Seven Shoes

by Mark Davis

  “From now on,” Sandra said, “I am declaring it will be corporate policy to forbid doughnuts in the conference rooms.”

  The line was rehearsed, but it won her the expected chuckles.

  It was now time to present. Sandra stepped forward.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the press, it is my honor and distinct pleasure to introduce to you—Betsy—the world’s first comprehensive, universal blood assay machine,” Sandra said. “For the cost of a movie and a tub of popcorn, Betsy can bring immediate and highly accurate diagnoses for a range of the common disorders to any human being on earth.”

  Questions erupted around the room.

  The health-care beat reporters wanted to know about independent verification.

  “We have tested each function ourselves against every major machine and human lab,” Sandra said. “And then we beta-tested our results against the same comparisons made by Empirca Labs in Mountain View. In each instance, Betsy scored as good or better as each comparison form of assay.”

  “Why don’t you say the tests are perfect?” a young woman from The Huffington Post asked.

  “No instrument or test can be 100 percent perfect,” Sandra said. “Ours is 99.99966 percent accurate, a six sigma level of performance that exceeds any other assay by orders of magnitude.”

  The remaining questions came from business-beat reporters who wanted to know about ROI, expansion plans, franchising and interaction with the new health care system and if Medicare would pay for it.

  The last question came from a Delaware health care blogger, a chunky woman with a purple strand in her blonde hair. Her name was Gillian, Sandra remembered, whose blog tended to attract a lot of Therapso ads, and whose editorial policy in return reliably sold Therapso messages. Sandra was ready for Gillian’s question because she had made sure that her communications office had planted it.

  “Who is the inventor of this remarkable device?” Gillian asked.

  Sandra cocked her head and smiled, as if surprised at such a perfect question.

  “Well, Gillian, I am deeply honored to be considered the co-inventor of the Betsy universal blood assay machine … a set of discoveries and solutions that would not have been possible without the drive and vision of my co-inventor, our Chief Science Officer, Alonso Fernández.

  She turned to Alonso appreciatively and nodded.

  On that note, the press conference was over. While heading back to the third floor, Sandra imagined an evening three to five years into the future when she would be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Alonso in Stockholm to accept the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

  Should she let him speak first?

  ___________

  Elizabeth had slept in late, a hangover from the DMT. The evening before, George had brought her back to her room and waited with her until he was sure she was ready to sleep. George was concerned. On the walk back from the park, Elizabeth had seen suggestions of things creeping in the shadows of the alleys, between the trees of parks, nimbly following them down the street.

  When Elizabeth awakened at 11, she felt as if the frontal portion of her brain had been removed and the space stuffed with cotton. Her visual perception was still off. The shower stall was out of plumb, the contours rubbery and undependable. After the shower, Elizabeth caught a glimpse in the steamed mirror of a feral version of herself, wolf’s fur running along the side of her neck and her eyes nothing but dark iris.

  After coffee and eggs downstairs, Elizabeth felt clear enough to go to Thor’s old office and return to Sandra Armstrong’s long testimony. It was not a pleasant experience. As the executive told the story of her life—really, the story of her death—she spoke with clinical detachment, as if the crash of her spectacular career were a business school case study of a storied corporation that lost its share value to a strategic error, or an analysis of a touted pharmaceutical that tested well but had bad side effects. There was much Sandra Armstrong had left out, of course, but Elizabeth was good at reading between the lines.

  In the afternoon, Elizabeth had had enough of the CEO. She placed her head on Thor’s old desk to take a nap. A few minutes later, her phone rang. She raised her head lazily. It was Lars calling to ask her to dinner. Elizabeth went back to her hotel. She took a real nap this time. She lingered in a warm shower and took extra care in applying her makeup. Elizabeth slipped into the one evening dress she had brought across the Atlantic, a suitable black dress she had worn the night she had sat next to the ambassador and given her speech in London.

  Elizabeth met Lars at a white table cloth restaurant on the harbor. Lars looked comfortable in civilian clothing, a black woolen jacket and dress shirt. Something about civilian attire made his blond hair look longer, a little shaggier.

  They lingered over dinner, sipping wine, talking of family.

  Lars gave a brief account of his ten years of marriage to Anita, who worked at an NGO dedicated to helping immigrants. He voiced his suspicions that his wife had had an affair with a coworker, while she had accused him of having a controlling nature.

  “And do you?”

  Lars’ smile was winning.

  “She is not the only one to make that observation,” he said. “I just like to see things done properly, promptly and in a way that tidies up.”

  Elizabeth laughed.

  “You’re textbook, Lars.”

  “So I guess that was a confession,” Lars said, laughing, then turning serious. “I have struggled with depression over that and some other career issues. You might be surprised to know that I once saw George—”

  He paused to scan Elizabeth’s face for any sign of surprise.

  “But it was really time—time and hard work—that pulled me out of it.”

  Elizabeth took his hand in hers.

  “I know that you saw George. Of course, he’s a professional …”

  “So the two of you don’t tell tales when you’re in your cups?”

  “Never. I have placed the same confidence in him, as I think you know.”

