“I thought we were going to the lake”, I said.
“We are”, Jack replied, “Just wait and see”.
After a few moments he pulled up in an area where the road broadened and Jack stopped the engine.
I arched my brows, smiling, “So?”, I asked.
“So, let’s go take a bath”, Jack replied with a sly grin.
I tilted me head, pouting, my sense of orientation completely off key at this point. Jack laughed and jumped down from the truck. I looked around hesitantly, till I noticed a thin trail making its way through the woods. We were opposite to the shore where I usually swam, and seeing the lake from another perspective filled me with the amazed happiness that the unfamiliar vision of familiar objects brings about: like the clouds from a plane, the sky flickering across the leaves of a tree, a grain viewed under the microscope.
“I didn’t know there was another road leading to the lake!”, I exclaimed, and rushed towards the water, removing my clothing and making a hasty ball of them.
The coolness of the lake felt good on my feet. I was about to splash Jack with water when I caught a pensive look crossing his face, a veil of sadness cloud his eyes and go, like the shadow of a plane in the summer sky.
Jack saw my frown and said “This is the first place where I came when I moved here”.
I stepped out of the water and took his hand.
“Come on”, I said, tugging him gently.
“Do you want to swim all the way to the other shore”, he asked.
It was a long swim and I hesitated, but Jack defied me, and so I began paddling fast, and raced besides him for a while then passed him, my muscles pushing and my blood throbbing, before I finally slowed down, out of breath. We were only halfway, so I turned on my back to rest to save some energy. Jack did the same, and we let ourselves float silently for a while, before slowly sliding through the water still separating us from the shore.
When we finally arrived I sat on the rocks, legs folded against my torso, my arms wrapped around them. I rest my head on my knees, smiling at Jack.
“Are you cold?”, he asked.
“Maybe just a tiny bit”, I said.
He stood for a while on a rock, staring at the lake, then said “I wanted to swim with you at the sunset since a long time”.
I looked at his slim, muscular back without answering, feeling peaceful. The scene felt familiar, as if I had been there before or always knew this would happen. Jack kneeled in front of me, and cupped my face in his hands. I saw his green eyes come close to mine, then felt the roughness of his unshaved beard brush my face, and his soft lips touch mine. We kissed and plunged into one another, losing track of time, and when the sun began melting in the sky we swam back, enveloped by the scattered reflections of its multicolored melancholy.
Chapter 23
By the time we reached the coast I was hungry and my body was tired, but I felt a lightness of spirit and a peaceful joy that lifted the weight off my strained legs. Jack took my hand and helped me out of the water, and guided me silently towards his truck. He had a towel in the back of the truck, it was crisp and smelled of fresh laundry. It had warmed up staying in the truck while we swam and it felt good when Jack rubbed me dry, gently brushing my face, and then making his way slowly down to my legs. I wanted him and I knew he wanted me too, but I appreciated his decency, his shyness, the fact that there was no explicit provocation in his gests. When he finished I took the towel from him and began drying him the way he had done with me, then I wrapped it around his neck and pulled him close, till our noses touched.
“Where are we going to have dinner?”, I whispered.
“I’ve baked something for you today”, Jack told me, cupping his hand on my cheek and brushing his finger against it.
We drove to Jack’s place in silence, the landscape flowing on the background of his presence.
Chapter 24
We reached the top of the stairs on the back of the building and Jack turned the key in the door hole, but before opening he said, “Close your eyes”.
He covered my eyes with his hands, I heard the door squeak and open, and close again behind me. He guided me around and when we reached what I then figured was his bedroom he said, “Sit here for a moment, eyes closed. Don’t move till I come get you”.
I sat there, listening to the noises from the other room, and feeling around with my hands what seemed like wrinkled linens. I thought the bed was undone and felt the urge to check. I was about to open my eyes when I heard Jack shout “Make sure you don’t cheat!”, and laugh.
