Breed

by Chase Novak

  “Oh my God, Alex, it’s him.” She grabs Alex’s arm.

  “I know, I know.”

  Leslie is open-mouthed with wonder. She shakes her head. “I thought we tried everything. How did you find him?”

  “I just found it. What difference does it make?” He pauses the playback. “Do you want to see it or not?”

  Leslie stares at Kis’s ravaged face. She reads the video’s heading—FLESH AND BLOOD—and suddenly has an inkling of how Alex stumbled across it, the keywords he must have been typing into his computer’s search engine, the gruesome and shameful nature of his curiosity. Flesh, blood, who knows what else? She has no desire to humiliate him or cause him any further discomfort.

  “Play it,” she says. She touches his shoulder.

  He looks at her with love and gratitude. There is a closeness between them that surpasses anything he has ever imagined. He clicks Play.

  “Bonjour,” Kis says in a very quiet voice.

  “In English, Doctor.” The voice comes from behind the camera.

  Is it Reggie? Leslie wonders. That dreadful little pimp… But no, the voice is without that snide, complicitous quality Leslie remembers from Ljubljana. This voice belongs to someone heavier, sorrowful, someone who might even be kind.

  “Where is he?” Leslie asks.

  “Ach,” Kis says, throwing up his hands. He takes a breath, smooths his shirt front.

  “You know what?” Alex says, suddenly pausing the video. “He looks like he’s on his way to The Hague.” He sees the blankness in Leslie’s expression. “World Court?”

  “Oh,” says Leslie. But she shakes her head, still a bit lost.

  “You know, a lot of military men in what used to be Yugoslavia behaved rather badly during their civil wars. There was a lot of slaughter.”

  “Back in olden times?”

  “Well, not really. Mid-nineties, around then.”

  “I wasn’t even born yet.”

  “Of course you were, Leslie. What are you talking about?”

  “Stop testing me! I’m not in the University of Alexander. And anyhow, he’s a doctor, right? He’s not a millinery.”

  “Military.”

  “What is he saying? Let’s hear it. Maybe. I don’t know… you never know. Maybe there’s something here.” She knocks Alex’s hand away and clicks on the Play icon to continue the YouTube video.

  “Hello,” Kis says. “My name is Slobodan Kis, and I have been practicing medicine in Slovenia, primarily in my home city of Ljubljana, since 1987.”

  “Oh my God,” says Leslie. “This is too much. This is just really fucking too much.”

  “For many years I was fascinated by the mysteries of human reproduction,” Kis says. He pauses, swallows, dries the corners of his mouth with the back of his spotted, trembling hand. “I treated infertile couples in my home city, and eventually all over Europe, and finally from everywhere—China, U.S.A., United Kingdom. I had some successes, some failures. And one day in the summer of 1999, I devised a fertility treatment that indicated we were at a new threshold in the science of human reproduction. Blending endocrinal materials from human and nonhuman sources, I began to administer injections that had a stimulating effect on the human reproductive system that was nothing short of miraculous.”

  A wave of static goes through the image, flashes of light like the branches of a bare tree, and for a moment the image of the haunted old physician is a jumbled, disjointed negative of itself. But quickly it comes together again, and now Kis is holding an immense photo album covered in a plush, quilted material that looks like it’s from the sofa in a fortune-teller’s waiting room. With some difficulty, Kis opens the book, and in it, eight to a page, are snapshots of children, from infants to young people in military uniforms. “These human beings are alive today because of me, my work, my science.” He turns the pages, first slowly, and then quickly, as if the whole enterprise is trying his patience, and the pictures flash by.

  “Whoa,” a voice says, a teenage boy. “I think I saw us in that book.”

  “Who is that?” Leslie asks. “What’s going on?”

  “Two kids. We’re watching them watching him,” Alex says. “They’re the ones who posted the video.”

  “Oh Jesus,” Leslie says. “This is making me sick.”

