The Baby Merchant

by Kit Reed

  I’m not taking this child out to the doctor tonight, not with him just settling in, but he’ll be flying out with the Everetts in the morning, so he needs a chip. I make the doctor come to me. Sweet kid; he doesn’t even cry when it goes in.

  Hard to explain why this particular transfer of property pleases me so much, or why tristesse creeps in just when I should be feeling good because the job is done. Maybe it’s the business with Zorn and maybe it’s something about seeing this one up close and knowing he’ll be better off because of what I’m about to do. He has a nice, goofy smile. I should be happy and satisfied at putting him into a good family, but I worry. Will the Everetts love him enough? Will he be happy with them? When I do one of these jobs I can feel the psychic energy draining out of me. There’s not much of me left. When the Everetts ring at seven and I buzz them in, I have to force a smile.

  Oh, look at them. Nice, but assertively chic in custom rumpled Armani one-offs bespoke especially to impress me, beaming because I just told them we aren’t only signing, tonight’s the night.

  “Oh,” she says with her eyelash extensions wet with tears of anticipation, “You’re wonderful.”

  I can’t help smiling. “Thank you.”

  He gives me his hand with that flash of teeth he keeps for top of the line clients. “Can’t tell you how grateful.”

  “I’m glad.” I am. I saw the hunger in their eyes, afterimages of pain burned into the irises. I know what you are feeling no matter how cleverly you dissemble. In spite of the fact that they can and do buy anything and anybody they want, this couple has been through it, trying to score the one thing they want most and couldn’t have, an item careless teens used to abandon in Dumpsters or high school toilets in the days before the crop failed.

  Childless men Everett’s age have all done time with the nurse and skin magazines and the humiliating paper cup and they have done it whether they are ordinary guys or piranhas circling the tank in Beverly Hills, which is what Everett is. This kind of grief spares no one, not even the powerful Tai Everett of ICM. And his wife Jane? It’s always harder on the women, because these are their bodies on the line. Screenwriter, beautiful but scarred, tried everything, endured every medical indignity and still feels guilty, like it is her fault.

  Her mouth won’t hold still. “Can we see him now?”

  “Soon,” I tell her. “First, the papers.”

  He says, “Look, if you want me to sweeten the deal …”

  “That’s not the issue here.” I make clear there is no need for him to open the alligator case for me, no need to rifflle the stacks of bills or make a show of counting them. Money isn’t all I want. “You need to agree to the terms.”

  He’s an agent. He knows. “Show me where to sign.”

  I stop his arm. “No. First read it. You have to agree to the terms.” They have to guarantee to give the product everything it needs. More: to love and take care of him for as long as it takes.

  This is a man who spends his life vetting contracts. I see him combing the prose for loopholes, unexpected fine print, subtle traps. While they read I hover like a hawk. One sign of hesitation, one attempt to hedge and I’ll cancel the arrangement. In the other room, the product’s begun to cry: hungry? Wet diaper? Did the doctor hurt him when he put in the chip? What are you trying to do, Starbird? Keep this baby for yourself?

  They execute the agreement quickly, initialing every clause. He signs.

  She signs.

  I sign. “Done. Do you have a name for him?”

  “Tai. Tai Junior.”

  “Don’t call him Junior, OK?”

  “When can we see him?”

  “As soon as you want.”

  “And when can we take him home?”

  “He’s just getting settled. Tomorrow’s fine.” What am I doing here, playing for time? Looking for an excuse to dodge the meeting with Zorn? Dangerous to keep the product onsite, and I know it. Still I am watching the Everetts for signs of hunger or fatigue, anything that will send them to a hotel now, so I can keep the baby overnight. “If you want to stay over, the hotels on me.”

  “No thanks.” Everett scowls. “You just promised we’d have him tonight.”

  Sad truth about me? I am a hardened professional, but every time I turn over one of these kids there is the doubt. “Right.”

  He’s all business but she could die of happiness right here. “I can’t tell you …”

  “Here.”

  I put the baby into her arms and her face blazes. “Oh!”

  “I know.” For an intense half-second I get to feel like God.

  I hand them the starter set: car seat and clothes, premixed formula and bottle warmer, disposable diapers for the trip. One of those bunting things for him to wear in the car. Does he have enough food, should I change him again, do I need to tell them to keep him warm? The baby grins at me one last time. The newly cemented Everett family thanks me and they go.

  In the end I want to leave my mark on life, everybody does; I want to do something big and I want to fall in love and have my own babies before I get too old to love them right; I want to use my money and whatever talents I have to surprise the world, but first I have a problem to solve. Tonight I have made these people happy. On a good day, that should do it, but not this time. Tomorrow I meet Zorn.

  10.

  When you’ve been in want for as long as Maury has, you run in every direction, looking for straws in the wind, unless it’s straws to grasp. A new procedure, a new agency. A new hope!