  “I do,” Lars said. “Tell me more about yourself. How did you come to be the great doctor Browne?”

  And so Elizabeth did.

  She spoke of how her mother’s death had thrown father for a loop, how he had eased back from work and started to live on savings, how he spent hours on end putting on those large earphones and listening to music, letting his hair and beard go wild and his hygiene lapse. His obvious disinterest in their homework and school activities only made Elizabeth and Michael want to excel in school, if only to separate themselves from him.

  Elizabeth and her brother Michael thought that their father had gone to seed without the guidance and structure mother brought to the household. Now, of course, she can see that her father was profoundly depressed.

  Father’s suicide affected Mike more than his sister. Mike got into drugs, and that did no good for his mental stability. In his freshman year at the University of Michigan, Mike grew depressed. Elizabeth would later learn that he had gone three weeks without showing up in class. How can that happen and the university not check in with someone?

  She had graduated from Smith in three years and was already into her medical studies at Harvard when Mike had cut his wrists. Michael’s suicide devastated her. It kept her out of school for half a year. It could have taken everything from her. It was only due to the friendship and strenuous efforts of her academic mentor, George Abelman, that kept her from completing the family tableaux and ending the last of the Brownes.

  Telling Lars all this did not feel like one of her speech confessionals. The stories welled up inside her, telling themselves. She had to excuse herself and go to the restroom.

  When she came back to the table, Lars looked shamefaced.

  “I am sorry I put you through that,” he said.

  “You didn’t,” Elizabeth said. “I did. No bother. You deserve to know who I am.”

  “Two broken people,” Lars said.

&
nbsp; Elizabeth smiled and finished the last of the wine.

  “You are not broken Lars. Just a little scarred, like most people.”

  The bill was 3,500 kroner, almost $400, for two branzino filets and the wine. Restaurants were ridiculously expensive in Oslo. Elizabeth offered to split the bill—Lars, after all, lived on a public official’s salary—but he shook his head.

  “Everything has a 25 percent VAT tax here, the prices are astronomical, how do people live here?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I pay nothing for health care,” Lars said with obvious pride. “I need not put away a penny for retirement, and the state will take care of my children’s college tuition. In Norway, money is made to be spent.”

  After dinner, they had walked in the cool of the evening around the glowing lights of the courtyard fountain of the Oslo City Hall. They waded through a crowd to find a chorus of African children dressed in school uniforms singing melodic songs accompanied with hand instruments. One child tapped out a strong and infectious beat on a goblet drum.

  They held hands and Elizabeth rested her head on Lars’ shoulder.

  After walking her back to the hotel, it seemed only reasonable that he see her up to her room, and even more reasonable that she let him in. Lars kissed her as soon as they entered the room, spun her around and unzipped her dress, snapped off her bra, yanked her panties down and rushed into her. No man had ever quite taken command of her like that, with such assuredness and ferocity. When they were done, and resting in bed, Elizabeth nestled her head on his chest.

  “What are your thoughts on the case now?” he asked.

  “Wondering if Freyja is someone we know.”

  “Could it be Karl Pedersen?”

  “You mean Freyja? How?”

  “He has access to computers in prison.”

  “Doesn’t fit his MO,” she said.

  Lars frowned.

  “What about Charles Bowie?”

  “He’s weird enough,” Elizabeth said. “But no. Charlie is, at root, quite simple. Even his deviousness is straightforward.”

  “What about Nasrin?”

  Elizabeth laughed.

  “Well, Freyja is the right gender for a goddess,” she said. “She certainly has the attitude.”

  “But is Nasrin feminine enough to be a goddess?”

  After a pause, Elizabeth replied, “Essentially.”

  “What about our good and mutual therapist, George?”

  “George Abelman? Don’t be silly.”

  She looked up at Lars.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you, mister policeman. It makes dramatic sense, after all, the macho detective who turns out to be a secret digital crossdresser.”

  Lars laughed, making his ribs vibrate. He quit laughing and took on a mock-fierce look.

  “Now I know who it is. It is you after all, Elizabeth-Freyja.”

  “You’ve got me.”

  Lars kept eye contact.

  “Yes, indeed, I’ve got you.”

  He molded her face and neck with his fingers. His hands drifted down, a light touch, and they made love a second time, gentler this time, more considerate. They came to a soft climax together and were soon asleep in each other’s arms.

  In the morning, Elizabeth fumbled around the bed with one hand, searching for Lars. All she found was a warm spot. She sat up. A bright day outside, typical Oslo. It was 7 a.m.

  Lars had left a note on the bedside table.

  “Didn’t want to wake you,” Lars had written. “Got to go home to get fresh clothes—wouldn’t want to set off gossip among the PIGers.”

  Elizabeth smiled at his thoughtfulness.

  There was another line under Lars’ signature.

  “You really do need to finish the Sandra Armstrong testimony today.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Sandra loved Palo Alto—who didn’t? The spreading sycamores and broad aspens, the town’s once-ordinary main street enchanted by wealth, the eternal spring weather great for a morning’s run. Sandra had bounded out of her corporate condo early Saturday to jog across El Camino Real, winding through Stanford’s exotic sandstone courtyards and Moorish archways, around the History Corner, past the business school for nostalgia’s sake, down the sprawling green to cross El Camino Real to finally rest her aching body in a coffee shop.

