by Lisa Tucker
What Matthew thought of as the victim mentality taking over America was a perpetually sore subject for him, and never more so than in the last month when, as his boss so colorfully put it, Matthew had been driving a hundred miles an hour, in a convertible, trying to outrun a shit storm. The potential disaster had surfaced on an ordinary Thursday night when he was in bed with a woman, dozing after sex while she watched inane TV. Later he would wonder why no one on his media surveillance team knew that this pseudo news show was going to mention Galvenar, but at the time, his reaction was more primal. He went into the bathroom and punched the wall hard enough to make his knuckles bleed, though the wall, embarrassingly enough, was absolutely fine.
By every standard, Galvenar had been Astor-Denning’s most spectacular success, and one of the most successful launches in the history of pharmaceuticals. The medicine was approved by the FDA for chronic pain, but it also had a stunning array of off-label uses, which had led to AD’s stock climbing steadily ever since the drug had come on the market two years earlier. In the last quarter alone, its sales had reached 1.32 billion. Matthew had no intention of letting some idiot who fancied himself an investigative journalist ruin all this, especially with the non-news story that two men had died of heart attacks while taking a long list of meds that just happened to include Galvenar, which this jackass journalist had the nerve to suggest could be “the next Vioxx” and have to be withdrawn from the market, like Vioxx, for the “safety of the public.”
That same night, Matthew started making damage control phone calls. First, the AD legal team threatened the network with a lawsuit if they didn’t issue a statement that Galvenar had been specifically tested for cardiac side effects and judged absolutely safe, even in doses sixteen times larger than either of the men had been taking, which was all true: Galvenar wasn’t even in the same drug class as Vioxx. After the retraction aired, Matthew had his staff reach out to journalists, suggesting they might want to ring in on the “scare tactics” used by this network to boost ratings. More than a dozen had taken the bait, including a handful who wrote for prestigious newspapers. In the meantime, the PR firm drones were planting more testimonials for Galvenar on sites like patientsays.com and manufacturing outrage in pain community chat rooms about television shows that didn’t understand suffering, with frequent references to Galvenar, the gave-us-our-lives-back miracle drug. Then, over the last few weeks, Matthew had personally contacted all the scientists who’d signed on to the research results, just to gauge their reactions, but few of them had heard of this TV report and those who had thought it was another example of the public’s ignorance about cause and effect. Finally, he’d gone with Ben and Amelia to Grand Cayman last weekend, without telling anyone about the trip, even his boss. His boss didn’t know anything about that situation, but even if Matthew had forced him to hear every detail of the last twenty years, all the way back to when he and Ben and Amelia were in college, the boss might still have concluded that Matthew was being so careful it bordered on paranoid. But to Matthew, there was no such thing as too careful. Not when billions in profit were at stake.
Thankfully, it had all blown over now. Well, almost. On Saturday, a Japanese television station had picked up the discredited story, and now Matthew was going to Tokyo with a PR exec, just to make sure the newest big market for Galvenar wasn’t having any second thoughts. His job was simply to present the clinical trial data again and emphasize the impressive safety record in the postmarket, while the PR rep, a heavy hitter, played off what the Japanese (and the rest of the world) already believed: that the American media and government seemed to be obsessed with scaring the hell out of everyone, turning our country into a nation of frightened brats.
Matthew was all too aware that Japan and Europe didn’t like U.S. pharmaceutical companies, whose products they considered vastly overpriced, but they didn’t think the companies were Big Meanies. Only in America. He had dreams of telling all these whiners that the solution was simple: just stop taking any of the products from evil Big Pharma. Put your money where your mouth is. See how you feel about dying at forty, the way your great-great-grandparents did.
This point of view, harsh though it undoubtedly sounds, was not something Matthew had chosen to believe; he was sure about that. Of course he would have preferred to see the world the way he had last night on E, but he knew that rosy outlook was deeply and utterly false, a mere alteration in his brain chemistry, not in the way things really operated. Case in point: last night, he’d stupidly tried to help a poor family, and what was the outcome? He’d not only been inconvenienced, he’d been robbed.