  This is how bad it is. When she comes home at night she goes here, there in the darkened house convinced that she hears children’s voices. She imagines them sitting down at night with her and Jake; she sees them running through her empty rooms. Every time she sees a baby now Maury’s mouth dries up and her heart turns over. It takes all her self control to keep from leaning too close, running her hands over the fuzzy heads or cupping those soft little skulls; it takes everything she has to smile and keep on walking instead of stopping to beg. “Oh please, can I hold her just for a little while?”

  She’s excited but she knows better than to be happy. They’ve been so close too many times. A guy, Jake tells her he’s found a guy, but he won’t give her any details.

  “I don’t want to get your hopes up,” he said when he was leaving the house this morning, but you do not blow off a woman like Maury Bayless with platitudes. She’s too smart. She’s been through too much.

  A specialist who works under cover and only in privileged circles, Jake said finally, don’t ask. He wouldn’t tell her much even though she pressed, and like any lawyer, Maury is expert at asking questions, looking for holes. If this doesn’t work out he’s going to get a hell of a story out of it, he told her, hesitating just long enough to make her uneasy. Then he laid it out for her in that slick broadcaster’s rumble. When did he start using studio inflections on her? She said, “Oh, be yourself Jake.”

  His eyes were bright: “I am!” The job is more important to Jake than the baby; this she knows. For years he’s been hearing rumors, Jake said, but around the time the first surrogate mother backed out on them, he turned up his first solid lead. An opera singer who’d been dropped from this guy’s list because she’d failed some kind of test, naturally she was bitter because she’d been turned away because she’s a star and felt entitled but it isn’t about that. Listen, Maury, this guy does a high ticket business for high end clients. Celebrities use him, why shouldn’t we?

  “What are you trying to tell me, Jake?”

  “I got a meeting with a guy it’s impossible to meet,” he said with that sweet grin. Like any good reporter, he thanked his source for the information and promised to get back. Then he started backgrounding. Laying stepping stones to this hard-to-get specialist’s front door. Now Jake has him. “I have the goods on him, honey. We’re in,” he said, but Maury never knows when he is bluffing. Fool luck that he followed a lead that took him to the exact and only person who can get them a child.<
br />
  “What does that mean, get us a child?”

  “I didn’t want to say much until I had him in the bag. We talked. We’re meeting. He’s flying in today.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Jake!”

  “Not if you want this to go through. All you need to know is that he can give us what we want.”

  OK, Jake’s enthusiasm made her nervous. “No, Jake, that isn’t all I need to know. We’re talking about a baby, not a new car.”

  “Can’t stop now.” He was halfway out the door. “Going in early to prepare.”

  It was barely seven A.M. Maybe it was Jake’s tone and maybe it was the brown envelope he was carrying that snagged her attention; it looked like a private detective’s report. She took his arm. “What do you mean, prepare?”

  “This is a high end service, Maur. Heavy demand. The guy isn’t just playing hard to get. He is hard to get.”

  In their exhaustive search for a baby, service is a new word. She said, “What do you mean, service?”

  “It’s a special placement service, OK? Practiced technician.”

  “That sounds so vague.”

  “It’s all I can tell you right now. He puts the best babies into the right hands.”

  “How, Jake?”

  He wouldn’t answer. Instead he disengaged her fingers and pulled away. “He’ll find us a baby so right for us that you’ll think you had him yourself.”

  “I see.”

  “Our demographic. Discretion guaranteed.”

  Why couldn’t she let it go? Jake was leaving. She reached out to stop him. “It doesn’t have to be our demographic, Jake.”

  When her man turned, the lines around his mouth were drawn for battle. As if he could crush her with blunt teeth. No argument. Just this. “Yes. It does.”

  “Who is he, Jake? What’s his name?”

  “I can’t tell you until I’ve got him signed and sealed.”

  “I’m not going into an agreement without meeting the other party, Jake.” Yes she was using his name like a weapon. Repeating. Wham. Wham. Wham.

  “This is not the time.”

  When did this turn into a fight? “The hell it isn’t. The meeting’s in your office, right? What time?”

  “I said, no.”

  Need made her savage. “Jake, fuck it! We’re in this together.”

  “Not this time. Maur.” Take that. “It’s one of the conditions.” And that.

  “Conditions!”

  “I told you he was hard to get.” Jake was drumming on the open door with those blunt, ridged fingernails. No apologies, no explanations, just, “We’re meeting one on one. Call you at five.”

  Fine. Smart woman like you, you ought to be able to figure out how to make it through the day. Maury spends the morning in the firm’s library, researching precedents. She is preparing an opening statement. When you can’t have a baby, you retreat into work because it’s the last safe place. Here she has control over her circumstances. She makes facts march in line. Concentration keeps her steady until late morning, when she closes her folder and takes her PDA into the park. She won’t work, even though she thinks she can. She can’t even find a bench she likes. She can’t stay still. Dressed for the office and carefully combed and made up, Maury wanders the paths like a starving woman at a street fair, watching mothers pushing strollers and mothers sitting on benches with their babies, hungry and reduced to feeding on what she sees because none of this bounty belongs to her; she can look but she can’t touch.

