Afterburn

by Colin Harrison

  "Three years. I found this place and knew I'd be there forever. What about you?"

  "The East Village," she said, her arms clutched in front of her.

  "Been there long?"

  "No."

  "Where were you before?"

  "In prison." She hoped that this would bother him.

  "Oh, that is very cool." Rahul nodded.

  "Why?" she asked. "Why is that cool?"

  "I'm into knowing different kinds of people." He inspected his cigarette, as if it might be a microphone. "Last week I met this woman whose job is to figure out how to put advertising in the sky. She's supposed to get some kind of satellite that floats around, and in the night, you see this logo up there with the stars. I have this other friend, she vacuums people's faces."

  Christina winced. "What?"

  "These rich old ladies on the East Side, they come in and have their faces all warmed up with hot towels, and they apply this stuff on the skin, some sort of softening chemical, then my friend uses this vacuum thing that looks like a pen, except it's got a little nozzle, and she sucks out all the gunk in the pores of these women's faces. Sometimes their backs and other parts. It's the new thing. Once a month, all your nose pores cleaned."

  "That is totally disgusting," she cried, yet was intrigued.

  "But these women love it. They love it because it's disgusting. They pay something like five hundred bucks a shot." He pulled out his keys and they stopped at the stoop of a townhouse. "Here we are."

  She looked behind her as she entered. No one knows I'm here, she thought.

  The door closed heavily and he locked it. Inside the front hall she examined the framed photographs. "They're all pills."

  "Yes."

  "You take pictures of pills?"

  Rahul nodded. "I'm very good at it."

  She looked into the living room. Retro-fifties decor, expensive and collectible, the tables and chairs and lamps all sophisticated experiments in chrome, dyed leather, and wood laminates. So stylish, so uncomfortable. Across the walls, dozens of framed black-and-white photos. All pills.

  "You'd be surprised how many photos of pills are required these days." He touched his finger against one. "You have new pills coming out all the time, and the pharmaceutical companies need good pictures of them. You need lighting and a backdrop. Sometimes you have to make the pill look shinier, sometimes duller."

  Christina blinked attentively. I'm getting out of here, she told herself.

  "I've done almost all the pills there are," Rahul told her. "The anti-depressants, the herbs and natural remedies, birth-control pills, thyroid pills, the chemotherapy, the steroids . . ." He watched her expression. "The hormone medications, the heart pills, the new antibiotics, the anti-inflammatories, the ones for high blood pressure . . . low blood pressure, the over-the-counter remedies, the blood thinners, the cholesterol pills, seizure-control pills, the hair-growing pills, the anxiety medications, pills so that you can take other pills, all the palliatives, like morphine. There's one that you take to forget pain from surgery, you know that? They have a new pill to make your fingernails grow more slowly." He passed through the living room into a large kitchen with an unused designer stove. "You have companies all over the world making new pills. They either send me there or the pills here. I'm flying to Germany tomorrow, in fact. Love their pills, the Germans." He pulled out two glasses from a cabinet. "Drink?"

  "I'm okay, thanks," she said. "Maybe one, I guess."

  She used the bathroom, locking the door behind her. It seemed perfectly normal. Perhaps a bit clean. Maybe he had a maid. Maybe he would put a pill in her drink and she'd fall unconscious. She peeked into the cabinet. Q-tips in a glass. That was all. What kind of guy kept Q-tips in a glass? She sat down on the toilet, imagined something sticky, worried, stood up, underwear at her knees, inspected the seat, wiped it off with tissue, sat down again. All that wine going piddle. I don't want to have a hard heart, she thought, I don't want to be too strong. That was the thing about Rick. He made her weak in a way she liked. Her anxiety disappeared; she would lie in bed against his huge back, smelling his T-shirt, or she would pull his heavy arm over her. That was the best she'd ever slept in her life. He took care of her hardness problem. But just for a while. Maybe the religion professor had been right. Rahul didn't seem to be so bad—no, that was just the wine. She knew enough not to trust herself. Sometimes it could just be anybody, and that scared her, that was what the religion professor had seen.

