Fire in the Firefly (20 page)

An interval, longer than expected, before her reply.

What a relief! I'd hate to think you'd moved up to that guy's level of delusion. Sure you want to waste time eating out? I cook, you know.

H
e is strongly tempted, but that would be going too far. That would stretch morality beyond the point where even Roebuck is willing to escort it. And besides, he has promised himself not to set foot in her house until the issue of his fertility is conclusively resolved.

No worries, I've booked off the whole afternoon. I'm in the mood for oysters. As it happens, I can stay out late …

Untrue. Roebuck is scheduled to deliver Morgan to her Monday soccer practice, 4:45 PM, sharp. But by that time he is fairly certain circumstances will radically have altered. Lily's answer arrives with the rhythm of an Attic chant.

Noon, then.

Pick me up at noon.

Roebuck books a table at
Crème de la Mer
for 12:30 PM. He has just logged out of the restaurant's website when a fresh email pings in from Anne, who prefers to use caps when corresponding with her husband.

JULIUS, TWO REMINDERS. PLEASE NOTE:

ONE: YOU NEED TO PICK UP KATIE FOR BALLET AT 5:00 PM
TODAY.

TWO: YOU NEED TO GET MORGAN TO HER SOCCER GAME AT 4:45
MONDAY
.

He was certainly aware of his responsibilities Monday with regard to Morgan, but it's true that Katie's ballet this afternoon had temporarily escaped him. Roebuck's plan was to stop in at the pharmacy on the way home. No matter; plenty of time Monday morning.

It's late evening. Roebuck has washed his face, brushed his teeth, and put on the soft flannel pyjamas he has preferred for several years and which Anne has disliked for almost as long. His new reading glasses are positioned on his nose and an advance copy of Malcolm Gladwell's latest, opened to page one, rests on his chest. Roebuck's intention is to read a chapter then slip as quickly as possible into sleep. Anne is speaking.

“Don't forget, Monday I have that session with our new yogini. So it's you taking Morgan to soccer.”

Her recent email had spelled out his responsibilities quite clearly, but saying so would sound like bickering. He yawns and, when his jaw rehinges, says, “So you've given up on Willow?”

He is completely wiped. All through this afternoon Roebuck has been trying not to think about tomorrow's lunch and concentrate instead on how solidly he hopes to sleep tonight. He is not normally troubled by jet lag, but that whirlwind
back-and
-forth to Asia is still messing with his system. He hasn't slept well since Manila.

Anne's reaction warns him that he's touched a sore spot. “Honestly, that woman!” Whether this refers to Yasmin or the new yoga instructor, Roebuck isn't certain. “Once she gets something into her head, there's no stopping her.”

So it's Yasmin. Amen to that. He takes off his glasses and aligns them on the spine of his book. Anne circles the room, lowering blinds, and drawing curtains. “This one spent six months at some ashram in Rishikesh, so she's all the rage …”

Roebuck gives some thought to asking if a female yoga master can be properly called a yoga mistress, but has the good sense to set that one aside. He's too tired anyway …

“All this kundalinic energy,” Anne says, “and the Shakti goddess and serpent power … and don't forget the sacred sacrum bone.”

He feels the mattress tilt beside him and opens his eyes.

“Really, whatever happened to just working up an honest sweat?”

He has registered an anomaly here, though not as fully as he knows he should. His wife is lying on her side beside him, head resting on her hand, watching his face. It has been a long while since she has been on his bed like this with both feet off the floor.

“I bought you new pyjamas.”

“I like these ones.” Anne has often bought him new pyjamas. There's a drawer full.

“You've had them forever. Time for a change.”

“That's why I like them.” Roebuck yawns; his eyes have settled shut. “The longer you've had something, the stronger your attachment.” He is aware that this too, has perilous implications as a marketing platform, but never mind. “I'm attached” is the best he can manage.

Anne lays a finger on his cheek. “What a nice thing to say.”

He feels the touch, but distantly. He does not hear his wife get up and return to her own room.

Smart is to stupid what thought is to belief.

The Collected Sayings of Julius Roebuck

B
y now he has begun to panic. No, not panic. Roebuck checks the dashboard clock. It's 10:22 AM. He's lost track of how many pharmacies he has stopped at already. Half a dozen, at least.

More.

By this time he is well out into the suburbs, or what he considers suburbs; parts of the city there's no reason for anyone to go; endless tracts of endless strip malls. Roebuck marvels that all these people could live so far away. He is waiting at a stoplight, deciding which way to turn. Every direction is more of the same.

