The Corrections: A Novel (45 page)

“Good Q, Enid, but guess what: it’s wonderfully legal.” He examined one of the checks somewhat absently and then tucked them all into his shirt pocket. “Excellent question,
though. Really ace Q. Professional ethics prevent me from selling the drugs I prescribe, so I’m confined to dispensing free samples, which luckily conforms to Pleasurelines ‘own
tutto è incluso
policy. Regrettably, since Asian has yet to receive full American regulatory approval, and since most of our cruisers are American, and since Aslan’s designer and maker, Farmacopea S.A., therefore has no incentive to provide me with complimentary samples sufficient to the extraordinary demand, I do find it necessary to purchase the complimentary samples in bulk. Hence my consulting fee, which might otherwise strike some as inflated.”

“What’s the actual cash value of the eight sample packs?” Enid asked.

“Being complimentary and strictly not for resale, they have no actual cash value, Eartha. If you’re asking what it costs me to provide this service to you free of charge, the answer is about eighty-eight dollars, U.S.”

“Four dollars a pill!”

“Correct. Full dosage for patients of ordinary sensitivity is thirty milligrams per day. In other words, one caplet. Four dollars a day to feel great: most cruisers consider it a bargain.”

“And tell me, though, what it is? Ashram?”

“Aslan. Named, I’m told, for a mythical creature in ancient mythology. Mithraism, sun-worshippers, and so forth. I’d be making it up if I told you any more. But my understanding is Asian was a great benign Lion.”

Enid’s heart leaped in its cage. She took a SampLpak from the desk and examined the pills through the bubbles of hard plastic. Each tawny-gold caplet was scored twice for ease of splitting and emblazoned with a many-rayed sun—or was it the silhouetted head of a richly maned lion? ASLAN® Cruiser™ was the label.

“What’s it do?” she said.

“Absolutely nothing,” Hibbard replied, “if you are in perfect mental health. However, let’s face it, who is?”

“Oh, and if you’re not?”

“Aslan provides state-of-the-art factor regulation. The best medications now approved for American use are like two Marlboros and a rum-and-Coke, by comparison.”

“It’s an antidepressant?”

“Crude term. ‘Personality optimizer’ is the phrase I prefer.”

“And ‘Cruiser’?”

“Aslan optimizes in sixteen chemical dimensions,” Hibbard said patiently. “But guess what. Optimal for a person enjoying a luxury cruise isn’t optimal for a person functioning in the workplace. The chemical differences are pretty subtle, but if you’re capable of fine control, why not offer it? Besides Asian ‘Basic,’ Farmacopea sells eight custom blends. Asian ‘Ski,’ Asian ‘Hacker,’ Asian ‘Performance Ultra,’ Asian ‘Teen,’ Asian ‘Club Med,’ Asian ‘Golden Years,’ and I’m forgetting what? Asian ‘California.’ Very popular in Europe. The plan is to bring the number of blends up to twenty within two years. Asian ‘Exam Buster,’ Asian ‘Courtship,’ Asian ‘White Nights,’ Asian ‘Reader’s Challenge,’ Asian ‘Connoisseur Class,’ yada yada yada. American regulatory approval would accelerate the process, but I’m not holding my breath. If you’re asking what’s specific to ‘Cruiser’? Mainly that it switches your anxiety to the Off position. Turns that little dial right down to zero. Asian ‘Basic’ won’t do that, because to function day to day a moderate anxiety level is desirable. I’m on ‘Basic’ right now, for example, because I’m working.”

“How—”

“Less than one hour. That’s the glory of it. The action is effectively instantaneous. That’s compared with up to four weeks for some of the dinosaurs they’re still using Stateside. Go on Zoloft today and you’re lucky to feel better a week from Friday.”

“No, but how do I refill the prescription at home?”

Hibbard looked at his watch. “What part of the country are you from, Andie?”

“The Midwest. St. Jude.”

“OK. Your best bet’s going to be Mexican Aslan. Or, if you have friends vacationing in Argentina or Uruguay, you might work something out with them. Obviously, if you like the medication and you want total ease of access, Pleasurelines hopes you’ll take another cruise.”

Enid pulled a scowl. Dr. Hibbard was very handsome and charismatic, and she liked the idea of a pill that would help her enjoy the cruise and take better care of Alfred, but the doctor seemed to her a trifle glib. Also, her name was Enid. E-N-I-D.