  "Want me to show you around?" Rahul said when she came out.

  "You want to show me?" Christina asked, her ankles feeling loose on the heels of her shoes. She followed Rahul into the bedroom. It appeared normal, except for the large circular lights above the bed. "What are those?"

  "Operating room," he said, "exact kind used." He flicked a switch and the lights above the bed began to glow. In a minute they were excruciatingly bright.

  She smiled casually. If she was smart, she'd be leaving soon.

  "What's next?"

  "Darkroom." He lifted his eyebrows. "By way of contrast."

  "Oh, let's see that," she asked.

  "Most photographers send out their film." Rahul pointed at his sinks and chemicals. "I send out most of my stuff, but there are certain shots I want to develop myself."

  Like the ones of the dead women in the cellar—trussed, hanging from hooks, mouths stuffed with surgical gloves.

  Don't think these things! she told herself. Just keep looking around. The darkroom's desk was littered with papers, keys, postcards, contact sheets, cassettes, money in different currencies, and a black cell phone the size of a pack of cards. She picked it up, liked its ingenious engineering. When Rahul turned to point out his collection of old Hasselblad cameras, she slipped the phone into her purse. I might need this, she told herself.

  She noticed a little glass jar filled with Q-tips. "What other pictures do you take?" she asked, hurrying into the living room.

  He followed. "What is it?"

  "Nothing."

  His skin was bright, pressurized. "You think I'm strange?"

  "No."

  "Yes, I think you do."

  "Why would I think that?" she said.

  "I can tell."

  Maybe he had taken a pill. "We're all strange." Christina clutched the purse. I'm not scared of him, she told herself. I wouldn't sleep with him in a bazillion years, but I'm not scared of him.

  "Let's sit down and talk," he suggested.

  She looked at her watch. "I should go."

  "I want you to stay. We've barely—"

  "My friend is waiting for me."

  "I was going to show you my other pictures."

  "Your other pictures? Not the pills?"

  He pulled a large album of photographs off a shelf. "This is the first series."

  She sat down and flipped open the album. Q-tips. Forests and constellations and waterfalls of Q-tips.

  "I worked very hard on that, he said, pointing at one. "The light's tricky."

  "You took these pictures in your bedroom?"

  "How'd you know?"

  "Just a guess."

  He was pleased, and again ran his hand over his head.

  "How many did you take?" she asked. "Of the Q-tips, I mean."

  "Over the years, probably, what?" He contemplated the question. "A thousand rolls. Thirty-six to a roll."

  "You took thirty-six thousand pictures of Q-tips."

  He nodded. "No one else has ever done that, I suspect."

  "Rahul, I have to go."

  "Please don't."

  "I do." He'll lock me in the basement and I'll use the cell phone, she thought. That line about going to Germany the next day was a lie.

  "Can I have your number?" Rahul asked.

  "Not quite yet."

  He fiddled with his watch. "I'm rich, you know."

  "I can see that."

  "You're very beautiful."

  "Right," she said.

  "I know men always say tha
t, but I have a special ability to see things."

  "Will you see me to the door, then?"

  "Not yet. Please."

  She stood.

  "I can make you happy!"

  She ran to the hallway. God, am I stupid, she thought, brushing drunkenly against the pill photos. I must be stupid and desperate to let myself—

  "Wait!" he cried, following her. He caught her arm at the front door. "You can't just leave me. Wait, you—"

  She opened the door, but he was stronger and pushed it shut.

  "I said wait, bitch."

  She lifted her knee into his crotch, which stopped him long enough for her to tear open the locks and dash down the steps and along the street, almost running, looking behind her. He didn't follow.

