Code Red

by Janie Chodosh

  “Yeah, but no pressure!” Jonah calls.

  “Shut up!” Esha lobs back, but there’s a smile in her voice. She enters one bar code as an example, hands me a glass vial filled with clear liquid, and asks if I understand. I tell her I do. She fingers her pendant, a tribal-looking thing hanging from a beaded chain, as I enter the first bar code on my own.

  “Cool necklace,” I say when I’ve entered the information.

  “This?” She looks down as if just remembering it’s there. “Thanks. Gift from an old boyfriend. Now, why don’t you get started? I’m around if you have any questions.”

  Jonah pokes his head around the divider the second Esha sets off for her own desk. “You like music?”

  “You like to breathe?”

  He laughs. “Excellent. Because everyone gets a day to choose tunes, and it’s a tradition that the newbie gets to choose their first day. So you bring anything? Again, no pressure. If I don’t like what you picked I’ll send you into deep freeze with the samples.”

  Most of the music I listen to has a painful, tragic honesty to it, songs that feel somehow too personal to share, as if my musical taste will reveal an insight about me I don’t want others to see. So I go with Jesse’s song collection. “I have this,” I say, taking my iPod with Jesse’s playlist from my pocket. “It’s kind of eclectic.”

  “Eclectic’s good. As long as it’s not American country. ‘I lost my girl and I drank a beer then I crashed my motorcycle and now I’m broke.’” He attempts to sound twangy and Southern, but the British accent gets in the way.

  “I heard that!” Esha calls from the other side of the room. “And for the thousandth time it’s alt country, not country.”

  The two tease each other about music while Jonah plugs my device into the sound system. As the first rock-meets-reggae track sings to life, everyone goes back to work.

  I zone in on my task, becoming one with the vials, descending into a trance of bar codes and numbers. Entering bar codes might not be the most monumental scientific task, but the process of DNA sequencing is a scientific assembly line—the whole only as good as the sum of its parts. I imagine the work and research these flasks represent, what knowledge awaits discovery. I enter the information with a mechanical precision that’s a relief from the imprecision and chaos of the outside world. Before I know it, it’s time for lunch and Esha’s back at my side.

  “You got all these done this morning?” she asks, examining the rows of vials in the ice buckets, waiting for storage in deep freeze.

  “Yeah. It wasn’t that hard. I mean, I don’t think I ruined anyone’s research.” I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, so I add, “Entering bar codes isn’t exactly complex genetics.”

  “You’d be surprised how many ways there are to screw it up,” she says. “You ready to eat?”

  I tell her I am, and we go outside and park ourselves at a picnic table under a big shade tree. The sky is a moody mosaic of clouds and light. I’m watching a funnel of rain across the valley, listening to the crackle of thunder, when Esha asks me how I got interested in genetics.

  “I had a biology teacher who said genetics was the forefront of scientific discovery. I liked the way that sounded.” I rip open a bag of Doritos with my teeth and leave out the rest of the story—the real story of how I actually learned genetics, which had nothing to do with school and everything to do with a fake clinical trial and murder. “What about you? How’d you get into it?”

  She contemplates her answer as she picks through leafy greens in a Tupperware container. “After my PhD I traveled for a while. I went to South America, and I became fascinated with the tropical forest,” she says, spearing a blade of spinach. “Twenty-five percent of our medicines come from the rainforest, you know, and only about ten percent of the plants in the jungle have even been studied. There are so many things to learn about them, so many ways they can help us, and like you, I wanted to be part of the discovery.” She puts the salad to the side, unwraps an expensive-looking protein bar, and looks out toward the distant mountains. “I got sidetracked for a while,” she says without elaborating on how or why, “but eventually I knew what I wanted to do, so I came to New Mexico to work here.” She takes a bite of the protein bar, then holds it out to inspect, nose wrinkled. “Tastes like sawdust,” she says, inspecting the wrapper and the list of gluten-free, soy-free, anti-oxidant, no-creature-harmed-in-the-making-of, planet-saving list of ingredients. “GMO-free is listed as a health benefit,” she says with a sarcastic laugh. “I think I paid three dollars for this thing.”

