Noble Vision (9 page)

Somewhere on the edge of David’s awareness, he now understood the reason for the employee’s odd behavior. With reflexes primed for shocks, he remained expressionless, except for his eyes, which widened in amazement. He made no attempt to hide being caught. His glance fixed on her, and his astonishment softened to a look that was open, calm, almost tender.

Nicole eyed the starched collar of his shirt and the crisp lines of his suit. He seemed impervious to the stifling heat that wilted the figures around him. His hair formed a black backdrop for his face. His eyes seemed to hold center stage, two green magnets pulling her. His mouth was the mysterious part of the scene, its muscles drawn tight, its next move unknown. She found no trace of the despair punctuating his letters and wondered if she alone knew of an inner struggle he kept hidden from the world. His straight posture and penetrating face suggested a man possessing the capacity to write her letters. His countenance was so proud that it seemed as if a spotlight were shining on him, dimming everyone else by contrast. She thought that the stage, not the street, was the fitting place for such a presence. He looked like the prince of her favorite ballet, the one whose powerful kiss awakens her from a long sleep and delivers her to everlasting happiness.

But he was not a prince in a fairy tale, she reminded herself. He was a real man in the world—her world. She suddenly wanted to force him to blink, to make his eyes turn away first. She cocked her head and looked at him insolently.
I don’t know anything about you
, she thought,
but maybe I know you better than anyone. I know your deepest longings and your worst despair. You tell me. I think you tell
only
me. You
need
me!

He saw the meaning of his letters written on her face, a sight that did cause his eyes to break away from hers, but not in the manner she had intended. His eyes danced over her body in a momentary sweep, too subtle to be rude yet too pointed to be polite, a sweep so palpable it made her suddenly aware of her breasts beneath her thin blouse, her thighs against her slacks, the strange tingling down her throat. When his eyes again met hers, it was she who dropped her glance.

This was the first time he had seen her offstage. Without makeup, she looked younger—and more beautiful. He saw a slender young woman with a slim waist, a swanlike neck, and legs too long for a human form, legs suited to a graceful feline. He liked the contrast between the dainty body and the power of its movements on stage. She looked at once vulnerable and strong.

He was struck most by the arresting face that watched him. The firm set of her mouth showed no trace of the laughter that had enchanted him from the stage; the intensity of the giant blue eyes bore no hint of the gaiety he knew. He saw instead an earnestness that was more haunting than her joy, an earnestness he had not anticipated. He searched her face for a sign of levity, which he knew would set him free of her forever, but he could detect no amusement. He saw only a quiet solemnity that conveyed to him what his letters meant to her.

While they stared at each other, neither one seemed to notice that the traffic light was green and the street clear; either one could have crossed at any moment. They continued to face each other across twelve feet until the light changed and a city bus lumbered into the road between them. After the vehicle passed, Nicole was left with a question. Her eyes darted to the nearby subway entrance, to the stores along the street, to the crowded sidewalk, searching for an answer.

Where did the Phantom go?

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David returned to his office and arranged to take his wife out to dinner. He told himself that he had written his last letter to Nicole. He’d never intended to meet her. He’d certainly never intended to cross the street that afternoon, wrap his arms twice around the slender waist, and press his mouth against hers before any words could be spoken between them. That was just an impulse! Fortunately, the bus had passed, jolting him back to his senses.

“Dr. Lang, are you feeling okay?”

He realized that his secretary had been knocking for a few moments.

“What is it?” he asked the head peering through the door.

“It’s about the chocolates you want sent to your wife. Do you prefer dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white choc—”

“Why don’t you decide?”

“And would you like truffles or—”

“Whatever you think is good.”

“And do you want a note or—”

“Have them scribble my name on a card.”

“Okay.”

She watched him through the shrinking slit in the door she was closing, puzzled by his uncharacteristic curtness.

Trying to tackle the mound of paperwork on his desk, he grabbed a document but instead saw across the page the immense innocence of Nicole’s face. But that was the one thing he must not see, for the delicate figure had been dangerous to him from the start.

The previous summer, in a laboratory that he kept at the university, David had begun an experiment of great importance. By the fall, after hundreds of hours spent isolating his new embryonic protein and scar inhibitor, he hoped to overcome seven years of failed attempts in his research. On the brains of fifty rats, he performed the first of his two operations to regenerate nerve tissue. This experiment, he believed, could finally bring success.

In January, as he was ready to perform the second surgery on the rats to determine whether the new technique worked, he received visitors—inspectors from the Department of Animal Welfare.

“Dr. Lang,” said the chief inspector, Daryl Denkins, a thin man with a colorful bow tie and lifeless eyes, “the approval period for your study is expiring, so we’re here to reevaluate your research and discuss revisions.”

Standing by the door, David stepped aside to let the officials enter, but the annoyance on his face conveyed another message. He remained silent while Denkins and two assistants analyzed his records, examined the animals, and surveyed the premises.

“These physical conditions are stressful, Dr. Lang,” said Denkins after his investigation.

“The conditions aren’t the best, but I manage.”

“I didn’t mean stressful for you, Doctor. I meant for the animals. There are violations here.”

Denkins paused, as if expecting the customary explanations, excuses, apologies, and pleas, but he received none.

“The air vent is clogged. This air is unhealthy for the animals,” continued Denkins.

“But I’ve been breathing the same air they have for months.”

“There are insufficient vitamin supplements in the animals’ feed, resulting in improper nutrition.”

“More improper than the garbage they eat in the subways?”

