Erin turned on her heels, lifted an eyebrow. “This just gets curiouser and curiouser.” She started up the floating staircase which protruded from the exposed brick wall.
Lloyd remained frozen by the doorway, gawking at the way the sheer pant legs tightened around her thighs with each step, the way the buttons on her back pockets see-sawed like two eyes taking turns winking at him.
“Oh, this is nice!” Erin said as she reached the top step.
Lloyd trotted up the stairs as if her words freed him from his trance. “I’ll pour the coffee.”
As Erin turned into the parking garage Lloyd was still trying to put a name on the feeling he had been experiencing all morning. A feeling that had always been as elusive to him as a mirage and now, he expected, would dissipate once more. The word, “mirth” floated in his consciousness. An odd word, Lloyd thought; practically archaic. He wondered which ridiculous neural pathway had errantly fired to bring it forth. He imagined a shriveled neuron tucked in a crevice deep in the auditory association cortex of his left temporal lobe hiccupping to electro-chemical life.
“Do you have any plans for dinner tonight?” Lloyd asked.
“Are you asking me out on a date, Lloyd Copeland?” Erin said, a teasing smile stretched across her face.
“I’m just being preemptive, in case you’re planning to stalk me with a Taser after work. I don’t want you to zap me with a million volts just to have an excuse to drive me home again.”
“I see. So that’s what happened last night?”
“More or less,” Lloyd said.
“And the purse-snatcher?”
“Your accomplice? It was all a set up as far as I know.”
Erin took her right hand off the steering wheel and punched him in the arm. “Why is it so hard to admit that you had a good time last night? That you actually enjoy being with me?” She pulled into an empty spot, thrust the shifter in park and cut the engine. “So…” she said as she turned to face him.
“What?”
“So, do you like me?”
Lloyd looked at her for a moment without saying a word. She cocked her eyebrow making him smile. “Are you going to give me more Chlorophyll now?” he asked. She shook her head ever so slightly without taking her eyes off of his. “Well, you haven’t poured iced water on my lap this morning and the agony of the pepper spray is subsiding, so it’s not as painful to be with you today as it has been.”
She smiled. “You’re just terrible. Terrible and terribly childish.”
“So dinner’s on?”
“After what you just said?”
“Oh, come on.”
“Tonight’s not good. I have a crazy day,” Erin said reaching for the door handle. “Don’t know what time I’ll be done.”
They stepped out of the car.
“Still, you gotta eat,” Lloyd said, looking at her over the roof of the car.
“I’ll be dead tired.”
“Still… you gotta eat.”
“I told you. I don’t know when I’ll be done.”
“It’s alright. When you finish you just swing by my place. I’ll have dinner waiting on the table.”
“You cook?”
“No, but I know some good take-out places that deliver.”
“I don’t know.”
“A nice glass of wine…”
“Let’s go Lloyd. I’m going to be late.” The sound of Erin’s heels resonated off the concrete columns of the parking garage.”
“Some soft music…” Lloyd said as he followed her.
The clicking of her steps came to a halt. She stopped to stare at Lloyd’s motorcycle. Lloyd walked up to the bike, inspected it briefly and caressed the handlebar.
“Why don’t you wear a helmet when you ride this thing?”
“Why should I?” Lloyd said with a shrug.
“Because you can die.”
“We’re all going to die.”
“That’s just stupid.”
Lloyd exhaled through his nose as he studied Erin’s piercing stare. “Look, if I die, I die.” He shrugged again but the gesture came out feeling mechanical, contrived.
Erin looked down and started walking again. “That’s so sad,” she said under her breath.
“What’s so sad?” Erin kept walking. “Erin, what’s so sad?”
She stopped and faced him again. “It’s so sad you feel you have nothing to live for.”
The words slammed into him like a rogue wave breaking over a life raft. He drew a finger across his lips, stared at the pavement then lifted his gaze again to see Erin’s eyes still burrowing into his. He forced a meek smile and said, “Well, now that you won’t have dinner with me I really have nothing to live for, do I?”
