supervising manufacture at official pharmaceutical arm, Ottawa. Worldwide distribution by the end of 2003. In less than a generation kids would be asking their parents “What’s Alzheimer’s?” if they saw it in a movie or a book.
My sweaty fingers pulled words from the newsprint. She’s done it again. A tiny photo of Dr. Pfenzc—how would you pronounce that, I wondered?—and a big one of her, the photogenic one, in a white dress with a big red flower at her shoulder. Her hair in the photo was shorter than when she had left, in fact shorter than when I’d picked her up yesterday. She looked like a nicely-groomed ten year-old boy. I wondered when she had gotten it cut. What city in Europe, what fancy salon, a century-old pair of scissors probably, silver-plated. Must have cost more than our monthly rent.
I scoured the photo for clues. Could be that award banquet she called me from, squiffed on champagne.
(“There’s no minimum drinking age in Europe!”
“I’m pretty sure there is. Where’s Rutger?”
“Beats me.”)
She won an award that night—not the big, main one, but a smaller one. Some chemistry award to add to her display case.
The paper didn’t go into her background, for once. A tiny relief. No mention of the big white wedding cake of a house, the squash court she only used for experiments, all those secret floors underneath like an iceberg, like a Bond villain’s lair; no mention of her labs, her observatories, her factories, her ribbon-cutting ceremonies. Her prizes and magazine articles and thinkpieces and documentaries. She had been Time’s Person Of The Year in 1995 for her HIV cure. The laminated cover she’d given me was still around my house somewhere—the golden child perched on a lab stool, posing with a microscope. People keep trying to prove that she’s a fraud. They’ve all been embarrassed, discredited, publicly shamed for it. She’s legit. Not like me. If someone tried to prove that I was a fraud, they’d be trying to prove a negative, demonstrate the existence of nothing. A nothing in a nothing life.
What was she doing right now? Hopefully sleeping in her iceberg house—or, more likely, pacing like a zoo tiger, out of her mind on espresso and jetlag, her and her ‘big idea.’
It’s the way it’s always been. State of the union. But like she said: I wouldn’t have been so bothered by it if she hadn’t come back and held my life directly up next to hers for comparison, like those laundry commercials with the stained shirt and the clean one.
But when I think about not being her friend any more... it wouldn’t even be like an amputation, where you lose a visible part of yourself, but some violently invasive surgery, where you are left without organs. I can’t imagine that level of pain. And maybe she can’t either, because she hasn’t abandoned me, either, after all these years, when that would be the easier way. When she has already dismissed so much from her life.
The paper vanished from my hands and smacked onto the floor. “Whatcha got there, Osama?”
I didn’t even bother going for it, just sat back on my crate and put on a poker face, the standard when my manager arrived. “Morning, Gino.”
He snorted—but that’s key with bullies, don’t do anything that shows they got a rise out of you—and turned away, heading to the lockup and activating the timeclock so the stockers starting to trickle in could punch our cards. Several people stepped on the paper, right on Johnny’s picture. I flinched each time.
THE PHONE WAS ringing just as I came home; I heard Carla pick up, followed by a delighted squeal. I knew who inspired those kind of noises, and collapsed on the couch to wait.
“It’s Auntie Johnny! You never said she was back!” Carla shouted, dancing in several minutes later. “We talked about school! And haircuts!”
“Gross, girl stuff,” I said, and took the phone, wet from Carla’s eager breath. “J-Dawg.”
“N-Diddy,” she said, formally. “Or is it N-Puffy?”
“Puff-Nicky.”
“My God, we’ll never be rappers.”
“Well, not with that attitude,” I said. “What’s up?”
“There’s sort of a...” In the pause, I heard a highpitched hum, as if she were standing in front of a running microwave. She finally said, “Something kind of big just happened, I think. If it isn’t, then it isn’t, but if it is... I want a witness.”
“Did you literally just murder someone.”
“I’m not answering that question without my attorney present. Can you come over later?”