Finally he entered the bedroom and placed his hands on my eyes again, “Let’s go miss”, he said smiling, taking me to the kitchen.
“Ready?”, Jack said, taking his hands off my eyes.
There was a huge cake at the center of the table and all around it Jack had arranged dished with sweet and salty finger foods. I was stunned and stood staring at the table in silence. Before I said anything Jack pulled a watermelon from the fridge, he had carved it and pink chunks of the fruit’s pulp floated in what looked like a cocktail.
“Wow”, I exclaimed at last, unable to add anything more.
I walked up to Jack and hugged him tight, my head resting on his shoulder and my arms laced around his waist, my eyes closed, till our sweat began to mix.
“Thank you”, I was able to add after a while, still holding on to him, rocking him slowly left and right.
“I didn’t wish you happy birthday earlier because I didn’t want to spoil the surprise”, Jack said, his gaze laid intensely on me.
My face went blank, I had forgotten it was my birthday, as I often had since a long while. I looked at the two storey cake on the table, with the frosting and the white puffs of cream on it, when it all flew back to my memory.
It was my birthday, the last one I would spend with my family, and my mother was wearing a red flowered apron.
“Hey Iris, what are you doing up there?”, she called out from the kitchen.
My father and brother were helping me put together the puzzle I had received as a present. I had fit in one last piece before running down the stairs. Seeing the cake I had stopped and gasped, before I burst out laughing and yelled “Woah!”. My mother had laughed too, and after my family had sang the “happy birthday” tune for me I had blown the candles, wishing I could find a kid I had met the previous summer in the compound where we could usually spend a week during the summer.
Tears pooled in my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. I didn’t wipe them, Jack did it for me.
“Hey…”, he whispered, lifting my chin
I began telling him my story. We had just come back from the campground and unloaded the car. “I suppose we should go buy some groceries”, my mother had said. Mrs Shaw was gardening her flowers when we were about to get in the car. “Welcome back”, she said, waving at us. “I have some popsicles if you want to drop by later”. The idea had got me really excited, “Oh yeah!”, I had exclaimed grinning. “You can have one now darling”, Mrs. Shaw said, smiling at my bubbly joy. When I looked at my mother she said, “We have to go buy groceries now, Iris”. “She can stay with me if she likes”, Mrs. Shaw had offered, smiling again. So my mother relented, “Well sure, if you don’t mind. We won’t be long, we’ll be back in half an hour or so”. But half an hour become one hour, then two hours and four, and I was still at Mrs. Shaw’s place. I knew something was wrong, but that night reality surpassed my darkest thoughts. By the time the sky had turned dusky and I was exhausted by tiredness and worry a police officer knocked on the door. He spoke to Mrs Shaw first. I was in the kitchen, but stepping out I saw she had brought a hand to her mouth, and was standing there gasping. Then the officer had me sit on the couch. He told me a truck had hit the car my father was driving, wiping off my whole family. I didn’t cry, I remember walking to my place, climbing up to my room and falling asleep. Drowsiness numbed me and I lost track of time. I wouldn’t talk or eat. By the time t
hey found my grandmother and she flew from NY to Minnesota I was in the hospital, where they had hooked me up to a tube to feed me.
One day a new doctor walked in my room, carrying a book about an adventurous duck. He sat on my bed and read it, then he pulled out a chocolate spread and put some on my lips. “Nice lipstick miss”, he laughed. I licked if off, smiling after a long time. It was thanks to that doctor that I resumed talking and eating, and a bit at a time I recovered. After two weeks grandma brought me home, where we stayed till the end of the summer. When September was about to start she announced we would move to her place in NY, where a good school was waiting for me.
Chapter 25
Jack took my hand and sat me at the table, then he dipped his finger in the chocolate frosting. Holding my chin, he spread it on my lips and kissed them. We licked the chocolate off our lips at the same time, and laughed at our moment of childish joy. I got a knife from the old cupboard on the other side of the kitchen and cut off two large slices. The dough was soft with a rich taste, and I ate slowly, in silence, enjoying every bit.