She didn’t smile. “You’re such a dolt.”
“And next you’ll ask me if I like you.”
Erin paused, took a deep breath and said, “I’ll be at your place sometime between eight-thirty and nine.”
“Anything in particular you’d like to eat?”
Erin shook her head with a somber expression. “Just no more tapas,” she said before walking away.
Chapter 12
Lloyd stepped off the elevator and headed for his office. He was still replaying Erin’s last words in his mind. No more tapas. What did she mean by that? Was she referencing her psychology professor’s asinine musings on the reluctance to form commitments? But at Mike’s barbecue she had clearly told him that she wasn’t ready to enter a serious relationship either. Maybe she just didn’t like Spanish food.
It’s not as if Lloyd struggled to understand women; he simply didn’t try. It never truly mattered to him. He didn’t strive to fill any emotional void they might harbor. His only aim was to satiate the sexual hunger he purposely stoked in them.
The door to the lab was locked, which meant that Kaz hadn’t arrived yet. During the day they usually left the door unlocked. Lloyd extracted a key ring from the pocket of his riding jacket and opened the door. He exchanged his riding jacket for his lab coat and headed for the ward to start his rounds.
After lunch, he decided to retreat to his office to think. He jogged up the stairs, the tuna-salad sandwich feeling far heavier in his stomach than it should. He walked up the last half-flight of stairs and placed his fist in front of his mouth to belch. The taste of mayo and tuna rose with a putrid sweetness.
Lloyd reached the landing, still belching. Maybe he should stop running up the stairs after lunch, he thought, or he should just lay off the tuna at the cafeteria. He pulled open the heavy metal fire door and stepped into the hallway leading to his office.
He was half-way down the corridor when he first noticed the man standing squarely next to his door tapping away on a smartphone with both thumbs. He wore a sleek double breasted pin-striped charcoal suit over a pale blue shirt, perfectly polished leather shoes the likes of which you don’t find in a mall. Lloyd slowed his pace a little and clenched his jaw. Speaking to pharmaceutical reps was slightly less annoying than hearing the sound of fingernails scratching a blackboard. He despised the phony reverence, the contrived charm. How did this clown manage to sneak up by his office in the first place?
Just ten feet away the man looked up and Lloyd noticed a medical center badge clipped to his lapel. The man slipped the cell phone inside the breast of his coat, slid both hands in his trouser pockets and nodded at Lloyd. Definitely not a drug rep.
It wasn’t until Lloyd had his hand on the door knob that the man said, “Dr. Copeland?”
“Yes?”
“Nick De Luca, head of security at the medical center here.” No offer of a handshake, no smile, deliberately slow speech with a strange inflection as if he were trying to dampen a thick Chicago accent.
“Okay.”
“Wonder if I can have a word with you.”
“I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
“Good, I’ll only be a minute,” De Luca said, his face not betraying any expression.
Lloyd exhaled. “Look, can�
�t we do this another time?”
De Luca took his hands out of his pockets and rubbed his palms together. “Well… no.”
Lloyd pushed the door open and De Luca entered without being prompted. They walked across the lab and stepped into Lloyd’s office. While Lloyd circled his desk and took a seat, De Luca stood in the middle of room, pivoting on his heels to inspect the office.
“So what’s this all about?” Lloyd asked.
De Luca finally sat down. “Quite a night you had last night, no?”
Lloyd thought of his dinner with Erin. “The hell you talking about?”
De Luca scratched his chin. “What, you jump muggers every day, doc? I watched an interesting video taken from one of our surveillance cameras this morning. Tyrone, one of my officers was like, ‘Who’s this crazy dude?’ So I say to him, ‘Why, that’s Dr. Lloyd Copeland,’ I mean, I see you around campus all the time. You ride that nice Ducati, there.”
“Yeah.”
