“Look, man, thanks for the distractions,” Russell said. “I needed a little R-and-R, get my head straight about that girl.”
“Which girl?”
“The PR woman. The one we talked about.” He laughed. “You really are a charity case.”
“Well, give my love to Cornelia,” I said.
“And mine to the dancer.”
Russell squeezed my arm and gave me a light hug. While he strode toward the airport, compact and hustling, his suit bag like a shadow on his back, I thought, I don’t care if I never see him again.
Days zipped by and the world shrank back to our lab’s small proportions. I didn’t think about Russell or Sara or Regina, there was only me and Lucy and the rest of the team arriving each morning for meetings and conference calls, shouting down the hallways, and eating candy by the bucketful. One morning it was someone’s birthday, Lucy remembered, and she brought in doughnuts spiked with candles. We had the tempo of an umbrella factory. Of course there was also my anxiety about our grant under review and the next ones I needed to write to patch some funding holes, but that was normal. As Darwin had pointed out, anxiety was paramount for survival, it signaled a threat. An adapted response was required. A typical grant was only about seventy-five pages long, but I’d write at least fifteen drafts and sweat every punctuation mark. And then add to everything the constant locomotive rhythm beneath my thoughts—keep it coming in, keep it coming in—with dollar signs floating around my vision.
Work was everything as it was in the beginning, now and forever. One evening, flipping through my calendar, I figured out I’d taken less than ten nights off in the previous two years.
The big New York conference was approaching. I needed to look good and talk pretty. It was a sales conference and I was peddling the latest appliance to a crowd I knew personally. I’d sat with them in lecture halls from Greece to Colorado, but I couldn’t rest on my laurels. Some of them might be judging my grants, and they needed to be brought up to speed with some razzle-dazzle.
Dr. Low, aka Toad, Soborg’s president, left me a voice mail at three in the morning one night, saying he wished he was still burning the midnight oil on something other than his digestive tract. He sounded like a ghost trapped between walls: a mind still sharp and flexible, and a body falling apart.
Sixteen-hour days became pleasurable. We were hunting again, closing in, until a miniature crisis turned up: Lucy figured out that in several databases, columns of figures had been accidentally swapped sometime in the winter, invalidating an entire chain of results. Human error, but error nonetheless, and one that had gone unreported for months. Conclusions, previously solid, were in the wind. A lot of work would need to be reanalyzed before it could be made public.
Panic swept through the team. Late one night, dizzy from exhaustion, I couldn’t remember how Alzheimer’s was spelled, and when I asked one of my M.D. fellows to see if she could find a Webster’s dictionary, she told me to use my computer’s spell-check tool. I nearly threw an “Institute for Brain Aging” mug at her head.
But come the following Friday, when our new data charts should have distracted me, I still clicked CHECK MAIL—every five minutes, every minute, every thirty seconds.
Regina as I remembered her from the beginning, coy and funny and new.
I forced myself up to take a walk. The quad was full of students sitting in clusters, draping their arms over one another, so that I couldn’t tell which ones were couples, which were friends. One boy wore eye makeup and a white ruffled shirt over a black dress. A girl dancing reminded me of Cornelia, Russell’s Cornelia, twirling around barefoot in a skirt made from corduroy patches. But who was I to judge? She was probably an M.D./Ph.D. candidate with an IQ of 140. The boy would be the next Nobel Prize winner in applied mathematics, doing his best work with a cell phone.
On the phone a few weeks earlier, after she was done complaining about her roommate, Regina had asked me, “So when did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That you wanted to be a scientist.”
“No idea, really.”
“It just fell into place.”
“Same story as everybody else, a great teacher. She showed me that people actually got paid to do this stuff. Weren’t your parents biologists?”
Regina laughed. “Christian biologists. I really don’t want to talk about my family right now.”
I said, “Well, how did you pick up burlesque?”
