Colin Harrison - Afterburn

"Tell me, sweetie," he said once he got past the secretary.

"Oh, Daddy…"

"Yes?"

A pause. And then she cried.

"Okay, now," he breathed, closing his eyes. "Okay."

She gathered herself. "All right. I'm fine. It's okay. You don't have to have children to have a fulfilling life, I just keep reminding myself. It's a beautiful day outside. I can handle this. I don't want you to worry about me."

"Tell me what they said."

"They said I'll probably never have my own children, it's probably impossible, they think the odds are-I haven't even told Brian, I'm just sitting here, not even-I mean, I can't work or think or anything, all I know is that I'll never hold my own baby, never, just something I'll never, ever do."

"Oh, sweetie."

"We really thought it was going to work. You know? I've had a lot of faith with this thing. They have these new egg-handling techniques, makes them glue to the walls of the uterus, and they say it increases the odds."

They were both silent a moment. He rubbed absentmindedly at the scar on his hand.

"I mean, you kind of expect that technology will work," Julia went on, her voice thoughtful. "It's the last religion, right? They can make a sixty-three-year-old woman give birth. That's the actual record. They can pull sperm out of a dead man. They can clone human beings-they can do all of these things and they can't-" She stopped.

The day had piled up on him, and he was trying to remember all that Julia had explained to him previously about eggs and tubes and hormone levels. "Sweetie," he tried, "the problem is not exactly the eggs?"

"My eggs are pretty lousy, also. You're wondering if we could put my egg in another woman, right?"

"No, not-well, maybe yes," he sighed, the thought of it abhorrent to him.

"They don't think it would work. The eggs aren't that viable. You could have someone go through a year or two and fail, just on the basis of the eggs."

"And your tubes-"

She gave a bitter laugh. "Daddy, they could poke the perfect eggs of some eighteen-year-old girl into me. But the walls of my uterus are too thin. The eggs won't stick."

"Right."

"I'm barren, Daddy. I finally understand that word. I can't make good eggs, and I can't hatch eggs, mine or anyone else's."

He watched the lights of a tanker slide along the oily water outside. Say something useful, he thought. "I know it's too early to start discussing adoption, but-"

"He doesn't want to do it. At least he says he won't," she sobbed.

"Wait, sweetie," Charlie responded, hearing her despair, "Brian is just-Adopting a child is-"

"No, no, no, Daddy, Brian doesn't want a little Guatemalan baby or a Lithuanian baby or anybody else's baby but his own. It's about his own goddamn penis. If it doesn't come out of his penis, then it's no good."

Her husband's view made sense to him, but he couldn't say that now. "Julia, I'm sure Brian-"

"I would have adopted a little baby a year ago, two years ago! But I put up with all this shit, all these hormones and needles in my butt and doctors pushing things up me, for him. I mean, I've done Lupron nine times! I made myself a raving Lupron bitch nine times, Daddy. That has got to be more than any other woman in New York City! And now those years are-Oh, I'm sorry, Daddy, I have a client. I'll talk to you when you come back. I'm very-I have a lot of calls here. Bye."

He listened to the satellite crackle in the phone, then to the return of the dial tone, then the announcement in Chinese to hang up. His flight was at eight the next morning, New York seventeen hours away, and as always, he wanted to get home, and yet didn't, for as soon as he arrived, he would miss China. The place got to him, like a recurrent dream, or a fever-forced possibilities into his mind, whispered ideas he didn't want to hear. Like the eight million. It was perfectly legal yet also a kind of contraband. If he wanted, Ellie would never see the money; his brokerage and bank statements were filed by his secretary, Karen, and Ellie could barely be troubled to sign the tax returns each April. She had long since ceased to be interested in his financial gamesmanship, so long as there was enough money for the necessities: Belgian chocolates for the elevator man at Christmas, fresh flowers twice a week, the farmhouse and pool in Tuscany. But like a flash of unexpected lightning, the new money illuminated certain questions begging for years at the edge of his consciousness. He had been rich for a long time, but now he was rich enough to fuck with fate. Had he been waiting for this moment? Yes, waiting until he knew about Julia, waiting until he was certain.

He called Martha Wainwright, his personal lawyer. "Martha, I've finally decided to do it," he said when she answered.

"Oh, Christ, Charlie, don't tell me that."

"Yes. Fact, I just made a little extra money in a stock deal. Makes the whole thing that much easier."

"Don't do it, Charlie."

"I just got the word from my daughter, Martha. If she could have children, it would be a different story."

"This is bullshit, Charlie. Male bullshit."

"Is that your legal opinion or your political one?" She was tough, old Martha.

"I'm going to argue with you when you get back," she warned.

"Fine-I expect that. For now, please just put the ad in the magazines and get all the documents ready."

"I think you are a complete jerk for doing this."

"We understand things differently, Martha."

"Yes, because you are addicted to testosterone."

"Most men are, Martha. That's what makes us such assholes."

"You having erection problems, Charlie? Is that what this is about?"

"You got the wrong guy, Martha. My dick is like an old dog."

"How's that? Sleeps all the time?"

"Slow but dependable," he lied. "Comes when you call it."

She sighed. "Why don't you just let me hire a couple of strippers to sit on your face? That'd be infinitely cheaper."

"That's not what this is about, Martha."

"Oh, Charlie."

"I'm serious, I really am."

"Ellie will be terribly hurt."

"She doesn't need to know."

"She'll find out, believe me. They always do." Martha's voice was distraught. "She'll find out you're up to something, then she'll find out you're advertising for a woman to have your baby, and then she'll just flip out, Charlie."

"Not if you do your job well."

"You really this afraid of death?"

"Not death, Martha, oblivion. Oblivion is the thing that really kills me."

"You're better than this, Charlie."

"The ad, just put in the ad."

He hung up. In a few days the notice would sneak into the back pages of New York's weeklies, a discreet little box in the personals, specifying the arrangement he sought, the benefits he offered, and Martha would begin screening the applications. He'd see who responded. You never knew who was out there.

He sat quietly then, a saddened but prosperous American executive in a good suit, his gray hair neatly barbered, his body still trim even if it had a dozen steel pins and plates and screws in it, and followed the ships out on the water. One of the hotel's Eurasian prostitutes, dressed not too conservatively, watched him from across the lobby as she sipped a watered-down drink. Alert to the nuanced, late-night moods of international businessmen, and perhaps sensing a certain opportune grief in the stillness of his posture, she slipped over the marble floor and bent close to ask softly if he would like some company, but he shook his head no-although not, she would see, without a bit of lonely gratitude, not without a quick hungered glance of his eyes into hers-and he continued to sit calmly, with that stillness to him. Noticing this, one would have thought not that in one evening he had watched a man die, or made millions, or lied to his banker, or worried that his flesh might never go forward, but that he was privately toasting what was left of the century, wondering what revelation it might yet bring.