“You’re really, really, really sure this will help me?” she said. “You’re really super certain this is the best thing for me?”

“I ‘guarantee’ it,” Hibbard said with a wink.

“What does ‘optimize’ mean, though?” Enid said.

“You’ll feel emotionally more resilient,” Hibbard said. “More flexible, more confident, happier with yourself. Your anxiety and oversensitivity will disappear, as will any morbid concern about the opinion of others. Anything you’re ashamed of now—”

“Yes,” Enid said. “Yes.”

“‘If it comes up, I’ll talk about it; if not, why mention it?’ That will be your attitude. The vicious bipolarity of shame, that rapid cycling between confession and concealment—this is a complaint of yours?”

“I think you understand me.”

“Chemicals in your brain, Elaine. A strong urge to confess, a strong urge to conceal: What’s a strong urge? What else can it be but chemicals? What’s memory? A chemical change! Or maybe a structural change, but guess what. Structures are made of proteins! And what are proteins made of? Amines!”

Enid had the dim worry that her church taught otherwise—something about Christ being both a hunk of flesh hanging from a cross and also the Son of God—but questions of doctrine had always seemed to her forbiddingly complex, and Reverend Anderson at their church had such a kindly face and often in his sermons told jokes or quoted
New Yorker
cartoons or secular writers such as John Updike, and he never did anything disturbing like telling the congregation that it was damned, which would have been absurd since everyone at the church was so friendly and nice, and then, too, Alfred had always pooh-poohed her faith and it was easier just to stop believing (if in fact she ever had believed) than to try to beat Alfred in a philosophical argument. Now Enid believed that when you were dead you were really dead, and Dr. Hibbard’s account of things was making sense to her.

Nevertheless, being a tough shopper, she said: “I’m just a dumb old midwesterner, so, but changing your personality doesn’t sound right to me.” She made her face long and sour to be sure her disapproval wasn’t overlooked.

“What’s wrong with change?” Hibbard said. “Are you happy with the way you feel right now?”

“Well, no, but if I’m a different person after I take this pill, if I’m
different
, that can’t be right, and—”

“Edwina, I’m completely sympathetic. We all have irrational attachments to the particular chemical coordinates of our character and temperament. It’s a version of the fear of death, right? I don’t know what it will be like not to be me anymore. But guess what. If ’I’m’ not around to tell the difference, then what do ‘I’ really care? Being dead’s only a problem if you know you’re dead, which you never do because you’re dead!”

“But it sounds like the drug makes everybody the same.”

“Uh-uh. Beep-beep. Wrong. Because guess what: two
people can have the same personality and still be individuals. Two people with the same IQ can have completely different knowledge and memories. Right? Two very affectionate people can have completely different objects of affection. Two identically risk-averse individuals may be avoiding completely different risks. Maybe Asian does make us a little more alike, but guess what, Enid. We’re all still individuals.”

The doctor unleashed an especially lovable smile, and Enid, who calculated that he was netting $62 per consultation, decided that she’d now received her money’s worth of his time and attention, and she did what she’d known she would do since she first laid eyes on the sunny, leonine caplets. She reached into her purse and from the Pleasurelines envelope that held her slot winnings she took a handful of cash and counted out $150.

“All joy of the Lion,” Hibbard said with a wink as he slid the stack of SampLpaks across his desk. “Do you need a bag for that?”

With a pounding heart Enid made her way to the bow of the “B” Deck. After the nightmare of the previous day and nights she again had a concrete thing to look forward to; and how sweet the optimism of the person carrying a newly scored drug that she believed would change her head; how universal the craving to escape the givens of the self. No exertion more strenuous than raising hand to mouth, no act more violent than swallowing, no religious feeling, no faith in anything more mystical than cause and effect was required to experience a pill’s transformative blessings.
She couldn’t wait
to take it
. She treaded on air all the way to B11, where happily she saw no sign of Alfred. As if to acknowledge the illicit nature of her mission, she threw the dead bolt on the hall door. Further locked herself inside the bathroom. Raised her eyes to their reflected twins and, on a ceremonial impulse, returned their gaze as she hadn’t in months or maybe years. Pushed one golden Asian through the foil backing of its
SampLpak. Placed it on her tongue and swallowed it with water.

For a few minutes she brushed and flossed, a bit of oral housekeeping to pass the time. Then with a shudder of cresting exhaustion she went to her bed to lie and wait.

