Fire in the Firefly

by Scott Gardiner

  The Collected Sayings of Julius Roebuck

  At thirty thousand feet, generally speaking, Roebuck is relaxed.

  Although most people he knows have come to loathe it, Roebuck still likes flying. Not the taking off and landing part, true. And, certainly, he would happily avoid the parody of public good advanced in Homeland Security’s neo-Newspeak. But he loves being up in the air. Especially a flight like today’s, with the North Atlantic glinting in pewter furrows down below. Only in times of emergencies does Roebuck permit himself to work while in an aircraft, and today’s flight, happily, does not coincide with one of those. Instead he reads and sets his mind deliberately to wandering. He cherishes these periods of disconnection, insulated, for at least those hours in the sky; unwired.

  The return flight from Helsinki has been as close to perfect as it gets: cloud this morning over northern Europe with driving sheets of rain, the kind that wraps the cabin in a winding shroud of murk until, suddenly, blindingly, it breaks through into that brilliant, crystalline blue. Roebuck has always gloried in that moment. There’s a particular variety of solitude that satisfies him to the core, passing through cloud like loose bales of light. A concentration of focus, a consolation of private thought.

  He is a realist. He knows it.

  Roebuck understands completely that if the roles were reversed—if Lily was the official spouse and Anne the woman he was seeing on the sly—then Anne would be the sweet one and Lily the reproachful wife. This is in no way a reflection of either of their personalities. Either one. It’s just a function of marriage as he sees it in the twenty-first century. Roebuck has lost track of what evolution they’re now in—fourth wave? fifth?—but he does know that the early days of feminism foretold a world in which men and women behaved the same, but they don’t because they can’t, which has pissed off every generation since. He wonders how bad things will be when poor Zach comes of age.

  By now the cloud has mostly burned away. A short while back they passed a ship—passenger or freighter, Roebuck couldn’t say—just an arrow-tip of darkness disappearing off the starboard wing behind a trailing fletch of wake. Whitecaps scatter on the sea below like grains of melting salt. Sometime in the next hour Labrador will appear and after that the long, narrow ribbons of fields radiating at precise right-angles from the banks of the St. Lawrence. With his cheek against the window, Roebuck will be watching as forest gives way to fields, whose square concession blocks in turn become the grids of cities melding into one another on the shores of the Great Lakes. He’ll be struck, as he is each time, by the turquoise ovals of suburban swimming pools, at how reproachfully they mimic the darker, deeper ponds that dot the landscape farther north.

  He loves Helsinki.

  He loves the herring and the cloudberries and those rumbling blondes with voices like laughing rocks. It’s that familial northerliness; so much the same as home, yet so completely not. Helsinki is headquarters to the biggest, most important—and, yes—happiest of his clients: the bedrock of Roebuck’s fortune. Today, today in particular, his esteem flows above all from his meetings in that loose-limbed city; his meetings have gone very, very well with the promise of better still to come. At thirty-thousand feet, Roebuck’s contentedness planes above the atmosphere. It occurs to him, as the aircraft dips a wing, beginning its descent, that his balls have not twinged even once during the entire flight.

  It is not until he’s in the limo, heading for the office, that Roebuck’s happiness bumps into opposition. His luggage for this trip was strictly carry-on; no wasting time banging elbows at the carousel. Roebuck has breezed through customs, despite the undeclared bottle of Lakka tucked into his flight bag as a thank-you gift for Daniel Greenwood.

  He is now studying a photograph of Daniel Greenwood. More precisely, BlackBerry in one hand, chin in the other, Roebuck is rereading the caption:

  “Advertisers not interested in recognition are like carnivores not interested in meat,” whiz kid Daniel Greenwood tells AdForge audience.

  Whiz kid? The pic shows a chiselled and tuxedoed Greenwood, nicely backlit, one hand extended, brow contemplatively furrowed. It’s a flattering shot.

