Friedrich helped himself to the potatoes. “They’re copulating.” His mouth was full.
“That’s how my uncle says he wants to go.” The rats continued to mate as they sunk to the bottom of the pool.
At 6:00 A.M. the following morning, the rats who had been fed the same fermented Way Home that the shamans prescribed and that Winton’s lieutenant had imbibed began to tire. Snapping at one another midpool, it almost seemed as if they argued briefly about when to give up. They drowned almost simultaneously. But the two who had consumed GKD in its purest form, two ounces of diluted crystals each, were still swimming laps.
Winton handed Friedrich a cup of coffee that tasted like it had been brewed in a sock. Together they watched the rats swim back and forth, back and forth, rodent eyes glowing red in the first light of the day; undaunted and unfazed by their predicament, they endured, certain they would prevail. Dr. Winton flicked her cigarette into the pool and clapped her hands. “We’ve done it.”
Friedrich yawned and smiled at the same time. “It would appear so, Dr. Winton.” Friedrich was thinking how he’d surprise Nora with the news. Flowers? Candy? Or would he trick her, pretend the test was a bust, get her to feel sorry for him, and then pull her into bed with his triumph. If he waited another fifteen minutes, the big kids would be at school.
Winton stared at one of the strawberries that were left over on the dinner tray, then slowly, deliberately, she popped one in her mouth and walked over to the bar at the far end of the pool and produced a bottle of Veuve Clicquot.
“What’s that?”
“Breakfast.” She handed him the champagne to open and stuffed three more strawberries into her mouth.
It had been twenty-seven hours since Friedrich had slept. He was punchy with fatigue. The thought of champagne on top of the bad coffee was making him feel queasy. He popped the cork anyway. The rats on The Way Home were still swimming. On the way home was where he should be.
They drank the champagne from coffee cups. Friedrich watched the drugged rats swim on. “Think we can reproduce this synthetically?”
“If our initial pilot study with humans pans out, we’ll get the organic chemistry department to spectrum it out in a column chromatography.” Winton was looking at her reflection in the glassy surface of the pool. “One thing’s for certain: It’s some kind of antihistamine.”
“How can you say that?”
Winton was looking at her watch. “I’m allergic to strawberries. I love them, but whenever I eat them, I break out in hives in a matter of minutes . . . antihistamine’s the only thing that takes care of it. It was just a hunch.”
It took Friedrich a minute to put it together. “You took The Way Home?”
“If I didn’t believe in it enough to test it on myself, I couldn’t very well give it to my patients, could I?” Her smile was Mona Lisa lazy. Her pupils were dilated. And her voice and manner were softer and more inviting than he could ever remember.
Friedrich was furious. It was unscientific, it was unprofessional; she could have had a toxic reaction, she could have had an epileptic seizure and stopped breathing, like the two rats they put in the garbage.
“How long ago?” Friedrich’s voice was calm, but he was angry.
“About when you had that cup of coffee.” She smiled.
“How the hell much did you take?”
“About as much as you would give a fifty-pound rat.” She wasn’t trying to be funny.
“How do you feel?” Friedrich began to make notes.
“Like celebrating.”
Friedrich took her pulse. It was fast, but within the normal range. “Any paranoia?”
“No.” She closed her eyes. “Just a strong desire to . . . celebrate.”
“What does that mean to you?”
“Well, the night I graduated from medical school, I celebrated by taking off my clothes and skinny-dipping. Swam all the way across the river to the other side.”
“Is that what you want to do now?” Friedrich was speaking to her like a patient.
“No. At the moment, I feel the urge for physical release. You know, that tingling sensation you feel before you realize you’re feeling lust.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“It’s a nice feeling. Don’t you like it when you feel strong sexual desire for someone?”
Friedrich felt himself getting an erection. In his mind she had already taken off her clothes, and he wanted to get out of there before she actually did. “I’m uncomfortable with you making sexual overtures toward me.”
“I wasn’t thinking about having sex with you or anyone in particular, Dr. Friedrich.”
