Chang-Rae Lee - On Such A Full Sea

Perhaps it’s because I am one, he said.

Because you’d get treated first?

He told her that used to be the case, but no longer. Now, like a lot of things that were once available to certain people, treatment was sold at hourly auctions. And doctors were far from able to be the highest bidders. But it didn’t matter to him. He wasn’t even sure he believed in the idea of C-free, at least not anymore.

Fan took in the notion but did not reply. Rather, she now took another forkful of her pie, deciding it was indeed excellent, as untroubled and pleased by it as any B-Mor would be, whether with child or not. But the big piece was still too much for her and Vik had to finish her slice. He ate without worry as well, seeming more contented now, and this, to her surprise, pleased her equally.

The housewarming party, it turned out, was going to be a retirement party as well. They had messaged everyone the news yesterday, after Vik and Fan had returned from the Circus. Apparently, Vik’s colleague, who was also in his early thirties, a blood C-specialist at the medical center, had been developing an antirejection drug for the last eight years, starting from when he was still a medical student. Although just 60 percent efficacious in yearlong trials, the drug had been deemed promising enough that all three major pharmacorps joined in a frenzied auction for his patent. The winning bid was certified by the respective attorneys yesterday afternoon, and was a sum of cash and unrestricted stock that Vik’s colleague and his wife and their three young children could live on for the rest of their lives, and in the finest Charter style. This was why Vik was only half joking when he said that they would be tearing down the new custom-built villa they now pulled up to. The driveway was nearly full with catering vans and the immediate street spots were all taken, so Vik just parked right behind the vans. The neighborhood was an elite one but not as elite as Miss Cathy’s, certainly a rung below, with smaller, narrower lots, the houses appearing surprisingly modest from the front but extending far back from the façade, and in some cases right to the rear property line, such that there was hardly any remaining yard.

Oliver and Betty’s house had a span like this, and to Fan’s eye was not nearly as attractive as her own clan’s row house, which though meager in comparison and attached on either side gave one a feeling of ever-abiding welcome, with its fetching stoop and the timeworn textures of the brightly painted brick. Even Miss Cathy’s villa, grandly imposing as it was, seemed more friendly than this one, which looked like a leaden two-and-a-half-story coffin, clad in graphite-colored brushed metallic panels, the nearly flat and barely visible hip of the roof spined with sharp-edged beams, all the windows of irregular sizes and shapes in the most haphazard placement, as if a child had chosen and affixed each by pure whim with no regard for the final pattern. There was a short line of other guests at the front entrance waiting to be greeted, and Fan could overhear some of the comments about the new house, which were mostly positive, except one fellow who wasn’t taking to the landscaping and wondering why there weren’t a lot more flowers and shrubs. His wife shushed him, saying they’d only moved in last week and that Betty’s magical hand would have the place all together in no time.

Vik didn’t betray any feeling or opinions about the property, his general demeanor on the drive over and now even-keeled, if not one of great eagerness. Yesterday when they returned to the apartment, he was in improved spirits and they’d watched a different old anime film (after he inhaled some vapors) and afterward had gone for a bubble tea in town, as he was craving one. As they drove back with their drinks, the message came in about his colleague’s good fortune, and he had actually laughed on viewing it, rapping at the steering wheel as if at once pleased and befuddled, as well as perhaps panged by the rueful envy one can suffer on learning of a peer’s success.

Maybe it was this jealousy, or simply the sugary tea and tapioca balls, suddenly fueling him, but Vik started to talk about how out of curiosity he’d graphed unpublished Charter C-death rates against those from 125 years ago and how, though it appeared there was vast improvement after controlling for nascent-stage diagnoses, which is how Charter survival rates were measured, Charters didn’t actually live more than a few years longer than they did back then. People now just knew much earlier that they were diseased, literally sometimes mere days into the condition. And while they were being “cured” with all the therapies available now, it could be argued that they were never actually “well,” given the constant stress of regimens and associated side effects.

But all this masked a more serious and underreported issue: the fact that a growing number of patients, after near lifelong serial therapies (some from when they were in preschool), had stopped responding to the treatments altogether. This was antithetical to the stance of the all-powerful C-therapy industry, which held that there was always a cure and had, in fact, always come up with one, no matter how a C-illness might express itself or evolve. But now — though, of course, Vik did not know this — it was like what we ourselves faced in our grow houses early on in the originals’ history, when it was found that a certain blight had developed that could not be eradicated or prevented with any known chemicals or change in practices. They examined the grow media, the water, the grow-house air, the particular mélange of engineered nutrients, testing each and then all the possible matrices, and in the end it was decided to dismantle the grow houses and literally incinerate every last thing inside them, right to the concrete flooring, and start over again, which indeed solved the problem. But of course, this was not an option with what was now facing Charters.

This was why Vik’s colleague’s new therapy was so valuable, as it could address a profound threat to the entire C-industry, its companies grown massively rich over the last one hundred years, certainly the most profitable on the planet. Fan, if not comprehending every particular of what he said, gathered enough to ask him why he chose to work as an emergency room doctor, rather than be a C-specialist. This seemed to short-circuit Vik; he took a long sip from his bubble tea straw and told her that people got sick, they always did and always would, and in the end no one would ever figure out why. But he found addressing their immediate ills gave him satisfaction. So, yes.

The moment passed and he made no more of it. Vik now carried the boxed apple pie stiffly before him like a ritual offering, and when they reached the door where Betty and a helper were greeting everyone, he gently deposited it into her hands and quickly whispered something — Vous êtes ma tarte aux pommes — which was audible only to her and Fan and perhaps the helper. Of course, Fan didn’t understand the breezy, lispy words, but assumed from Betty’s stricken expression that he had said something confusing or maybe even rude, and certainly not amusing to her in any way. But Vik was almost sweetly smiling and the helper behind Betty was smiling back at him, if only reflexively, and Betty could do nothing but hand back the pie box to the helper and air-kiss Vik quickly and, with an effortful smile, ask who his young friend was.

Meet Fan. She’s the niece of a friend. I’m keeping her company today.

Hello, Fan. I’m Betty Cheung. Welcome.

Fan thanked her and shook her warm, dry hand. Betty was quite petite, not too much taller or broader than Fan, in fact, and very beautiful in a needlessly perfected way, as if a higher power had taken a woman who was similar to Betty and plenty pretty, and decided to bestow the most shapely cuteness to her nose, and fund a sappy darkness into her brown eyes, and draw rounder and fuller her smallish lovely mouth, and envelop it all in a slip of clean pure skin that could never possibly pale or blush or sweat. Having somehow unconsciously grasped that this had happened, Betty dressed herself just as exquisitely, no matter the occasion, and whether it was a dress or jeans or apron, the faithful cut of her clothing never allowed the impression of her smallness to supersede the faultless lines and proportions of her figure, surely fit but never too drawn or lean-looking.