  At the corner she stopped and lit a cigarette, her heart beating too fast. She felt buzzy and sickish, her forehead hot. Next to her, the cars blew down the avenue and people plunged confidently into the further possibilities of the evening. She breathed out the cigarette, waiting for it to calm her. It didn't. She looked back along the street. Nothing. Her fingers felt funny and she realized she was shaking. I'm out of control here, she thought, a little out of control.

  | Go to Contents |

  Snyder, Wainwright, Lovell & Passaro

  Fiftieth Street and Lexington Avenue, Manhattan

  September 20, 1999

  HE HAD NOT FOUND HER. Not yet, or not exactly. On the Thursday and Friday previous, he'd taken a sweaty lunchtime taxi over to Martha's office to meet two or three women in a row. Eager, sweet, healthy women, bright and full of life. And thoughtful and attentive, no doubt reassured by Martha's gruff motherliness. Each had seemed acceptable; none was right. Yet now he walked into Martha's office feeling—maybe even hope, Charlie told himself. The third-quarter sales numbers were going to be good enough to singe Marvin Noff's eyebrows, and he had been able to sit through the Jets game on television the previous afternoon without Ellie mentioning the retirement community once. Maybe she'd given up on the idea. Even his appointment for dinner with Mr. Ming that evening seemed propitious. He would talk about the factory, Ming would smile. He would buy dinner, Ming would release the next ten million.

  "We've received your application," said Martha as they welcomed the woman who lived on a farm upstate, Pamela Archer. Tall and slender, she wore a plain dress and running shoes. No braces as a teenager, a sandbar of worry on her brow. "My name is Martha."

  "And I'm Charlie Ravich."

  "Are you the—the businessman?" Pamela Archer asked.

  "I am," he said gently.

  They sat down in a conference room. "Miss Archer," continued Martha, "our intention here is to ask you a few questions, and perhaps to answer yours."

  She smiled with polite nervousness. "Okay."

  "I want to explain this idea, first conceptually, and then specifically," Martha said. "So that we are clear. The arrangement will be spelled out in a document of course, and if you were to be the selected party, we would understand that you may wish for your own attorney to review it. I want to emphasize that the intention here is to work in good faith—very good faith, the best of faith, in fact—and that the well-being of the selected woman is of paramount importance to us, to me." Martha paused to see that Pamela Archer understood. "This is meant to be as caring an arrangement as possible."

  They continued from there to the structure of the agreement—the duties of each party, the method of payment, the proof of paternity, the schedule of reports on the child's well-being.

  "We also have two other areas of inquiry," said Martha, getting up to pour herself some coffee. "The first is your health. From this appointment you will be taken by a private car to a doctor's office for examination. That includes a gynecological exam and blood work."

  "Seems quite expectable." Pamela Archer smiled at Charlie.

  "They'll go over your medical history," Martha continued. "But we have some medical questions that we ask in an attempt to determine your character, not your health per se."

  "All right," Pamela Archer said.

  "Do you smoke?"

  "Never," she announced proudly.

  "Never?"

  "Never."

  "Drink?"

  "Not much. I like a glass of wine, you know."

  "Use drugs?" Martha asked.

  Pamela Archer frowned. "A long time ago."

  "You might as well mention any recent use, since the drug tests will—"

  "I'm completely clean," Pamela Archer interrupted.

  Martha noted this. "What did you use—in the past?"

  "Pot, speed, some psychedelics. Acid a few times."

  Charlie leaned forward. "Ever inject?"

  "No, absolutely not."

  "You're sure?" Martha asked.

  "Have you ever injected?" said Pamela Archer.

  "No!" said Martha.

  "Sure?"

  Martha sat back in surprise. "Of course!"

  "That's how sure I am."

  Martha turned toward Charlie.

  "I think she's sure."

  Martha returned to her clipboard. "All right, have you ever suffered from hepatitis, gonorrhea, syphilis, herpes, or any other sexually transmitted diseases?"

  "I had chlamydia once."

  "Ever been pregnant?"

  "No," she breathed.

  "First menstruation?"

  "Twelve, I think."

  "First intercourse?"

  "Fifteen."

  "Number of partners?"

  "I'm not sure."

  Martha didn't like this answer. "Approximately?"

  "Perhaps ten or twelve."

  "Any partners intravenous drug users?"

  "No."

  "Convicted felons?"

  "No."