  According to his custom, Roebuck has waited until he’s seated in the cab, briefcase at his hip, seatbelt buckled, driver instructed to take the 401 not the Gardiner, before opening his mobile and reconnecting with everything that’s been switched off since they rolled out on the tarmac at Helsinki-Vantaa. Earlier this morning, he was surprised to find no mail from Lily. What with the difference in time zones, Roebuck was in bed last night before the show got underway, but he thought she would have sent him a quick note to tell him how the evening went.

  Turns out she did. Later. Much, much later: 3:48 AM, her time, to be exact. Roebuck had never before received an email from a Lily so unmistakably inebriated.

  Like listening to you in a different package. Did you write that speech? Must have. Very, very strange, hearing your words coming out of somebody else’s mouth. But the mouth was good. He’s a good presenter. Also very nice. You nevr said. You’ll also be happy that you had a good night. Eight awards altogether if I counted right which I probbly didn’t, including the one accepted by dear little me. Remember that stuff you had me working on for the Donlands account? It won!!!! Daniel asked me to go up to the podium to get it. He said he wasn’t even working here when that account was handled so it was ridiculous for him to take the credit. He really is very sweet. I think I’m tipsy. Haven’t been out this late in centuries. When are you going to take me out late? What’s going down in Finland?

  Roebuck opens up the on-line edition of today’s AdForge and checks the tally. Sure enough, his agency has been awarded prizes in a total of eight categories. Not as good as some years, but nothing to sneeze at, either. And there is the picture of Greenwood. Roebuck thumbs the text.

  Daniel Greenwood, hot new talent at Roebuck and Associates, got the crowd going at last night’s AdForge gala with a clear-eyed appraisal of the industry today. A last-minute substitute when creative partner Julius Roebuck was scratched, Greenwood clearly enjoyed the opportunity to remind his colleagues that award shows like the AdForge are a vital link between advertisers and agencies. “Awards are like the proteins of our business,” noted Greenwood …

  Roebuck is pleased.

  His shop won eight awards; his speech was clearly a success; Greenwood did everything asked of him and more; the AFA appears delighted with how everything worked out. Even Lily—obviously—isn’t mad.

  How could anyone not be pleased with that?

  Part II

  May 2008

  These nuptial gifts, which can include captured prey, spermatophores, or various male body parts, are intimately tied to both precopulatory and postcopulatory relations.

  Sara M. Lewis and Christopher K. Crastley,

  “Flash Signal Evolution, Mate Choice, and Predation in Fireflies,”

  The Annual Review of Entomology

  16

  Angels don’t get laugh lines.

  The Collected Sayings of Julius Roebuck

  Eight weeks.

  It’s not as if he has been marking each day on the calendar. It’s not as if he’s been scratching nightly notches on the bedpost. But Julius Roebuck has been yearning for this moment for what seems like a very long time. Two months.

  Two long months. Fifty-six sunrises; fifty-six sunsets—ardently dodging the hours between.

  Meanwhile he has recovered so completely that Roebuck has forgotten, almost, what it was like to be invalidated. The titanium clips now buried deep in the regenerated tissue of his groin are, by every outward indication, holding true. He will know for certain very soon. All swelling has long since disappeared; the scar beneath his penis is insignificant, and for practical purposes, invisible. Roebuck’s pubic hair has returned to re-assertive normalcy. He has completed all twenty ejaculations, as prescribed, plus a few more for good me
asure, although it has been lonely work. But very soon all that will be behind him, too. Today is not the big day. But the big day is just around the corner.

  In Roebuck’s pocket is a plastic vial.

  This is not the sample jar that Yasmin pressed into his trembling palm. Nor the one he left for Anne those long eight weeks ago, although this one is identical in size and shape—and, indeed, prescription—right down to its orange lid and paper seal. Today that seal is broken. Today the label is inscribed. Today, like Hardy’s Tess, Roebuck’s sample jar is virgin no more.

  Inside it is a quantity of sperm. Or, rather, not sperm—no sperm at all if there’s a shred of justice in the universe. Ejaculate. A quantity of ejaculate, then, presumptively sperm-free, produced not half an hour ago and transported fresh, according to instructions.

