High Octane

by Ashlinn Craven

  “Polly, I’d like to come and talk to you about the website. When can I come to your office?”

  Polly’s glee turned to consternation as she remembered the mess. “Oh that’s not necessary. You can do it from the comfort of your own home. All you have to do is go to the website on the card, and—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. But I’d really prefer to talk to you about it. There are some, ah, high-level details I’d like to go over with you first.”

  “OK, sure. Not everyone wants to hide behind a keyboard, and there’s a lot to be said for a personal meeting so we can get to know your tastes.”

  “Uh-huh, great.” Karen checked her gold watch. “So, how about this evening? Five?”

  “Five sounds…great.”

  • • •

  Polly entered her office two hours later.

  “How’d it go?” Dora’s cherubic face winced, as if anticipating the horrors of a gynocologist rooting around her nether regions.

  “No time for that. We’ve got to get this dump cleaned up. New customer coming over in an hour.”

  “Coming here?”

  “Yep, and a very important one.” Polly shoved a cable in her mouth trying to de-tangle a bunch of them. She pulled it out again. “For a same-sex wedding—that’s a first. You can’t really count that gay one we did back in 2009 that got cancelled.” She peered at Dora, who was still sitting behind her monitor. “So, uh, let’s move it, please.”

  “But what about the … you know, the thing?”

  “The thing? Oh no, it was just a consultation. Just to let me know the pain of it all.”

  Dora’s kohl-rimmed eyes widened. “Will it hurt?”

  “I was referring to the cost.” Polly reached to a high shelf to take down a large cardboard box. “And yes, that will hurt.”

  “You have to inject yourself every day, don’t you?”

  “Pfft. A few self-injected needles wouldn’t put me off.”

  “It would put me off.” Dora held a plump hand to her neck. “It’s messing with nature. It’ll all end in misery, wait’ll you see.”

  “Thanks for the support.” Why did she bother telling Dora about this anyway?

  “What’s wrong with doing it the natural way?”

  “The natural way, as you put it, Dora, requires copulation within a wincey little window of time that puts incredible pressure on women. In this enlightened age, a woman can choose not only to procreate with whom she wants—thank you, Jane Austen—but also to do so when she wants. In my case, forty. Maybe later.”

  Dora opened her purple lips to speak, but Polly held up her hand. “Let me put it another way. The biological clock is a sad, sad metaphor that will soon become obsolete. In a few years, what I’m doing will be the norm for every girl entering her teens. I’m starting a revolution.”

  Dora snorted. “You’re sick.” She shook her black bobbed hair over her cheeks and turned back to her screen.

  Polly eyed the progress of the website on her screen. As her boss, she could tell Dora not to speak to her like that, but that wasn’t the way this two-person company worked. In other words, she couldn’t afford to have her whiz kid walk out on her. Web-programming geniuses were thin on the ground, at least those prepared to work in a shoe box for pittance with no overtime compensation.

  She addressed Dora’s back. “Have you finished the O’Neill-Smythe Kent Country site yet? Hard deadline’s midnight, don’t forget.” With a growing sense of dismay, she surveyed the mess that emanated from Dora’s desk and crept a path organically around the office … cable salad, old disk-drives, tons of corrupt CDs and DVDs and their jewel cases, boxes of pastel-colored wedding invitations and leftover catering menus, stacks of wedding magazines and trade show brochures, various glasses and mugs, a hideous mauve smoking jacket that no one could explain, and a toy robot dog.

  It was a hovel and it looked woefully unprofessional. But at least it was hers.

  • • •

  When the doorbell rang, she was still in a flurry tidying up. Smoothing back strands of hair from her damp forehead, she took a last look around and reckoned the office looked presentable, if somewhat homely. They’d taken the brute-force approach to tidying—dump everything into boxes and regret it—or forget it—later.

  “Thank you, Polly, for seeing me on such short notice.” Karen Jones stepped into the office, spreading the scent of street air and Opium perfume. “I’m alone. Mimi’s got a teacher’s conference tonight.” She handed Polly her burgundy trench coat. Polly offered coffee, which was politely declined, and they got down to business.