  “So, I guess you’re on the side of GMOs? I mean, duh. Obviously. You work here.” A few drops of rain plunk down hard on the table. Thunder rumbles.

  “I’m certainly not into big agricultural companies manipulating our food economy,” she says, “but there are uses for genetic engineering beyond agriculture that could help us in ways we can’t even yet imagine.” I wait for her to say more, but a cloud directly above us lets loose, and now it really pisses down, a deluge that makes me think of building arcs and counting animals by twos. “Ahh! Welcome to New Mexico!” Esha shouts over a clap of thunder. She shoves her food into her lunch sack, and we race for the building. “Don’t like the weather? Wait five minutes!”

  She’s right. By the time I dry my hair under the hand drier in the bathroom and get back to the lab, the sun’s gloating over a double rainbow. Jonah’s spinning the tunes now, but I’m too absorbed in my work to listen. I enter DNA data for professors and research scientists all over the country. Even Esha’s gotten in on the act, I notice, as I input a vial with her name on it.

  Like the morning, the afternoon flies by. I’m so busy with bar codes and sample storage that I have no idea what time it is until I hear Jonah inform Esha it’s time for volleyball and to go crush the opposition, which he says in an Orc-meets-the-Terminator-mash-up-Euro accent that makes me laugh.

  “I don’t think I’m up for it,” I hear Esha respond.

  I try not to listen to the argument unfolding, but unless I stick my fingers in my ears and sing, there’s no avoiding overhearing. I hear Jonah when he tells Esha it’s the second time she’s used this excuse. I hear her insist she’s too tired. I hear Jonah concede with a grumble, and finally, I watch as he leaves for the day.

  I follow Jonah’s lead and pack up, expecting Esha to call it a day, too, but when I pass her desk, she’s hunched in front of the computer, no signs of quitting. I say good-bye, and head for the bus back to the dorm, wondering, despite myself, if Clem will be around.

  Four

  Rejina, Bro Boy, and a few other interns are hanging around in the dorm entrance when I get back. Rejina’s telling the group about her Amazing! First! Day! at the O’Keeffe Museum, and how she’ll be going to Ghost Ranch, the real Georgia O’Keeffe country, for a two-day study with the art curator, and how Georgia (apparently she and the famous dead artist are on a first-name basis) was just the Most! Inspiring! Painter! To prove it she points to a print of some O’Keeffe painting of a white flower hanging on the wall. A few others tell about their first day, and then the conversation hits the inevitable topic of evening plans and who’s doing what and going where. I join in a bit, but this is the happiness brigade—the metaphorical high school cheerleaders with their aggressive joy and parties and streams of selfies on Instagram and Snapchat—and I feel like a cactus, all spines and prickles, in a sea of sunflowers.

  I keep an eye out for Clem as I half-listen to them plan, telling myself I don’t care if he shows up, but when he doesn’t show up, I take off, telling myself I’m not looking for him, then I detour by his room on the way to mine.

  Violin music drifts from behind his closed door. A beautiful, complex piece, and then the music stops, and I hear, “Shit!” followed by more expletives. A minute later the music resumes, repeating the part I just heard. I’m tempted to eavesdrop on the practice session, but it’s t
oo stalkerish to stand outside the door, so I head up to my room.

  I consider calling Jesse when I get there and responding to his voice mail, but I don’t. Instead I call Aunt T to check in and update her on my first day. I tell her about meeting Esha and Dr. Richmond and the lab work and the dorm, but I specifically don’t mention The Jerk. Aunt T thinks digging into the past to find a guy who abandoned my mom when she was three months pregnant will only lead to hurt. Still, the topic lurks in the background, its omission only shedding more light on its presence.

  When we hang up, the energy of avoiding the subject has placed it in the forefront of my brain. I take out my father’s photo from the just-in-case file and study it, trying to imagine the features blurred by an unsteady hand. Do we look alike? Are his eyes the same brown as mine? Staring at the photo, I realize Jesse’s right. Screw it. I’m not letting fear guide me. Alvaro Flores, I’m going to find out about you.