“There’s a leak in the ceiling, making it substandard.”

“More substandard than the ceiling they have in the sewers?”

“And you haven’t waited for a veterinarian’s approval of your protocol before starting your experiments. That’s a major violation.”

“But I operate on
humans
all the time. Don’t you think I can handle a few rats?”

“A veterinarian is needed to act in the animals’ behalf.”

“Who acts in my behalf?”

“Dr. Lang, you don’t seem to understand.”

“I don’t.”

“These animals have rights.”

“I understand only that I have none.”

“Of course you have rights, Doctor.”

“Do I?”

“It’s a free country.”

“Then I’d like you to get out of here, so I can finish my experiments.”

Denkins laughed, but the sound was not pleasant. “You know, Dr. Lang, I don’t appreciate your attitude. In fact, I have enough here to shut you down.”

David remembered little of what occurred over the next two days. He could recall only vaguely the order to seize the animals; the police removing cages of rats; Inspector Denkins giving him a list of infractions and telling him that he had forty-eight hours to correct them or else he would be shut down permanently; the cancellation of all of his surgeries and appointments; the repeated exhortations to Denkins not to harm the rats; the forty-eight sleepless hours that he spent correcting the violations; the appearance that he made afterward at the Department of Animal Welfare, with the document necessary to reclaim the animals; Denkins informing him that he was too late, that his time had already expired, and that the fifty rats—on which thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of effort had been spent, because they held the key to the mystery of the nervous system—had just been transferred to a downtown facility to be destroyed by lethal injection.

“Then I’ll pick up the animals at the downtown facility right now, before they’re destroyed.”

“You can’t do that, Doctor.”

“Why not?”

“Because Downtown won’t give the animals to anyone without our authorization.”

“Then call the people downtown and tell them to give the animals to me.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because your time expired, and the paperwork was already processed. Downtown has to follow the orders on the paperwork.”

“Then get the paperwork back and change it.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“There’s no provision for doing that.” Denkins shrugged helplessly.

“If you seized the animals to protect them, then why are you going to kill them?”

“Those are the rules,” Denkins replied tonelessly, his listless eyes a bland contrast to his polka-dotted bow tie.

“Then why not destroy them
after
I finish my experiment?”

“But, Doctor, there’s no provision for doing that.”

David argued the matter with the inspector’s superiors, but to no avail. He had to return to the hospital without the animals. For the rest of the day, he performed his work with the same ruthless precision that was as much a part of him as his signature, but without the quiet excitement that had always colored his manner. He was like a computer performing prodigious feats by rote, without the pride, ambition, and joy of a human engine. That evening he stared out the window of his office, watching a winter storm sweep through the street below. The blizzard reduced the normal buzz of traffic to the plaintive screech of a few skidding wheels. The lively dots of people always speckling the pavement at dusk had disappeared, but for a few shivering bundles huddled against doorways, waiting for buses that would not come. He stood motionless at his window, as if he, too, were waiting for something that would not arrive. There were articles to read, papers to write, brain scans to study, sketches to draw, notes to record, but he could not summon the energy to peel his weary eyes from the frozen glass.

He left his office and wandered in the snow, having no desire to go home, to eat, or even to join the reddened faces behind the frosted tavern windows along his path. No activity interested him, not even the act of pulling up his collar to fend off the cold. He drifted as aimlessly as the branches that the wind pulled off the trees and tossed across the desolate streets.

There was a growing scarcity of research animals, making the rats that he had lost irreplaceable. Except for a few cats, he had no other research animals and no hopes of obtaining them—at a time when he needed many more to make progress! His years of work seemed as futile as the car wheels spinning on the icy streets beside him—he could not find traction on a road that led to success, to achievement, to triumph. Then beyond the white brush strokes of snow, he spotted a flashing sign announcing a new production at the Taylor Theater. The sign brazenly proclaimed the existence of that which he thought impossible:
Triumph
. Was the marquee right, or was he? He walked to the theater. The billboard of the show’s star suggested a universe in which defeat did not exist. Looking at the proud posture and immense gaiety of the young dancer on the poster, he decided that there was, after all, something he wanted to do. He bought a ticket to the show.

That night he watched a production that took liberties—with nothing less than the story of the creation of mankind. Where actual legend told of woes and miseries irrevocably unleashed on the human race,
Triumph
told of its salvation. That evening David discovered a magical presence that made victory as certain as the sunrise: Nicole Hudson.

When he left the theater, David no longer felt the biting cold. The warm cone of the spotlight seemed to cover him, sealing him from the elements. For the first time in months, his passion for his work was rekindled. Something of immense importance was possible to him, and every fiber in his body burned for it. Then he remembered the unfocused eyes of Inspector Daryl Denkins. Could he surrender his solemn quest, David wondered, not to a noble enemy whom he would fight proudly at the barricade but to a defender of . . . rodents?

The hour was late and the streets were deserted that stormy night. It was easy to return to the hospital for his car, gather cages from the lab, drive to the unguarded animal holding facility in a deserted area by the waterfront, break in through a window, find—to his utter relief!—that his rats had not yet been destroyed, and take some of them and leave the rest, so as not to arouse suspicion. He opened the cages of other animals, scribbled across the wall in crayon
Liberate the animals and cage the people—that’s what the world deserves
, smashed the windows, returned to the lab, and worked feverishly through the night. Then as the sun rose after the storm with bold red rays across a new blue sky, he learned that his procedure worked. It worked! For the first time in seven years, success!