Mark Gimenez - The Common Lawyer

Like that summer.

Andy stretched out on the south ledge of the pool and admired the lifeguard in her red Speedo sitting up in the tower. Barton Springs Pool was a thousand-foot-long natural swimming hole situated in Zilker Park just south of downtown Austin. Four million gallons of spring water filled the three-acre limestone cavity and maintained a constant year-round temperature of sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. And every hour, another million gallons gushed forth from the three springs the original owner, Uncle Billy Barton, had named after his daughters: Eliza, Zenobia, and Parthenia.

Poor girls.

It was a hundred degrees out, but the cold water had temporarily relieved the heat, just as the marijuana smoke riding the breeze from the college kids on the grassy bank south of the pool had temporarily relieved Andy's aches and pains.

"Hey, medicinal marijuana really works. My knee doesn't hurt anymore."

Andy didn't do dope-his high came from adrenaline-but he inhaled the sweet smoke again just to make sure he had completed the full course of treatment.

"There's no place like Austin," Tres said. "Biking the greenbelt, swimming the springs… the live music. This is as good as it gets. I only wish I'd been around to hear Springsteen rock the Armadillo."

The Armadillo World Headquarters, a cavernous National Guard armory converted into a concert hall, was the kind of place where politicians from the city wore cowboy boots and cowboys from the country smoked dope and everyone regardless of political persuasion got drunk and danced to Willie Nelson. The famous and not so famous had played the Armadillo back in the seventies, including Andy's father. To hear him tell it, those were the best years in Austin. He said the Armadillo was the soul of Austin-until it was razed for an office building in 1981. That was a dark day in Austin's history-the day of the coup. The day the developers seized power.

Austin had changed that day and hadn't stopped changing. Austin seemed more like L.A. every day, although Andy had never been to L.A. More people, more traffic, more trendy lofts and lounges downtown. Less laid-back. Fewer hippies. No Armadillo. In ten years it would be just like-and this singular fear gripped all who loved Austin the way it used to be-Dallas.

But one place had not changed: Barton Springs.

Andy had broken a full-body sweat again, so he rolled off the ledge and into the water. He dove down fourteen feet below the diving board and put his sore back close to the Parthenia spring. The rhythmic pulse of the spring, the dim light, and the water wrapped around his body made sitting on the bottom of the pool a womb-like experience. But this was not your chlorinated backyard pool; he stirred the gravelly bottom and tiny red-gilled salamanders floated up. Unlike the salamanders, Andy needed oxygen so he pushed himself to the top. He climbed out of the pool and again stretched out on the warm ledge.

Andy's standard routine was to lie on the ledge ogling the female lifeguards in their towers and the college coeds tanning on the grassy bank until he had worked up a good sweat; then he would simply roll into the pool. After a few minutes in the cold water, he would climb out and repeat the routine. With enough experience, you got into a nice rhythm. Andy and Tres were in a nice rhythm.

"Arthur," Natalie said, "it says here we could hire an Indian surrogate."

Natalie Riggs was Tres' gorgeous girlfriend; she insisted on addressing him by his given name. Against Andy's advice, Tres had dutifully reported in to her after their morning ride, apparently a condition of their engagement. She had decided to meet them at the pool, the only upside of which was the fact that she looked stunning lying there on a towel in a tiny string bikini with her smooth skin shimmering in sweat and suntan oil. Jesus. She was thirty-one and a sexy brunette; she wanted to marry Tres and have a baby-Tres said her biological clock was ticking so loudly it kept him awake at night-but she also wanted to retain her fabulous figure, a requirement both for her job as a local TV lifestyle reporter and her hopes of jumping to the networks. "Have you ever seen a fat pregnant woman on the network morning shows?" she often asked Tres. So they had decided to have a baby by gestational surrogacy: Tres' sperm, Natalie's egg, a stranger's womb, and a binding contract.

"Which tribe?" Tres said.

Natalie eyed her fiance over the magazine she was reading.

"Which tribe what?"

"Which Indian tribe? Apache, Comanche, Sioux…?"

"Not those Indians. India Indians. You know, the ones with the little black mark on their foreheads."

"They're having babies for Americans?"

"That's what this article says. You just send them the fertilized egg and nine months later they send you back the baby. And they're a lot cheaper than American surrogates."

"Outsourcing babies to India?" Andy said.

"Every time my computer crashes and I call tech support," Tres said, "I'm talking to some Indian guy named Bob. Can't understand a word he says."

"And the clinics have pre-qualified surrogates," Natalie said, "tested and ready to go."

"Tested?" Andy said.

Natalie sipped her Pellegrino sparkling water then said, "The surrogate's got to pass a criminal background check, a psychiatric test, and an STD test. Do you know how hard it is to find a surrogate in the U.S. who can pass all three tests? That's why they're so expensive here."

"Supply and demand," Tres said.

"You gotta worry the woman who's carrying your baby is a criminal, a nut, or diseased?" Andy said. "Jeez, Natalie, seems a lot safer to birth that baby yourself."

"And lose these abs?"

She had awesome abs.

"Why not outsource your baby to a nice Swedish girl?" Andy said. "I'll implant the egg myself."

"Commercial surrogacy is illegal in Europe," Tres said. "And it's only legal in twelve states over here."

"Is Texas one of them?"

"Yeah, but you've got to get court approval, so we may do it in Illinois. You don't have to go to court up there. But the doctor's got to sign an affidavit saying it's a medical necessity."

"And saving Natalie's awesome abs might not qualify?"

"Exactly." Tres reached over and patted her lean belly. "Still, babe, I think we should use an American surrogate and support the troops."

"Support the troops how?" Andy said.

"A lot of American surrogates are military wives," Tres said, "having other women's babies to make ends meet while their husbands are in Iraq. I figure we could do our share for the war effort." To Natalie: "I vote American."

"I vote for her," Andy said.

He nodded at a coed walking toward them. She was blonde and spilling out of her bikini in a good way. She jiggled past them and over to her spot on the bank where she sat and removed her bikini top. Topless sunbathing was legal at Barton Springs. For full nudity, you had to go out to Hippie Hollow on Lake Travis, a bit of a drive, so most coeds opted for topless at the springs.

"Only problem with her," Tres said, "is I'd have to manually fertilize the egg."

Any perceived threat to Tres' trust fund got Natalie's immediate attention. She lowered her sunglasses and gave the blonde one of those brief but thorough head-to-foot once-overs that competitive females mastered by ninth grade. Natalie Riggs could now describe in detail every flaw on the blonde's body.

" Puh-leeze. You or my baby inside her? I don't think so."

"Maybe I should conduct a pre-surrogacy exam first," Andy said, "check out her reproductive system personally."

"In your dreams," Tres said.

"Like there's anywhere else?"

"The standard surrogacy contract," Natalie said, "requires the surrogate to stop having sex for the entire gestation period. I doubt she could stop for an afternoon."