  Ten minutes in, Polly tapped her mouse, thinking aloud as she clicked through design templates. “So, you’re looking for something elegant and classic with a wallaby as the main motif? I see.” The answer wasn’t springing out at her, but she had a potential color scheme to start from, browns and yellow ochres to suggest the Australian outback. Perhaps she could make an elegant, continuous ink line of a wallaby, à la Picasso.

  “Yeah, and the wallaby has to be a mommy wallaby with a little baby poking out of her pouch,” said Karen, her eyelids drooping, looking a tad sheepish.

  “Right.” It sounded like this wasn’t Karen's idea, but rather her partner’s. If there was one thing Polly had learned in her nine-year career, it was that both partners had to agree from the outset, or there’d be trouble down the line.

  “I’m sorry,” burst out Karen, prodding her bulletproof-looking nails into her hairline. “I can’t do this!”

  Polly’s hand stalled on the mouse. “That’s fine, we can try something else.”

  “No, I—we want you to do this website, of course. But … ” Karen heaved a breath, as though she couldn’t bear the enormity of what she was going to say. Polly leaned back in her chair bracing herself for the sudden loss of a customer.

  “I don’t care about the design. Well I do, but … ” Karen's eyes beseeched Polly’s. “But that’s not really what I came here to talk about.” Her voice caught at the end.

  Polly sat up straight again “What did you come here to talk about?”

  “Egg donation,” said Karen.

  “Egg donation? As in … ?”

  “As in donor eggs for IVF, yes,” said Karen, flexing her fingers wide.

  “I don’t do … websites for er, egg donation.” Polly exhaled carefully. “Or IVF.”

  “Ye-ah. That’s not what I’m talking about.” Karen raised her eyebrows.

  Polly didn’t want to look too horrified in case this was just some weird aside regarding other people—egg-donating kind of people. This was surely some test of her tolerance levels. But as the silence grew, she felt compelled to produce some comment. Did this really have something to do with her? “Wh—wh … ?” she began, and gave up.

  Karen edged her chair closer. “When you told me this morning that you were freezing your eggs, it stuck in my mind, and I had to ask if you’d consider donating one or two … to us. You see, Mimi had to have a complete hysterectomy in her twenties due to a bout of cancer. She’s fine now, except she can’t produce eggs or get pregnant. Me, I’m forty-five, and I’ve been told my eggs are too damn old … but my chances of getting pregnant with donor eggs are as good as a thirty year old’s, if the eggs are from a thirty year old. I’m sorry to approach you like this, but we’re desperate.”

  Karen sucked in a breath, rose from the chair and walked to the window. She turned and faced Polly again with determination etched into the lines of her tanned face. “The clinic put us on a waiting list for eggs from an agency, but we don’t know when that’ll come through, if ever.” She sighed heavily. “It could take years. It’s not like sperm donation where there are banks of it to choose from. So when I mentioned it to Mimi—well, she said I should ask you, at least. You don’t have to make up your mind right now. Just think about it.”

  Polly nodded, careful to keep her face blank. She couldn’t actually be serious, talking to a stranger about this as if it were as simple as
blood donation … could she?

  “I’d give my right arm just to have a baby,” Karen continued. “We’re moving to Australia after the wedding. You wouldn’t ever have to meet the baby or anything if you didn’t want to. It would be totally up to you. Of course, the chances are only thirty percent in any given round, so we may never get to that stage. But we’d like to at least try.”

  Polly forced herself to retain eye contact. The woman was obviously mad. But how could she refuse outright without ruining the whole website deal? She’d have to tread carefully here.

  “There’d have to be a medical assessment. And many visits to the clinic. But we’d pay you more than double the going rate, twenty thousand, and any expenses you’d have. Sterling, not Oz dollars. Money’s not the issue.”

  Twenty thousand?

  “We just thought we’d ask you … I mean, if you’re freezing your eggs anyway. We’re only asking for two … ” Karen's voice trailed off.

  “Uhm, let me … think about it?”

  Karen's eyes widened. “Of course! So, you’re prepared to consider it? Really?”

  “Yes, I’ll definitely think about it.” What was she saying?

  “So, you’ll sleep on it and I call you tomorrow?”

  “Uhm, how about Monday?”

