Immortality (5 page)

Mary kissed him on the cheek and dragged him off to see her latest work of art. She had it pinned on the refrigerator with pink ladybug magnets. The painting was a watercolor of the ocean and gulls and an island in bright sunlight.

“Daddy, I want to show you my picture of you... I’ll get it. Stay here.”

Julie came into the kitchen. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a red blouse. Her eyes could say more than any woman he knew. Deep brown and moist like pools of warm emotion. They seemed to move over his face, taking in the new lines, the subtle hints.

“You look unhappy,” she said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine... I was thinking of taking Mary to the beach this weekend.”

Julie sat down in a chair beside him. She picked up his hand and rested it between hers. A vague sensation of electricity moved along his arm. The feeling was pleasant. She was leaning forward. Her eyes were only inches from his. He leaned back a little. He felt a sensation of dizziness. Had he taken his insulin this morning?

“Something is bothering you,” she said. “I can see it. You’re not drinking again, are you?”

“No, of course not. I know it’s bad for diabetics to drink. Wreaks havoc with the old blood sugar levels.”

“I’m worried about you…”

~

The sun would be setting in a few hours. The air was still unseasonably warm from the Santa Ana winds. Mark sat in a deckchair on his roof. His townhouse was on the canals in Venice Beach, a block from the Pacific. Over the roof of the building in front of him, he could see the ocean meeting the horizon. The water seemed to reach up to fill half the sky. The brine scented wind conjured memories of him and Julie sailing on the bay. A pitcher of margaritas sat on a glass coffee table. He was fixing himself his third. He wet the rim of the glass, then pressed it into a dish filled with salt. The iced margarita mix was still a cold slush.

His stomach grumbled. Gracy would be home from her classes soon. Maybe they’d go out for something to eat. He’d been on the roof for over an hour watching the ducks swim in the canal. For the first drink or so he’d been thinking about Julie and what he had done to her, but those thoughts had stopped and now he was just happy to sail on pleasant dreams. Occasionally, a few seagulls would show up at the canal’s edge, poke around a bit, and then leave. He realized he was enjoyably drunk and slurped some more of his margarita.

The steel door leading to the roof opened with a familiar creaking. Mark looked up. It was Gracy. A gold colored beer can was dangling from one of her fingers by its plastic six-pack loops. She was wearing jeans and one of the tropical shirts that he’d bought her for their trip to the Bahamas. Her fingernails were pink. Her eyes were a coral blue. She was a stunning creature. His world never failed to change in her presence.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Having a party – want to join me?”

“I don’t know. My mother warned me about guys like you.”

“I promise to be good.”

“Hope not,” she said.

Survivors

Dr. Kathy Morrison stared at her reflection in the mirror. An hour from now, a blind date would be knocking on her door. Her hair was okay but her makeup was not. She started to make her face over again. She knew she was acting crazy but couldn’t help it. She was a very attractive woman but had never been confident in her beauty. During her years at Harvard Medical, she had dated an endless procession of soon-to-be doctors. None of the relationships had lasted, and with each ending she had lavished greater and greater blame onto herself. At the odd moments when she dared to look back, she saw an entire life filled with blame.

During her final year of medical school, she had met and married Barry Lakeman, a successful surgeon who had been brought in to lecture on liver transplants. Barry the great, Barry the ego. She had dumped his last name along with the marriage two years, twelve days, and – she glanced at a bathroom clock – six hours ago. She could still feel
that feeling
from the day when she had come home early, walked into their bedroom, and found Barry thrusting furiously between the legs of the neighbor’s nineteen-year-old daughter. That evening, Barry’s stellar defense had been that the girl was no virgin, just a neighborhood slut who had chased him relentlessly and caught him at a moment of weakness.

Kathy set her lipstick down. She was getting angry and knew from experience that applying makeup in this frame of mind led to undesirable results. She went into the kitchen, drank some Diet Coke, and tried to relax. This was only a blind date; she didn’t have to marry him. A cat mewed from beyond the kitchen.

“Tolstoy, here baby,” she called.

