by Arnold, Jim
It felt the same as always, so I gave up, resting my bike helmet back on my lap.
Dr. Sternberg came in and sat in the chair opposite mine. “How’d it go, Mr. Schmidt?”
This time, he wore a white lab jacket with no embroidered name. His shirt was gray with some black detailing and—was I imagining this, or—the top two buttons were undone, showing even more of that black chest hair I’d noticed on other occasions.
“Really—you can call me Ben; it might not be professional, but I’d like it,” I said. “I’m only a couple of years older than you—if that.”
It was hard to tell whether he was uncomfortable or not.
“Your bike helmet,” he said, finally.
“See, I wasn’t lying. I’m in mortal fear of getting doored while riding, so it’s always on.”
He made notes on his clipboard. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect. You guys have a great sound system in there.”
He laughed. “That’s all Monica—she’s an amazing advocate for our patients.”
“The music selection did seem skewed toward Italian artists—not that there’s anything wrong with that.” I smiled in a way that would most effectively show off my right cheek dimple.
It was awkward. I felt my head get warm.
He cleared his throat. “I can’t call you by your first name—it’s much better to be formal—but I appreciate the gesture.”
“Fair enough. For now, anyway.”
He flipped a page in my file. “Did we go over the duration? Wasn’t sure if I’d finalized that at our meeting before.”
“I seem to remember ‘six weeks’ floating around—”
“Right, the default position—your tests tell me to do forty treatments, five days a week, so that comes to—”
“Two months,” I said. “Guess that’s not so bad.”
Dr. Sternberg looked up from the file. “That’s a lot of bike riding over that hill.”
He smiled in an almost quizzical fashion, his head cocked, like he’d be over coffee at a table across from me in Café Flore or someplace with steamed-over windows down in North Beach.
“You do a lot of hill riding or walking or…I guess that’s what it is,” he said. “Like when I saw you on my street—a nice Sunday afternoon hike in Buena Vista Park?”
This was code. I could play along, though he didn’t give me much warning.
“You’ve got to admit, the view from up top is stunning—if it’s clear. Sometimes I can make out my favorite waterfront restaurant in Tiburon.”
“And the sights in the park,” he said.
“I’m not that much of a tree hugger—but that location is particularly aromatic. Whoever planted it all had a good nose.”
Oh Ben, you’re such a tease.
“Tiburon? What do you like over there?
“Palermo’s Landing is where we usually go—you know, take the ferry, sit out on their deck till we feel fat and lazy, make a day of it.”
“I love that place,” he said.
“Well, maybe—” I stopped myself, getting way ahead.
He waited.
“Maybe I’ll run into you there sometime,” I said.
Dr. Sternberg closed my folder, the receptacle of my cancer history, secrets he knew told in technical terms. “So, tomorrow again at seven?”
“I’ll be here.”
“Great. I’ll see you in the next couple of days, Mr. Schmidt—I don’t over-see treatment every day, but usually Fridays I’m back down here,” he said.
* * *
One of the nicer things about cruising from Mount Horeb back to Safe Harbor on the bike was that it was almost all an easy downhill. By the time I was done with “treatment,” changing and the interesting conversation with Davis—whom I’d need to keep calling Dr. Sternberg, at least to his face, anyway—the sun had risen well over the downtown skyscrapers, and it had warmed up.
Davis told me, and Monica confirmed, that eventually the radiation would tire me, make me sick and cause diarrhea. I’d have no appetite, which conceivably could mitigate the shit problem. My pubic hair would fall out.
Perhaps, I thought, I could go into Safe Harbor late, or even not at all. Surely, a sick day was justified on the occasion of my first radiation treatment. Over my shoulder to my left was the general direction of Union Square. My watch said nine-twenty—Jake, if he’d got himself off to work in time and took the Muni, would be climbing up the stairs about now rooting around for a quarter or two for the legion homeless who surrounded Powell Street.
That image made me smile. As much as I’d argued with him that giving money to those people was just encouraging them to not do anything at all about their situation for themselves, he had simply replied very calmly, “I do it for the ones who’re really hungry. I have no way of knowing. It’s such an easy thing, Ben.”
Which, of course, shut me up immediately.
Had he watered the garden before going to work? I’d left so unbelievably early I hadn’t heard the reassuring sound of the spray on his exotic plantings. We’d been civil, of course, as we were neighbors and would see each other anyway; it was pretty much unavoidable—or maybe we just didn’t want to make the effort to make it so.
Jake had pulled back—and it wasn’t my imagination. It was the cancer. He said it was the alcohol but it really was the cancer. I was sure of it. The stoic, masculine gardener-designer-artist with the hairy chest and the HIV and yet he couldn’t handle it—or me with it.
Did he think about me as I thought about him? Did he get warm deep inside at that image? Did he resist the urge to call me on his cell phone?… Probably not—most likely there was no urge—or at least that was what was easiest to imagine, easy when it was all to justify my growing attraction to Davis Sternberg.
* * *
Janine Fromm had called several times since the message she’d left when I was in Sydney. I paid the storage bill, having finally received a new one from Canada Smith—never did find out what Jake did with the original. For all I knew it was sitting up in his flat somewhere, still making him confused and angry.