He discovered this after his shower, when he was dressed and packed, but he couldn’t find his wallet. He was already planning to wake up the kid and tell him they had to leave, but now he was furious. He grabbed the boy by the hands, lifting him from the hardwood floor (vaguely wondering why the kid hadn’t slept on any of the furniture or even on the thick oriental rug), and said, “All right, you little thief. Where the fuck is my wallet?”
The boy rubbed his eyes. “I tried to warn you. Don’t you remember? I kept shaking you, but you wouldn’t wake up.”
“If I wouldn’t wake up, then how could I remember?”
“I tried to stop her. I even tackled her, but she shook me off.”
He smirked. “You’re saying the baby robbed me?” Then all of a sudden it hit him. The baby was still asleep, tucked into the corner of his leather couch, with throw pillows all around her. Of course he wasn’t talking about his sister; he was talking about his mom, who Matthew suddenly knew wasn’t sick like the little girl. She was sick like an addict. This was why the kid hadn’t sympathized with her last night. Of course.
“You’re telling me your mom rolled me?” He was shouting. “I let you in to help your sister, and you bring along your mom, who you know will steal whatever isn’t nailed down?”
“I wanted to tell you to lock everything up, but you passed out.” The kid’s voice had an edge to it, but then he said, more quietly,
“I’m really sorry.”
“What else did she take? My wallet and what else?”
“Money in the desk drawer. All the prescription drugs in your bathroom. I think that’s it.”
He kept more than five thousand dollars in the desk drawer. His emergency fund, in case of a bird flu–like disaster that would temporarily close down banks and ATMs. The medicines he didn’t care about, except Lomotil, which he always took on trips overseas, for diarrhea. He couldn’t imagine why a druggie would want it. The Percocet he’d gotten for his knee injury last year, the samples of Vicodin for a toothache a few months ago, the Ativan he took for occasional anxiety and sleep: all of those made sense, but Lomotil? Dammit. Now he’d have to pick up Imodium at the airport. Another thing to do, and time was short already.
“I made her leave your driver’s license,” the kid said, pointing at the end table.
“How thoughtful,” Matthew snapped, though he was relieved to see it lying there. He absolutely had to have that and his passport, or he’d miss his plane.
As he walked into his bedroom to get his keys and watch and cell phone charger, he yelled to the kid that everyone had to go now. “I’m leaving and you and your sister are, too. Sorry, but this isn’t a shelter. I have to go to Japan and you’ll have to go back to wherever the hell you came from.”
“How long will you be gone?” the kid said, following him.
Matthew spun around. “Why?”
“Just wondering.”
“This building has the most advanced security system in the city. If you’re thinking you’ll sneak in after I’m gone, give it up.” He snapped the band on his Rolex to emphasize his point, and forced himself not to wince. “The one and only reason I’m not calling the police right now is I don’t have time.”
“That’s nice,” the kid said sarcastically.
“Why aren’t you waking up your sister?” He had the charger in his briefcase, along with his tablet lap
top and the second corporate Amex he was supposed to use only in emergencies, but now he couldn’t find his goddamn cell. It was in his pants when he fell asleep, wasn’t it? Had it fallen on the floor? He knelt down to look and said, “I told you to get out. If you don’t, I’m calling the security guard to throw you out.”
The boy watched him as he looked around the bedside table, under the bed, everywhere he could think of. Then he said, “Have you ever brought kids back here before?”
“You know I haven’t,” Matthew said, because he was suddenly sure this kid did know. This boy’s eyes were cunning, suspicious, nothing like the innocent child he’d seen the night before. Fucking E. He’d never take it again as long as he lived, if he could just get through this morning and on the plane.
“I don’t think you want to call the security guard.”
“Oh, really?” Matthew stomped over to his bedroom phone and picked up the receiver. “We’ll see about that.”