He might have believed her if it hadn’t been for the smile on her face. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow. I think I should go home now.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I didn’t agree to this. We’re not part of the experiment.” His voice echoed over the water.
“Then why are you taking notes?”
Friedrich put down his pen and began to pack up his briefcase.
“You’re a psychologist. You asked me a question, I gave you a candid answer, which you misinterpreted. It happens to me with my patients.”
“You are not my patient.” Friedrich was walking, but he felt like running.
“Drive carefully.”
Friedrich paused at the far end of the pool, reached into water, and grabbed hold of the last two rats by the fur on the back of their necks, then walked out the door. As he gently set them down into the grass and watched them disappear into the garden, he felt like he was dreaming.
Even though he told himself he had done nothing wrong, Friedrich could not shake that what have I just done to my life feeling as he drove home that morning. The test was an unqualified success. There was no question the rats had survived because they had been given The Way Home. But did that mean they were happier? Certainly, the happiness Friedrich thought these results would bring him was not forthcoming.
He was angry at Winton for dosing herself with the drug without telling him. By not giving him the chance to be the first guinea pig, she had deprived him the opportunity to join that heroic tradition of doctors who dared greatness by testing their miracle cures on themselves.
Hartford dentist Horace Wells became the father of anaesthesiology, proving in 1844 the pain-killing capabilities of nitrous oxide, aka laughing gas, by inhaling a large quantity of the same, and ordering a fellow dentist to pull out a perfectly good tooth from his jaw, reporting he “didn’t feel as much as the prick of a pin.” Wells ended up a chloroform addict who committed suicide in jail. More disturbing to Friedrich was remembering something about Wells’s partner and former apprentice ending up rich and famous off of Wells’s discovery.
Friedrich searched his mind for a medical first with a happier ending and thought of Dr. Werner Forssmann, who proved it was safe to catheterize the human heart by slicing open his arm and feeding a catheter into the right atrium of his own heart. Johns Hopkins had fired him for the stunt, but Forssmann was a shooin for the Nobel Prize one of these years. Friedrich knew Madame Curie’s husband had done a first to himself, but at that moment was too infuriated to recall it.
Winton could blame her sexual overture, whether she was conscious of it or not, on the drug, dismiss it as a side effect. But he had no easy excuse, no chemical scapegoat, for the jumble of primitive impulses he felt as he ran from the drowning pool.
Should he tell Nora what had happened? Confess everything and thereby convince himself, if not her, that it was nothing? His work with Winton was just beginning. They would be alone together for hours on end in the months to come. Years to come, if they were truly successful. If Nora got jealous this early in the game, life would be hell. If he told her the truth, i.e., that he ran away with an erection, it’d be almost as bad as if he’d stayed there and . . .
Driving slowly, letting others pass, he wondered, If I’ve done nothing, why do I feel guilty? He knew the a
nswer to that when he began wondering if he would have been more successful sooner if he had married someone as rich and powerful, and as accomplished, as Bunny. And if Nora knew he had such thoughts, what was to keep his wife from thinking likewise? She could cheat on him in her imagination and he would never know. She could be cheating on him right now. Friedrich shook the thought from his mind and decided to say nothing.
By the time he’d gotten to Hamden, Friedrich’s paranoia, his doubts about himself, his motives, and his questions about the path he was on had evaporated. He deserved to be a success. Friedrich was lost in the warmth of his newfound entitlement and self-appreciation. His needs, his predicament, were unique. They had to be protected. It was clear to him: Without him as himself the world would be a dimmer place.
Friedrich stepped on the gas and made it to Hamelin Road in record time. He was neither embarrassed nor chagrined when he turned the key and the White Whale backfired and refused to stop rumbling. The brown spots on his lawn and the peeling paint on his front porch didn’t depress him. He picked up his daughters’ bicycles and Will’s skates with a smile on his face.
The three oldest were in school, Jack was napping, he heard Nora in the shower. He stepped in with her without bothering to take off his clothes.
“Have you lost your mind?” Nora laughed, as she pushed her hair out of her face and looked up at him.