“See, not too many docs ride bikes, at least not to work. Maybe a Harley on the weekend, you know, when they get their mid-life itch. But you’re too young for that, and I must say, as a bit of a connoisseur, that Ducati is an engineering work of art. It’s Italian, you know.”
“Mr. De Luca…”
“Call me Nick.”
“Nick, I really should –”
“Right, you would know your own bike is Italian. You been in this office long?”
“I’ve been here for years.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” De Luca turned to scan the room once more.
“So how can I help you?”
“Strange you didn’t report the incident to security.”
Lloyd shrugged. “I just didn’t think about it.”
“Well, I wish you had. Sure wish you had. You see, this lowlife’s been snatching purses from nurses for the last two weeks. Hides in the parking lots, jumps out at them and pulls the purse right out from their hands when they’re busy trying to find their keys. And then he runs off into the apartment complex across the street. Slippery son-of-a-gun! He was just a bit north of a nuisance until last week when he punched a nurse in the face.” He frowned. “Broke her jaw… a damn shame.”
“Well, I don’t think I can help much.”
“Can’t give me a description?”
“He had his back to me the whole time,” Lloyd said. “And then…”
“You got pepper sprayed.”
“Right.”
“Well, that’s just what I figured,” De Luca said scratching his jaw. “I mean, after talking to Miss Kennedy this morning.”
“You spoke to Erin?”
“Charming girl, no? Quite a looker. You two been dating long?”
“Oh, we’re not…”
A thin smile appeared on De Luca’s face. “I see. I just assumed, seeing how you came to her rescue and all… and then the two of you leaving together, you know… seeing as you’re uncommitted.”
“What makes you say that?” Lloyd said.
“Well, you’ve been in this office for years but there’s no pictures anywhere.” He pronounced it, pitchers. “No pitchers on the desk, no pitchers on the wall. And no ring on your finger.”
“Well aren’t you the Sherlock Holmes,” Lloyd said.
“Part of my job, you know. I try to notice things.” De Luca reached into his jacket pocket. “Well, I told you that I’d only be a minute.” He pulled out a business card and dropped it on Lloyd’s desk. “You know, if you think of something, give me a buzz.”
De Luca extended his thick, beefy hand. Lloyd grasped it and felt his hand being squeezed far too tightly. As De Luca reached for the door handle Lloyd asked, “These cameras, are they all over campus?”
De Luca turned slowly, studied Lloyd’s expression. “They’re used strictly for security matters.”
Lloyd wrinkled his brow. “Are they inside the hospital?”
“You see, the precise location of our cameras is a security issue in itself… but yes. Of course we’re very sensitive to the issue of patient confidentiality.”
“How about in the laboratory tower?”
De Luca rubbed his chin. “Is there something we need to talk about, Dr. Copeland?”
“I was just wondering.”
De Luca squeezed his lips together. “You’ve got my card.”
When De Luca left, Kaz entered the office carrying a large rectangular parcel wrapped in brown paper.
“Special delivery. It came in this morning,” he said.
From its dimensions it looked like a frame of some kind.
“You can set it against the wall,” Lloyd said.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” Kaz asked.
Lloyd smiled. “You want to open it?”
“I can’t help it Lloyd. I’m like a little boy when it comes to opening presents,” he said. He tore at the tape wrapped around the edges.
“Who’s it from?” Lloyd asked.
“I don’t know. It just says,” he read slowly, “from the never-ending happening.” He raised his eyebrows. “What does that mean?”
“It means someone is sending me a message.”
Kaz tore the paper off unceremoniously and held up the painting that was wrapped inside.
“Wow! Where is this?”
“Lake Como,” Lloyd said.
“It’s beautiful.”
“I know where you can get one just like it.”
Lloyd thought of Cecil Spalding, sitting at his easel painting the same scene every day, stopping to shower his wife with kisses every time she happened to step back in his line of sight.
“How many vials of prion do we have left in the freezer?” Lloyd asked.