  I decide to take a shower—as good a place as any for planning a mission. As I soak under the hot water, I ponder the best place to start the search. I have no idea how one goes about locating a person they’ve never met. I finally reason that the library’s as good a place to start as any.

  I’m heading back to my room, clad in a bathrobe, hair wrapped turban-style in a towel, when I smack into Clem.

  “Hey!” he says, ignoring the fact of my near nakedness. “I was just coming to find you.”

  I clutch my toiletries to my chest, wondering what the protocol is for bumping into a cute boy while dripping wet and one step away from unclothed. I power up a smile. “Well, looks like you found me.”

  “I’m hungry,” he says, apparently oblivious to the awkwardness of the situation. “You want to get something to eat?”

  “I was actually thinking about going to the library,” I say, wondering if we’re going to have an entire conversation in the hall while I’m in my bathrobe.

  “Cool, we have three libraries. The closest is downtown. I could show you.”

  I study the small puddle pooling at my feet. “I guess so. Sure.”

  “Great. Let’s go.”

  “Um, one small problem,” I say to the floor. “I might need to get dressed first?”

  He blasts out a string of apologies, as if only now noticing I’m a step away from naked, says he’ll wait for me out front, and rushes off.

  I dart back to my room, terrified of bumping into someone else in the hall, and throw on my clothes still crumbled on the floor from yesterday, then slip into my Converses, run a brush through my hair, and set off.

  “It’s about a fifteen-minute walk to the library,” Clem tells me when I join him in front of the dorm.

  I wait for him to say it’s a fifteen-minute walk and therefore he’ll drive. I’m a city girl, or a formerly city girl before I moved to the suburbs last December with Aunt T. To get from point A to point B, I took a bus or a train, and on the rare occasion I had cash on hand, a taxi. If I had to walk it meant city blocks. Traffic. Noise. Rude dudes with rude gestures. Buildings. Stores. Not this lip-cracking heat and backdrop of mountains and sky and houses in an unvarying palette of brown and beige.

  When Clem doesn’t say anything about driving, I lie through my teeth. “Walking’s cool,” I say and start down the hill.

  There’s something elemental and in-your-face about this place, with its mountains and thin air and dry heat, a reminder that no matter what, nature has the final say. I’m not sure I like it, but I respect it in the way you respect a hornet or a rattlesnake.

  When we arrive at the library, I unglue my lips from my teeth with a long guzzle of water, then we find a seat at one of the tables in the front room. “You didn’t say why we were here,” Clem says and pulls up his shirt to wipe his sweaty forehead. I try not to notice the flash of taut brown skin, but trying not to notice just makes me notice more. “You like to read?”

  “Huh?” I say, quickly pulling my eyes from his abs to his face. “I mean, yeah, but I’m not checking out books.” I glance around as if someone might be listening. I don’t want the guy with the huge backpack using the computer, or the blue-haired girl with the dog, or anyone for that matter, to overhear. I sigh and frown down at my fingers. “Okay, here’s the deal. My would-be father was born in this town, and I know that two years ago he was here. I never thought I cared or wanted to know about him, but I guess I’m curious, so I thought…” I stop talking because truthfully I have no idea what I thought I’d find out in a library.

  Clem seems to read my dead-end conclusion. “If he was born here, maybe he grew up here. And if he grew up here, he might be in a high school yearbook,” he suggests.

  The idea is good, but I slump into my chair still unsure how much, if anything, I want to know. It’s too hard to explain the back-and-forth tumble of my feelings, so I just say, “I have no idea what school he went to or where I’d even get a yearbook.”

  “That’s easy,” Clem says. “There are only two public high schools here, or at least there were only two five years ago. They donate yearbooks to the library each year, so if he went to public school, we should at least be able to find out which high school he went to. Not that I’m helping or interfering,” he quickly adds. “I’m just saying.”

  “No.” I sit up, reinvigorated by the idea. “I mean, you’re not. I mean, that’s a great idea.”

  Clem leads us past the circulation desk to a reading room, several shelves of which are dedicated to Santa Fe and Capital High yearbooks. The yearbooks go all the way back to the nineteen seventies. I have no idea how old my father is, but assuming he’s about the same age as Mom was, I start with the nineties. I show Clem my father’s photo, tell him his name, and we start to search.

