My Favorite Midlife Crisis (Yet)

by Toby Devens

  “Wow,” Claire laughed. “I like your style. Is that what you had in mind, Gwyneth?”

  “Hypothetically,” I said. I paused before pounding out the punch line. “I want to take him down at the GRIA meeting. In front of everyone! Well, not exactly me. Us.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” Claire leaned forward in her chair, scotch sloshing. “In front of the whole GRIA gang, the cream of gynecologic research?”

  “Gwyn has a seriously demented brain. We’re very proud of our girl.” Fleur reached over and patted my arm.

  I ignored her. “We’re going to play stump the scientist,” I said to Claire. “I assume since this project is your baby, you’ve got questions he can’t answer?”

  “Absolutely,” she said, nostrils flaring. “Simon knows the basics, but I know the nuances. And,” she let go a final volley in rapid New York rhythm, “I have evidence he hasn’t even seen. Analyses I’ve been working on the last few weeks that I can put it up there in PowerPoint. Unequivocal proof I’m the one who should be giving that paper. Plus,” she licked her lips like a starving woman at a buffet, “I’ve got a smoking gun. A really big gun. With a tremendous amount of smoke. We do this right, Simon York is toast!”

  She popped to her feet and hauled me to mine. While I stood there, smiling indulgently, she danced a celebratory salsa around me. At the end, she pirouetted and planted a kiss on my cheek. “He’ll never see it coming. Not in a million years. Gwyneth, you’re a genius. I’m so indebted.”

  Across the coffee table, I could see Kat fluttering her fingers in a high sign, my cue to say the right thing.

  I let Claire collapse in the club chair, still grinning. I leaned against the mantle and assumed my best mentor frown. “Well, I think we’ve got a shot to get you what’s yours, but I hope you appreciate the risk involved. Not to me. This meeting is all researchers, not my crowd. They won’t even recognize me up there. Besides, I’m in private practice, so I’m safe if they do. You, on the other hand, are risking your career by going up against Simon and the heavy hitters in public. That’s just not done. There’s a good probability this crowd will turn on you and you’ll be persona non grata among your peers.”

  Claire waved a napkin to cool her flushed face. Maybe it was the dance in front of the fire that made her cherry-red, neck up. Or at forty-four she could have been peri-menopausal. Late to take such a big chance with her career.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Especially if Simon’s done this before. There’s some untapped resentment out there from other researchers he’s screwed. Worst-case scenario,” she gulped the last of her scotch, “I’ve got a job lined up in Finland. This pharmaceutical company has been after me for years. Mucho euros. If I can get credit for this discovery, I can write my own ticket. Besides, we owe this to all the women Simon York’s trashed over the years. Like Jordan Conrad.” She let that sink in before she said, “On my way to the airport, I called her.”

  “Ah, the Key West cutie,” Fleur muttered.

  “Actually,” Claire said quietly, “she seems like a nice kid. Yeah, I know she’s a board certified plastic surgeon, but she sounds so young. She sobbed when I laid out Simon’s screwing around for her. At our age, Gwyneth”—oh hell, I knew she was buttering me up with the “our”—“with our bank of experience, we only got dazzled. Jordan got bamboozled. He told her he was trying to get her a staff position in the plastic surgery clinic at Brubaker so she could move to New York to be near him. He’d been stringing her along with that for more than a year.” Claire rolled her eyes.

  I was too embarrassed to confess I’d fallen for Simon’s line about relocating to Baltimore. He was so slick. And some women are so gullible.

  “Jordan thought Simon was going to marry her. Like that crappy jade ring was a four-carat diamond from Tiffany’s.” Claire reached in her pocket. “I assume you got one.”

  Fleur was turning lavender to purple holding her breath.

  I fished around in my handbag. “Just last week.”

  We lay the rings side by side. I said, “He must buy them by the gross in Hong Kong. Every size.”

  Claire had a musical laugh. Then she sobered. “As long as we’re comparing, I have kind of a personal question?”

  When I hesitated, Fleur whined, “Come on, Gwyneth. We’re all good buds here. And think of it as being on the other end of one of your own nosy scientific surveys.”

  I nodded to Claire.