“Oh, okay.” She paused. “For fun, I guess. Glamour of the femme fatale. Don’t you think I could be a community theater star someday? I don’t know. Don’t you have things you like to keep a mystery?”
“Scientist, dancer, actress, poet.”
“A lady doesn’t reveal too much. See, you should inquire more, there’s a lot you don’t know.”
“And you me,” I said.
“Well, exactly. God, who says that? ‘And you me.’”
“I apologize.”
“Accepted. Let’s play a game, three questions each. Only truth.”
“Only truth.”
“How many women have you slept with?”
Both stenographer and judge, poised to record prior to verdict.
“Four,” I said.
“Four as in three plus one?”
“How many am I supposed to have slept with?”
“So that makes me—”
“Two in college. Then Sara. Then you.”
“No, I mean, sorry, I guess? I’m just surprised.”
“It wasn’t sexy, you know, in those days to be passionate about molecular biology. What about you?”
“Is that one of your questions?”
“Sure.”
“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen?”
“Chéri, I’m twenty-five. These days? It’s not like I’m not careful.”
“Is that what people worry about, being careful? For my generation, it was getting a girl pregnant, then the pill came along.”
“Sounds like you didn’t have that much to worry about.”
“This was your idea.”
“Fine. Sure, it’s out there. But we’ve been schooled. My gym teacher was very clear about showing us how to put a condom on a banana.”
“That’s a joke.”
“Seriously? Okay, sure, sex is different. Frankly, you want to know the major difference? It’s that men these days, the dudes, watch so much pornography, there is no sex anymore, it’s just fucking. I mean, pardon my French, but it’s truly frightening. Men think women are puppets, and women go out and get surgery to look like blow-up dolls. I’m serious, men don’t realize women grow pubic hair. That we’re not fuck pillows. It’s outrageous, what’s on the Internet. There’s prank pornography, rape rooms. I mean, forget worrying about waterboarding, this is humiliation on campuses nationwide. And it’s not just visual. There are manuals on how to pick up women by insulting them. Handbooks on precisely what to say to trick women into sleeping with you. As though we’re to be used and then discarded. And of course it convinces some girls,” Regina said, and snorted. “I’m sure they love it, and why not? The brainwashing starts so early, it’s amazing we resist. We’re told by the overlords to primp, to shave, to slim down. It’s safeguarded by other women, for other women, so how should our boyfriends behave when it comes to what they want, and in which position? Why shouldn’t we give in to their rights? The older generation is caught up trying to get a woman elected president, and women my age refuse to be called feminists. So why burlesque? Because it’s the personal empowerment revue. It’s not about sex, it’s about luster, it’s about control. It’s an ego steam bath. If the audience gets off, what do I care?”
“Is all that true?”
“That’s your third question. But yes. So, my turn. Why do you accept?”
“Accept?”
“I want to know, why you reply when I e-mail,” she said after a second.
“I was going to ask you why you invite me.”
; “But you’re out of questions.”
It took me a moment. “Because I want to,” I said. “I look forward to it all week. Being in the audience, so to speak.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s so different.”
A pause. “Fine,” said Regina, “what’s different?”
“Just from what I know. Regina, I’m nearly sixty, it’s nothing I would have expected. What you do, is all.”
Another pause. “Well, that’s about the least passionate thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Regina, I meant—”
“So what, I’m like your sideshow?”
“Now, that’s not what I said.”
“This isn’t, you know, the variety show,” she stammered, “where you get to go tell the boys in the locker room about us afterward.”
“Regina, calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down.”
“Believe me, I have told no one.”
“Why should I believe that?”
“Listen to me: I covet our time together. Do you understand?”
I was the desperate older man, the moneybags seeing his ward run off.
She said a moment later, “When I think about you—”
I said quickly, “And I you.”
“Well, okay, exactly,” she said. “Exactly.”
“Regina—”
“What do you want?”
She caught me off guard. “Us,” I said.
“No, you don’t.”
“Well, what do I want?”