  The video camera with which the two young boys have been recording Kis’s video swings off to the side, revealing a disheveled bedroom, a window with tattered green curtains, and a flat-screen TV showing Kis’s video.

  “Rewind it,” one of the boys says.

  “What the fuck, Mario,” the other boy says. “I’m not fucking rewinding it.” Still, he does as he was asked, and they freeze the image of Kis’s book of accomplishments.

  “That’s us!” Mario says, and he runs to the TV and jabs his finger against the screen. “We’re in there!” He is a slight kid with shoulder-length hair, sloping eyes.

  “Look at what’s happened to this guy,” Alex says. “Look at his eyes, his face. Look at what he’s become.”

  The boys start the video from where they’d paused it.

  “A doctor is not measured by his successes alone,” Kis says. “The failures often eclipse much of the good.”

  “Yeah,” one of the boys says tauntingly, “like you messed up, dude.”

  “Big-time,” the other boy says. And they both dissolve into laughter.

  As if hearing the taunts of the boys, the doctor falls silent, looks down at his hands, which rest on the table before him.

  “He looks a hundred years older,” Leslie says. Her hand is on her chest as she tries to slow her breathing, but the sight of this man, no matter how time-worn and melancholy, no matter how desperate and fugitive his manner, brings her back to that time in his offices when he seemed to tower over her, an overpowering presence who seemed almost to rape her with his needles.

  “Do you want to talk about the canine component of the serums you were using?” the kindly voice prods.

  “No, I am not talking about that.”

  “Well, the whole purpose—”

  “Don’t speak to me of purposes,” Kis says, suddenly regaining the imperial manner both Alex and Leslie so vividly recall from their own meeting with him.

  “Nothing of the canine component?” the voice says rather sadly. The doctor shakes his head. “And nothing of the ursine?” Again the doctor shakes his head. “And nothing of the vulpine?”

  “There is nothing vulpine in my serum. Fox are not good breeders. You must be mad.”

  “And nothing lupine?”

  A long pause. Then: “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It doesn’t matter?” one of the boys screams, his voice rising on the wings of incredulity.

  “It matters to us, Doc,” the other boy cries.

  “If we live, we’re coming to kick your ass,” the first boy says. One of them zooms the lens of his video recorder so that Kis’s face is closer, grainier.

  “Stop it for a minute,” Leslie says.

  Alex does what she asks.

  “Can he fix us?” Leslie asks.

  “Do we even want that?” Alex says.

  “Are you insane?”

  He opens his mouth to say something but remains silent.

  “Can he fix us, Alex? Does he say anything about that?”

  “You can hear for yourself,” Alex says, restarting the video.

  “In my serum,” Kis says, clearing his throat, straightening his shoulders, “I use many different strains of genetic material. What is my crime? Trying to bring happiness and relief to people? Vigor. That is the watchword.” He closes his fists, shakes them, bares his teeth. “Strength. So many of these infertile couples, they wait too long, they live too soft, they worry, they obsess about nonsense. They fatten. They tire. I give them back the vigor. And health. Good blood, wildness. You understand? I put the wild in them.”

  “Jesus,” one of the boys mutters, no longer finding it funny.

  The boy with the camera
turns it away from the video of Kis and toward his brother, who has hair down to his shoulders, shaggy sideburns, and the beginnings of his first mustache. He looks hollow-eyed, frightened, but needs to put himself forward for the camera’s sake. He holds up his pointer finger and his pinkie and sticks his tongue out as far as he can, as if he were some heavy-metal hair god acknowledging his headbanger audience at a concert.

  “Oh, that boy. That poor kid,” Leslie says.

  “Wait,” Alex says. “This is what I most wanted you to hear.”

  “In pursuit of vigor,” Kis is saying, “I introduced certain kinds of fish oils. Yes. You understand?”

  “We’re not stupid, you fucking wack,” one of the boys fairly screams.