  A young mother in jeans passes, pushing a tandem stroller, toddler perched up front kicking and blowing birdies, infant nestled in back.

  Maury presents herself shyly. “He’s beautiful.” This always brings a smile. Make them smile, but don’t let them know you’re hovering, looking deep into their babies’ faces. “Great eyes!”

  This mother can’t help smiling. “Thanks.”

  “How old’s the baby?”

  “Six weeks.”

  “Is it all right if I peek in?”

  Some mothers mind, some don’t. “I’m afraid she’s asleep.”

  “I don’t mind.” Even though she knows it’s too soon to be happy Maury offers, “I’m having one myself.”

  This makes some mothers back up and hurry off. Not that Maury looks old. It’s just not something you say until you begin to show.

  “That’s wonderful.” In this case the girl is too distracted by her toddler to see the telltale laugh lines; Maury has never looked her age, so the young mother may look right at her and not know.

  “It’s scary.”

  “Tell me about it. How far along are you?”

  Oh, God! Maury swallows hard. “Too soon to tell.”

  Now she does look up. Her expression goes flat. “Oh.”

  Everything wells up in Maury’s face. The losses of the last ten years, wild hopes. Everything. “But I can’t wait.”

  What’s the matter? Did her tone give her away? The girl makes an abrupt about-face with the stroller and turns to go. “Have a nice day.”

  Even the smartest women are all about the body: orifices and seepings and biological accidents. Never mind Maury’s long, sad gynecological history. This is Maury today. Strong, resourceful, brilliant in court and reduced to the sum of her eructations, effluvia, physical events that she never asked for and can’t help. Resorb the tears, lady, brush your hand across your mouth and buy a sandwich. Eat until you have to run for the public toilet because your miles of intestine are threatening to let go. When the cramping stops and you think you can smile, clean up and go to the basin. Dash water on your face, refresh your makeup and find that your lips are trembling and nothing you do will keep them still. Use your comb and the Clinique spray to turn yourself back into yourself. Straighten your shoulders and go back to the bench where, if you concentrate, you just may be able to stop your hands from shaking so you can look for security in your PDA.

  “Can I sit here?” Who is she, where did she come from, tired-looking middleaged woman with a baby straddling her hip.

  A baby. When does the desire move out of your head and into your secret places? “Of course.”

  “Sometimes you’re just too old to have a baby.” Dowsing with one hand, the woman parts her coat and comes up with a cigarette.

  “I hope not!”

  Shifting the baby, she sits with a little plop. This mother looks older than Maury, but she isn’t. In spite of the sagging, pouchy body and the exploding hair, the face remains smooth; the cheeks are still padded because the flesh hasn’t begun its inevitable slide. “They never tell you what you’re in for, you know.”

  “But he’s adorable.”

  “Yeah, right. And I’m dead beat. Gregory, stop that!”

  “He isn’t doing anything.”

  “He’s a pest.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Six months. Six months of shit and no end in sight.” She gropes for a match as the baby starts slipping down her thigh.

  “Watch out!”

  Absently, she pulls him back into position. Sort of. “Can’t sleep, can’t put him down, now I can’t even find a fucking match.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t smoke.”

  “It figures. Everything sucks when you’re sleep deprived.”

  Now she knows better than to say, I’m expecting one myself. “But he’s wonderful.”

  “I guess. It’s the day-to-day that’s the killer. He’s high maintenance.” She’s found the matches but she can’t seem to juggle her matchbook, the baby and the cigarette. “Want to hold him? Just for a minute, while I light this.” Before Maury can answer, she drops the baby in her lap. “Here.”

  Only years from now will she be able to process what happens next. There is the thud of flesh on her flesh: a squirming, compact little tub of guts and aspiration and unformed intelligence and whatever else informs a beginning person when it first gets started in the world. On contact, Maury compreh
ends the union of earth and spirit that makes the baby what it is— this individual, like no other. Who will grow and become a person in time. This is the weight of humanity landing in her lap. The connection is immediate. Electrical. Running on without her, Maury’s body fills up. Confused and astonished, engorged, she rocks in a pre-orgasmic tremor. For the moment all Jake’s promises come true. She gasps. This is going to be HUGE.

  Relieved of her baby, the woman lights up. She turns to thank Maury. Then she sees her face. “Hey, what’s the matter?”

  Words won’t do it. They never can. Breathless and rocking with the tears streaming, Maury says stupidly, “He’s so cute!”

  11.

  Starbird

  Nothing’s worse than doing business with someone you don’t like. Unless it’s pretending to like somebody you don’t want to do business with, but that is what I have to do today. Think of this trip into deepest Boston as an exploratory operation. It wasn’t Jake Zorn’s threat that put me on the shuttle today and sent me nosing through the bowels of the Big Dig, it was the open question. To find out what I need to know, I have to make him think I’m here to negotiate.