“Oh,” said Jeanie. “Would you like some?” It took Dr. Trilling some seconds to realize that he’d been staring abstractedly at Jeanie’s coffee cup, and that she’d misinterpreted.
“Oh, no,” he said. “Thanks anyway. I don’t use caffeine. I think it’s bad for me.” He frowned down at her hose-covered toes peeking from the bulky layered leg warmers that obscured the shape of her calves. “You have good legs,” he said. “Why do you wear those things?”
“Because it’s cold out in my office. There are a lot of drafts blowing around this glass box. And because it’s cold outside, especially on the subway platforms.”
“Oh. Subways. Right.” Funny, he’d almost forgotten the subways existed. He always took taxis or a company car, and sometimes—not often enough—the Tempel limo.
“Well, thank you, Jeanie,” he said. “Uh, I think you should call these people I’m checking off in the directory. First find out where the follow-ups are, then find out how soon they’ll be ready. Tell them it’s a rush and to hire however many people they need to finish in a reasonable amount of time. And when you’ve found out where the reports are, tell me and I’ll call them myself, sort of let them know Daddy cares.”
She walked out of the office in a blaze of warm colors. Trilling thought about the FDA and their annoying insistence that he read hundreds of boring follow-ups, and then with an angry motion, he opened his drawer. With the blind petulance of the inanimate, it parted company from the desk and spilled the hundreds of little pills and capsules all over his carpet.
“Ooohh.…” Trilling moaned softly. He got down on his knees and began methodically to put them back in their little plastic bottles. The red pills and the white pills and the blue pills, all the patriot colors … they could sort of look like a flag if he moved them around and put this red one here and the blue one over there.…
It was very hard to stay optimistic under these conditions, he thought. No choice but to soldier on.
… and the black pills and the blue pills with the yellow stripes and the other yellow pills.…
10.
Replace the first paragraph in the ADVERSE REACTIONS section with the following:
The following adverse reactions have been reported since the drug was marketed. A probability has been shown to exist between Riderophan and these adverse reactions. The adverse reactions that have been observed encompass observations for 2,722 patients, including 381 observed for at least 52 weeks.…
11.
Dr. Winkelstein peered with frowning attention into Mrs. Kane’s private parts. “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus,” Mrs. Kane moaned. “Oh fuck, oh Jesus.” She was thrashing around considerably, and Winkelstein found it hard to concentrate. Shut up, you silly woman, he thought, and jabbed her very precisely with his curette. Mrs. Kane gave a sudden strangled yelp.
“Try not to move so much, Mrs. Kane,” he said. “You might hurt yourself.”
“Careful now,” the nurse said automatically. She was frowning at her nails. “It’ll be over soon.”
“Sonofabitch shit oh fuck,” said Norma Kane. But she stopped thrashing.
Winkelstein finished cutting his tissue sample from Mrs. Kane’s uterus and dropped the bloddy tidbit of flesh into his clear plastic specimen container that his nurse had labeled. He put the cap on it, left the room, gave it to the lab assistant, and then returned to Mrs. Kane.
“You’re doing fine, Mrs. Kane,” he said.
“Jesus God Almighty,” she said. Her forehead was spangled with sweat.
He removed the speculum, trying not to pay attention to his patient’s occasional groans. Norma Kane, he knew, was a perfect subject for the Tynadette study. She was a fifty-eight-year-old black woman with graying hair and good health. Two grown children, one in the navy and the other in school somewhere in Tennessee. Menopause confirmed for at least three years, but still subject to hot flashes as well as vaginal atrophy: she was thus good for both the Baum study and the Tempel group. She was a widow who live on a small pension and had a hard time meeting her medical bills. It hadn’t been hard to find her: he’d just had the office staff look through his records and call anyone who was currently employing his prescription for hormones.
Winkelstein thought he’d give her the new pills right away; if anything contraindicative came up from the lab, he’d call her and tell her to cancel.
He straightened and took off his gloves. “There,” he said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“That sin of Eve must have been some sin,” breathed Mrs. Kane as she sat up.
