Brian Hodge - Prototype

One of the scientists, however, had a skeleton in an old closet. Stanley Wyzkall had been fined several years before for tax evasion. God bless greed.

Valentine flew to Boston, where he arranged to meet with a perplexed Dr. Wyzkall, and paved his proposal with an endowment of $50,000. Ample rewards for information, for progress and understanding — what could be more noble? Discretion would be assured as well as demanded, particularly for Valentine’s own genetic karyotype…

Which confirmed his every suspicion about himself.

Ironic. He had become the oldest identified Helverson’s syndrome carrier — the first of a kind, possibly — and remained entirely off-record. Only after their deal was clinched did he stress to Wyzkall just how deep was his need for continued privacy.

“We’ll get along beautifully as long as we stick to the simple guidelines I suggested,” Valentine told him one day over lunch. “We’ll both profit immeasurably.” Then from a pocket he removed five pictures and dealt them across the table like a poker hand: Wyzkall himself, then wife, daughter, daughter, son. “But if you ever expose me? Stanley? I’ll leave every single hair on your head untouched, but I’ll center these other four heads in the crosshairs of a scope on a rifle so powerful there won’t even be teeth left.”

Valentine slid Wyzkall’s own photo over to him, gathered the rest, and returned them to the pocket — patting them — over his heart. The man was speechless, but he had not paled. Admirable.

“Have you read Nietzsche?” Valentine then asked.

“No,” Wyzkall murmured.

“He wrote, ‘The great epochs of our life come when we gain the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us.’” With a frank and humorless smile, “Have courage, Stanley. And enjoy my money as much as I’m going to enjoy learning.”

Dealing with the devil was the way Stanley Wyzkall chose to regard it, but Valentine took no offense.

And within two months, the devil decided to move his home and entire operation to the Boston area.

He drove back across the river and was home in Charlestown before the afternoon traffic thickened to its worst.

Valentine settled into his Cape Cod, secured it, checked every room and closet, made sure each room’s pistol was where he normally kept it. Once he could breathe again, he eased into the armchair in the living room and did not leave it until he had gone through Clay Palmer’s file from beginning to end. He read slowly, carefully, each word not so much comprehended as digested.

Another one to hope for, another in which to invest his dreams of a surrogate guardian. This one, Clay Palmer, would have the attentions of a therapist in these days of self-discovery, but what did doctors really understand? They sought the concrete and quantifiable because as long as they could measure something, it was the easiest way to chart progress. To underlying meanings they gave as little thought as they could get away with.

Clay Palmer would in many respects be the last to know what was important. Left to doctors, he would be told only as much as they thought prudent to let him know, as if it were a privilege and not his right.

Unacceptable.

Late in the night, Valentine repackaged Clay’s file and took it into his bedroom, pulled back the rug in the center of the floor. Very solid floors in this house, teak, like the decks of old sailing ships. It made a solid anchor for the floor safe concealed beneath the rug and a removable panel.

He opened the safe and stowed the file, along with the dozen others he’d purchased. There they would spend the night until he awoke the next morning, refreshed, and could retrieve them for some selected photocopying.

When he would find time to make it to the post office was anyone’s guess.

Adrienne only had to spend one night alone in the condo. A month’s lease signed, renewable, she had moved in on Friday, and it seemed wrong, all wrong. The task had taken barely an hour. It looked like a home, but that was all. She spent the rest of Friday roaming rooms that had been furnished by someone else, a stranger, and trying to make herself comfortable on furniture that she had not bought. This was like wearing someone else’s old jeans and trying to convince herself they fit just as well. She stood at windows overlooking the neighborhood — hedges and lawns and trees — and they looked lifeless. Three years in the desert and she had forgotten the desolate grip of early winter.

Come on, this too shall pass. This is where I live now.

Sarah arrived mid-afternoon on Saturday, having spread the journey over two days. Adrienne was outside to meet her almost as soon as she had stepped from the car, hugged her tightly and they kissed, and Adrienne wanted nothing more than to spend a few hours getting reacquainting with Sarah’s wonderfully distracting body. It was under there somewhere, beneath all those clothes.

“I think somebody missed me,” she said.

Adrienne squeezed her hand. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

And the crisp air smelled sweeter, felt for the first time invigorating rather than forbidding, while the sun strained more persistently behind its prison of clouds. The day had gone from vinegar to wine.

“Do you want the grand tour first,” said Adrienne, “or are you itching to lug boxes already?”

“Show me, show me.” Sarah fell in step beside her, toward the enclosed stairway to the second floor. “I dressed for the state, do I look like I belong here?”

Sarah tramped up the stairs in jeans and soft leather moccasin boots, a heavy knit sweater, and a down vest. She looked as if she’d just stepped from an ad for a ski lodge.

“Everybody’s a chameleon,” Adrienne told her.

After seeing the condo, Sarah granted approval, adding only that as long as someone else was picking up the tab, why not have gone for someplace with a hot tub as well?

They put off unloading the car until it seemed indecent. Sarah could never travel as lightly as Adrienne; always something she might want, might miss, might long to hold to remind her of another place or time. She packed keepsakes the way alcoholics packed bottles, always in reserve if needed.

Flashbacks came while carrying boxes from the car, a pleasant déjà vu of two years ago when the commitment had finally been made between them, the house in Tempe chosen, Adrienne acknowledging, This is no passing fling, I love her, this is serious. Friends had shown up that weekend to pitch in, those whom she had gotten to know and love through Sarah. Lesbian couples, mostly, who seemed to form their own extended family, and around whom Adrienne had at first been terribly insecure. Worrying, Will they even accept me? I’m a half-breed. They had, and it really came through that day. Everyone had toted crates and boxes and furniture, had made seats for themselves amid the half-finished jumble. Passing pizza and beer, they traded tales of old moves, horror stories of demolished possessions and runaway trucks and wrecked appliances and fires, those ruinous events that seem to grow more fondly hilarious the longer ago they happened. Adrienne found out that day why it is always wise to withhold the beer until the job is completed. It was the first day since leaving San Francisco that she had genuinely felt this new town to be her home, that her soul had taken root and found a sense of community.

Alone this time, just the two of them to share the burdens, though they were few, and she found herself missing the gathering of a tribe.

When they had everything in, Sarah ran for the door one last time. “Back in ten minutes, I swear,” then she dashed off. Adrienne heard the car gunning back onto the street.