Break in Case of Emergency

by Jessica Winter

  “It’s all natural, totally pure, untouched by anything but the hand of God,” Karina said. “What this dude is doing, it’s like fair trade on steroids. No, what am I saying—it’s like fair trade on medicinal cacao and sacha inchi!”

  “Right, because steroids aren’t natural,” Jen said. “I mean, they are natural in that they’re organic compounds, but anabolic steroids are kind of definitively unnatural…”

  “You’re exactly right,” Karina said, staring into space.

  Paddock’s plan in Belize, Karina explained, was to research and develop a line of herbal teas derived from the nation’s diverse ecosystem, particularly its trees: the bark of the bay cedar (“to aid digestion”) and the Billy Webb (“to boost immunity”) and the copal (“to restore the body’s pH balance”), the pulp of the calabash tree (“to increase the red blood cell count”), the leaves of the Senna alata (“to detoxify the liver and kidneys”), and the seed pods of the stinking toe tree (“to relieve fatigue and the symptoms of diabetes”).

  “Can you imagine?” Karina asked Jen. “You’ve got this guy who looks like a Norse god, who does the Nevada Silverman every year and plays water polo with weights on his ankles just to spice things up, and he’s going to market a line of herbal teas? It’s just so wild!”

  “Totally,” Jen said. “Well, I am so grateful for this opportunity, and really psyched that you asked me along. I’ve never been to Belize—I don’t even know much about it. My husband will be so jealous.”

  “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever asked you before—what does your husband do?” Karina asked, resting her elbow on her desk and her chin on her fist and squinting, as if about to squeeze all of her powers of attention into an orange juice–like concentrate composed solely of binary data on Jen’s husband’s occupation.

  “He teaches fifth grade in a public school in Flatbush,” Jen said.

  Karina shimmed her chin back and forth atop her fist in wonderment. “That’s God’s work right there,” she said. “You’ve got a keeper. And where’s he from, what about his parents?”

  “He’s from Erie, Pennsylvania; only child,” Jen said. “His mom was a waitress. She died a few years ago. Cancer.”

  Karina furrowed her brow and mashed her lips together. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Yeah, she was awesome,” Jen said. “And—and what about your husband, Karina?”

  “He’s in advertising,” Karina said, rolling her eyes and flopping backward against her chair. “Raw deal.”

  “Oh! Why is that a raw deal?” Jen asked.

  “When people have less money to spend, the first thing they spend less money on is advertising. Been a tough time for him. I feel for the guy.”

  Jen tried to imagine a scenario in which she would say “I feel for the guy” in regard to Jim, and then refocused. “Oh, no, Karina, did he—well, it’s none of my business, but was he affected by the financial apocalypse?”

  Karina tossed her head and laughed. “Oh, man, the apocalypse,” she said. “I’ll have to remember that. That’s a good one. He’s fine. He didn’t lose his job, if that’s what you’re trying to ask me, although sometimes I think that would have been the softer blow. But he did have to be part of a lot of tough decisions about cost-cutting, restructuring staff, the usual brutal calculus of keeping the lights on when there’s a storm outside lashing your power lines.” Karina sighed. “Whatever. He’s obviously not dashing around the foothills of the Andes trying to save the world, one exotic herb at a time. Anyway. What else?”

  “So, what is our agenda for the trip?” Jen asked. “Other than hanging out with this awesome guy, which is agenda enough, obviously!”

  “Ha, agenda—that is such a Jen question, such a Jen word,” Karina said. “I love it. I do. I love you! But to be honest, we’re off to a subtropical paradise with a board member who’s sourcing foods that can cure everything from procrastination to cancer, and he’s helping entire communities of subsistence farmers while he does it. Really, how much of an agenda do we need?”

  “Sure, sure,” Jen said. “And so, many of these subsistence farmers are—women?”

  “Yes, of course,” Karina said. “It’s a real by-women-for-women kind of deal. For a project affiliated with LIFt, I think that goes without saying.”

  “Travis Paddock’s eye-watering macho masculine manliness notwithstanding,” Jen said, and cushion-laughed.

  “I don’t follow,” Karina said.