A gray Siamese with blue eyes sauntered into the kitchen. He stopped at her feet, batted her slipper once, then ducked out of sight behind the far end of the table. Kathy laughed and thought
typical Tolstoy.
He looked so cute at his games. He never cuddled and preferred catnip mice to food. Kathy wondered where the other little monster was hiding. The third member of the Morrison household was a seal point Persian named Socrates, ‘Socks’ for short, in honor of a past feline member of The White House.

Kathy considered the cats two of her best friends. She lavished them with everything she imagined they’d crave. She fed them almost exclusively on people-food and in the living room they had a kitty condo: a scratching post that ran from ceiling to floor, with lookout platforms and a cylindrical den at the top. The kitty condo had been very expensive before she’d had it recovered with the same Berber carpeting that was on the floor. One of Kathy’s closer friends, of the human variety, had once said that she treated her cats better than she treated herself. Her friend was right.

Kathy opened a box of chocolate truffles to go with her Diet Coke. It was time to get a grip and climb out of this funky mood. She’d done well... hadn’t she? At forty-two, she was a respected medical researcher. She had friends who really cared. She had a very desirable condo in the exciting Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, the Greenwich Village of the South, and she loved it. Countless distractions greeted her the minute she walked out the door: restaurants, movies, bars. Sure, there was crime; but what urban area was free of that particularly human blight?
Buck up kid
, she thought with a smile,
you’re doing fine.
She slurped the last of her Diet Coke and returned to the bathroom to face her makeup and mirror.

~

Kathy was nursing her first drink of the evening. Jack, her blind date, was turning out to be far better than she’d expected. They were seated outside under a canopy while waiting for their table. It had rained earlier and the streets were wet and the air clean. There were reflections of colored lights dappling the roadway. Jack was talking about his job as vice president of marketing for CNN. Kathy was impressed. He was gorgeous and successful. Minutes ago she had started thinking about the condom in her purse. The condom had been there for over a year, buried under makeup and breath mints and keys. It was the kind wrapped in foil. She remembered rediscovering it a month ago and thinking that the edges of the wrapper had looked rusty just like her love life. She stared into Jack’s face. Not hearing a word he was saying, she considered the unavoidable fact that she hadn’t slept with a man for over a year. There it was – an uncomfortable truth. She found herself hoping that Jack would seduce her. She would never have the nerve to take the initiative.

The maitre’d appeared to usher them to their table. Jack slipped the man some folded money and whispered something to him. They were led to a quiet table separated from the others by a row of potted palms.

Two more drinks had arrived, and Kathy was starting to relax. Her half of the conversation was growing more personal.

“I feel like my life’s been stuck in one of those cheap romance novels,” said Kathy. “I was the orphan kid who grew up to be a doctor.”

“Did you know your parents?”

“They died when I was eight. Killed in an auto accident. I ended up at an orphanage run by the Catholic Church. Up until then, I’d seen the inside of a church exactly twice, once for a distant relative’s marriage and once for a Christmas mass. Almost immediately, the sisters at Holy Cross singled me out as a gifted student. It was like I was going to be their example of success, their reason for being nuns. Most of the time I resented it, but their little ploy worked. I got a scholarship to Harvard.”

“Harvard’s a good university,” said Jack. “Me... I went straight from prep school to Yale law, and from there to upper management. It’s sort of a family tradition. Yale, I mean.”

Jack took a sip of his drink. He appeared so refined.

“Did I mention my cousin’s running for congress in Virginia?” said Jack.

“No, that’s got to be exciting,” said Kathy.

Jack glanced at a woman at another table. He’d done that several times since they’d sat down. Kathy was trying to ignore it.

“I’ve been through elections before,” said Jack. “My family’s been in politics for almost a hundred years. We’ve had three US representatives and two state senators. I’m the black sheep for not going into politics.”

“Why didn’t you?” asked Kathy.

“Nothing there except wiping the behinds of a bunch of sniveling constituents and a government pension in the end. Now television, there’s a career with a serious up-side.”

He grinned with his mouth, but the eyes lacked warmth. They had an impenetrable sheen that seemed to deflect all feeling directed toward him and revealed nothing of what was inside.

“I’m a senior VP at CNN. In five years, with my connections, I’ll be president of one of the majors. Forget politics. It’s the media that controls this country.”

