Aaron Elkins: Little Tiny Teeth

So many medically useful herbs and drugs had already come out of Amazon Indian healing practices: analgesics, astringents, expectorants, hypnotics, steroids, antiseptics, antipyretics, anaesthetics. Even their poisons – their neurotoxins and paralytics – had turned out to have enormous potential benefit. D-tubocurarine, an extract of curare, was a blessed muscle relaxant that had transformed surgery. Rotenone, the safest biodegradable insecticide in the world, had first been extracted from plant materials used by Amazonian Indians as fish poisons. What untold treasures were still locked up in the minds of those mysterious jungle scientists awaiting discovery? Cures for AIDS? Alzheimer’s? Cancer? Delve into their ancient lore, and you unlock the gate to the greatest storehouse of natural medicine in the world. But time was running short. They were a vanishing breed, these old shamans, and no one was taking their place. It was an opportunity she wouldn’t have missed under any circumstances.

After the cruise was over (and this was the part that had her grumbling to herself between sips), she would fly on with Arden to Tingo Maria to discuss the details of the appointment: responsibilities, lab facilities, accommodations, and so on. Then, assuming she was interested, in a little less than a year she would fly to Tingo Maria again, but this time on a one-way ticket.

The question was: did she want to? Her Spanish was rusty, but with a year to work on it, that was no problem; it had been one of her two qualifying languages for the Ph. D. And the salary was attractive, more than she was getting at UI, plus all kinds of great perks. Beyond that, it would be a distinct and not inconsiderable pleasure to outrank Arden, technically a mere adjunct professor, in the faculty hierarchy. But, Jesus Christ, the Universidad Nacional Agraria de la Selva? The National Agrarian University of the Jungle? How appealing was that?

And what about the town, Tingo Maria? Arden, who lived down there for a good part of every year, had talked it up, but Arden was the kind of person who didn’t much care or even notice where he lived. Maggie did. When she had Googled the city to get some other points of view, the descriptions hadn’t done much for her spirits. “Tropical, hot, and wet,” “a tatty, ugly town,” “the drug-trafficking capital of Peru,” “the saddest kind of ‘modern,’ ramshackle South American town, cobbled together out of nothing in 1938, and already rusting to pieces.” Not a lot to draw her there.

On the other hand, what did she have in Iowa City?

“Ouch.”

Mel Pulaski gingerly peeled the Band-Aid – well it wasn’t a Band-Aid, it was a lump of cotton held on by a scrap of masking tape; the Providence County Health Department was making a point about its dissatisfaction with its current budget – from his beefy upper arm.

Standing at the bathroom counter in his undershirt, he checked the swollen, reddened site of his tetanus booster shot in the mirror and gingerly touched it with a finger. “Ooh.”

At the twin sink beside him, his wife Dolly, in the flannel nightgown she’d taken to wearing lately, was applying a squib of toothpaste to her brush. “That last shot’s bothering you, isn’t it?”

“Oh, a little bit. It’s the only one that has.”

“No, it isn’t. Your arm hurt for a couple of days after the one for yellow fever.”

“True.”

“And you didn’t feel that great while you were taking the typhoid pills. I had to nurse you for two days.”

“Yeah, that’s right, I forgot. That was not fun. Ah well, such is the life of the freelance writer. Danger, sacrifice, and adventure abound at every turn.”

“I still don’t understand why you’re so keen to go on this trip,” Dolly mumbled around her toothbrush. “I don’t see the point.”

“Well, for one thing, EcoAdventure Travel is paying me three thousand bucks for an article on it, and another five hundred for photos, which will cover the cost and then some.”

“Not-much-some, when you figure in the cost of all those immunizations.”

“Okay, then,” Mel said reasonably. “There’s the fact that Arden Scofield will be on it, and I’ve got some ideas for another book we can do together. I think he’s going to be interested.”

A few months earlier he had concluded a yearlong ghostwriting association with Scofield on an autobiographical narrative, Potions, Poisons, and Piranhas: A Plant-hunter’s Odyssey. It hadn’t been that hard either. Scofield had a pretty good way with words himself, and he’d led an exciting, interesting life; he just hadn’t wanted to take the time to organize the material and do the grunt work that went with rewriting and editing.

Dolly snorted. “‘Do together.’ You practically wrote that whole damned book for him, and he’s going to get all the credit.”

Big, strong, slow, and mellow, a onetime linebacker with the Minnesota Vikings, Mel Pulaski was a hard man to get into an argument, even when Dolly seemed to be spoiling for one, which had been happening a lot lately. Well, he understood why. She was forty-seven. It was the dreaded Change of Life, and she was having a hard time with it, psychologically as well as physically. It didn’t help that she was five years older than he was, something that was clearly starting to bother her a lot more than it did him. Mel had stopped telling her that the age difference didn’t matter, because when he did it only ticked her off even more.

“Well, he’s the expert, honey,” he said. “He’s the only reason anybody would buy the book. Me, I’m just a hired hack. Anyway, who cares about the credit? We got fifteen thousand bucks for what probably amounted to maybe two months’ work altogether. That’s a pretty good paycheck in my line of work.”

“I thought you couldn’t stand him.”

“I never said I couldn’t stand him. I said he was a phony, posturing pissant of a prima donna.” He grinned. “But for another fifteen grand I guess I can stand him a little longer. Pass me the floss, will you, babe?”

Unsmiling, Dolly passed it, rinsed her toothbrush, and put it back in the rack. “Fifteen thousand. And how much is he going to get?”

“He’s a name, sweetie; I’m not. It’s his life the book’s about, not mine. And don’t forget, my name is going to be on the cover right up there with his. That’s not going to hurt my career.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Dolly said. And then, a moment later, as a muttered afterthought: “What career?”

Mel sighed. The moods were worst at night. In the morning she’d shyly and sincerely apologize and say she didn’t know what had gotten into her, and surely he knew she hadn’t meant it (which he did). And things would go smoothly until the next night, or maybe the one after that.

Mel had been doing a lot of Web research on menopause. Among the things he’d learned was that it typically lasted anywhere from six to thirteen years. He just prayed Dolly’s was the six-year variety.

A seasoned underground commuter, Duayne V. Osterhout knew precisely where to stand on the platform of the cavernlike Smithsonian Metro station in order to be first through the rear doors of the second car, from which he would have a clear shot at his preferred corner seat, wedged in by the window. As usual he had arrived in time for the 5:23 P.M. Orange Line train to West Falls Church, in order, not to take it, but to be there when the passengers boarded, so that he could assume his place on the platform the moment the doors slid closed and thus be in position for the 5:37. He did not consider a fourteen-minute wait a high price to pay for a comfortable seat, with no sweating straphangers leaning over him, during the twenty-five-minute ride to Virginia. At this time in the evening on a weekday, planning was essential if he didn’t want to stand most of the way home.