Golden sunlight fell across the blankets in her windowless room.

He nuzzled her palm with his warm velvet snout. He licked her eyelids with a tongue both sandpapery and slick. His breath was sweet and gingery.

When she came awake the cool halogen lighting in the stateroom wasn’t artificial anymore. It was the cool light of sun from behind a momentary cloud.

I’ve taken the medication, she told herself. I’ve taken the medication. I’ve taken the medication.

Her new emotional flexibility received a bold challenge the next morning when she rose at seven and discovered Alfred curled up fast asleep in the shower stall.

“Al, you’re lying in the shower,” she said. “This is not the place to sleep.”

Having awakened him, she began to brush her teeth. Alfred opened undemented eyes and took stock. “Ugh, I am stiff stiff,” he said.

“What on earth are you doing in there?” Enid gurgled through a fluoride foam, brushing merrily away.

“Got all turned around in the night,” he said. “I had such dreams.”

She found that in the arms of Asian she had new reserves of patience for the wrist-straining wiggle-waggle brushstroke her dentist recommended for the sides of her molars. She watched with low to medium interest as Alfred achieved full uprightness through a multi-stage process of propping, levering, hoisting, bracing, and controlled tipping. A lunatic dhoti of bunched and shredded diapers hung from his loins.
“Look at this,” he said, shaking his head. “Would you look at this.”

“I had the most wonderful night’s sleep,” she answered.

“And how are our floaters this morning?” roving activities coordinator Suzy Ghosh asked the table in a voice like hair in a shampoo commercial.

“We didn’t sink last night, if that’s what you mean,” said Sylvia Roth.

The Norwegians quickly monopolized Suzy with a complicated inquiry regarding lap swimming in the larger of the
Gunnar Myrdal
’s pools.

“Well, well, Signe,” Mr. Söderblad remarked to his wife at an indiscreet volume, “this is indeed a great surprise. The Nygrens have a lengthy question for Miss Ghosh this morning.”

“Yes, Stig, they do always seem to have a lengthy question, don’t they? They are very thorough people, our Nygrens.”

Ted Roth spun half a grapefruit like a potter, stripping out its flesh. “The story of carbon,” he said, “is the story of the planet. You’re familiar with the greenhouse effect?”

“It’s triple tax-free,” Enid said.

Alfred nodded. “I am familiar with the greenhouse effect.”

“You have to actually physically clip the coupons, which sometimes I forget,” Enid said.

“The earth was very hot four billion years ago,” said Dr. Roth. “The atmosphere was unbreathable. Methane, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide.”

“Of course at our age income matters more than growth.”

“Nature hadn’t learned to break down cellulose. When a tree fell, it lay on the ground and got buried by the next tree that fell. This was the Carboniferous. The earth a lush riot.
And in the course of millions and millions of years of trees falling on trees, almost all the carbon got taken from the air and buried underground. And there it stayed until yesterday, geologically speaking.”

“Lap swimming, Signe. Do you suppose that this is similar to lap dancing?”

“Some people are disgusting,” said Mrs. Nygren.

“What happens to a log that falls today is that funguses and microbes digest it, and all the carbon goes back into the sky. There can never be another Carboniferous. Ever. Because you can’t ask Nature to unlearn how to biodegrade cellulose.”

“It’s called Orfic Midland now,” Enid said.

“Mammals came along when the world cooled off. Frost on the pumpkin. Furry things in dens. But now we have a very clever mammal that’s taking all the carbon from underground and putting it back into the atmosphere.”

“I think we own some Orfic Midland ourselves,” Sylvia said.

“As a matter of fact,” Per Nygren said, “we, too, own Orfic Midland.”

“Per would know,” said Mrs. Nygren.

“I daresay he would,” said Mr. Söderblad.

“Once we burn up all the coal and oil and gas,” said Dr. Roth, “we’ll have an antique atmosphere. A hot, nasty atmosphere that no one’s seen for three hundred million years. Once we’ve let the carbon genie out of its lithic bottle.”

“Norway has superb retirement benefits, hm, but I also supplement my national coverage with a private fund. Per checks the price of each stock in the fund every morning. There are quite a number of American stocks. How many, Per?”

“Forty-six at present,” Per Nygren said. “If I am not mistaken, ‘Orfic’ is an acronym for the Oak Ridge Fiduciary
Investment Corporation. The stock has maintained its value quite well and pays a handsome dividend.”