  Side-by-side we scan photos of sports teams, thespian clubs, and all the various high school cliques and groupings. We study individual portraits of freshman, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. After scouring three yearbooks and matching columns of photos with names, I realize this search could take hours.

  “We should focus on just the senior photos,” I say, shutting a Santa Fe High yearbook from 1993. “Those pictures are big and the names are underneath. I mean, assuming he graduated and didn’t drop out, it’ll be faster.”

  Clem agrees, and I start pouring over senior photos. About fifteen minutes in, I’m tired and frustrated. It’s been a long day. I’m hungry, and I’m back to doubting this enterprise. I halfheartedly open my sixth yearbook, ready to quit as I turn to the F’s in the senior photos.

  That’s when I freeze.

  In the Capital High graduating class of 1995, I stare at my father’s face.

  Although the one photo I have of him is fuzzy, although this guy is just a year older than I am now, although there could be more than one Alvaro Flores in Santa Fe, I know without doubt that it’s him. I gape at his picture, too overwhelmed to speak, trying to reconcile the image of this handsome kid with my father.

  Like all the other senior photos, his has a caption underneath, but unlike most of the others with their song lyrics and inspirational quotes, his says: “Remember the Cowgirl.” I’m disappointed at the non sequitur, but then again what was I expecting? Was his picture supposed to be accompanied by his autobiography? So he went to high school here. Big deal.

  “You got something?” Clem asks, sensing the fact I’ve gone rigid and looking up.

  “Remember the Cowgirl,” I mutter, turning the page to him. “That’s a freaking weird thing to put under your senior picture. What, did he have a thing for some girl with spurs? Sounds kinky.” I shove the yearbook away from me and get up. “This is stupid. Forget it. Let’s go eat.”

  Clem considers the picture a minute longer and then says, “I know the perfect place.”

  Twenty minutes later we’re standing on the sidewalk outside a restaurant with a crowded outdoor patio filled with young, hip beer-drinkers and a band getting ready to
play. When we go inside to find someone to seat us, the first things I notice are the walls—they’re plastered with photos of cowgirls and their horses. Every space displays black-and-whites of rodeo gals, horse gals, gals with spurs. It’s a veritable cowgirl museum.

  “Welcome to the Cowgirl Hall of Fame,” Clem says. “Known locally as the Cowgirl, one of the more famous bars and restaurants in Santa Fe.” He waves at a few people as we make our way to the hostess. “Maybe your father liked hanging out here with his friends. Maybe he was talking about this place and not about an actual person.”

  I consider this possibility as the hostess, a girl dressed in a studded Western shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots and hat, leads us to an outside table. Maybe Clem’s right, I think as I take the menu from the faux cowgirl. Maybe my father hung out and partied here, and his quote didn’t refer to romance with spurs. Senior photo tag lines aren’t just inspirational quotes and song lyrics, they’re inside jokes, private reminders of good times and partying, as if you need to be able to look back at your eighteen-year-old self and think, man was I sloshed.

  “I think it’s great you’re looking for your dad,” Clem says, tossing a what’s-up? nod to one of the guys in the band. “I mean it would be cool to know about him, right?”

  “I guess,” I say, hiding my doubt behind the menu. The closer I get to him—his geography, his place in the world— the more unsettled I feel. What if he sat in this chair? Listened to this band? The idea makes my stomach hurt, and when the waitress (a cute new cowgirl) comes to take our order I’m not hungry. I don’t want to let on to Clem how I’m feeling and ruin the meal, so I order Frito pie because, seriously, who can resist a plate of Fritos, chile, and cheese, no matter how low they’re feeling?

  The band starts up and Clem goes all bobbleheaded, nodding in time with the beat, grinning. When the first song ends, the fiddler, an old guy with a long gray beard, shouts out to Clem, asking him if he wants to play a tune. Clem raises his eyebrows at me. I nod and shoo him away. He jogs to the stage and takes the guy’s fiddle. A few words to the band, and a second later they’re busting out a tune straight from Appalachia.