  “Monday.” Karen scribbled her number in large forward-slanting numbers on a Post-it, which she handed to Polly. “Works nicely too.”

  It took Polly a long time to get Karen to calm down enough to concentrate on webpage templates, color schemes and fonts. She kept thanking her all the time. Polly’s head was in a whirl too. In the end it was useless, she had to send her home.

  • • •

  By the time she’d reached her friend Jenny’s that evening, Polly had churned the idea around her brain thoroughly enough to see the situation in a somewhat more magnanimous light. “I do hate to see wonderful intelligent women thwarted in life just because their biological functions are ill-adapted for our times.”

  “I do hate to see twenty grand flittering away,” said Jenny, winking.

  Polly nodded pensively. “I mean what they’re doing is just the logical extension of what I’m doing, except they ran out of time and luck … and a required reproductive organ.”

  “My thoughts exactly.” Jenny rose from the sofa to fetch more ice cubes. She had one of those swanky fridges the size of a monster truck that churned out ice on demand. If nothing else proved her yuppie, corporate-slave status, this did. Along with the fact that she was always maxed out on her credit cards trying to keep up with her management consultancy colleagues. But she did have some lovely work outfits and a great drinks cabinet.

  “It’s not about the money though,” Polly poked her lemon slice below the surface of the pinkish-red liquid in her glass.

  “No?” called Jenny over the whirring of the ice machine. “Tell that to your landlord next time he calls you on a Sunday night threatening to throw you out on the street.” She returned to the living room with the ice bucket. “Like I said, Polls, that bastard means it, and tenants’ rights in this country are practically non-existent. Better watch your back. I’d let you move your operation here, except the snooty neighbors would bitch, and then I’d be out.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. I can manage.” Polly could scarcely imagine Dora settling into Jenny’s perfect living room with its creams and beiges, kowtowing to Jenny’s elderly aristocratic neighbors in the gilded elevator at 7:00 A.M. Besides, she could solve her own problems.

  “Look, the way I see it”—Jenny gestured with the ice-tongs—“either you charge this pair through the nose for the website, or you seriously think about this egg donation. Or both. What have you got to lose? Two little eggs? If I wasn’t seeing Gary, I’d friggin’ do it.”

  “You would?”

  “Like a shot. I mean, if they’d have me. I’m not a lovely strapping blonde like you. They wouldn’t want my natural vampire looks … or would they?” Jenny narrowed her eyes and pretended to preen her straight, jet-black hair.

  Polly focused on folding her paper napkin into ever-smaller triangles. “So you don’t see any big deal in it then?”

  “Nope. Should I?”

  “Well.” Polly looked up. “I was kind of hoping for a healthy debate about being completely mad or doing something utterly tasteless.”

  “Sorry.” Jenny slurped her drink through her straw.

  “Am I worrying too much? I mean, it wouldn’t be my baby as such, not even half my baby, just a couple of eggs.”

  “Cells, really,” Jenny said. “When you think about it.”

  “A bunch of atoms.”

  “Yup. You don’t need to know or even think about what happens to them after you cash that check.”

  “Probably nothing in any case.” Polly exhaled. “IVF success rate for a single round is a paltry thirty percent.”

  She caught Jenny’s eye again. Since they first met in the Java programming course eleven years ago at college, they’d remained buddies—going out for a laugh and, when needed, letting each other into their personal lives. Jenny was nothing if not direct, and you could trust her with your life. She never blabbed. She was also the only person who was more hopeless than herself when it came to men and relationships in general. “Look at it this way, sperm donors are respected members of society, aren’t they?” Jenny said. “Even if payment is involved. So why shouldn’t it be the same for egg donors?”

  “Why indeed?” agreed Polly. “I could easily spare two eggs out of twelve or whatever. I mean, I may never use any of them myself, and if I can help someone else survive the scourge of fertility problems, then I should be glad to. Besides, the only way I can realistically afford to freeze eggs for myself is by doing this. That’s actually the bottom line here.”

  “Atta girl.” Jenny lifted her glass in a toast. “Polly, m’dear, you’ve made a sensible decision.”

  Polly exhaled slowly. “Then why does it feel so weird?”