Regina laughed but it was overwrought. “Why, darling, what everyone wants.” The tremors fell off her voice a few seconds later. “Just tell me this isn’t some fuck-buddy thing for you.”
“Some what?”
“Yeah, exactly.” She laughed. “No, you wouldn’t.”
A party game that Sara once invented: Reduce a famous movie plot to three bones, and elaborate only if the other players aren’t able to guess the title.
Southern lawyer has a way with kids. Can’t get an innocent off the hook. Boo.
Vito shouldn’t buy fruit. Michael won’t talk business. Diane Keaton?
Men embark on spaceship. Spaceship disembarks men. Sorry, Dave.
We got to the point, though, where Sara wouldn’t play it with me unless other guests were around. I had a hard time coming up with the titles.
“Audi is part of Volkswagen, don’t forget,” Betsy said, “who may as well have been the Nazis’ personal automaker. Besides, Victor, what’s wrong with a Saab? Convertibles kill, dear.”
“If you want me to scratch up your old hunk of junk instead,” I said, “just hand over the keys.”
Betsy was inside the hall, standing beside a bag full of gardening equipment, arranging wildflowers. Sunlight was pouring in. It could have been any summer Friday afternoon in the last two years, and I sensed a wild hope appear, one to run away with, that I’d never met Regina, that Betsy would allude to some faraway business trip I’d been on since April, one I forgot.
“Now take a look, dear,” Betsy said, pointing me to the dining room, “those candlesticks on the table. They belonged to my great-great-uncle, the one I was telling you about, the banker. Take them when you go. Now I should get dressed.”
Betsy trotted off and I remembered the banker: he’d warranted his own chapter in the family genealogy compiled by her father, the admiral. Ernest “The Boiler” Gardner, deceased 1884, made the newspapers a few weeks after he died when a secret chamber was found in his offices. Behind several locks, his daughter discovered a back room the solicitors hadn’t touched, where inside were shelves of gleaming human skulls, cataloged with small cards. Letters she found in her father’s files accounted for the exhibition: the heads were specimens collected for his amateur phrenology studies. He’d offered a price of one hundred dollars per head of “unknown peoples” to be boiled clean in his office, then measured and preserved. More than three dozen were on display from the Canary Islands to the Philippines, according to their cards. “The Boiler,” said the New-York Tribune, had either ordered or condoned the murders of nineteen people. “Still people, no matter their religious beliefs, color of skin, or birthplace.”
I put the candlesticks back in Betsy’s kitchen cupboard and took a short nap on the living room couch. Half an hour later, Betsy was coming down the hallway, bejeweled and wearing a yellow tea-length skirt, a diamond pendant, and matching earrings. I knew she was dressing up for Joel. She’d changed from boat shoes to flats, though the beach hat remained.
“Where’s my palanquin? Back off, you’re too old. I’ll have a martini, Victor—dry, with a twist.” She checked herself in the mirror. “But you’re driving, dear. You have tonic.”
“Thanks, but I believe I can handle it.”
“You’re driving,” she repeated.
Baht yur driving, de-ah. You have tah-nik. This from the generation that invented alcohol poisoning.
Joel had told me and Sara once how cooking had saved his life. At eighteen, he was living in Venice Beach, making ends meet by dealing marijuana. Then his supplier went to jail, and Joel took a short-order job in a diner. He discovered that he liked it: working, cooking, drawing a salary, plus the vagabond lifestyle of kitchen culture suited him—particularly the cocaine. After two years, Joel moved north and began ascending in the business, from a banquet hall in Fresno to a Sacramento members-only club. Finally to Berkeley, for an apprentice period, before returning East, this time to open his own place, a French bistro in Boston serving the latest fusions. He lasted four years. The reviews were good, but they were no match for Joel’s addictions, and his investors dwindled to one, a car dealer’s son Joel had known from California. That one disappeared with the chandeliers, auctioning off assets while Joel was away on a bender in New Orleans. By that point, Joel and Betsy were back on speaking terms over the phone, but he’d vowed never to return to Maine. Then Uncle Bill died. Joel came back for the funeral, found a job cooking surf and turf in Ellsworth, and decided to stay. He joined NA and AA and got sober, and thought about opening his own place again. One afternoon during a coffee visit, Sara gave him our lawyer’s card, and Joel successfully sued his former partner, who’d turned up rich selling boats in Annapolis. Joel eventually received enough money from the judge to start Blue Sea.
