Vox(39)

Finally, we’re alone.

“Fifteen million for the two Tesla MRIs and the PET machine,” Lin says when we hear the double click of the main doors to the lab. “Fifteen million. And then there’s everything else.”

We all know the numbers. The National Science Foundation did all but stick a laughing emoticon on our last grant proposal when we asked for a single MRI setup. I run some rough calculations in my head and come up with a figure.

Lorenzo nods. “Twenty-five million sounds about right. But that’s not what bothers me.”

“Me neither,” I say.

We lock eyes, the three of us, alternately, and I know we’re thinking the same thing. Every piece of equipment is new, shiny, recently installed. And all of it is exactly what we need to work on the Wernicke cure. You don’t set up a lab with twenty-five million dollars’ worth of apparatus in three days. Also, there was that animal smell in the first room. The mice and rabbits have been here a while.

They’ve been here longer than the president’s brother has been in intensive care.

“It’s almost as if they already knew,” Lin says. “As if they’d planned for it.”

I look around, moving from the biochem lab, past the MRI and PET scan rooms, toward the open area housing small equipment. In our world, small doesn’t mean cheap.

“We need to talk,” I say, addressing them both, but I know I’m looking at only Lorenzo.





THIRTY




Lin leaves us in the small-equipment area, with an excuse about wanting to check out the Tesla MRI tubes. For a woman as petite as she is, she has eyes that can bore into me like the punch of a heavyweight boxer. Be careful, those eyes say.

“Come with me.” Lorenzo crooks a long finger and stays quiet until we’re back in the biochem lab at one of the sinks. He turns the water on full blast, then leans on the black epoxy resin counter. Then he taps his right ear and looks up at the ceiling. “Cameras,” he mouths.

I get it. If there are cameras, there are bugs as well. I lean in toward him and pretend to read the report he’s taken from his breast pocket. It’s a utility bill, but I focus on the page as if it’s Fermat’s last theorem.

“You told them we’d be ready in a month? Why?” I say.

“Because Morgan wasn’t going to ask for you. Or Lin. He didn’t want any women on the project. I guaranteed him we’d have a successful trial before the president left for France, but only if you two were on the team.” After a moment, he adds, “And we’re already there.”

I don’t know whether to kiss him or slap him. “You know what happens to me when we’re finished, right? And to Lin?”

Lorenzo looks down at my wrist, at the faded ring of an old burn encircling it. “I know.”

His voice is sad but holds an undercurrent of fury. Once again, I’m reminded of the difference between Patrick and Lorenzo. Both are sympathetic, but only Lorenzo has fight in him.

“Also, I need the bonus money,” he says.

“For what?”

“A personal matter.”

“What kind of personal matter costs a hundred thousand dollars?”

His eyes meet mine over the running tap. “A very personal matter,” he says before turning off the water. “Okay, you feeling better now?”

“Sure,” I say, not understanding whether he’s talking about my puke-fest this morning or our conversation. “Right as rain.”

“Good. Because we’ve got work to do.”

“Wait.” I twist the cold water back on. “When did they contact you about the project?”

“Just after Bobby Myers broke his head.”

I nod. “No one gets two Tesla MRI tubes ordered, delivered, and installed in three days, Enzo. Not even the government.”

He cracks a smile at the old nickname. “Yeah. I know. Come on. Let’s dig Lin out from her techno-orgasm and grab some lunch.” The tap goes off for a second time, and we walk back to the neuro section of the lab as the clock pings one.

“Who do you have in mind for the first subject?” Lorenzo asks.

“Definitely Delilah Ray. I saw her son the other day, you know. He’s our mailman.”

He’s also the man who blinked three times at me and said he had a wife and three daughters. I jot a mental note to be at the door the next time he makes his rounds. Right now, the only other thing on my mind is food.





THIRTY-ONE




This afternoon, as I wind along with the snake of cars on Rock Creek Parkway, hunched down behind the steering wheel to avoid the stares of the male drivers who populate rush hour, I think of Jackie Juarez again.

She called Patrick a cerebral pussy; she’d never hang that epithet around Lorenzo’s neck.

“Men come in two flavors,” she said once. “Real men and sheep. That guy you’re dating—”

“—is a sheep,” I finished. “I suppose you’d think that.”

“I don’t think it, Jeanie. I know it.” Jackie lit a cigarette—she was in her Virginia Slims stage, and You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby kitsch decorated our flat that year—and blew out a cloud of menthol smoke. “I mean, if I were to switch over to your team, I’d want a man who—I don’t know—stood up for me.”