  As Roebuck has discovered earlier this morning, it is one thing flushing a wad of sticky Kleenex down the john at 2:00 AM when everybody’s sleeping; it’s something else again achieving accurate expression into a tiny plastic cylinder while the kids are fighting for the toaster and Anne is pacing past the bathroom door, yelling for him to step it up or everyone’s going to be late. And in retrospect, too, it would have been a little weird, driving to school with a jar of jism, jingling alongside the change in his pocket.

  In the end he’s had to wait until the kids were safely off, and Anne departed for her morning run before sneaking back into the house and finishing the job. He’ll definitely be late for his 9:30 conference call, but Greenwood can take care of that.

  Gama-Care Laboratories is not what he’d expected.

  Roebuck isn’t sure what he was imagining. Something somehow more … clinical. This looks more like the kind of place a Baptist outreach group might set up shop—or one of those relax spas specializing in prostate massage. He drove by twice before spotting the tiny sign mounted on the door beside a same-day dry cleaner.

  Roebuck has switched off the engine and decided to not to pay for parking. There’s a buzzer mounted on the doorframe. He presses and waits, hands in his pockets, until it occurs to him that it must be wired to some other apartment. The door swings opens to his pull. Roebuck climbs the narrow stairs.

  The reception is a tiny landing no more than eight feet square. Two women sit behind a counter that has further shrunk the space. They’re having a discussion with a third individual who Roebuck almost bumps with the door as he enters. One of the women is wearing a lab coat, which Roebuck interprets as a positive sign. The conversation seems to be in Mandarin and each of them is lobbing comments through a sliding glass window set into the wall behind the chest-high counter, although Roebuck discerns no reply emerging from the other side. He edges in sideways and waits in the corner.

  “Know what?” he says after a while. “I’m just going out to go check the car.”

  Ten minutes later by the dashboard clock, he attempts his next ascent. He is feeling somewhat awkward, not altogether confident, truthfully, about how to handle this. Before leaving home, he has inked his name on the label, very clearly with a new black Sharpie, alongside his work address and his private cellphone number. Tucked into his pocket, neatly folded, is the requisition form provided by the No Fuss Vasectomy Clinic. But he’s still uncertain of the protocol for transferring materials of this nature.

  When he climbs the stairway this time, the person by the door is gone. The remaining two stare as if they have no idea how Roebuck has materialized in front of them. The woman closer to the sliding window rolls her chair back and sends another stream of diphthongs through the void. Roebuck clears his throat.

  “Um,” he says, “I should give you this,” and hands over his Post Vasectomy Semen Analysis form. The woman takes it, scans the essentials, and extends her other hand. All business, now, Roebuck briskly removes the sample jar from his breast pocket and places it in the woman’s waiting palm. She holds it up to the light like a jeweller examining a lump of zirconium, grunts, and lobs the jar into a wire basket. She has passed his requisition form to her colleague, who drops it in another tray at her end of the counter. Voices now come from behind the window. Both women pause respectfully to listen.

  A few moments pass before Roebuck realizes that’s it.

  “By the way,” he says, nonchalantly, “how long before the result comes back?”

  The woman nearest to him perceives that Roebuck is still in the room. “Wa?”

  “How long until I get the result?”

  “Two week.”

  “Two more weeks?” But that’s …”

  “We tell No Fuss. No Fuss tell you. Two week.”

  “It can’t be two weeks, I have …” he hears his own voice failing. The women behind the counter aren’t listening anyway.

  Two weeks.

  Lily is expecting him Monday. Yasmin, even more so. Roebuck retreats to his car. He has cut this too fine. Way, way too fine. If the thought of Lily getting pregnant is beyond frightening, the idea of actually fathering Yasmin’s child is full-spectrum nightmare. Roebuck understands that there is absolutely no safe way of dispensing any of his body fluids until he is categorically, unambiguously, 100 percent certain there is no trace of Roebuckian sperm in the mix.