  “Just so I understand,” Jen said, “we’re tagging along on one of his research trips, right? And I’m guessing that we could meet with some local farmers or collectives—women farmers, women’s collectives—that could benefit from a LIFt grant? Is that the general idea? And my role—the communications role here would be—documentation? Photos, interviews…”

  “Mmm,” Karina said.

  “And so, this might sound like a weird question, but is there a way in which this becomes a kind of promotional opportunity for Travis’s company—it’s called BodMod, right?” Jen asked.

  “Promotional opportunity, huh. I mean, if you want to be cynical about it, sure, you can put it that way,” Karina said, twisting her mouth into a constipated smile. “If that’s your agenda.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant,” Jen said, resisting the urge to cushion-laugh again. “Like I said, I think you’ve just been in deeper with this project, and I’m clumsily trying to catch up!”

  “Catch up when you land in Belize,” Karina said, swiveling her body toward her computer and laying her fingers on her keyboard while keeping her eyes locked with Jen’s, her head poised at a 90-degree angle from the rest of her body. “Be in the moment and just open yourself up to the journey. Who knows what we’ll discover there, right?”

  “I just—I know you’re busy, I just want to make sure that there isn’t anything we need to keep in mind in terms of—of any kind of collaboration we’re making between LIFt as a charitable entity and BodMod as a for-profit business.”

  Karina frowned. “Good to know,” she said, drumming her fingers lightly on her keyboard and turning her head toward her computer screen.

  “Maybe we could loop Daisy in?” Jen asked. “She would have all the intel on programs we could consider funding in Belize.”

  “We’ll certainly keep it in mind,” Karina said to her monitor.

  “Well, we can discuss it now if you want?” Jen said. She was still resisting the urge to cushion-laugh, but just then a little puff of conciliatory air escaped.

  “Look, Jen,” Karina said to her computer, “if this opportunity just isn’t calling your name—if you just can’t hear it—I understand completely. There’re plenty of other people on the LIFt team who might be able to strike that harmony the moment they hear the tune, so to speak.” Karina clicked her mouse to open an email.

  “No, no, I’m really excited to go—I can hear the harmony!” said Jen, finally succumbing again to the lure of the cushion-laugh. “I can’t wait. Apologies for giving off a different impression.”

  “Like I said, just open yourself up to the journey,” Karina said to her email.

  “Absolutely,” Jen said, rising to go. “Door open or closed?”

  “Closed. Also, can you see if Donna is in her office?”

  Jen peered next door. “Nope, not at her desk.”

  “Can you just take a spin around the building and round her up for me?” Karina asked, her eyes fixed glassily on her screen and her fingers already typing. “Thanks.”

  Financially Is the Easiest Part

  “I just don’t know that I’m up for this,” Jen said. It was her monthly check-in at Dr. Lee’s private office, which was tucked away in a quieter back corridor of the henhouse, perhaps forty paces away from the Garden of Earthly Delights. “Physically or emotionally or financially.”

  “Financially is the easiest part,” Dr. Lee said.

  “Oh, really?” Jen said with ironic glee.

  Dr. Lee squeezed her eyes shut and shoo
k her head. “Forgive me, you must understand, our clientele is—”

  “It’s okay,” Jen said. “Even with WellnessSolutions not covering the—the procedure, there are still payment plans, installment plans, income-based sliding scales, all that. It’s not as formidable as it is at other clinics. I did the research, and—”

  Jen exhaled and looked out the window. Dr. Lee’s office overlooked a Grecian-phallus monument perched in the center of a tiny patch of walled grass in a busy intersection. Jen had been jaywalking past the phallus for more than a year on her trips to the henhouse, and she had never once stopped to read the plaque. She had no idea what the phallus commemorated. For all she knew it honored not past mayors or congressmen or land-grabbers but served instead as a totem of power and fecundity meant to embolden all visitors to the Garden of Earthly Delights.

  “Well,” Dr. Lee said, placing her palms on her desk in a pose of adjournment. “Let me know what you decide.”

  They stood and shook hands. “I have some work travel coming up, and it’s the holidays soon—I’ll come to a decision after that,” Jen said. “In the New Year.”

  She went to open the door, hesitated, and turned back. “I don’t know why I keep saying I. I’m not the only one doing this. It’s Jim and me. It’s you. Your colleagues.”