  “With you, did he come with his eyes open?” she asked, pink flooding her face.

  “Oh, sweet mamma-jamma,” Fleur rocked in her chair, “is that anatomically possible?”

  I nodded again. “A trick to create an instant, powerful connection,” I speculated.

  “Bullshit,” Fleur roared, “with all those women, he was checking to see who he was fucking at the moment.”

  When the laughter died down, Claire said, “What I don’t understand is why. Why did he do this? Have all these women?”

  “Because he can,” Fleur fired off. “He’s high-and-mighty Simon York. At the top of the food chain. Women are just perks to him, like flying first class.”

  “It’s got to be more than that,” Kat said thoughtfully. “Because not all who can, do. Maybe he was weaned too early.” To Fleur’s disparaging hoots she insisted, “Well, it’s possible. He had a lousy childhood, right? So maybe he’s looking for the warmth and love he missed as an infant. And now that he’s grown up he can never get enough.”

  “Kat’s close, I think.” I’d been giving the topic some thought. “My sense is Simon has all these women to keep from getting close to any one of them. Really close, I mean. He talks a good game, but playing it scares the crap out of him. So he moves from one to another…”

  “…avoiding intimacy. I think you have it,” Kat said.

  Claire had been quiet while we batted this around, listening, fussing with her bracelets. Now she said, “The thing is, I really was in love with him.” She looked up at me. “You?”

  “I was in something,” I said.

  Fleur broke the moment of mournful silence that followed with a brisk handclap. “Okay ladies, funeral’s over. We have work to do.”

  “Right,” Claire said. “I’m going to call Beata Karnikova. I’ve heard she takes no prisoners. I know the three of us, plus you guys of course,” she swept Fleur and Kat into her field of vision, “can bring this off.” She grabbed my hand, squeezed hard, and looked deep into my eyes with her emerald green ones. “This is more than revenge,” she said, pupils firing. “This is justice.”

  “Close enough to revenge for me,” Fleur said. “Death to the infidel! Hang the bastard!”

  Kat simply nodded encouragement.

  “Let’s do it,” Claire said.

  Chapter 39

  The next four days blurred by. Everyone had an assignment. Fleur finessed Claire’s PowerPoint presentation and chatted with the conference manager at the Clay-Madison Hotel, who had a final list of the post-deadline papers—which included, yes, one by Dr. Simon York about early detection of ovarian cancer. And the Colonial Room, venue for the post-deadline session, did indeed have two screens and a sophisticated audio visual system.

  Over the phone, Kat, who’d been on the debate team in college and I, the public speaking champion of Ferdinand C. Latrobe Junior High School, rehearsed Claire in confronting Simon and coached her in parrying every possible outraged response.

  I got hold of Beata Karnikova just before she departed for America.

  “Zkurvysyne!” she cursed him out after I let her know she’d been another victim of Simon’s worldwide love-scam. The lying zasranec had even booked a suite for them Thursday night at the Clay-Madison. “Of course, the idea of sleeping with him makes me physically sick.” Which turned out to be the perfect excuse for changing her plans and arriving just in time to
get in on our act.

  “Weren’t we all a bunch of dunces to fall for his duplicity? But his day is coming,” she said. “Tell the others I’m foursquare behind this. Just email what you want me to do.”

  Claire phoned Jordan Conrad and asked her to keep the lid on it for another week—if Simon phoned, she was to play it cool. She sniffled a lot, Claire reported, but she agreed. On another front, Claire put in a call to an attorney girlfriend in Kerns-Brubaker’s legal department, who poked around and confirmed that Simon had, in fact, engaged in preliminary discussions about applying for a patent on a novel ovarian CA test. Claire’s name hadn’t been mentioned.

  And, regarding phone calls, I got one from Casanova himself on Tuesday night. All lovey-dovey. My performance was Oscar worthy. Butter could have melted. Ten minutes after we cooed good-bye, Claire called to inform me she’d just hung up on her call from Simon.

  He really was a low-down dirty zkurvysyne.