Deborah Bowens was to be in the East Bay, and I hadn’t seen her since CES, since the prostatectomy. January seemed a lifetime ago. She was my one friend who’d survived cancer—that I knew about, anyway—and always so fucking cheery about it, like any good Republican would be.
We made plans for lunch at Caffe 817, a cozy little place she knew about in downtown Oakland. Afterward, I’d head over to Berkeley and meet with Janine. I took BART and arrived at the restaurant first.
A sweet-looking teenage waitress with milk chocolate skin and dread-locks, inexplicably named Sandy, showed me to a table along the wall, underneath a local artist’s work for sale.
The paintings were snitches of gardens, tropical in color and feel. This was what my artist boy should be doing. Why wasn’t Jake showing his paintings—lately there’d been a series of foothill landscapes, abandoned mines, eerie ghost town images from his Auburn past—in nice places like Caffe 817, where successful people could pony up real cash for his pictures?
A tapping—like the tentative beginnings of a downpour against a windowpane—interrupted this Jake-art-marketing brainstorm. It was Deborah, outside, poking at the glass with her long, salmon pink fingernail. She winked at me while finishing up her cigarette, and then stamped the butt out on the cement.
* * *
“Weird you’re a cancer survivor and still you smoke,” I said as Deborah scraped the metal chair legs over the Saltillo pavers and sat herself down.
“Everybody’s got to keep some bad habits. You of all people, Ben, should know that,” she said.
Her blond hair was a shade or two lighter than I’d remembered from CES. It poofed out around her ears before settling back closer to her neck and executing a pert little flip. Very sixties, reminiscent of Meredith MacRae. I could imagine Deborah hanging out at a beach down south with a few guys and t
heir surfboards.
“I’m glad I don’t smoke anymore,” I said.
She rubbed my hand and leaned in. “So good to see you. Now, tell me everything.”
Sandy dropped off the menus and we ordered drinks—Deb surprised me with her choice of jasmine brocade blended tea. It was such a “lady” beverage. I had the usual double-shot nonfat latte.
Dr. Kim—Monica, too—had reminded me that caffeine exacerbated urine production and would delay the elimination of the Defendor pads. It didn’t seem that important, considering. I needed to be very awake. Every day.
“OK, still in my first week of getting zapped. So far, still feel…normal.”
“That’ll change,” she said. “You’ll get tired. Bet you start working half days, even.” She opened her menu. “What’s going on at the office?”
Now, that was a cold slap on my preferred cancer topic as well as an interesting segue.
“The usual—prepping spring software releases; they might want to go back to Vegas for National Association of Broadcasters, even though it’s really not their—”
“I mean with Mallard,” she said. “You know, he called me a couple of weeks ago. I think you were in Australia. This ham and artichoke grill looks good.”
The steaming latte appeared in front of me. Sandy laid Deborah’s tea service with an almost Parisian attention to detail.
“He called you?”
“Have you decided?” Sandy interrupted.
“This sandwich here.” Deborah pointed on the menu. “Are you at the university?”
“My last year,” she said, after hesitating slightly. “Sir?”
“He called you?” I wasn’t hungry now, but hell, what…
“He wanted to know about my freelance work history,” Deborah said, stirring her tea.
I looked back at the menu, but the type swam on the page. “You still serving breakfast?” I asked. “How about some granola? I want something with nuts.”
* * *
It’s a good thing there wasn’t sewer repair going on between the café and BART because I would’ve likely fallen into the manhole. Obviously, Tony hadn’t called Deborah just to chitchat. Worse, he had called her during my leave of absence. As if he was in the habit of calling public relations freelancers anyway—it was a revelation to me that he even knew who she was. Had they met and I didn’t remember? Unless…Jason, or Kelly, or Amy—no, don’t go there. They wouldn’t, and even if one of them would—like Jason—he’d cover his tracks by letting me know somehow but lying about part of it.
To obfuscate his shocking disloyalty!
Deborah didn’t say outright that she’d received a job offer or even hint that was what his purpose was. The absolute worse thing about it was she was the work colleague I’d trusted the most.
I sure didn’t see this one coming.
It was probably nothing, though the last time I thought something was probably nothing it turned out to be cancer.
* * *
At FertilOptions, Canada eyed me suspiciously as I looked through a well-thumbed copy of Mother Jones. She’d nodded when asked whether or not they’d received the storage check, late as it was.
“Your samples are still here; they’re…fine,” she said, her smile a thin pink line across her moist, dark face.
Always good to know one’s DNA lies suspended somewhere ready to be thrust into an unsuspecting world at just the right time. Other than the payment issues and the slight drama with Jake over disclosure, I hadn’t given fatherhood a lot of thought.
The idea was to be Daddy in the purely biological sense, and even that word might imply too much. Sperm donor was probably more apt. I’d made the decision to save some only when I found out it would be gone forever after cancer.
