs! I tried to stay calm.
“Nothing would happen, Mom. All the kids do it.” She didn’t sound utterly convinced herself, which gave me a little hope. I wasn’t ready for the staying-out-all-night battle yet.
“Allie, why did you ask this boy? How well do you know him?”
She shrugged. “He’s cool. All my friends would just die to go out with him.”
Uh-oh.
She twisted unhappily on the bed, bunching up the pillow under her hands. “I have to go, Mom. Everybody’s going to the dance,” she said.
I patted her gently on the back, like a baby. “The last time you said everybody like that was when you were trying to persuade me to let you pierce your tongue. I’ll say the same thing now that I did then. The somebody you’re becoming now is the one you have to live with for the rest of your life. Make sure you’re making decisions for the right reasons.”
“Oh, Mom, I know. It’s just…” She raised her arms in a gesture of despair.
“Allie…”
“What?”
“Ask somebody else to the dance. There’s plenty of time.”
She looked startled. “How could I do that? What if he decides to go with me anyway?”
I closed my eyes. The words A lousy jerk who keeps you dangling while he waits for a better invitation? hovered temptingly close to utterance, but restraint won out. “Tell him that since he wasn’t able to make a commitment, you made other plans,” I said gently.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Trust me,” I told her.
Bobbie Crystol was resplendent in a diaphanous, flowing pink gown that would have been right at home at the Oscars. Her blond hair (chemically assisted or I’d eat my program) was pulled back in a knot to show off her perfect youthful complexion. She swept across the stage clutching her microphone as if it were the gift of the Magi.
The room was packed, so Taylor and I sat in the back.
“She doesn’t look much like a doctor,” Taylor observed.
“Who’d want to come if she did?” I whispered back. It was true. Medical professionals aren’t a very glamorous-looking bunch, on the whole. Too much time squinting into microscopes and staying up late to study. By the time you reach the age where you can afford restorative measures like health spas and ski trips, the years of toil have already taken their toll.
A room-sized screen at the front of the auditorium filled suddenly with a slide of what looked to be a gathering of transparent worms, but maybe it was just something on the projector.
“Nematodes!” cried Dr. Crystol in a celebratory tone more suitable to announcing the Half Yearly Sale at Nordstrom’s.
The audience, now fearing they had signed up for a science lecture by mistake, murmured audibly.
“Why do we care about nematodes?” she continued. She paused dramatically, but not long enough for someone to fill it with a rude comment. “They’re creepy, right? You can’t even see them unless you’ve got very good eyes. They don’t do much either. This group just hangs around a Petri dish, resting on top of a bed of nutrients. Borrring! Get a life, nematodes!”
The audience laughed uncertainly, not sure where she was going, but clearly relieved by the jocular tone.
“The thing is,” said Bobbie, in a tone of intense excitement, “it’s not what they do with their lives, it’s how long they have to do it. Outside of laboratory conditions, nematodes might survive nine days if they’re lucky. These nematodes, who happen to live in a laboratory in Canada”—she made a sweeping gesture with her arm, embracing the screen—“have been known to live fifty days.” She dropped her voice in pitch and volume. “If a human being were able to duplicate that kind of life extension, he would live for four hundred and twenty years. Four hundred and twenty,” she emphasized.
I had to admit she was good. She had the audience in the palm of her hand, enthrall
ed with the life span of invisible worms.
The picture on the screen changed. I recognized the subject matter from biology, not to mention rotten bananas.
“Fruit flies!” exclaimed Dr. Crystol. This time there was nothing but expectant silence.
“Fruit flies have a riveting life compared to nematodes,” she said. I could see the bumper stickers now: FRUIT FLIES HAVE MORE FUN. “They eat, they mate, they fly around. This is a fruit fly community here in California, in another laboratory. In the wild, if some bird or another predator doesn’t snap them up, fruit flies might get to live seventy days. These fruit flies can survive up to a hundred and forty. It’s not as dramatic an increase as the nematodes, but a human with this kind of longevity could live a hundred and fifty years and beyond.”
She turned away from the slide to face the audience. “So why am I bugging you with this?”
Heh heh.
“Because in laboratories all over the world, similar studies are going on. Because the world of aging is being remade. The rules are changing. Scientists like me are here to tell you that what works for nematodes and fruit flies can work for human beings too.”
Wow, a life span of 420 years. I wondered what that would do to Social Security.
“In nineteen hundred, a child born in the United States could expect to live forty-seven years,” she said. “If he’s born today, his life expectancy is seventy-six. There’s absolutely no reason to believe that we can’t keep on extending and extending a person’s life, perhaps indefinitely.”
In short, you don’t have to die.
I glanced over at Taylor to see what his reaction was so far. He looked transfixed, like the rest of the audience. But hey, he was a Boomer too, and immortality sounded just as good to him as it did to everybody else.
“Unfortunately,” said Bobbie with a wistful smile, prepared to let us down gently, “science alone, while pursuing many promising areas of investigation, isn’t yet able to give us the kind of results we’ve seen with nematodes and fruit flies.”
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