“Six full vials. So we’re down to eighteen doses,” Kaz said. “What are you thinking, Dr. Copeland?” Kaz asked in a mischievous voice.
Lloyd looked him in the eye. “Are you ready to run some experiments today?”
Kaz carried the plastic tray, set it on the counter top where Lloyd was sitting and pulled up a wooden stool. “Six vials,” he said. He picked up the first one and read aloud, “Lot number JP four, one, six, four.” He set it down and picked up another vial. “JP four, one, six, four.” He puckered his lips and picked up a third vial. “Same,” he said. He twirled the remaining three vials and said, “they’re all the same lot, JP four, one, six, four.”
“That was Wolfgang’s lot,” Lloyd said.
Kaz pushed the plastic tray a few inches farther away from him and wiped his palms on his jeans.
“I say we use one vial,” Lloyd said.
“Three mice,” Kaz said, his shoulders drooping. “Are you sure?”
“I’ll inject them myself if you’re not up to it.”
“Thank you but I always do my own job. I was just thinking of Wolfgang. You don’t think…”
“We’ve used this same lot on, how many other mice? And they were all fine,” Lloyd said.
Kaz nodded. He slowly got to his feet and picked up the tray.
“I was thinking Debussy, Rachmaninoff and Vivaldi,” Kaz said.
“Not this time. No names. Nothing to make them stand out from the other mice,” Lloyd said.
“I don’t like to break tradition. That’s bad luck.”
“You’re not getting superstitious on me?”
“But they deserve names,” Kaz said
“No names. No distinguishing features,” Lloyd said.
“They deserve something.”
“I want every mouse in the lab to have a serial number. Four digits would be good. And only you and I will know the numbers of the treated mice.”
“Like secret agents,” Kaz said with a smile. “Like James Bonds.”
“Sure, whatever.”
Kaz headed for the refrigerator but stopped midway. “I know. We’ll give them double-o numbers. Double-o-five, double-o-six and double-o-seven, with an extra digit in front so it’s not too obvious.”
“Fine.” Lloyd returned to his d
esk and dialed the extension to Dr. Kowalski’s office. His palms became clammy as he punched in the number.
Kowalski answered in his usual chipper tone.
“What the hell happened to our deal?” Lloyd asked.
“Our deal?”
“You left me high and dry.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kowalski said.
“The damn autopsy report! You were supposed to call me first, remember?”
“But … but I never received the specimen.”
Lloyd froze. “Come again?”
“I haven’t done the autopsy. I never got your little mouse.”
“Hold on a minute,” Lloyd said. He tapped on his keyboard to open his e-mail account. There were six unread messages. He scrolled down to the one from Lasko’s secretary, clicked on it and opened the attached file. Lloyd scanned the pathology report and zeroed in on the last line. Report electronically signed by Todd English, M.D.
“Who the hell is Todd English?” Lloyd asked.
“Todd English?”
“Todd English, M. Fuckin’D.”
“He’s a surgical pathology fellow. Why do you ask?”
“His name is on the autopsy report,” Lloyd said.
“That can’t be right. Do you have the case number on that report?”
Lloyd scrolled to the top of the page and read out an alphanumerical code.
“Give me just another minute, Lloyd,” Kowalski said. “Well, now that’s odd. There’s no attending of record assigned to this case number.”
“Do you see the actual autopsy report?” Lloyd asked.
“Final diagnosis: spongiform encephalitis? Oh, oh, oh, what have you done, Lloyd?”
“Don’t give me that. The report’s wrong.”
“Are you using a different prion?” Kowalski asked.
“Same one as always.”
“What I don’t understand is why a fellow signed out the case. I’m the prion disease expert here. And this should’ve been my case anyway. Tell you what, my friend, let me pull up the slides and review the case. I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”
“Hey, Dr. Kowalski,” Lloyd said, “I’m sorry I busted your chops.”
The Art of Forgetting Page 11