“On the contrary, I have finally found it.” His hands were on her, he was pleased to find her breasts were rounder and fuller than those of Dr. Winton.
“Come on, Will, what’s going on?”
“I’m happy.”
“So I see.”
He kissed her on the mouth. “I need you.”
He turned her around to face the wall. They had never done it that way before.
After they were done, they went into the bedroom, closed their eyes, and began to whisper. In the past, whenever she had asked him to touch her in a certain way, tried to instruct him in the likes and dislikes and curiosities of her body, Friedrich would balk, freeze up, and take her suggestions as criticism. But for the next hour her husband listened to her, took in what she wanted to share with him as he had never done before, or in fact, would ever be able to again for the rest of their marriage.
Afterward, they lay in bed and he told her, “This is going to change everything.”
Friedrich had no idea that the reason his coffee had tasted so bitter that morning was due to the fact that Dr. Winton had sweetened it with The Way Home without telling him.
As planned, Dr. Friedrich and Dr. Winton met in the lab at four to type up their notes. They were clinically courteous with one another. After they had finished collating their observations re: the effects of The Way Home on the rats, Friedrich broached its effect on Dr. Winton.
“I don’t mean to cause you any embarrassment, Dr. Winton, but I think it would be of value to discuss some of what you said when you were under the influence of GKD.”
“I quite agree.” She watched him as she sipped her tea. She wondered if it was her imagination, or did he in fact seem bolder, more aggressive, since she had given him the drug in his coffee. She had intended to tell Dr. Friedrich the truth the night before, but his reaction had been so emotional, she did not want to risk upsetting him. Winton had already decided it would be more informative to watch for any lingering effect on him without his knowing that he was a subject in her private study.
“Do you think GKD’s a sexual stimulant?”
“If you mean, did it arouse me or heighten the sense of arousal I felt at that moment, I would have to say ‘no.’ But it did make me feel on a conscious level that I would like to feel that way. And I felt none of the shame or inhibition that would have, under normal circumstances, prevented me from revealing that to a man. I felt free to be myself, and to make the most of myself.” Dr. Friedrich made note of what she was saying in a black composition book. “You don’t think that’s a good thing, Dr. Friedrich?”
“I don’t see it as good or bad. It’s just anecdotal evidence worth noting.”
“There’s one other thing that might be worth noting.” Winton was washing her teacup now. “I didn’t worry in the least about what I had said to you, or have the slightest concern about having put you in what was so obviously an uncomfortable position, until a few hours ago.”
Casper hitchhiked north that Saturday morning, passing the time between rides calculating perfect numbers, those whose proper positive divisors (excluding itself ) add up to the number: 1 + 2 + 3 = 6; 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28; 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 31 + 62 + 124 + 248 = 496; 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 127, 254, 508, 1016, 2032, 4064 = 8128 . . . While he begged a lift with his right thumb, he held his left hand aloft, and with his bony, nailbitten forefinger, traced and erased an endless stream of invisible numbers across the ether as if the whole universe were his blackboard.
They had taught Casper that all the perfect numbers that had ever been calculated were even, but Casper pushed on, sure there was an odd one waiting for him out there somewhere. Numbers bubbled up within him with the carbonated fizz of a shaken-up bottle of pop, igniting inside his head with a silent flash, like fireworks exploding underwater as he worked the progression over and over again as effortlessly as anyone else would hum a tune.
Casper didn’t just have a feel for numbers, he felt them. As such, each digit had a separate personality: 1 was a bright light; 5 was loud, like a clap of thunder; 6 was the most modest of integers; 9 the grandest. They were friends he had known since the crib, played with since before he could speak.
He was juggling the divisors of 288(290 -1) when the driver of a Mayflower moving van coming out of the Esso station across the road pulled over and gave him a ride all the way up Route 1 to Providence. When he got out there, Casper was thirty-seven digits further down the road to nowhere, his numerical joyride was interrupted by a lift from a Presbyterian minister and his wife on their way to see a ballgame at Fenway Park. The wife gave him a cheese sandwich wrapped in wax paper, which he ate even though the bread was stale and he wasn’t hungry.
