Chapter 5

Daylight roused Ned. Caitlin lay beside him, her arm across his chest. He nuzzled her wavy, dark hair, kissed her scalp and inhaled her scent. She roused.

"Good morning," he said.

"Morning." She rolled onto her back, stretched her arms and yawned.

"How did you sleep?"

"Mmm ... Wonderfully well. Now, I need to know one thing."

"What's that?"

She swung her feet to the floor and picked up the cardboard box containing the two bulb syringes. "Which one did I pick? I'm pretty sure it was the root and not the placebo." She picked up each bulb. "This one's the empty one..."

Caitlin peeled the blue tape from the bottom of the bulb. "There's no mark."

"You had placebo," Ned said.

"How are you so sure? How do you know which is which?" She picked up the still-full bulb and peeled the tape from the bottom. "No mark on this one, either." She looked at him, her jaw slack.

"It's because both bulbs contained the same thing -- placebo."

Her jaw dropped and her eyes widened. "Both? That warming sensation ... It felt just like last week. What was in this? What did you use?"

"A ten percent glycerin solution in water," he replied. "Glycerin is a mild irritant to your colonic mucosa ... but otherwise harmless."

"You said it was a double-blind experiment. You said one of the bulbs had the root extract! You lied to me!"

"I never lied to you. I never said one bulb contained the root. I said, two identical bulbs. You came to that conclusion."

"You led me to believe..." Ned could see rage building in Caitlin's face. She picked up the unused syringe, pointed the nozzle at him and squeezed the bulb, spraying its contents onto his face and chest. Then, she threw the empty bulb at him, turned and began gathering her belongings.

"Caitlin ... Wait."

"You deceived me!" she said, her voice trembling with anger. "You used me! I feel so ... so ... SO VIOLATED! Ned -- I never thought you were capable of such an awful thing."

"It was the only way I could think of to isolate the placebo effect," he said. "It was for science..."

"Fuck science! What about ME? What about my feelings?" She pulled on her long dress and stuffed her robe into her duffel. The, she turned and faced him, raising her hand to slap him but checking herself. "We are through, Ned Sommerfield. Done. Finished! Do you hear me? THROUGH!"

She turned and stalked to the front door, slamming it behind her. Ned slipped into his robe and headed after her. "CAITLIN!" he called.

"GO TO HELL!" she shouted back at him. Caitlin slammed shut the door on her car. She started the motor, backed briskly out of his driveway and then sped down the street, her tires squealing.

Ned stepped back into his bungalow. Fuck! he thought. Oh, well ... We've been finished before. I wonder how long it'll take her to simmer down this time...

Ned headed toward the Science Center. His path took him past the classroom Caitlin used for her recitations. It was empty and dark. He stuck his head in the door and saw the caricature her student had drawn that morning. This time there was no thundercloud over her head -- it was a mushroom cloud.

He continued on his route to his office, unlocked the door and sat at his desk for his office hours, whiling away his time by finishing his review of his galley proofs.

At noon he headed for one of the lecture halls for his advanced Organic Chemistry lecture and then he stopped by the lab to check on his two graduate students. That afternoon he had a staff meeting with the department head.

Around five, Ned packed his case and locked his door. He strolled past Caitlin's office. The light was on and she was sitting at her desk. He poked his head in the door. "Caitlin..."

She looked up at him. "Get out. GET! OUT!"

Ned stepped back and then headed down the corridor.

Tuesday and Wednesday he spent without crossing Caitlin's path. By Thursday he figured it was time to take some action.

Ned locked his office and headed to the parking lot. Most days he walked from his bungalow but not today. He pulled closed the door to his car, started the motor and drove to a nearby strip mall. There he stepped into a florist's shop and picked up a bouquet he had ordered, one of rubrum lilies. He drove to a row of townhouses that the university had built for faculty housing and approached the one that Caitlin rented.

He stepped to the door and rang the bell. She opened the door barefoot and wearing cutoff jeans and a tee shirt. "What do YOU want?"

He handed her the bouquet. "Peace offering."

"You know I love rubrum lilies," she said, holding one to her nose and inhaling. "I love their fragrance."

"Caitlin -- may I come in?"

"Suit yourself."

He followed her into her kitchen as she found a vase and filled it with water. "Caitlin ... I felt really badly about this weekend ... but..."

She turned to face him, her eyes narrowed. "You know ... Whenever a man says, 'I'm sorry, BUT... ' I know he's not really sorry."

"I didn't say I was sorry ... and I'm not. I said I felt badly ... which is the truth."

"You're not sorry you deceived me?"

"The only thing I'm sorry about is agreeing to this foolishness in the first place. Caitlin -- don't you see? The only way I could tease out a placebo effect was for you to believe you were receiving the real thing. Think about it from an experimental perspective. I had to quantify that variable."

"Sit down." She gestured toward a sofa in her living room. She set the vase on a low table and sat beside him. "From an intellectual viewpoint, I understand and I agree. But as a woman..."

"Look at it this way ... I'm convinced now that most of what you experienced came from you, Caitlin ... and, not from that root."

"Most?"

"I do believe the root may have some subtle, physiological effect -- but not enough to explain it all."

"Why do you say that?"

"Did you ever see the animated film, Dumbo?"

She shook her head. "No."