After wiping the dish clean, I looked up at Jack and said, “This was heavenly”.
“It must have tasted even better because you were starving”, he winked, “I had a plan when I asked you to swim all the way to the opposite shore of the lake and back”.
“That’s wicked!”, I exclaimed, laughing again.
Letting the past out and washing it away with long due tears had a liberating effect on me, and now I felt light as I hadn’t had for years.
I chose some salty tarts and ate them voluptuously, with my eyes closed. Jack ate little, observing me with a smile concealed between the soft curve of his lips.
“We’re doing this backwards”, I said, licking the crumbs off my lips and brushing them off my fingers.
Jack arched his brows.
“We started from the dessert and we are ending with the appetizers”, I explained.
“Ah well”, shrugged Jack, “My life has been following a very random logic in the last years, and I’ve stopped worrying about the right order”. “And talking about randomness, I want you to come see something”, he continued, getting up from his chair.
In the bedroom, beside Jack’s undone white and green bed there was a large box wrapped with newspapers and decorated with a rope tied up to form a rustic ribbon.
Jack pointed at the box and said, “Go ahead, open it”.
“Oh boy!”, I exclaimed, “What else did you get? I had even forgotten about my birthday…”.
“This is something I had wanted as a kid and I know you always sit on your porch till late at night, so...we’ll share this, it’s not all yours”, he said smiling.
I stopped unwrapping the box and glanced over my shoulder at Jack, who was wearing a vaguely mischievous expression on his face.
“Come on, keep going”, he said, accompanying the words with hand gestures.
It was a telescope.
“We’ll drink lemonade on your porch while we look at the stars”, Jack told me with a satisfied grin.
This was so unexpected, I would have never thought of buying a telescope myself but now that I had one the excitement foamed inside me quickly and spilled out, “Oh wow!”, I almost shouted.
We brought the telescope over to my place and mounted it on the patio I had on the upper floor. So far I hadn’t used it much, preferring the porch for some reason, but now I would change this habit, I thought. We stood out in the air filled with the voices of the cicadas, looking at the stars far away in the summer sky till past midnight. By then my eyes were sore and I said, “Let’s go inside”.
The wooden floor squeaked under our bare feet as we moved in the dark, to which our eyes had grown adapted by staying out in the night for so long. I leaned Jack against a wall, and began caressing him under the shirt, breathing him in. He had a smell of salt, as if he had been swimming in the sea, and the marine scent was mixed with faint leathery notes, the residues of deodorant and laundry detergent.
“I love your smell”, I said, pulling up his shirt.
Jack’s nipples were firm in my mouth, I licked them till he let out a weak moan and I felt his body shiver against mine. We explored each other slowly and let our desire climax in a memorably intense night.
Chapter 26
I opened my eyes around 5 am the next morning, feeling Jack silently glide out of the bed.
When he saw I was awake he brushed my brow with a kiss, “Keep sleeping, I have to go set up the bakery for the day. I’ll call you later”.
I moaned yes, and perhaps said something else I soon forgot, before closing my eyes again. When I reopened them it was almost 8, and I was terribly late for work. It was my turn to go pick up Brad that day, and I gave him a call that I couldn’t be there before 8.30.
“Everything all right?”, he asked.
I assured him it was and hang up. I was quite reluctant at the idea of going to work that day, I had no interest in seeing McMurrich’s icy expression and talking with her, and I didn’t have any more interest in the polymer either. McMurrich had made it clear that Brad and I would have to do the science on the side, since the priority was to answer what the boss needed to know to sell a product that had unknown effects. A product I had created and that I did not want to sell. I was dipping cookies in my coffee plunged in these feelings, when I suddenly found myself wishing that I could walk in the labs that morning and have someone announce that McMurrich was dead. For the fraction of a second I felt relieved, as if the fact had really happened, and I was astonished that relief was all I felt. I washed the coffee cup, showered quickly and drove to Brad’s place, wondering now and then if the life I was leading was changing me in dark ways I could only catch glimpses of.
