A Nearly Perfect Copy - By Allison Amend Page 0,90

anything for him. And when he broke up with her (kindly, he was always kind), his flaw was that he didn’t love her enough, and she swore she’d never be the one to give more than she got again. When Colin came into her life, and loved her with a passion equal to that she’d felt for Jason, she found herself in the position she considered correct. She loved him, very much, and she liked him too. But there was something about his love for her—patient, completely unconditional—that Elm knew her love for him couldn’t match. And here was the proof. She was willing to risk her marriage on a science experiment.

In the morning, Colin woke her up by pressing an erection into her back and they made love. In the moment, Elm was able to convince herself that this act was creating Ronan; this merging of bodies and souls in this Midtown hotel was sparking the life that would soon grow inside her. But as she lay there while Colin ordered Continental breakfast, wondering aloud as he did each time they stayed in a hotel about why it was called Continental breakfast since no one he knew from the Continent ever ate like that, not even those German wankers, Elm reminded herself that she was taking hormones to sync her cycle with the egg donor’s, and that as much as she wanted to believe that they could re-create Ronan by themselves, it was science that would ultimately provide them with the son that nature had taken away. Colin looked at her and smiled in such an innocent and unadulteratedly happy way that she was almost able to forgive herself.

On the plane from JFK, Elm sat with her head against the window, holding a James Patterson novel she’d bought in the airport. She watched the ground recede and then the clouds bounce off the wing. A drop of water formed on the window, rolled across its plastic surface, and flew off into the expanse of air. Elm was startled when land appeared three hours later, but then remembered that the fastest way to Europe was to fly north and east before turning south again. So that large island would be Greenland, or Nova Scotia. Then she fell asleep and woke, unrested, to the smell of baked croissants coming from the first-class section of the plane. Cruel, to do that to economy passengers. Self-moving freight, she heard they were called by airline staff. Such contempt we all have for our clients, she thought.

Elm had liquidated all the stocks she could, sold her Magritte sketch to a private collector, and emptied her 401(k) (with penalties), but she still needed to come up with $150,000. So far, her deal with Relay had earned her $30,000. She was contemplating taking out a home equity loan, if she could manage to do so online so Colin wouldn’t know about it. Of course, by tax time, he would. But by then she’d be pregnant. She knew she was digging herself into a hole, but she wanted this so badly that she would endure a prison sentence, torture, to have the opportunity to see Ronan one more time. If he could just come home once, after playing baseball in Central Park, and she could smell the outdoors on his hair, the mowed grass and the slightly sweet scent of child perspiration, fragrant, not sour like adult sweat, she would give anything.

Calm down, she told herself, knowing that her hope might be too strong, that it was possible she would need two or three implantations before she got pregnant. Where she would come up with that extra money was beyond her. Maybe she would start stealing art, she joked to herself. At least she knew what was worth stealing.

Tinsley’s had arrested and prosecuted an employee two years ago. He was a new hire, working within the transportation department, and someone reported him walking off with a tiny Giacometti sculpture. He claimed he had removed it by accident and then, when he discovered his mistake, was going to return it the next day, a lame enough story that Elm almost believed him—surely a lie would be better constructed. Security grew tighter after that. All employee bags were searched, even, oddly, on the way into the building.

They served the breakfast, tasteless melon balls and chewy rolls with butter and sugared jelly. She looked down at the Parisian outskirts as the plane descended, trying to see the clinic, but all the