“I mean,” the kid said quickly, “how will it look when I tell him that you brought me back here for sex?”
“What?” he said, though he’d heard the kid perfectly. “You scheming little—”
“I won’t hurt any of your stuff. I swear. It’s just, I have to let Isabelle sleep. Even with all your yelling, she hasn’t woken up because she’s really sick. I can’t take her out yet or she might die.”
“Boo hoo hoo. And how is that my problem again?”
“It isn’t your problem. I know. But I have to protect my sister.”
Matthew was still holding the receiver, but his finger was hesitating on the 7, the number for security. He didn’t know the security guard beyond awkward hellos in the hall and the less awkward giving of frequent tips, including five hundred dollars last Christmas. What if the man was some kind of kiddie advocate? What if he’d been abused by his father or his priest? The world was full of whiners, crying about what happened to them in their childhood. Unfortunately, even a 275-pound security guard might turn out to be one of them.
The boy stood with his arms crossed, watching Matthew. Matthew was watching him, too, and suddenly he remembered the kid’s name. He’d introduced himself last night in the elevator. His manner had been surprisingly formal. “I’m Danny, sir. Thank you so much for helping us.”
Matthew smiled as it hit him that the kid was bluffing. He told him so, looking straight into his eyes. “You won’t do it because you want to be better than your mother. She’s the liar, not you.”
“Whatever you say,” Danny said, smirking like a monkey. A clever monkey; Matthew had to give him that. “But I’m gonna do whatever I have to do for Isabelle. If that means putting you in jail until they can prove you didn’t have sex with me? Guess you’d miss your plane and all, but if you don’t care about that, then—”
“All right, all right, Jesus Christ!” Matthew banged down the receiver. It was 6:49; he had to go. “But you better get out of here before I get on that plane or—”
“I swear we’ll leave as soon as she has a chance to sleep. Just tell me how to lock the door.”
“It locks automatically. All you have to do is shut it when you get the hell out.” As he walked back into the main room, he was still yelling, “Because once I’m on the plane, I’m calling security. I’ll tell them the whole story and you can try your sex lie; be my guest. I’m sure they’ll realize you’re a little shit long before I’m back in the country.”
He glanced at the baby girl as he walked to the closet for his coat. She did look so peaceful lying there, and she had a beautiful face, just as he remembered. For a split second, he felt sorry for her and her lying brother, but then he realized he still hadn’t found his phone. When he asked Danny if his mother had taken that, too, the kid sighed and nodded.
“I really am sorry, mister.”
“Not as sorry as I am,” Matthew said, walking to the door. “And not half as sorry as you’re going to be if you aren’t gone before the police arrive.”
Of course he was furious; he had too many problems to deal with this mess. And he didn’t want homeless people in his house, but as he reminded himself as he stepped on the elevator, who would?
CHAPTER TWO
A Knight’s Tale
The boy who’d called himself Danny never used his real name. He hated his real name, and he couldn’t use it anyway, since it didn’t work as well. “Timmy,” he’d discovered, was best for old people; “Jacob,” for women, but also sympathetic-looking men; and his personal favorite, “Danny,” for rich men and teenage girls. (Nothing he’d tried so far worked with teenage boys, and he usually ran away from them.) His mother said she wished she’d named him Daniel, since he loved that name so much. “Or maybe Richard,” she said, smiling. She had the softest blue eyes. “Because he had a lion’s heart, just like my son.”
This was the way his mother talked whenever she wasn’t sick. He used to fall in love with her all over again within hours after she got her medicine. He was a little boy then; he thought her medicine came from doctors, like the pink stuff he had to take whenever he had an ear infection. This was back when her habit wasn’t as strong and she could work hard and still afford three weeks of drugs and their one-bedroom apartment. But the fourth week, she was always sick with what she called the flu. Sometimes she would get fired during that week, but she always got another job once she got better. He was able to go to kindergarten and first grade like a normal kid. Mrs. Greenly, his first-grade teacher, told him he was smart, but she told everybody that. He hoped it was true, so he could eventually figure out a way to teach Isabelle to read and print and do basic arithmetic. You couldn’t get by in the world without reading street signs and counting the quarters and nickels and dimes people gave you. You had to know how much you could buy with $3.12, which meant figuring taxes, unless you could find a clerk who would cut you a break, but those people were few and far between. You couldn’t rely on them. You couldn’t rely on anyone but yourself.