When I reached Brad’s house I honked the horn and he came out few moments later, wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
“What’s up?”, I said when I saw him, pulling up one eyebrow and tilting my head.
Brad was usually pretty sober, his esthetic sense was as daring as the average engineer’s, that is to say not very. I had buddied up with him for long enough to be fond of him and feel cozy when he was around, without ever considering him gifted with neither a classy or flamboyant taste.
“Why?”, he said, trying to hide his smile and blushing lightly.
“I don’t know, you tell me”, I said, tugging the bottom of his shirt.
“What’s wrong with the shirt?”, he asked innocently.
I started the car, shaking my head and laughing.
“Ok, it was a birthday present”, he said after a few moments.
“Aha”, I said, “and from whom?”.
“You could start by saying happy birthday Brad, no?”, he retorted.
“Was it yesterday?”, I asked.
“Yes, it was”, he replied drily.
“Oh, I am sorry…well, happy birthday Brad!”, I said turning around with a broad smile, “You know it was mine too, and I had forgotten all about it”.
He looked at me perplexed. “Are you joking?”, he asked.
“No, not at all…and you forgot about my birthday too, so we are even”, I concluded, satisfied that I had stunned him.
“But you never told me about your birthday…”, he told me after a moment.
“Ah well, twin, I forgive you. So, who have you the shirt?”, I insisted.
“Why are you so pushy?”, he snapped, and then, after a pause, “A girl”.
“I thought boys were supposed to show off this type of thing, why are you shy about it?”, I winked.
“I wouldn’t have thought you could be so stereotypical”, Brad complained, “and in any case I am not shy, a friend gave me a shirt and I see no reason to either advertise it or hide it”.
“Uhm uh”, I nodded teasingly.
“So we should go see Alice this morning”, I said, shifting the conversation.
And that’s what we did as soon as we reached FoodTech labs. We foun
d her in the culture room, already busy with our milk sample. She was in an excited state and gestured us to have look at what happened under the microscope.
“You were right”, I said, “the bacteria hardly move now”.
“Bingo!”, she exclaimed, “What is strange is that there is still some food around for them, so I don’t understand why their metabolism seems slowed down”.
“We could call Sandeep again”, Brad suggested, “maybe he can run some more analyses on this sample as he had offered to”.
“Sure”, I agreed, “in the meanwhile, do you guys want to go talk with McMurrich?”.
“Well, ‘want’ is an overstatement”, Brad said, “but I suppose we can”.
When mcMurrich opened the door of her office and saw the three of us she raised her brows and said, “What can I do for you?” in a way that hinted a bitter mood.
We explained how the bacteria behaved, how they would multiply rapidly and then stop moving.
“Well, which bacteria are we talking about?”, she asked frowning.
“That’s the issue”, said Alice, “I cannot pin them down”.
“You cannot pin them down?”, McMurrich asked with genuine surprise, which surprised me in turn.
She thought in silence for a moment. “I have some contacts at the DNA Research Center, they might be able to help us find some answers”.
We were about to leave McMurrich’s office when she picked up the phone and gestured us to wait, raising the index finger.
“Hello Mark, this is Janet”, she said, “I would need somebody to run some analyses and I was wondering if you could help”.
The guy named Mark said something on the other hand of the line
“I have people in the office now”, McMurrich replied curtly, before explaining what we needed.
McMurrich’s expression was pleased as Mark spoke on the other end, although she smiled just the time required to thank Mark and hang up.
“Someone will help you tomorrow morning”, she said, “Bring your samples, all the ones you have, and the pure polymer too. They’ll need it to interpret clearly what is in your samples”.
She seemed ready to dismiss us when she added, “Ask for Mark Gill at the reception when you get to the center”.
When we left McMurrich’s office we looked at each other.
Lethal Discoveries Page 5