  “I believe in fish oil, quite apart from my fertility research. For joint health, lowering triglycerides, depression. Even skin tone.” He glances unhappily at his own hands and puts them onto his lap and out of sight. “I perhaps made an error.…”

  “An error?” the kindly voice asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you say more about that?”

  “Is that what is required?” Kis asks.

  “It would be helpful,” the voice says.

  “We’re going to find you!” one of the boys bellows, his youthful energies returned.

  “And tear you up, man,” his brother adds.

  “And scatter you to the wind!” they both shout in unison, their voices now a virtual howl.

  Leslie reaches for Alex’s hand, looks up at him with very, very frightened eyes.

  “I used oil harvested from a most common fish,” Dr. Kis says softly. “I was concerned with availability. Eventually, I settled on gobiodes.”

  “English, please, Doctor.”

  “The goby fish. An everywhere fish. Cold water, warm seas, aquariums.”

  “And there was a problem with this?” the voice asked.

  “Here we go!” one of the boys calls out in an amusement-park sort of voice, the kind people use when the roller coaster is creakily inching up its initial ascent.

  “Yes, a problem. This particular fish has a particular nature.”

  “And this nature was?” the interlocutor prods.

  “The goby is a cannibal fish. It feeds on its own kind.” Kis’s voice is clipped, factual; whatever it costs him to say these words will remain his own secret.

  “Specifically?” the cameraman asks.

  “I am working all the time,” Kis says, now with emotion. “Don’t you understand? All the time. Perfecting, taking out the bugs. And learning perhaps how some of the unfortunate side effects can be reversed.”

  “You see? He can reverse this,” Leslie says.

  “Not yet,” Alex whispers, indicating with a gesture that Leslie should listen to what Kis says next.

  “But you were saying about the fish,” Kis’s gentle interrogator asks. “This cannibal fish.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “What we discussed before.”

  Kis heaves a huge sigh and looks off into the distance. “It’s a cannibal fish. The goby.”

  “And specifically?”

  “Specifically? This is what you want? Okay. Specifically, the goby fish likes to eat its own young. It seems to be its preferred form of nourishment. These are legal matters now. You understand? My lawyers advise me that there is very little I can say until these issues are resolved.”

  With a popping noise and a hiss, the video goes dark. In the sudden silence, Alex and Leslie can hear the faint screams of the man caged in their cellar.

  “We shouldn’t be hearing that,” Alex says. “I must have left the door open.” He starts to stand up, but Leslie stops him with a hand on his forearm.

  “What has he done to us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Alex.”

  “Worst-case scenario? Exactly what we think.”

  “We are a danger to our own children.” Leslie’s voice is plaintive, as if all she desires is for Alex to disagree with her.

  “Sometimes,” he says. “We have our good days, and we have our bad days.”

  Again, the faint cries rise from the cellar. Leslie turns toward the sound with a startled expression, and Alex wipes the saliva from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.

  The howls make him hungry.

  The sun trembles red over the small slice of the East River Michael can see from his windows. It is a little before 6:00 a.m., and pale thin stalks of light rise on the streets below. Michael is exhausted. He has barely slept and he is overwhelmed by worries—what to do about Adam, what Adam’s insane, bellicose father might do next, and as if that were not enough, he is also consumed with worry about Xavier. Since Michael learned that Xavier never made it to Rosalie’s, his mind has felt like a fish hooked by two different fishermen, being yanked and reeled toward two different shores. He is at once deeply worried that Xavier has been hurt or is in some other kind of trouble and is also furiously certain that Xavier has decided to punish him for basically turning him out of the apartment and has retaliated with some tawdry hookup. Or maybe Xavier’s finding another bed for last night was part of some larger retaliation, based on his boredom with Michael’s slow social metabolism, Michael’s stay-at-home mentality. Hadn’t Xavier regularly complained they didn’t go out often enough and were not a part of the throbbing nightlife?