  The past two months have been difficult enough. Two more weeks is going to totally screw everything up. He doesn’t even see the traffic cop slipping the ticket beneath the blade of his wiper.

  All things considered, keeping Yasmin contained has been the biggest challenge. Lily only slightly less so. As far as Anne is concerned, the time has passed without incident of any kind.

  Throughout this phase, he and Lily have kept in frequent touch by phone or email as usual, but Roebuck has succeeded, for the entire eight weeks, in steering clear of her reproductive tract. He has missed her. They have shared a couple of innocent lunches, a few drinks together after work, and now—this afternoon, when he has foolishly agreed to drive her home from work—some dangerous moments alone in his car. But he caught a lucky break with the timing of a cruise that her parents thoughtfully provided: sixteen whole days on a boat with an ocean between them. Since she’s been back, though, tensions have escalated sharply. Lily has never been one to let things fester.

  “Has it run its course? Just tell me. We both know this was never meant to be permanent.”

  “Oh jeez, Lil, no. No!”

  Roebuck takes at least a little moral solace from the honesty of his distress. The hand-wringing is no act. “Honestly. It’s just … circumstances. Awkward timing. I had the flu, remember? And then that meeting in Helsinki …”

  “That was months ago.”

  “Two months. Barely two months. Then it was Dallas, then that snag in New York I told you about. I told you about that, didn’t I? Then that thing in Halifax. And you were off in the Caribbean with your folks, don’t forget. It’s just … unlucky timing.”

  “But you’d tell me, wouldn’t you? You are the kind of man who’d tell me. Tell me you are.” Lily is wild-eyed in the passenger seat. Roebuck with his motor running is parked against the curb outside her house.

  “There’s nothing to tell! Seriously, Lily. It’s just …”

  “All right. All right! It’s been so long, that’s all. I’m not convent material; you’re the one who’s supposed to appreciate that. I know you can’t right now, but you are coming Monday? Better say you are.”

  “Absolutely. Monday. Of course. I blocked off the entire afternoon. Definitely.”

  Yasmin, in her own way, has been more problematic still. Though not at first.

  For several weeks following that inspirational visit to his sickbed—memories of which have played a central role in the functionality of Roebuck’s spermatozoa cleanse—not a peep. Nearly a month in absolute silence. Of course he heard about her, daily: Anne and Yasmin were off to see some Moore Park speculator envisaging a pop-top; Yasmin has patched things up with that inspector who’
s been jerking them around over the variance on Heath; Yasmin has gone and booked a test drive with a new yoga instructor, though Anne doesn’t see what’s wrong with Willow. But not a word, all the while, to him directly. By this time Anne was convinced their troubles were behind them; Roebuck more than half believed his wife was right.

  Then Yasmin staged her intervention.

  “That’s a very dedicated decorator you got there,” said Carol, his receptionist. Roebuck had just stepped off the elevator. “Owe her money?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sorry. My bad. It’s just that she sat there waiting half the morning. I told her you weren’t likely back for a while. But she kept staying.”

  At one level, Roebuck’s brain was at that very moment consciously reminding itself that he and Carol still needed to touch bases about the functions of Reception Desk, but pretty much every other circuit was lit up to the single throbbing question: “She’s here?” He caught himself, for just a second, lifting his heels for a better view across the cubicles.

  “Nah. She left.”

  “Right,” said Roebuck, grounding. What was he expecting, Yasmin on his sofa in red satin sheets?

  “But she said she’d be back in an hour.”

  “Anything else?”

  “There’s a package from Ripreeler. It’s on your desk. Also your BlackBerry. You left it in the boardroom again.”

  Roebuck walked in measured paces to his office and instantly checked messages.

  The usual: a cluster from Artemis, one from Anne reminding him about a charity dinner they’ve promised to co-chair next month, a new gripe from his client in Framingham, two from his accountant, followed by another of those disconcerting probes from Omniglobe.

  And four more flagged URGENT from Yasmin. That day was the turning point.