When the minister asked him if he thought God was a Red Sox or a Yankees fan, Casper stopped chasing the perfect number long enough to stutter, “G-G-G-God loves the g-g-game more than those who play it.” And though Casper didn’t mean it the way the minister thought, after moments of silence, the reverend announced he was going to use the line in his next sermon, and went two and a half miles out of his way to drop Casper off at Harvard Square.
From the bounce in his step, the way he paused to smell the just opened blossoms of a cherry tree, you would have thought Casper had just found an odd perfect number. In a way, he had done something almost as incredible: He had hitchhiked to Boston to see a girl. Only he didn’t think of it that way; to Casper, this outing into the larger world was an experiment with/on himself.
As he walked across the square in the direction of the Radcliffe dormitory where she resided, he could still not quite believe he had set out on this journey, and even more amazing, that he hadn’t turned back on this wildly optimistic, decidedly un-Casper-like adventure. Not only was this the first time he had ever hitchhiked, it was the first time he had ever dared to go see any girl anywhere, ever. Most reckless of all, the girl had no idea he was coming or that he even existed. He didn’t want his past to contaminate the chemical reaction he hoped to experience within himself.
The girl he had come to see was the sister of the same Whitney who had sent him to report on the parrots, roommate of Whitney’s girlfriend, Alice Wilkerson, the girl with salamander eyes who had described Nina Bouchard as “insanely smart, but dumb about dumb stuff.” And most important of all, Alice Wilkerson had said out loud, “You’d like each other.” And since the parrots had turned out to be real rather than the practical joke he had suspected, and the Friedrichs had not just been polite but actually seemed to like him, i.e., had invited him to dinner, and Mrs. Friedrich, who was smart and a looker (not that she made a big thing about it)
had told him to call her Nora and come back and see them soon and kissed him on he cheek instead of just shaking hands good-bye . . . it seemed not unreasonable in the calculus of Casper’s mind that perhaps someone “insanely smart” might be crazy enough to, if not like him, at least not dismiss him as pond slime.
As he pedaled back from Friedrich and the parrots that night, Casper had recalculated the trajectory of his life, and after two weeks of figuring in every unknown variable into the unknown equation of his life, had come to the conclusion that the long shot that he might know what it was like to be kissed by a female other than his mother and a professor’s wife who felt sorry for him was worth the probability of humiliation.
To limit the downside of this experiment he was conducting on his life, Casper had not told Whitney he was going to drop in on his sister unannounced. He had not given the features editor of the Yale Daily News the slightest indication of his interest or intentions other than casually inquiring as he worked the mimeograph machine, “What do you think Alice meant when she s-s-she said your s-s-sister was ‘insanely smart’?”
“What?” Whitney was standing on Webster’s dictionary, raising and lowering his heels to the floor, stretching out his Achilles tendon in the hopes of playing football next fall. “I’m not quite sure I follow you.”
“Did she mean she was c-c-crazy and smart or u-u-uniquely intelligent in a way that others p-p-perceived odd?”
“Odd.”
“How odd?”
“She writes her English papers backward to make it more challenging.”
Casper showed no emotion as he took in the information that day. But now that Nina’s dormitory was in sight, Casper’s pace slowed and his heartbeat rose. No question, his body chemistry was affected by proximity. His forefinger began to work that spot on his temple. His confident stride turned into a shuffle.
Though he was entirely sexually inexperienced save for the daughter of the cranberry picker who lived in the upper half of their two-family company shack back in Seabury, New Jersey, one Molly Klinger who ate roots and showed her vagina to him and every other child of either sex who lived in the neighborhood, he had heard his classmates at Yale who had dates on weekends talk about girls and how to make them do stupid things like actually like you. He had listened to the boasts and lies and exaggerations of the young men destined to lead America, and had distilled that there was some truth to the maxim “When women are concerned, honesty is not the best policy.”
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