"It was Amy's favorite from when she was a kid. Dumbo is a young elephant with enormous ears -- so big he can use them as wings and fly. The problem is, he has no self-confidence. One of his friends gives him a black feather that he holds in his trunk. It's a magic feather, his friend tells him, and when he holds it, Dumbo can fly. Then, one day he drops it and begins to fall from the sky. His friend tells him there was no magic in the feather, that he could fly all along. And, he does." Ned looked into her dark eyes. "That root was your magic feather, Caitlin. You're a beautiful, sexy and sensual woman. I believe every woman has the capacity to experience orgasmic ecstasy like you did the past two weekends. A man's climax is a grunt and a squirt. A woman's is nearly infinite and I am so envious of that. I would give anything to experience a woman's orgasm."

"Like I was willing to try anything to experience one," she replied.

"I was hoping you'd be happy to learn you can do it and that you don't need any drugs to achieve it."

She closed her eyes and lowered her face. "I never thought of it that way. I was too wrapped up in my own emotional baggage. I'm sorry for that, Ned. Of course -- you're right. But -- you said a subtle effect."

"Your nipple orgasm. I think the root might've contributed to that."

"Or, maybe not." She reached for his hand and held it. "You are a good friend ... the best I've ever had. There's another factor in what we experienced that you haven't taken into account."

"What's that?"

"Your skill as a lover. I've never met your equal."

He smiled. "You're stroking my ego."

"But it's true. How did you..."

"I learned all I know from Amy," he replied.

"You don't talk about her, much."

"Even today, it's painful for me."

"How did you meet?" she asked.

"That was luck ... pure, dumb luck. It was at the end of my first year as a grad student -- working on my PhD in botany. Amy was a freshman -- biology major. She was like you, Caitlin -- sharp as a tack. She had taken a raft of advance placement courses in high school and she tested out of most of her undergraduate core curriculum. So, she was a freshman taking a junior level botany course."

"Were you in her class?"

"No -- I was in a graduate level one. We both were working on projects and we both needed the same book. I remember going to the library and getting the callout from the catalogue. I went to the stacks and reached for it. Amy reached for it at the same time. Next ensued a brief tug-of-war -- which I won, by the way."

"Congratulations."

"No need to sneer," he replied. "We decided the civilized thing to do was to share it. So, we spent long hours at the library together, working on our projects and passing the book between us. Then, one Saturday night after the library was closed she invited me to her room."

"And, you made love?"

"No, we finished our projects. After that I asked her out. We did dinner and a movie and then she invited me back to her room and she deflowered me."

"You were a virgin? You?"

"At the time I had my own difficulties meeting the opposite sex," he replied.

"Was she a virgin, too?"

"Amy was a very nice Jewish girl; however, alas, I was not her first. That was okay. At least one of us had been through it before and knew what we were doing. We dated for the rest of the year and the next year we were going steady. The year after that we were engaged. She finished a semester early and spent my last semester living in my apartment -- to the chagrin of my other roommates. We were married after I got my first PhD."

"What was she like?" Caitlin asked.

"She was petite with naturally curly brown hair she wore long so it framed her face like a mane. She had dark gray eyes and a little pattern of freckles on her nose. I have an album of photographs we can look at some time. I haven't looked at them since the ... incident."

"Are you sure that's wise?"

"I don't know. I tossed a lot of memorabilia when I bought the bungalow. I couldn't bear to throw that album away. Anyway, Amy was a little thing ... not even five feet tall and built like a twelve-year-old boy. She had to buy her bras in the girls' department. We were married in a Jewish ceremony. Her family is Reformed, and tolerant of her marrying outside the faith. Her family had some money. In lieu of a big, overblown ceremony we opted for a honeymoon in the Bahamas. She was cute ... not what you'd call beautiful, but pretty in her own way."

"You said she was studying botany. Did she do anything with her degree?"

"No. I went on for my second PhD in organic chemistry and she supported us. She got a job as a bank teller and worked her way up to assistant branch manager. I was proud of her."

"She did well," Caitlin replied. "I believe earning a degree is more important than the subject matter. It proves you can go the distance."

"And she did. Amy was enthusiastic in bed. The little ones can fool you, you know. She could have a seemingly endless string of orgasms ... like you experienced the past couple of weekends. It didn't happen overnight, though. It took practice and each of us making the effort to understand the other's response patterns. We had a lusty physical relationship, right up to the end."

"How did she die?"

"She was pregnant ... about five months along, and already looking like one of those roly-poly dolls you push over and they spring right back. I was headed out on a trip to the rain forest ... planned to be back in time for her to deliver. One of my ex-students ... one who became unhinged and flunked out of grad school ... he came to the house that night, looking for me. I was already en-route to South America. He broke in and stabbed her. It took a couple of days for the news to reach me. When it did, I went right home -- left all my stuff in the jungle."

"Oh, God, Ned," Caitlin said. "How horrible! What happened to the guy? He's in prison I hope."

"He's in the state mental institution. After that, I sold the house and bought the bungalow. I couldn't bear to live there anymore." He felt his eyes filling and grabbed a tissue. "We had a rule -- each time before I left for the rain forest we would put aside any cross words ... not that we had many. We never fought and rarely argued. We'd put everything aside and make love. I still remember the last time." He dabbed tears from his cheeks. "On her crypt at the columbarium we have lines from Robert Burns -- 'Thy image at our last embrace/ Ah! little thought we 'twas our last!'..."