He spots a faded billboard straight ahead and rolls across another intersection.

It's one of those vast,
wind-swept
plazas that must have been at one time anchored by a megastore, now departed. A
flat-roofed
hulk squats in the centre of a fissured parking lot, boarded up where glass has been replaced with sheets of greying plywood. Remnants of enterprise cling to the perimeter. Roebuck coasts past a dimly lit barber shop, an Afghan family restaurant, and a
pay-day
loan establishment before he spots the drugstore. This—or at the very latest, the one after this—will be his last chance. He is
forty-five
minutes, at least, from his office and his 11:00 AM with Daniel Greenwood.

But this place holds out hope. A bell on a string chimes as he opens the door. Roebuck is encouraged by the air of gauntness; an auspicious blare of vacant white: pale dropped ceiling, bleached tile floor, stark fluorescent light casting shadows over empty shelves. A
red-faced
,
bulb-shaped
pharmacist sits on a wooden chair behind his counter leafing through a tabloid of the kind that still puts topless women on page two. No one else is on the premises. Roebuck feels his pulse begin to race. He keeps his voice pleasant, modulated, unconcerned.

“I'm looking for syrup of ipecac,” he says.

Roebuck smiles and places his hands on the counter, bracing. He is growing used to the reaction. The first one looked at him as if him he'd ordered a dose of Rohypnol with a lollypop to go. This was just around the corner from his house, a
big-box
drug mart a few blocks from Zach's school. Roebuck had walked serenely past the rows of exfoliating creams and oral hygiene products to the prescription desk where—innocently—he'd made his request. The woman behind the counter took a full step back. “That product has been taken off the shelves! You can't buy that here!”

Roebuck now knows he is an idiot for not having seen to this sooner.

The next place was the same again. Little by little, stop by stop—as he wound his way further and further into the suburban hinterlands—he has pieced the facts together. Sale of ipecac has been restricted or banned outright. On this point he is not completely certain, and therein lies his hope. “That's what killed Karen Carpenter!” one of them informed him, lip curling. Roebuck had forgotten Karen Carpenter.

He has no Plan B.

His one ambition, fading fast, has been to find a pharmacy that still keeps some in stock. This sad little shop is the likeliest he's seen so far.

It has been difficult, maintaining poise. Reaction to his request has been so uniformly negative, so wholly
guilt-inducing
, that Roebuck has begun to feel a smear of criminality. He reminds himself to straighten his shoulders and not to lick his lips. The pharmacist removes his eyes from his paper and ogles.

“Syrup of ipecac, please,” Roebuck says again,
dry-mouthed
.

This one's smock is striped, alternating blue and white. A large
tear-drop
stain rises and falls above the belly; its shape is reminiscent of Sri Lanka. Serendip.

“Aren't supposed to sell that.”

Hope explodes in Roebuck's chest like summer lightning. He does lick his lips; he can't help it.

“I know,” he says, his voice like sandpaper.

The pharmacist does not blink, seems incapable of blinking. A carotene anemone of hair fans softly from his nostrils as the air flows in and out. Sri Lanka bobs and settles on a swell of gut.

“Wait here.”

Roebuck battles down the sudden fear that someone out of sight is calling the police. He stands firmly by the counter, hands in his pockets, alone in the deserted shop.

Serendip emerges from a room in the back with a dusty cardboard carton. He sets it on the counter and swipes a rag across the lid; orange bristles curling at the joints of each knuckle, poor man.

The lid comes off, scattering dust. Inside Roebuck counts a half a dozen plastic bottles. The pharmacist picks one out in silence and passes it across the counter. The label is the same as in all the videos. A thought comes and goes—Roebuck pushes it away—that he's been spending too much time in the company of small plastic containers.

“How much?”

A price is named.

“How much for the box?”

A larger sum. Roebuck pays with cash and leaves with his cache of ipecac cradled in his arms, saved.

It's 10:44 AM.

“Epigamic?” Greenwood squints and interrupts himself. “
You look all out of breath. Are you okay?”

“It's Greek,” Roebuck says. “From the root
epi-
, meaning ‘close in space, and time', and
gamos
, meaning ‘marriage.' It's used to describe attractiveness to the opposite sex, as in the colours of certain birds …”

“And there you go again. You're obsessed.” Greenwood is now peering at him closely. “You sure you're okay? You look bagged.”