  ***

  Friday, December 18, 1:45 p.m. Bitti Karnikova and I arrived almost simultaneously for our planned reconnoiter in the mezzanine ladies’ room of the Clay-Madison Hotel. She shook my hand in a single chopping motion, then surprisingly drew me to her for a kiss on each cheek. She was a woman I’d characterize as handsome rather than pretty. Mid-forties, shoulders broad as an ox yoke, with generous Slavic features arranged symmetrically under a practical cap of glossy auburn hair. Interesting choice for Simon. I could see her slinging him over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes and carrying him off to have her way with him. Somehow I didn’t figure her as his type—then again, who wasn’t Simon’s type?

  “Sorry we’re meeting under such circumstances,” she said, backing off. “A moment,” she held up a halting hand, squatted to peek under the stall behind me, then made her way down the row to check the other five. Finally, she briskly opened, then closed, the door to the handicapped toilet. I was amused by all this Cold War spooky stuff. Then I remembered Bitti had been raised in Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia. “All clear,” she pronounced. “It is important to be careful. You never know who might be listening.”

  As if to prove the point, a woman dressed in head-to-toe black sailed through the door and swept in front of us to adjust her head scarf in the mirror. She wore no makeup, no jewelry. She peered at my reflection as it observed her. “You do not recognize me?” The accent was Middle Eastern with trilled r’s and a phlegmy overlay. “My friends call me Fatima.” She turned towards me and winked.

  The wink, a flash of emerald iris, cut through the disguise. “For godssakes, Claire, is that you?”

  “None other. But I had you there for a moment, didn’t I?”

  “Honestly, I had no idea it was you until I caught your eye color.”

  “I figured it would play from a distance. Claire McKenna,” she grinned and extended a hand to Bitti, who gave her the hatchet shake. “I decided in case I accidentally ran into Simon in the hall, I’d better not set off his alarms.”

  “Excellent costume. You see more and more head scarves these days. Alia Rashid is a brilliant scientist and she’s draped head to foot in the chador.” Bitti resumed leaning against the wall-mounted tampon dispenser, eye on the door.

  “Well, this is just an old Valentino suit and a scarf I dug out of a drawer. And I pushed back the bangs,” Claire said, facing the mirror, examining her teeth. “Simon’s already in the room, by the way. I was behind him in the hall and saw him go in.” She applied a slash of lipstick. “I gave him a few minutes and snuck a look at the meeting room. Nearly every seat is filled. The more the merrier is the way I see it. Let the world know the creep for who he really is.” She grimaced at her reflection. “God, I haven’t slept for days. My face is collapsing from anxiety.”

  A teenaged girl entered. Bitti waited until she’d chosen a stall, then stepped into one of the empty ones and flushed the toilet. Noise camouflage.

  “Okay. Time is flying. We need to move ourselves,” Bitti said. “Two good things. First, Angela Barola is chairing the session. Which is helpful to us. Because Angela is a past officer of Centro Italiano Femminile. Very involved in the Italian women’s movement. If it comes down to it, she will err on our side.”

  “Hurray for our team.” Claire swung around to grab a paper towel, blot her lips. Her gestures, I realized, were too jaggedy. She was pretty revved up. Eyes shining, color high. I wondered if she’d had a shot or three of her favorite Dewars in the Metroliner parlor car to boost her courage. Or something in capsule form. “That’s what I like, a totally subjective scientist.”

  Bitti flushed another unoccupied toilet. “Second, I set up everything with the young man in charge of the audio visual components. Multiple inputs are managed by a touch panel control system. For the next session, Simon is at the podium and his PowerPoint gets the screen on the left. The screen right side of the stage—remember right, as in we are in the right—has been programmed with your PowerPoint slides, Claire. Simple, yes? So, here is your remote. And a name tag for you.” She slapped the first into Claire’s outstretched palm and pinned the second to her lapel. “And one for you, Gwyneth.” She pinned the name tag to my pocket. Underneath, my heart was running a nervous arpeggio. My mouth was dry with stage fright.

  “All set, yes? Let us be off then.”

  We trailed after her like ducklings towards the door. Just before exiting she stopped short and spun around. “Do you pray?” she asked, and before we could answer, she crossed herself. “I don’t myself, but it wouldn’t hurt.”

  “Dear Jesus,” Claire muttered behind me. And it wasn’t a prayer.