  When Michael gets out of the shower and comes back to the front room, half expecting to see Xavier tearfully repentant or, perhaps—best-case scenario!—slightly injured, he finds Adam sitting on the sofa, which is still covered with bedsheets and blankets. Adam cradles a bowl of cereal and eats ravenously. He glances up at Michael with an expression both nervous and fierce.

  “I was just about to wake you up,” Michael says, trying to sound parental, even though he is wearing only a towel.

  “I get up early.”

  “Well, it’s time to go to school.”

  Adam concentrates on his cereal.

  “Adam?”

  “Can I have some more cereal?”

  “Of course. You want me to get it for you?”

  Instead of answering, Adam springs off the sofa, scampers into the kitchen, and pours so many Cheerios into his bowl there is scarcely room for milk.

  “Since you’re coming with me, you’re going to be a little early. We get there before the students.” He watches Adam shoveling the Cheerios into his mouth.

  “Please don’t make me” Adam is finally able to say.

  “You have to. It’s school.”

  Adam shakes his head no.

  “Come on, Adam…”

  “That’s where he’ll look for me.”

  “But that’s exactly what’s going to have to happen. Whatever is going on between you and your folks, you’re not going to solve it by running away or hiding out here.”

  Adam shakes his head, more and more insistently.

  “Well, you can’t stay here. I’m going to school and you’re going to have to come with me.”

  “He is going to kill me. Or maybe Mom is. Or both.”

  “Adam! Come on.”

  “They are. They do things. They’re different from everyone. They can’t even help it.”

  “Are you sure, Adam? Are you sure you’re not just super-angry right now and this is what you’re feeling?”

  “You saw him. He was right here. You saw him.”

  “I know. And all I saw was a dad looking for his kid. I should have given you to him right then and there. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  “Yes, you were. You could tell.”

  “Maybe I should call him right now.” Michael glances at his wrist to see the time, but he’s not wearing his watch. He’s not wearing anything—just the towel. A creepy, guilty feeling comes over him, the kind that comes not from doing anything wrong but from doing something that leaves you wide open to misinterpretation and accusation. He realizes there are still plenty of people who think gay men can’t be trusted aro
und male children, though to Michael being with anyone younger or smaller or lighter or smoother has zero appeal—he likes the weight and smell of someone substantial on him, a commanding air, a firmness of touch. He even likes a certain degree of sheer bossiness, something for which Cubans in general seem particularly disposed. Xavier! Where are you?

  “I don’t want you to call him,” Adam says, very softly.

  “Then you better get ready for school, and we’ll get this all squared away once we are there.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Adam, I think you’re old enough to understand this. I am a teacher. It’s my job. And I could get fired for coming between one of my students and his parents, or even for just the perception that I am.”

  “Even if the parents are going to kill the kid?”

  “No one’s killing anyone, Adam.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Come on, be reasonable.”

  “I am.”

  “Okay, as your teacher I am legally required to call Child Protective Services. I have to tell CPS that your parents are trying…” Michael stops himself, though it’s already too late. He has ventured into territory he should have never gotten near. The parents at Berryman Prep are for the most part wealthy, demanding, entitled alpha-dog types, and the school’s administration has always followed a policy of accommodation and catering to the wishes and whims of the parents upon whose large tuition checks and occasional endowments Berryman depends, a policy that was not a whit less stringent for being unspoken. Though carved over the Gothic-style front entrance were the words knowledge is freedom, a more truthful motto would have been “The customer is always right,” and at Berryman Prep, the customer wrote with a pricey Montblanc pen.

  “How come you don’t believe me?” Adam says, his lower lip beginning to tremble.

  “Adam, I’m not here to debate with you. We’re going to school and we’re leaving in ten minutes. Once we are there, if you don’t tell me to do otherwise, I’m going to make that call.”

  Ten minutes later, Adam emerges from the bathroom, washed, his hair wet-combed, his face frozen with unhappiness. Wordlessly, he follows Michael into the elevator and through the lobby. It is a cold, steely morning, with a stiff wind that carries the scent of burned coffee.