Chapter 11

I drove home and walked in the door, dropping the bag on the floor. I looked at the bed and thought, maybe I should lie down for ten minutes. When I awoke again it was late afternoon. I forgave myself, I probably needed the rest.

When I finally did awake, I read a little, I made a frozen pizza for dinner, and I called my mother, who was thrilled to find out that I’d gone out with one woman more than twice and started picking at the thread, trying to find out more.

It was just a bit inappropriate and possessive, like a helicopter mom, and I was almost tempted to tell her Sara was into threesomes, but then I’d probably have to call 911 and make sure she got to a hospital.

Not much happened for the next few days. I ran into Liz in the cafeteria, we talked, and she gave me another sheaf of her work to read when I had time. Apparently she was back into working on her novel with a vengeance, as she had included a couple of new chapters for me to look at.

The dynamic in the lab had changed since last week’s announcement by Clark, and people were hovering in small groups scratching out ideas on scraps of paper and sounding, not excited perhaps, but enthusiastic, with some creative ideas about approaches to the research.

And interestingly, Dr. Clark was looking remarkably relaxed, almost benevolent, a first since I had arrived at RBP. At one point I thought I detected a small smile on his face, but it could have been a facial tic.

On Wednesday, when I went to the cafeteria for my afternoon snack, Liz plopped a tray down on my table and sat, for the first time without asking permission. We exchanged greetings, then I said, “Liz, I’m not done with reading your latest stuff yet, I’ll need another day so I can think about my comments.” She said there was no hurry.

“Liz, may I ask you something? I’m really flattered that you’d trust me to give you my comments about your writing, and I’m happy to continue doing that for as long as you want me to. But, the thing is, I’m not a writer. I don’t know how it’s done, I don’t know much about structure and plotting and character development, I just know what I know.

“Why is it that you’re not involved with a local writer’s group? Those are the people who are going through the same process you are, having the same kinds of problems. Why aren’t you discussing your work there, getting their insight?”

She sipped her tea and looked at the table for a minute. Then she said, “When I first started doing this with some intent, acting like I wanted to be a writer, I did just that. I found a writer’s group, people like me with day jobs who had to create these stories, write them down so people could read them. And most of them were nice folks.

“But I later realized, like most self-help groups, there’s always one or two who are there not to get assistance and honest criticism of their work, but rather to criticize everyone else’s work so they could demonstrate their superiority as writers. So I got a lot of that, mostly from men who were convinced that they were genetically better authors, but also from a couple of women. Nothing we did was ever good enough. It got to be a little toxic, so I dropped out. And the amusing thing I took away from it? None of those critical people ever had anything published, that I saw anyway.”

“Oh,” I said, as intelligently as I could.

“So I just kept writing on my own. In fact, you’re the first person I’ve let look at my writing since I left those groups. Yours was the kind of criticism I was looking for, and I wish I had had it earlier, it would have saved a lot of time and ... angst. So thanks.”

“Liz, I’m not being ingratiating here, but don’t give up on this. You’re really good. Keep at it and I know your break will come along.”

Damn. Her smile was amazing, it was like the sun had just come out from behind a cloud.

“You’ve helped a lot, Sam, so the thanks are sincere. And now the specter of Harold Schwartz summons, and I must return to work. Look forward to your next set of comments.”

And she left. Her departure was always a high point of my day, for as long as I was able to watch her butt recede.

That night I called Sara to ask her if she had heard more from Carol, and she hadn’t. She may have been still away on her work shift. I asked her if now, with a few days to process it, she had any regrets about the threesome.

“No..., not really. There were a couple of awkward moments I could have done without, but I think that was mostly Carol trying to make this more about her pleasure. And as a first try, it could have been a lot worse, so it was mostly positive.

“I still haven’t made up my mind how I felt about watching you and another woman doing it, maybe a turn-on in some ways, and being reduced to a kind of spectator in others. Again, I think that was more Carol excluding me when she wanted to play. It probably would have been different if it had been someone else, someone I liked more, so the three of us could take part.”

“Yeah, I definitely see that. It was like we were toys that she played with for as long as she wanted, and she’d drop one and pick up another, and if she didn’t want to play with either one then the two toys would be allowed to play together.”

“That image actually works pretty well, Sam. Toys. Okay, so maybe no more Carol. I expect she’s got her own circles she can join whenever she’s in the mood, anyway.”

“Is it something you’re thinking of trying again?” I asked. “With someone else, I mean.”

“I wouldn’t rule it out, but it’d have to be the right person. I’ll think about it.”

She said that she was taking Friday off and that she’d be out of town this weekend visiting her family, but would be in touch when she returned.

So that left me on my own for the weekend. Maybe I’d be able to recover some of my lost energies.

Next morning, in the lab when I arrived, Frank and Art and Ted were huddled together, talking intently. Frank saw me and waved me over. “Listen to this, Sam, Art’s had a pretty interesting insight, maybe worth following up.”