“Some people think so,” Winkelstein answered remotely. His mind was already on his next patient, Mae Nare. She was white, poor, married to a husband who was in prison for theft, had four teenaged kids, and lived on welfare. Another perfect subject for his study.
12.
Well, thought Jeanie McGovern. So this is how some people live.
It was National Secretaries’ Week, which meant that all the secretaries received nice bowls of flowers for their desks and got a free lunch from Tempel in the Executive Club that occupied the top floor of the Tempel International Building in Manhattan. The booths were padded with tooled red leather, and the glass-and-chrome table gleamed with white tablecloths. Quite a change from the employees’ cafeteria on the second floor. It was nice of Trilling—or more likely Natalia—to see that she was included.
Free food, Jeanie thought, has no calories. She ordered lobster and a margarita.
“And coffee,” she said. “With lots of cream.”
Trilling ordered mineral water and a cottage cheese salad. He had taken Dicryptomine and Paradol for the combined effects of lunch table wit and a sunny personality, but unfortunately, Paradol had as its major side effect the supression of appetite. “They have a gym on the floor below,” he said. “I have an appointment with Dr. Kaplan to work out and then play squash every night after work. That gives time for the rush hour to end before I head back home.”
“Where’s that?” Jeanie said.
“Hempstead. It’s a long commute,” he said.
“You wife must never see you.”
“We play tennis on weekends,” Trilling said. The waiter came with Jeanie’s coffee.
“Just leave the pot,” she said. He lowered it expressionlessly to the table.
“Your margarita will be right up, miss,” he said.
“You drink a lot of coffee, don’t you?” Trilling said.
“I have to keep alive somehow. Margaritas help, too.”
“I like white wine sometimes,” Trilling said. “I don’t drink much alcohol.”
“You,” said Jeanie, “don’t need to.”
Trilling pondered the manifold implications of this remark for a short moment. The margarita made its appearance: Jeanie smiled gratefully and drank about a third of it at a gulp.
Temporaries were so different from regular employees, Trilling thought. They were outside the structure of the corporate authority, and as a result were free of the usual office games. Sometimes it made them interesting. The rest of the time, they were simply annoying.
Jeanie sat back in the padded booth and smiled. She had a broad mouth and a lot of white teeth. “I’m a dancer,” she said. “That’s why I’m working temp. My company folded, since we were new, and after the cutbacks, all the art money is going to the rich, established groups—you know, the ones who already have money. I still take class every night.”
“You’re doing a very good job here,” said Trilling. “You’ve picked up Tempel’s way of doing things remarkably well.” He wondered how long a thirty-year-old dancer had left.
“Thank you. I try.”
“Where do you live?”
“Downtown. Lower East Side.” said Jeanie. She gulped some more margarita.
“Oh. Isn’t that dangerous?” Trilling’s views of the Lower East Side came mainly from the eleven o’clock news, lots of dying people lying in alleys, all in the hard, lurid colors of night video.
Je
anie shrugged. “It’s kind of like range war,” she said. “There are a lot of rich people moving in now, taking over the ethnics and the junkies and winos and artists. I’m kind of hoping the winos hang on—it’s the only part of Manhattan where I can afford to live.” She gave a low laugh. “I can protect myself, though,” she said.
With a sudden grin, she unbuttoned the blue jacket she was wearing and showed him the gleaming butt of an automatic pistol tucked snugly in her armpit. The leather holster seemed to be approximately the size of the state of Colorado, and it was polished with use. Dr. Trilling felt sudden terror bleating shrilly in the hollows of his chest.
“Please put that away,” he said. She closed her jacket, finished her margarita, and looked for the waiter.
“Don’t worry. I got a permit after my apartment was broken into for the fifth time,” Jeanie said. She never understood why New Yorkers, who were so often tough-minded people, felt so terrified of guns. Damned if she was going to be one of those herd animals, always bleating about their problems to an authority that never cared. By the time a Montana girl got out of high school, she knew how to take care of herself.