Danny wasn’t afraid of being without a roof over his head—that was the way knights had always lived. He wasn’t afraid of rain or snow or sun so hot it burned his cheeks and chin. Most of all, he wasn’t afraid of the dark, because the dark meant fewer people, and people were the one thing that still frightened him. Most of them were mean and in a hurry and disgusted with poor people, if not downright cruel. And then there were cops and social workers and intake clerks at rehab who were always threatening to take Danny and Isabelle away from their mother, which Danny feared more than anything, because then they would take his sister away from him.
He’d met all kinds of foster kids, and they were almost never with their sisters or brothers. Not if there was a big difference in their ages. Not if they were of different races. And there was no chance at all if one of the kids was normal and the other could barely walk or speak at three years old.
Danny considered himself lucky to have been born before his mother started on drugs. He was wrong about this; she’d started when she was only seventeen years old, though of course she didn’t admit that to him. She didn’t admit anything about the drugs until after Isabelle was born, when he knew something was wrong with his sister. Her tiny arms and legs shook all the time. His mom’s legs shook only when they were out of money again. The needles made his mom’s legs stop shaking. Somehow, his mom’s needles had done this to his sister; he was sure of it.
When she finally confessed that it was true, he realized he wasn’t going to fall in love with his mother anymore. He would love her, because he couldn’t help that, but he wouldn’t be taken in by all her smiles and laughs and beautiful stories about the past and the future. Even as his mom cried and begged God to forgive her for hurting the baby, Danny was promising himself that he would never forgive her for this, not as long as he lived.
He was seven years old then, living in an abandoned car by the train tracks. He’d dropped out of second grade when they lost the tiny apartment, but he didn’t mind the car. Every day his mother would leave h
im with Isabelle, but only after his sister’s morning feeding, so he wouldn’t have to light the propane burner to heat up a bottle of formula. As he watched his mother walk away, he would pick up little Isabelle and hold her tightly to his chest so she could feel his heart beat, hoping it would calm her like the tick of the alarm clock had calmed the kitten they’d had for a few weeks when they lived in the apartment. If that didn’t work, he would rock her and sing song after song, all the ones his mother had taught him over the years. His mother had such a sweet, clear voice that he almost believed her when she told him her favorite story from the past, the one where she’d come close to becoming a famous singer. Sometimes when he sang to Isabelle, he would change the song’s words, like his mom always did, but instead of “Momma gonna buy you a mockingbird,” he would sing, “Danny’s gonna buy you a parakeet.” He didn’t know what a mockingbird was, but it sounded mean.
His mother always came back before it was time for the second feeding, even if all she’d managed to scrounge was some food or another layer of clothing from Goodwill. She didn’t want to be away from Isabelle for too long, fearing what would happen to the sick newborn. They even stayed in shelters when it got cold, which normally Danny’s mom hated because there were all kinds of rules to follow and, she said, the people who worked there looked down on her for being an addict. “Of course none of them can tell me how to quit,” she said. “None of them are offering me a place to go where I can really get clean.”
This was the one thing Danny knew about his mother—she did want to quit using drugs. This was why he knew he’d never be able to hate her: because he’d seen her try again and again to stop. She’d tried cold turkey hundreds of times, usually when she ran out, but sometimes when she just decided to give it up. Danny would wake in the morning and find her with her eyes watering and her nose running, always the first signs that she was getting sick. “I threw it all away. I have to get you and your sister out of this mess. I’m going to get a job and an apartment so you can go back to school. Wouldn’t you like that, honey? You could meet some friends.”