Vox(49)

In three days, I’ll know if I’ll have to.





FORTY




By the time I arrive at work Lorenzo and Lin are in the lab, heads together, arguing over protein extractions and whether we need to add a primate to the menagerie of lab animals.

“We don’t,” I say. “What we need to do is check out the second MRI room.”

There’s no reason to check the MRI equipment; Lin has already done that. But I’ve been around the machines enough, and heard one subject after another complain about the banging, even with ear protection. Lying in an MRI tube is like snuggling up next to the amp while Eddie Van Halen wails out a guitar solo. In other words, almost painful.

When we’re all in the room, I fire up the machine. The force of some sixty thousand times the earth’s natural magnetic field shakes my bones. I tell them above 125 decibels of ear-splitting noise about my mother and about the envelope I found in Patrick’s office last night.

“Three teams?” Lin shouts. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” I yell back. My voice is barely audible, but Lin gets it. “Anyway, we’re done. I have all the numbers at home and I want to set up the first trial on Mrs. Ray for Tuesday. Monday, if we can manage it. It means we’ll have to work through the weekend, dose up a few mice. I mean, Lin can dose up the mice.”

“I knew you were finished,” Lorenzo says, and hugs me, which feels wonderful and awful at the same time. “I saw it in your eyes that day at Georgetown.”

Right. I wonder what else he sees in my eyes. “Lin, I need a minute alone here.”

She raises an eyebrow but says nothing. In a moment, Lorenzo and I have the MRI room to ourselves.

“I have some news. Not very good news,” I say over the banging. I don’t know when, or why, I decided to tell him.

Lorenzo’s face goes as white as the walls. He punches the casing of the machine beside us, and the banging shudders, then steadies again. A flood of Italian cursing fills the room. “What is it, Gianna? What do you have?”

“No. I’m not sick. I’m fine. Well, I’m not fine, but—”

He checks all the corners of the room, examines the tile floor and the ventilation unit on the ceiling. For five full minutes, I’m standing in a sea of noise while Lorenzo combs the area around us. When he’s satisfied, he comes to me, tangles his long fingers in my hair, and presses his mouth to mine. His hands roam down, stroking the nape of my neck, playing silent musical notes on my back. The skin under my blouse prickles and tingles and now I’m in the kiss, all of me is lips and tongue and saliva and mute love, and it’s not a Patrick kiss, but a Lorenzo kiss.

I never want to leave this place.

When we break, we’re both panting. His hardness presses into my belly, like he’s probing to feel what’s inside, what secrets I hold in that dark female place.

It’s moments before either of us speaks.

“Is it mine?” he asks, moving slightly so there’s room for his hand where that other part of him was. “Gianna, tell me.”

I’ve already run these numbers, and I didn’t need calculators or spreadsheets. Ten weeks ago was a cold day in March, when I went to Eastern Market for a hunk of cheese and returned home with Lorenzo in my body after an afternoon at our little Maryland shack. Love shack, crab shack, baby shack. Patrick and I hadn’t been together for a while.

“Yes,” I whisper.

He pulls me close. This time, it’s all softness; no edges, no probing, only a warm cocoon of lips and arms and our mingled breath. I’m safe here, in this sterile room with its supermagnets and banging and no cameras to watch us or recorders to pick up our sounds. For a few moments, it’s only us. I have no children, no husband, only Lorenzo and the baby inside me, and a desperate need to stay like this.

“I’m working on it, Gianna,” he says into my ear. “I’m working on it.”

I want to ask what he’s working on. If it has something to do with the money and the personal problem he talked about yesterday. I want to ask if he has a way out for me, for Sonia, for our baby. It would mean leaving Patrick and the boys, maybe only temporarily, maybe until they’re able to travel and find me. And what then? Would Patrick take me in his arms this way? Would we return to normal in some new place? Would Steven ever speak to me again?

But that’s foolish talk. There’s no way out for me.

Suddenly, every new bang of the machine is Jackie’s voice, saying:

I told you so. I told you so. I told you so.





FORTY-ONE




The banging of the MRI stops.

“Okay, you two,” Lin says. “Visitor. Good thing I looked up when I did. That Poe guy makes absolutely no sound. Zero. He’s a fucking ghoul.”

I uncoil myself from Lorenzo’s arms with enough force to slam me backward, into the wall. My ears ring with the monotonous thunder of the machine and Jackie’s words. Lin, cool as a cuke, takes me by the hand and leads me to the main area of the lab.

“What the hell was that?” Poe says. “It sounded like the goddamned building was falling apart.”

“Magnetic resonance imaging,” Lin says. “It’s supposed to sound like that.”

Poe grunts. “Why was it on? The other ones aren’t on.”