  She checked her phone.

  Therapso’s stock had ended on a high Friday afternoon, the latest in a steady seven-week upward march. The company had now doubled its value since the day the board had tapped Sandra to become CEO.

  A long queue of emails popped up—a request to give a TED Talk on Betsy, an invitation to join the Council on Foreign Relations, knotty issues from the CFO and HR, some notes from the Armstrong family office. Sandra sent the invitations to her chief of staff with instructions to reply in the affirmative, and attached the TED Talk request to her speechwriter, a gnomish sixty-something former White House speechwriter who lived in Austin.

  >I want something bold, futurey, optimistic<

  The evening before, Sandra had dined with two household-name tech billionaires and a hedge fund manager who had initiated her into the select group of Extropians—tech titans feverishly funding research into ways to slow cell death, rewind telomeres, print organs and find other ways to slow aging and extend human life. Their goal was not just to live long, but to live forever, or at least as long as they wished. With any luck, they could all be practically in their infancy, with centuries of life ahead.

  Sandra was flattered, and more than a little astonished, that the Extropians had reached out to her.

  The Extropians were a handful of men—and all of them were men—who had pioneered new technologies with disruptive business models that upended whole sectors. They were all billionaires many times over. Sandra had not founded her company. She was an employee who could actually be fired by her board, as unlikely as that was. When Sandra eventually retired, even with stock options at greatly increased value, she could not expect to be worth anything more than two-tenths of a billion dollars. And yet they had taken her in, inviting Sandra to contribute some of her expertise to their quest for immortality.

  And it had all happened because of Betsy.

  Keep up the momentum, she told herself, while saving her emails. Everything depended upon it. After dinner with the Extropians, maybe more than she had imagined.

  It was imperative that the Betsy launch go well.

  She cleaned up, put on pair of new jeans and a casual blouse and ordered a car to take her to Alonso’s new home on Sand Hill Road. Sandra brought with her a wrapped gift box containing high-end cosmetics that she had picked out the evening before.

  Within minutes, the driver was following Sand Hill Road west, winding through forest and pasture land along the coastal range. Sandra opened the window to savor the cool, misty sea air filtered through evergreen trees. She congratulated herself for a wise move, shifting Betsy operations to this place where the greatest concentration of scientific and computer talent resided. Alonso did not complain about the move and seemed ensconced comfortably in his two-story Spanish-style adobe house deep in the woods.

  Balloons tied to a mailbox signaled a party.

  Alonso answered the door, looking handsome and fit in jeans and a light sweater. Sandra couldn’t help but find him attractive. But she didn’t have time for such thoughts and never, of course, would consider even flirtation with a subordinate or colleague. But she couldn’t help but wonder if Alonso found her attractive as well. And if so, did that generate a little cognitive dissonance with a superior who at times rode him hard?

  Who knows, she thought. Maybe someday, on holiday in Spain perhaps, after we’ve both won the Nobel Prize.

  “Where’s the birthday girl?” Sandra asked.

  “Out back, surrounded by friends.”

  The interior of the home was classic California faux-Spanish,
with dark, ornate tiles, wooden bookcases stained black, whitewashed walls and dark beams crossing the ceiling. Loud music reverberated off the windows. The back lawn was lush and green, the area around the pool a riot of teenagers running around under the watchful eye of a lifeguard hired for the day.

  “There she is,” Sandra said.

  Carmen turned around, a slight girl with straight black hair, olive skin and dark and pretty eyes that missed nothing.

  “Hello, Ms. Armstrong,” she said. “I am honored to have you here.”

  “Here’s a little something I think you might appreciate,” Sandra said. “Happy birthday.”

  Carmen thanked her. Alonso took the package to set it with the pile of others on a table at the end of the pool by a large chocolate cake under a plastic cover.

  “This could be your quinceañera,” Sandra said.

  Carmen smiled but shook her head.

  “I’m sixteen today, not fifteen, and we really don’t do that where we come from in Spain,” she replied. “But it sure feels like a quinceañera.”

  A girl ran screaming past them, chased by a boy with a squirt gun the size of a machine gun.

  “How’s chemistry going?”

  “I’ve just started advanced placement,” she said. “If I can manage an ‘A’ in those, they’ll let me start at Stanford a year early.”

  “Do you think you will be ready for college?”

  “I’ve felt ready for college since I was eleven,” Carmen said.

  After more small talk, Carmen rounded the pool, spoke with her friends, and came to the table just in time for Alonso to light the candles on the cake and prompt everyone to sing “Happy Birthday.”

  Sandra studied her. The young woman was thin, too thin, and moved with more deliberation than you’d expect for a person her age. But her face was radiant. It was hard to believe that Carmen had recently been so close to death.

  Alonso was divorced, but childless. Carmen was his niece, whom he took into his house to care for after her mother—his sister—had died of cancer. Carmen’s father, wherever he was, remained out of the picture. So Alonso took charge of raising Carmen, helping with homework, preparing her for college and managing her wellbeing.