“I'm fine, Daniel. Thanks for asking. Just that I'm still a little tired from that run to
the Philippines, is
all.”

“Are we going to talk about that?”

“Yes. Well, no. We
were
going to talk about it. But now we're out of time.”

“What do you mean, out of time? You're the one who showed up late!”

“Sorry. My morning got completely screwed. But we do need to discuss the epigamic angle. That's the important thing. Did I ever tell you that I gave some serious thought to using it as a name for the agency, back when I started?” Roebuck allows himself a shade of reminiscence. “Too esoteric.” He sighs.

Greenwood isn't interested in history or esotery either. “I'm trying to wrap my head around what you're saying. You want to use
sexual
attractiveness to sell fish goo?”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, Daniel, but sex is what's been driving this campaign since its inception. And anyway, it was you who got us here.”

Now it's Greenwood's turn to sigh.

“When I accidentally spilled some on you. Was it last month already? Time does fly.”

“That was no accident. And you didn't spill. You
squirted
!”

“I think the better verb is
spray
or
mist
. Anyway, that's what got me thinking of cologne. That began the process.”

“Where are you going with this?”

Roebuck has returned to his feet. He'd collapsed in Greenwood's chair, but now his wind is back. “What I'd like you to explore, Daniel, is the epigamic possibilities in Ripreeler's new pheromone bait.”

“But it's supposed to make fish want to
feed
, not fuck! Isn't that what they told you at that place in Manila?”

“More or less. And that, my friend, is why they hire people like you and me to see beyond what they do. And by the way, I don't think fish actually fuck. Not in the same sense we do.”

“Then how do they make baby fish?”

Roebuck is angling toward the door. “Let's leave that ponderable aside for the moment. It's people we're selling to, not fish. And people—I promise—are interested in sexual attraction. That's what we want to play with in this campaign …”

“And
that's
what I'm not getting.”

“Now, now, Daniel. I'm sure there are certain people who under certain circumstances might conceivably find you attractive.”

“Funny. You're so funny. Please explain the epigamic qualities of fish goo.”

Roebuck checks his watch. It's a
twenty-minute
drive to Lily's. “Are you aware that cat urine is used as a key component of perfumes? Beaver oils and deer musk too. They farm civet cats in China, strictly for their musk. Perfumers use it as a base note.”

“You're telling me you want to market this stuff as a perfume for fish?”

“Not fish. Fish are not our customers.
People
are our customers. Why do I have to keep telling you that? Not as a perfume for fish. As a perfume for people.”

“Are you insane? It reeks! I told you. I had to throw that shirt away.”

“So presumably, does civet musk. Reek, I mean. They're closely related to skunks, you know.”

“Sometimes I don't believe what comes out of you.”

“Neither did the Ripreelers when I told them they should put their fishing lures in the ears of fashion models. It's the same campaign, Daniel. One is a continuation of the other. Think
epigamic
.”

“You can't make
everything
conform to that.”

“Yes, you can. And yes we do. That's
our
base line. Go back and watch the reels. There's flow to this campaign that has everything to do with that. You've watched the reels, haven't you?”

“Of course I've watched the reels! The Ripreeler campaign is why I'm here!”

“And here I thought it was my mentorship.”

Greenwood has no reply, which is just as well because Roebuck is already out the door. “Use your creativity,
Daniel-not
-Dan,” he says over his shoulder. “That's why
you
are here.”

“You know I cancelled my other appointments for this!”

But Roebuck is too far gone to answer.

“You're late.”

Roebuck has checked his watch as he pressed the bell and is aware of his delinquency. He notes too that Lily has opened the door with a mostly empty glass of wine in hand.

“Yes. But only fourteen minutes.”

He has driven through three amber lights and nearly clocked another cyclist. Lily stands aside and gestures him in, but Roebuck holds his ground. He has left his motor running. “We don't want to lose our table,” he says, eyeing the pack of boys in
low-slung
pants and hoodies cruising past his car. Verisimilitude demands its risk.

“You're hot to trot for this seafood place.”

“Like I said, I'm in the mood for oysters.”

They have discussed, over other lunches, the aphrodisiac possibilities of bivalves; the likelihood that such qualities exist. Lily dislikes the taste, even more the texture, and disbelieves; Roebuck loves a plate of oysters and consequently doesn't care. He is wholly truthful when he tells her that the aphrodisiac is Lily herself, not whatever dish he eats beforehand. But he does enjoy a plate of Malpeques with a side of coarsely grated horseradish and a shot of oily jalapeño.