The restaurant was crammed when Aunt Betsy and I arrived. The hostess fawned over Betsy and took her coat, complimented her hat, and followed us patiently while Betsy navigated the dining room with her cane.
“I’ll have a martini,” Betsy ordered as we sat down. “Dry, with a twist. Now, Victor, my lighter, please.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Gardner,” the hostess whispered, “there’s a no-smoking policy.”
“There used to be no-Jews policies, too, dear. Are they still in place?”
“Darling, wouldn’t you like some wine,” I said.
She glared at me but accepted the menu. I took off my jacket and hung it on the back of my chair. After a minute, Betsy pointed to a 2003 Montrachet, the most expensive bottle on the list.
“Let’s start here,” she said to the waitress, smiling. “Then we’ll see where we end up.”
The bill had begun at five hundred dollars.
Betsy appeared about to gloat when Joel walked up to the table in a baseball cap, chef’s coat, and checkered pants. His name was stitched in blue thread over the restaurant logo. He’d shaved recently and seemed slimmer than I remembered, but was still ruddy in the cheeks. He was smirking, his eyes flittering around. Hands crossed behind his back, he was less the gym teacher, more the playful, reserved former athlete, aware when he’d been recognized. Heads turned. Joel bent down to kiss Betsy’s cheek while I half rose from my chair.
“Joel, how are you?”
“Hey, Victor.”
The waitress brought the wine and Joel took it, smiled at the label, and borrowed the waitress’s corkscrew. Betsy said, “Why, boys, don’t you look handsome. Men in uniform always get the girl.
Joel dear, I don’t see why they make you wear those awful pants.”
“I make me, Mom,” Joel said, laughing, rubbing his chin. Betsy reset her silverware and Joel poured the wine.
“So what’s fresh?” I said.
“Well, there’s good sea bass. I picked it out myself this morning. We do that with—”
“I’ll take a steak, Joel,” Betsy interrupted, picking up her wineglass. “So will Victor. And some potatoes, not mashed. Victor’s cholesterol can’t stomach the cream.”
I gave him a look, but Joel was gazing around the room, grinning. After a moment, he laughed and glanced at me while he kissed Betsy on the top of the head.
Betsy soon finished her first glass and frowned for a few minutes, her lips squeezed tightly together. I remembered a dinner party at our house in Somesville while it was still under construction: Betsy and Sara and I had been eating in the unfinished living room when Betsy started to cry because of all the lumber sitting around—it reminded her of Uncle Bill. Bill had been an amateur furniture maker.
And I was helpless but to think of Regina, seeing the couples out on dates: bonding over appetizers, leaning toward each other. I was split over a gap, cleft in two: part of me longing for Regina, almost wrenching me from my chair, and part wanting to make up for my mistakes, to storm out and fly over to her house and make her promise to never see me again, to find someone younger, some boy more her speed. Betsy explained to me a recent doctor’s diagnosis while I knocked back two glasses of the wine, ignoring how good it was, ignoring everyone.
I was too busy wondering, Why hadn’t Regina e-mailed? What was happening at La Loulou’s anyway?
I could have told Betsy everything right then. She didn’t notice, just went on drinking.
The restaurant filled up and became twice as loud. Perhaps it was the wine, but I felt seasick. My mind had a peephole through which I saw the room, my vision shrinking until I needed to focus on a small, single thing, a lady’s ear, a candle, or else I’d fall over.
When the steaks arrived, I was drunk. I heard Betsy calling me across the table.
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