“Isn’t that thing a little big for you?” Trilling asked. Maybe he’d order a margarita for himself.
“No. The only problem is learning how to correct your aim after the recoil. It’s my daddy’s .45, and it jumps like crazy unles you know how to control it. He added a custom grip and competition sights, and when I can afford the ammunition, I go down to the gun club and practice my quick draw.” She patted the thing under her armpit. “I keep my jacket unbuttoned all the time when I’m outside in the weather. You never know.”
You sure as hell don’t, thought Trilling. If he had known this, he would have taken Shacocacine.
My God, he thought, how can people live like this?
13.
Bennie Lovett hawked and spat into the sink, his phlegm having that lovely speedball aftertaste that promised cool excitement in his brain. He turned to look at the skulls sitting in the acid bath in his tub and grinned. More money tomorrow. This little sideline was turning out all right.
The acid was making a mess out of the chipped porcelain of the bathtub, not to mention the iron underneath it, but Benie didn’t much care. The tub was propped up on two-by-fours to keep it from crashing through the floor into the apartment below—the building was rent-controlled, and the landlord never bothered to maintain it. If he had to replace the bathtub, serve him right. Bennie hadn’t taken a bath in weeks anyway.
14.
Write “See Supplement B” alongside the product heading.
Warning: Serious and fatal blood dyscrasias are known to occur after the administration of Moxalinophene. These include thrombocytopenia and aplastic anemia. Blood dyscrasias have been known to occur after both short-term and prolonged use of the drug.
15.
Angel Hernandez stepped into his kitchen, patted Filomena affectionately on her behind, and put five-sixths of his Rolling Rock in the shaky refrigerator. He opened the other sixth and took a swallow. Filomena was listening to the radio—it had to be one of the college stations since it was playing Latin music—and dancing as she moved about the kitchen. He grinned.
“You feel better?” he asked.
“I don’t feel that arthritis in my hips,” she said. “Not since Mass on Sunday.”
Angel put his arms around her. “Mi señora, you’re looking better, too.” He began to dance with her to the salsa coming from WKCR.
She was looking better. The darkness under her eyes was fading, and her skin seemed much fresher. Her ass wasn’t so soft, either.
“It’s having you around the house,” she said, “and you being so good to me.”
He felt a short throb of sadness at the reminder of his unemployed status, and he kissed her carefully on her forehead. “Hey,” he said in wonder, running his hand through her hair. “Your hair’s coming in black again.”
16.
Static was joining the Vidiots in her left ear. Kimberlee Winkelstein tapped the earpiece of her Walkman, bone conduction producing a strange sound. The static continued. She looked up, frowning, through the reception room window at the motley group of patients in the Health Group waiting area, and then returned to her typewriter. She was losing interest in the Vidiots anyway—who could retain respect for a band that played the Bottom Line and whose lead was becoming a movie star? They were getting old.…
She was spending the summer doing the paperwork for her fathers patner’s programs in Experimental Drugs. It had sounded interesting at first, but the whole experience had turned out to be awful. The job was in Brooklyn, for God’s sake, not even in the city. And since she’d started working, she hadn’t seen anything but sick people. Several pairs of eyes looked dully back at her. How could people live like that?
Oh, well. She would be working only until they went to Maine on vacation in August.
Patient failed 5-1-83, she typed carefully. Physician attending reported there was no connection between patient’s failure and Simulene.
She detached the defective phones from her ears and looked up at Martha, the middle-aged black woman who ran the clerical staff of the Health Group. “What does it mean when it says that the patient failed?” she asked.
“It means they dead,” said Martha.
“Oh. Thanks.” Everything here was depressing. Maybe tomorrow she’d bring some of her father’s vodka in her pocketbook and try to make things better.
17.
Dr. Trilling’s relaxed voice sounded in Jeanie’s ear as she typed. “Make sure you stamp CONFIDENTIAL on this,” he said for the second time. she took her foot off the Dictaphone pedal, adjusted her earphones, took a sip of coffee, and wondered for a moment why Dr. Trilling always seemed so anxious about things. Then she lit a cigarette and went back to her work.