  “It’s still isolating,” Dr. Lee said. “Patients talk about that. You know, the clinic offers a support group—”

  “I went to one; I got up and left after ten minutes like a jerk,” Jen said. “It reinforced the feeling that I’m getting at—it’s almost like the more people get involved with this, the more isolated I feel. Whereas if we could have done this alone in a bedroom or a broom closet or the backseat of a car like normal people, I never would have felt isolated at all.”

  “Well,” Dr. Lee said again.

  That night, Jen dreamed that she received a certified letter from a collection agency, and Jim explained, remorsefully, that he had been using their shared WellnessSolutions health-insurance card as a credit card for the past year under the mistaken impression that their household expenses would be covered by their premium and copay.

  “I’m so sorry,” Jim kept saying in the dream. “I tried to guess how it worked, and I guessed wrong.”

  In Fact

  MARGARETHE!: Sorry I’m not calling you back; Millie is sick and gross and I just got her down and if she wakes up again I know we’ll be up all night.

  jenski1848: Aw, poor little lady.

  MARGARETHE!: Oh, man, I just found more barf in my hair, hang on

  MARGARETHE!: Back! You’re leaving first thing in the morning, right?

  jenski1848: Theoretically, although I can’t find my passport.

  MARGARETHE!: I want to hear about the trip, but first—and I wanted to ask you about this in person, but—what happened? With you and Pam?

  MARGARETHE!: And full disclosure, I asked Pam this question already, and I didn’t really get anything out of her.

  jenski1848: It was my fault.

  MARGARETHE!: OK…

  MARGARETHE!: I’m not interested in taking sides, I just wish one of you could tell me what happened.

  jenski1848: I asked her to do something—pressured her to do something, really—and I shouldn’t have, and she’s angry.

  MARGARETHE!: Pam said it was an interview? That’s basically all I got out of her.

  MARGARETHE!: Sorry if I’m being pushy! It’s just so sad that you guys aren’t talking.

  jenski1848: An interview, yes.

  MARGARETHE!: OK, well, so what? It couldn’t have been that bad, and she could have said no.

  jenski1848: And what do you say to her about it when I’m not around?

  MARGARETHE!: I say, “It couldn’t have been that bad, and you could have said no.” Jesus. I said that to her yesterday, in fact. You can ask her.

  jenski1848: No, I can’t, “in fact.”

  MARGARETHE!: Don’t be awful. I know I’m pushing too hard on this, and I apologize, and I’ll stop, but don’t be awful.

  jenski1848: I’m sorry, too, Meg. I’m really sorry. It will all be OK. We just need to give her some space. I think sometimes I lose sight of all she’s been through. She deserves some slack.

  jenski1848: I hope that doesn’t sound like I’m condescending to her.

  MARGARETHE!: Ooh, now I get to ask a Jen question: Are you saying all that for my benefit or are you saying that because you think it’s true?

  jenski1848:

  Asleep

  When Jen finally came to bed, bags packed and passport located, Jim was lying still, but she couldn’t hear him breathing, and because she couldn’t yet make out his familiar rhythm of inhale and exhale, she knew he wasn’t asleep but only lingering on the threshold of sleep, ready to turn back, and insofar as there was space for thought, she thought about why she would ever think about anything else but this, to want such relief so badly and to be filled with it more or less whenever she chose, and afterward as she thought she was fading into sleep, she couldn’t remember the last time they had convened an all-hands meeting without it having been in some sense scheduled in advance or at least without her knowing where it landed in the calendar, and therefore whether or not it might theoretically serve a larger purpose, and above them what sounded like an armoire crashed to the floor, and he gasped and turned again to wrap his arms around his wife, and his wife realized that her husband still wasn’t asleep, and as he pressed against her again his wife pushed her fists hard against her husband’s shoulder blades, hoping to release the ecstatic pressure of desperately wanting what she already had.