As dinner blended into ordering dessert, Kathy began to notice one constant. Jack never stopped talking and the topic seldom veered from money. She knew how much his house cost, his Corvette, even his Armani dinner jacket. She was starting to wonder when he would get around to telling her how much his perfectly straight white teeth cost. Or were they just one more sign of the genetic perfection of his lineage? She just wanted to go home. How could such an enticing beginning have reached so disgusting a finish? At least now the entire evening made sense. Earlier, Kathy had been wondering how such an eligible man had escaped marriage for so long; now she knew.

“Don’t look now,” said Jack.

“Look at what?”

“The couple that just sat down behind you. That’s Laurence De Pontane. He owns Jazz 24, that new club. The guy’s in his sixties and that girl can’t be more than eighteen. Gotta be a hooker... low cut black dress, black pumps... Wonder how much she’s charging him?”

“Excuse me,” said Kathy. “I need to visit the ladies room. If you’re really curious you can ask her.”

Kathy stood, picked up her purse, and headed toward the rest room and the lobby. She hoped she could find a cab fast. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. She’d never run out on a date before, but Jack had succeeded in making her insane.

The morning sun barely penetrated the heavy rain clouds. The world was gray. The CDC facility was a nondescript multistory building of black glass. It was located in an Atlanta Suburb twenty miles from the city line. A small sign read
United States Government, 19002 River Road.
Circling the building and its parking lot was a fifteen-foot fence topped with barbed wire. The entrance gate was electronically controlled, requiring a magnetic badge to enter. The facility received few visitors, and those who did arrive had to be accompanied by a CDC employee. From every corner of the building, remote controlled cameras monitored all movement to the property’s fence line and beyond.

Inside, past the reception lobby and security checkpoint was a research facility more tightly controlled than a nuclear lab, and far more dangerous. Samples of all known pathogens were stored in cryogenic vaults housed below ground level. Included in this little collection were quantities of the twelve known incurable viruses and bacteria. The scientists referred to them as the Twelve Apostles. This was the nation’s most advanced civilian laboratory for research on lethal communicable diseases. Its official designation was BVMC lab, which stood for Bacterial and Viral Maximum Containment. The laboratory exceeded all level-4 containment regulations; it was the most secure facility in the country and probably in the world. The facility’s funding was lavish compared to other CDC installations, due in large measure to its designation as part of the National Defense Network. Somewhat surprisingly, years ago, the talking heads in Congress had actually realized that diseases killed more people than bombs; and that these microbes were a much greater threat to this country than nuclear weapons. The tragedy of 9/11, anthrax mail attacks, the War on Terror, and killer flues had increased the funding to a point that they were running large surpluses every year.

Kathy unlocked the door to her office. The door had a cipher lock as well as a key. Several stories below ground, directly below her feet was the BVMC lab. Her left knee was sore. She’d twisted it last night while jumping into the taxi. That made three times this year she’d aggravated the old injury. She cursed her ex-husband Barry. A month after they’d been married, it had been his idea to go skiing and his encouragement that had led her into trying the advanced slopes. After three minutes of high speed downhill, her leg had been broken in two places and the knee seriously twisted. Her skiing career was over and her life with an occasional cane had begun.

Kathy set her cane against the side of the desk and eased herself into a chair. The cane had almost become her trademark around the office. She seemed to need the walking stick’s support more often with each passing year. She placed an ice pack on the throbbing knee. She now kept a supply of them in a mini-fridge that was part of the office furnishings.

She looked around her second home. Half her desk was a layered mess of files and paperwork and open books. A large computer flat-panel display and keyboard occupied the only clear spot. Her bookcases were precariously stuffed with thick computer printouts and medical reference sets. She was the CDC’s prized expert on immunological response to bacterial and viral pathogens. She was even mildly famous within a small circle of scientists. She had developed very novel ways of studying in vitro immunological reactions to every one of the Twelve Apostles. Her special status as
the CDC expert
gave her the privilege of working twelve-hour days, six days a week, but the pay made up for it. After six years she now pulled in almost as much as a general practitioner who was just starting their career. Barry had gone nuts when she began working for the government whose pay scale averaged one half that of the private sector.