Vox(36)

Thanks to raging hormones and my own idiocy, the system said “Fuck you” right back. Lorenzo and I went at it three times. One with a condom. The others? Bareback all the way.

Christ, it was good.

Lin takes my hand, bringing me from that afternoon to this morning. “Be careful, honey. You’ve got a lot more to lose than your voice.”

“I know,” I say, and pull myself together just as Morgan knocks at our door.





TWENTY-EIGHT




Morgan leads us along the hall, collects Lorenzo from his office, and pauses with his nose wrinkled. “What’s that smell?” he says.

“I don’t smell anything,” Lorenzo says flatly, but his eyes are smiling at me.

Lin plays along. “Neither do I.”

“Hmph. Well, let’s get to it, people. Lots of ground to cover if we’re going to meet our deadline.”

This is the first I’ve heard about a deadline, and any respect I might have had for Morgan drops down another several notches. He can’t possibly know we’ve already found the Wernicke cure, and I wonder what he’s promised the president. It’s not as if we’re baking a goddamned cake.

“What deadline?” I say.

Morgan hesitates, as if he’s inventing a story to tell us. When he finally speaks, it sounds like a well-rehearsed line. “The president is due to travel to France at the end of June, for the G20 summit. He needs his brother.”

“This is May,” I tell him. “I thought we had more time. The contract didn’t say anything—”

But he cuts me off. “You didn’t really read your contract, Dr. McClellan. If you had, you would have seen a clear deadline of June twenty-fourth, one week before the president flies to Europe. Any more questions?”

“We’re scientists,” I say. “We don’t do deadlines.”

Lorenzo, who has been quiet up until now, shuts his office door. “I’ll explain it to them later, Morgan. Let’s get on with the admin shit so we can start working on your problem.”

I flash him a look of disbelief, as does Lin, but Lorenzo shakes his head. “Later,” he mouths.

Our first stop is the security office, a series of rooms and cubicles staffed by twenty men. It isn’t in our section of the building, which is unpopulated except for Lorenzo, Lin, and myself, but one floor down. There are no windows here, not even on the main door, which Morgan unlocked by inserting a card from the lanyard around his neck into the reader.

“We’re all about security,” he says, leading us through the sea of computers and surveillance equipment toward one of the smaller cubicles.

Lin and I exchange a look.

“Security for what?” I ask.

Morgan doesn’t answer, but I know he’s heard me.

I repeat the question.

“Just general security, Dr. McClellan. Not something you need to worry about.” He turns to the man in the cubicle. “We’ll need card keys for my team, Jack.” Again with the “my.”

Jack grunts but doesn’t smile. I put him at about fifty, maybe pushing sixty. His suit jacket hangs on the chair behind him, wrinkled and well-worn. The white shirt stretches taut against an ample beer belly, and yellowish patches bloom under his arms. His collar is pierced with a silver pin, a blue P in a circle. I wonder if he’s married, if some poor woman has to lie underneath him while he grunts and sweats. Or, if he’s single, is he high enough up in the hierarchy to merit right of access to one of the city’s private men’s clubs? For the second time today, I picture Sonia, twenty years old, playing courtesan, satisfying a monster’s appetite.

“Sit here,” Jack says, nodding to me and indicating the chair next to his desk. “Right hand here, palm down.” He points to a flat screen on the desk, polished to a high shine.

I place my hand on the surface. It’s cold, but not as cold as Jack. The machine whirs, and a band of light scans my handprint.

“Look straight ahead. Don’t smile,” he orders.

The camera in front of me snaps a picture.

“You’re done. Now you.” Jack nods to Lin, and she goes through the same procedure. When Jack grunts another order, she stands up.

“You’re in the dark as much as I am, aren’t you, Jean?” Lin says.

“Shut up,” Jack tells her. He turns to Lorenzo. “Dr. Rossi, please take a seat. Right hand on the screen.”

Asshole, I think.

There are no pictures on Jack’s desk, no family portraits, no school photos of kids against a cloud or forest background, no decorations. His lunch, or what I think is his lunch, is in a crumpled paper bag that looks like it might not stand up to another emptying and refilling. I’m thinking Jack isn’t married and I find the thought appealing. Better to suffer through a few minutes of prodding and poking and heavy breathing once a week than to live with him 24/7.

Lorenzo’s finished, and the printer behind Jack spits out three plastic ID cards. Jack holds out a hand toward Morgan, and they shake. When he holds the same hand out to Lorenzo, nothing happens.

“I don’t think so,” Lorenzo says. “Something might rub off on me.”

This is why I love Lorenzo, or one of about a hundred reasons. Patrick would have shaken hands with the fat creep. Patrick would have smiled and said, “Thanks,” when Jack handed him the laminated key card. Patrick would be seething on the inside, but he’d play the game.