A couple of college-age guys swaggered down the hall—separately—from FertilOptions’ interior with that vague self-satisfied look that was more of a just-came acknowledgment than a freshly fucked full-on glow. Canada handed each an envelope, which I could only assume contained payment for prime-time, highly active sperm cells.
* * *
“You told me you were going somewhere,” Janine said as I sat down across from her. “How was your trip?”
“A conference in Sydney—nothing major,” I said, wanting to get to the business at hand and not feeling much like small talk.
“Wow. You have the life; you really do.” If she only knew.
She reached into a pile for a red folder, which appeared to have food stains on it. She held it up as if her hand was a scale—as if the file was full, as if it had heft and importance.
“That is my reproductive information, I gather.”
“Kind of thick, huh?” She smiled, dropping it onto her desk. Some of the papers slid out. “These are all the women who’d like some of your sperm, Ben Schmidt.”
My eyes bulged. There were a lot of papers in the folder. “Really—well—that’s interesting. How do you—”
“This is how it works,” Janine said. “Basic information is on our Web site—and prospective parents can see your race, hair color, eye color, background information, ethnic heritage—just the basics, mind you. Then—if they’re still interested—they call me and we discuss.”
“That’s OK with me, really,” I said. “I just didn’t know what to expect, like I didn’t plan on meeting them or anything—”
“Do you want to approve where we send your sperm?”
“I’m not sure…I thought I should know, at least, who was going to have it, what kind of family it was going to be, if there’d be…some sort of guarantee.”
She shook her head. I heard a cluck. “You really are a babe in the woods here.”
“Ms. Fromm—I thought I was paying you,” I said.
“I didn’t mean anything by that,” she said quickly. She put the papers back in the dirty folder and dropped it on her desk. She rose from her chair, pressed in on her abdomen and made a slight shudder with her eyes closed. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and left the room quickly.
It was probably a crime—confidentiality, and all that—but I looked. There were twenty-seven e-mailed applications for my man juice in the folder. Most had East Bay addresses or phone numbers—some were from the City, some from Marin, and some from as far away as Los Angeles and San Diego. One was from Pahrump, Nevada.
About half seemed to come from single women. There was a Julie, a Patricia, a Catherine—then more interesting names the further I looked, a Tanya, a Keisha, both a Jordan and a September. Most of the hopeful mommies’ ages were late thirties, early forties—a few younger women were mixed in, and almost all of them with husbands who for whatever reason couldn’t conceive on their own. I closed the folder.
If you really knew what they were like, you’d never want to do this.
Janine coughed a warning and moved back into her place behind the desk. She pulled out a tissue, removed her glasses and cleaned them, squinting at me. “Where were we?” she asked.
“I changed my mind—about having to know and approve. Do what you think is right with the donations—just leave me enough in case there’s someone—” but I didn’t finish, even though I think I meant to say someone specific.
* * *
Whenever the BART train entered the Transbay Tube I hoped this would not be the trip that would go down in history as an unfortunate consequence of a major earthquake, all passengers drowned like rats in the dirty, salty water that separated Sodom and Gomorrah from hell.
I fumed about my conversation with Deborah as I sat in the stained, padded seat. What were they trying to do over there at Safe Harbor? What conspiracy had Mallard, Sutcliffe, and yes—Jason—entered into?
Jason would be promoted. I’d lose that direct report in Kelly—but he’d still report to me, right? That’s what Tony had said. Still, that was a problem—if nothing else, Kelly was reliable eyes and ears and always could be counted on to report back to me what my colleagues might be doing.
This would all be
a little more difficult with Jason in the way.
I’d have it out with him, accuse him of treason—
Hold it.
This was not wise. Especially right before the Hell for the Holidays trip to Turin. We found out we’d been nominated for Best Short Film, and the Italians would put us up and feed us if we could somehow make it over there. I couldn’t really afford to do this after Sydney, after Palm Springs. Jake had miscalculated Billy’s generosity, and we ended up paying him for the condo stay.
BART shuddered and screamed to its stop at Embarcadero. The train seemed to linger longer than normal, with its doors stuck open—like it was waiting. A breeze shot through to ruffle a stray Chronicle food section across the aisle from me.
It wasn’t my stop, but there’d be a nice leisurely walk to Safe Harbor to settle my head, plenty of time before the start of the afternoon rush hour. As I stepped out, the dimly lit platform was quiet except for me and an older, muttering Asian woman who pushed me aside as I stepped on the escalator.
Electric stairs have a hum and a rhythm all their own, not always apparent when other people are present. The Embarcadero version was unusually noisy—as if there were something stuck down in the drive chain.
There’d been security cameras for a while, even before the terrorist attacks, so I knew I was being watched. The upstairs platform was empty, too—except for a homeless guy on his ass near the stairs leading up to Market Street.
It had begun to rain, so I readied my umbrella as I passed him.
“Man, you got three-fifty?” he said.
I laughed.
I shook my head in his direction, then looked up the stairs to daylight and saw Connie standing there at the top, tongue hanging out, just her head visible over the drop. She barked once, which seemed so much louder than I remembered, echoing back from the depths of the subway, reverberating from wall to wall.
I turned back to look at Homeless Guy and saw Bernard smiling up at me.