“Recently,” Trilling said, “I have received several inquiries about bleeding associated with use of the fourth-generation cephalosporins. Until now we’ve assumed that all bleeding that did occur was related to hypoprothrombinemia secondary to depletion of vitamin K. This seems to be in error.”
Jeanie’s fingers followed Trilling’s words nimbly over the keyboard. “Recent reports, however, demonstrate bleeding due to alteration of prothrombin time. These reports usually involve elderly or debilitated profiles with deficient stores of vitamin K. Marked reversal of hypoprothrombinemia is demonstrated by prompt administration of vitamin K.”
Jeanie had heard of vitamin K—dancers know a lot about vitamins—but hypoprothrombinemia was new. She decided to look it up in the medical encyclopedia when she got time, after she typed a new version of her résumé. There was nothing like a new job to increase one’s knowledge.
18.
Norma Kane balanced her bags of groceries carefully against the wall, took her keys out of her pocketbook, and unlocked the three locks on her door. She maneuvered herself and her bags inside, closed the door with a nudge of her foot, and put the bags on the sideboard.
She dusted her hands and turned back to the door to lock it. A few months ago, she would have been out of breath after that three-flight climb. She seemed to be feeling better lately, and the friends she met for regular games of bid whist were complimenting her on her looks. Her hair was even coming in black again.
There was a bid whist party again tonight at Serene’s apartment, and Norma began washing potatoes so that she could bring some potato salad. Even the wrinkles around her knuckles were smoothing out. “You have the hands of a babychild, Norma,” old Carey had said the other night. The odd thing was, she didn’t used to have.
She put the potatoes on to boil and walked to the toilet. “Oh, lord,” she said softly, discovering that the source of the slight feeling of abdominal pressure wasn’t from her bladder.
Damned if it wasn’t the Curse of Eve. It was the first time in almost two years, and she’d thought she’d long been done with it. She sighed and began to wonder if she had any
sanitary napkins left.
Strange, though, that it had come so easy. A few years ago, the cramps would have driven her half-crazy. Well. Another strange miracle.
She heard the potatoes boiling in the kitchen. It was time to turn the gas down so they wouldn’t boil over. She began to wonder seriously about the sanitary napkin supply.
19.
I’m sorry, Mrs. Nare,” Winkelstein said. “It turns out you’re right.”
“God damn it, I knew it,” said Mae Nare. She was a thin and perpetually angry woman of fifty-five, and when Winkelstein had first enrolled her in the Tempel and Baum Company studies, she had worn a ton of makeup and a blonde wig. Now the cosmetic layer was thinner, revealing a smoother complexion, and the hair was short but genuinely blonde and abundant. Heavy copper earrings brushed her shoulders when she turned her head. As she looked at Winkelstein, her thin lips became thinner.
“Look,” she said. “You’ve got to do something about it. When my husband gets out of prison, he’ll kill me.”
“We’ll arrange an abortion,” Winkelstein said. This sometimes happened with the birth control studies; it was an unfortunate but necessary expense. “At no cost to you. The program will pay for it.”
“It damn well better,” said Mrs. Nare. She gave a short bark of a laugh. “Hey,” she said. “I ain’t even had my period for a year. Who’d of thought this would happen?”
“We’ll switch your medication,” Winkelstein said. “I’ll write you a new prescription.”
Abortions, he thought. Arranging them seemed to be half his life. It occured to him that once upon a time, when he was young and in medical school, he hadn’t even believed in them, had supported the laws that made them criminal. He remembered making a speech to a friend about the value of continence and self-discipline. He had, of course, been a virgin then.
20.
A disc jockey make a joke in stereo about a sweet strawberry-flavored drink spiked with vodka, and Kimberlee wondered if he’d been paid to mention the stuff and thought it was O.K., sort of like a watery milkshake that got you high, but she preferred her vodka straight.
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection Page 45