  Charlie flipped through his file, not listening closely. Of the six women he'd interviewed with Martha, he'd liked only two, and Pamela Archer was not one of them. I need a basic affinity, Charlie thought, some buzz, some connection. He and the mother might have to talk from time to time, and if he wished to ask about the child's health and development, then better that he and the mother got along. If you can try to give your child one thing, what should it be? Family? Security? Intelligence? He could make an argument for any of the three. Moreover, what appeared to be optimal for one child was not for another. Living situations change, families fall apart. Maybe these were the wrong questions. Maybe the most important question was who would be the best mother. But the best mother under what conditions? Ellie had been an excellent mother, but was this due to the fact that she'd never much desired a career? Maybe if she had been born twenty years later she'd have pursued a career and been less devoted to the kids. Then again, some people said women who have careers are better mothers by example, showing their children their worldly effectiveness. You can get turned around and around on these questions, Charlie thought. Maybe the better thing was to go with a gut feeling, which was how he had always made the most important decisions in his life. Which of the women did he just plain like? Which one did he think he understood best?

  "That's the end of my part of the conversation," Martha said. "I'm going to let you and Charlie have a few minutes." She left the room.

  He pulled his chair a little closer.

  "Hi." Pamela Archer smiled, eyes bright.

  She's looking at me like I'm a goldmine, he thought. "Miss Archer, I know this interaction is a bit strange."

  "Presumably for you, too."

  He nodded.

  Her eyes were worried. "How many responses to the ad did you get?"

  "More than a hundred. We're still getting them."

  She blinked anxiously, color blotting her neck and cheeks. "How many so-called finalists are there?"

  "Nine."

  "How many have you spoken with?"

  "Six, including you."

  She played with her hands in her lap. "It's a pretty crazy way to make a baby."

  "Yes."

  "You already have children?"
<
br />   He nodded.

  "Why another, if you don't mind me asking?"

  Charlie eased back. "The other women have asked the same question. I guess the reason is that my family is sort of dying out. My son died years ago and my daughter has fertility problems."

  She looked into his face with sadness. "But you would never see the child."

  "I know."

  "That would be, maybe, painful?"

  "Maybe. But knowing a healthy child was—"

  The door opened. Martha poked her head inside. "Charlie, you have an urgent call."

  Oh, Ellie, he said to himself as he walked down the hall toward Martha's private office, please not Ellie.

  "Mr. Ravich, this is Tom Anderson in Shanghai," came a squeaky voice when Charlie picked up the phone. "Your secretary gave me this number. I don't think we've met, sir. I'm the assistant construction engineer on your factory. I've got bad news."

  "Where's Pete Conroy?" barked Charlie, angry that he'd been scared.

  "Down south trying to line up our concrete supply for the next month. He's asked me to call you because I'm on-site."

  He stared west through Martha's window, thirty stories up, high enough to see the planes swinging around into LaGuardia. "Tell me the problem."

  "We've had a construction stoppage, sir. Let me explain that. We had a laborer killed in a scaffolding accident yesterday. A terrible thing, but in fact it was his own fault. We have scaffolding accidents every day in Shanghai. The Chinese don't have the same sort of standards—"

  "It's all bamboo poles and ropes."

  "Right. So the municipal authority has shut us down. I came in this morning and saw the site posted. Had a hell of an argument with them, but you can only push so far. We couldn't get our steel in today, I had to get the trucks parked at one of our other sites, but this creates a risk. Good Japanese steel disappears in this place if you don't get it in within a few days. I've made what inquiries I can with the interpreter, and I plan to take the local codes inspector out for a drink tonight to find out what I can, but he's in the pocket of the big guys."

  I could land that, he thought, watching a 747 bank over Brooklyn. Like parking a bus. "How legitimate is the shutdown? They have a case?"

  "All the scaffolding is subcontracted to one of the same three companies, which in turn are owned, or controlled, I should say, by the municipal authorities." Anderson was getting his words out quickly, like a kid losing air. "I mean, there are several hundred major construction sites and thousands of smaller ones. I think it's one of two things. Either there's a war going on between the scaffolding companies, and one of them got one of their municipal people to order our shutdown—"