  Chapter 40

  We fanned out. Claire slipped into the last row far right and hunkered down in her chair. I found a man with a head as big and round as Charlie Brown’s and planted myself behind him. Bitti landed a seat halfway back on the center aisle. She didn’t need to hide.

  Within minutes, the room was packed and you could feel the anticipation. Word had got round that Simon York was about to unveil a groundbreaking advance in the early detection of ovarian cancer. This was a major event. Bitti had said they’d let out the expandable walls to handle the overflow.

  It took a few minutes for Angela Barola, the moderator, to calm the buzz. Dressed in a drab suit and a prim white blouse, Angela glared at the crowd under eyebrows that had never seen tweezers. She really did look the part of a science nun, one of that breed of women who channel all their passion into science, which they worship like a religion. I took heart from the fact that her introduction of Simon was not as reverent as he might have wished. Angela didn’t seem the type to fall for Simon’s charm. Unlike a certain three women of Simon’s acquaintance who were, however, currently uncharmed and ready to rumble.

  As I slouched in my chair trying to duck behind the big-headed man, a wave of menopausal heat rolled over me, leaving me drenched and breathless. A hot-flash ambush, not unusual under stress. I peeled my cashmere sweater away from my chest, mopped my face and the back of my neck, then stared at the wet tissue balled in my hands. And kept staring. I hadn’t laid eyes on Simon since the deli debacle in New York and I’d been stalling since sitting down.

  Now I counted to ten before forcing myself to look at him.

  Deep breath and there he was, crossing the stage, wearing his favorite navy suit and a new tan he’d probably picked up on who knows what California beach with who knows what California girl. Simon York. My Simon. Every woman’s Simon. Which I realized, as I palpated all my emotions, didn’t hurt anymore. I was pain free. My jaw was tight and there was some tension in my shoulders. But no real pain.

  I watched Simon fussing with his laser pointer. With the silver hair and the cleft in his chin, he was still, on a handsome scale of 1 to 10, a solid 15. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. The rich baritone, the Knightsbridge accent was, as always, velvet.

  Simon clicked to the title of his pr
esentation. I searched for Claire behind me and found her. She curled her lip, mouthed “mine” at the slide, and pantomimed slitting her throat. He nodded towards the back of the room. The lights dimmed. Simon began to recite.

  Claire let him get through the introduction: five slides laying out the objectives and the preliminary data. For a moment, when he referred to the work as “our” work and the problem as the challenge “we” saw, I thought, Oh, my God, we’d pegged him wrong, he was going to cite Claire McKenna, the real hero of this breakthrough. But Claire’s name never surfaced and as soon as he began describing the methodology of the experiments, he slipped into the omnipotent I. I calculated this, I extrapolated that. I, I, I. Ay, ay, ay…. Claire was out of her seat, heading down the right aisle towards one of three microphones set up for questions and answers. Bitti, I saw, had already positioned herself at the floor microphone far left. I felt a new heat wave simmering around my cleavage. Come on girl, I roused myself, no faltering now. I trotted to the third mike.

  The hijacking happened too quickly for the audience to react. Not that practitioners of science generally move faster than the speed of osmosis. But they did shift in their seats. And you could almost hear a collective crick of two hundred necks craning to see who was speaking as Claire said and the microphone amplified, “Dr. York, I’m going to need to interrupt you here.”

  Claire whipped off her head scarf. I cleared my throat. Bitti tapped her microphone to make sure it was working.

  On stage, the speaker was in a dither. Frankly, it was a joy to watch the always unflappable Simon York lose it in public. It was obvious he couldn’t quite take in the implications of the panorama before him. His eyes darted from woman to woman to woman. Claire. Bitti. Gwyneth. Together. What the hell could that mean? From the dazed smile and the hunted look, I could see he knew he was in deep trouble.

  Swaying slightly, he gripped the podium for balance. And then, like a marionette chinking parts into place, he visibly pulled himself into a reasonable facsimile of together. But not in time to override Claire’s announcement that she was Claire McKenna of the Kerns-Brubaker Medical Institution, a senior scientist in the laboratory directed by Simon York. And she felt she must protest this presentation.