  Gotta Run with the Plebes

  Jen watched Karina waiting just outside the gate at the Belize City airport, clasping and rubbing her hands together. It was bizarre, Jen thought, to glimpse Karina—however briefly—in a public place as if she were alone, unguarded, amid her excitement and her private thoughts. Virtually everything Jen knew of Karina amounted to an interpretation of a performance, consciously acted out in front of an audience. Jen thought of the tactic that Pam said she sometimes used on her more ill-at-ease photographic subjects, when, after twenty or so minutes of holding themselves stiffly before her camera, they would hear Pam call out, “That’s it, we’ve got the shot,” and the subject would either crack a grin of merry reprieve or sink and sigh into pensive relief—and that would be the moment when Pam squeezed off a few more frames, when she really got the shot. It was a trick, yes, but one that the subject almost always instinctively understood. The trick, of course, was to forget yourself for just a few seconds, to allow yourself to be safely alone before a documenting eye.

  “He’s just in the gents’,” Karina informed Jen by way of greeting. “Usually Travis would charter his own flight, obviously,” she added, “but this time around, you know, he’s gotta run with the plebes.”

  Jen wondered if running with the plebes meant that LIFt was footing the bill for Travis Paddock’s trip as well as hers and Karina’s. Jen had wondered about the financial arrangements behind their itinerary as she and her fellow coach passengers had inched past the first-class cabin, one of its rows occupied by Karina and an unidentified man, presumably Travis Paddock, their faces obscured by copies of Grazia and Men’s Health, respectively, elbows pressed together across armrests.

  Now a bronzed figure emerged from the men’s room closest to their exit gate, his wide-legged carriage seesawing like a cowboy’s. In person, Travis Paddock was smaller and wirier than the image of him that Jen had extrapolated from the homunculus staring out from the box-top of his smoothie starter kit. His stride accelerated as he grew closer to Karina, who called out, “Mr. Paddock, I presume!” in a preemptive tone as she glanced anxiously in Jen’s direction. He stopped a few feet short of Karina, pivoted 30 degrees toward Jen, and reached out to grip her hand with all the power invested in him by BodMod Nutritionals™.

  “Travis Paddock, BodMod Nutritionals,” Travis Paddock intoned, pumpi
ng Jen’s arm like a cable pulley in a weight room.

  “So Travis has an SUV waiting for us,” Karina said. A custardy singsong lapped around her voice. “Out here, most people would hire a driver, but not Travis,” Karina added. “He is pure-cut DIY.”

  Jen realized that her mouth was hanging open. “Yeah,” she said. “I bet you built that SUV, Travis.”

  Outside, the air hung like damp wool, a chilly undertow kicking at a steady breeze. A sooty cloud cover was dissolving the pale blue sky, as if the day were aging in time-lapse, its pigments drained by pollutants, tomorrow’s colors already muted by today’s subtle epigenetic changes. The city’s specific sleepiness felt almost suburban to Jen, as if the rows of nineteenth-century colonial structures, tin-roofed and weatherproofed and raised on stilts, hosted an absent bedroom community of daily travelers to some mysterious island location, accessible only via passport and password.

  “Look at the huge line outside that—is that a shopping mall?” Jen said inanely from the backseat. Travis and Karina had kept an eerie silence since pickup.

  Travis, behind the wheel, glanced out the window. “That’s a sort of security checkpoint for the cruise ships that dock here,” he said. “Way to keep out the riffraff.”

  “Capitalism, huh?” Karina said from the front passenger seat.

  They headed southeast along the coast, the gray haze obscuring the shoreline, then cut straight west toward their hotel in Cayo District, near the Guatemalan border. As they passed through the outskirts of Belize City, the landscape turned both greener and more desolate. The houses on their rickety stilts became fewer and farther between. Discarded auto parts languished in the yards. Chickens rooted in piles of garbage. A rooster and a pelican happened past. Dogs and coconut palms everywhere. They passed a graveyard of golf carts (“Did you see that graveyard of golf carts?” Jen asked, to no reply), an abandoned school bus, and three little girls stacked on one purple bicycle: one whose legs dangled from the front basket, one perched precariously on the edge of the seat, and the biggest girl in the center, pedaling steadily. Jen leaned out her window to snap a photograph of the girls—two of whom looked up in stoic accusation—and she immediately regretted it. She turned her camera’s attentions instead to the region’s residential aesthetics: The houses were bubblegum pink or spearmint or baby’s-room blue, salmon and racing green and magenta.