So Art backpedaled and told again what he’d just told the others. He’d compared some results from his experiments with some facts that Ted’s experiments had shown and thought that by tweaking the molecules we’d been playing with they could get them to hook more tightly into the opiate receptors with which opiates interfaced, effectively blocking them and rendering them ineffective.

That, of course, was what Clark had been trying to do all along, and what a lot of addiction treatment drugs did already, but the advantage to this modified method, in theory, was that it looked to be longer lasting, cutting the numbers of times addicts had to turn up for treatment significantly. That was a major selling point. If it worked.

But the facts were tantalizing, and certainly worth an experiment or two. We sketched out what this new molecule would look like and how to synthesize it. Art and Ted went off to work out the details. Frank sat there looking pumped. He glanced at me and said, “We’d never have been able to follow up on this just two weeks ago. Look at us now.”

I hoped something came of this. These guys needed a win before they lost their enthusiasm.

By Friday they were running their experiments which they hoped would produce the results which proved their hypothesis. They’d have something to be able to bring to Clark in a relatively short time.

I passed on going out to lunch with the rest of them and brought a sandwich and a salad back from the cafeteria while I dutifully caught up on some reports and emailed them. By 2:00 I was feeling like a deserved a break, and was hoping to catch Liz anyway, so I went to the cafeteria for a delayed dessert and coffee.

I was going to get fruit salad, but there was fresh carrot cake which I could not pass up. So I took it to a table and admired it for a moment before I attacked it.

“One step forward, two steps back,” said the voice, and I almost detected an underlying ‘Tsk, tsk’.

“I don’t care what you think. I like carrot cake.”

“Well, actually, so do I, I just have to be careful not to overdo it. May I?”

Liz pointed at the plate with an outstretched spoon, and I couldn’t refuse her. She took a small piece and put it in her mouth, and I thought for a moment that I saw a breach in the defenses. The look on her face, eyes half closed, was almost decadent.

Today must have been Casual Friday in the executive suites, because she had on a loose skirt that showed off her legs, and a blouse that did very little to hide an impressive chest. It took all my self-discipline to keep from staring.

“I wish self-discipline wasn’t so difficult. That’s really good.”

I thought for a moment that she was referring to my self-discipline.

“Perhaps that’s my next project,” I said. “A pill that blocks absorption of all calories above the recommended daily requirement. Then you could have carrot cake for breakfast and lunch, if you wanted.”

“You do that, Sam, and you’ll own this company, and a bunch of others, too. And you’ll have people all over the world writing you fan mail.”

I pulled out the package of her last submission from a folder and put it on the table. “I’ll make a mental note to take care of that next week,” I said. “Listen, while we have time, here’s your most recent stuff back, and let me summarize my thoughts.”

I took off the top sheet and started going over my impressions, which were mostly positive. I liked her short stories, I thought that was what she did best. Novels were harder, I believed, because it was easier to get lost in more complex plots, characters and backgrounds got muddled and hazy, and authors were more likely to get bogged down.

With that I mind, I poked at a few things I thought were fuzzy in her novel, places where I thought the plot was shaky, and one place where I asked why a character had acted the way she did.

She was not as enthusiastic about my comments as she had been previously. I may have been a bit disappointed and it showed on my face, because she was quick to say, “I really do appreciate this, Sam, it’s just ... well, the things you brought up, I wasn’t a hundred percent on them either, and I was kind of hoping that you’d say you loved them, so I wouldn’t have to go back and fix them again. But deep down I knew I was avoiding it. I don’t mind the first few rewrites, really, but damn, by the fifth or sixth time it gets really tedious.”

“If I were to pick up this book in a store,” I said, “and start reading it, I’d see the same problems, but I’d think of them as minor blemishes because the rest of the book read so well.

“And the truth is I’ve bought -- and liked -- published books in stores that weren’t nearly as well written as this. But I think those minor flaws, if changed, would be the difference between really good writing and great. Maybe that’s what makes authors so tortured, they see the flaws in their own writing and they have a hard time correcting them and it frustrates them.

“Are you a tortured writer, Liz?” I was teasing her a little now.

She looked me right in the eye and said, “You have no idea. Now I know why so many authors are drunks and addicts. Anyway, I appreciate the vote of confidence, and I’ll keep plugging away at it. Your thoughts really do help, you know. I have to get back. Thanks for the comments and the carrot cake. Have a nice weekend.”

I watched her as she dropped off her bowl at the dish-washing station. I almost choked on my last bite of carrot cake as she bent over to drop the paper cup in the recycling bin, and I caught a glimpse of her chest in profile. Deep breaths. Think soothing thoughts.

In the lab, everyone was finishing up for the weekend. Art and Ted were still huddled, working out some detail of their experiment. I took the final readings for mine, and extracted a sample to examine under a microscope. It didn’t really show enough detail and I made a note in the log to schedule time on the electron microscope so I could get a closer look at the molecular structure. Next week would be soon enough.

Frank asked who wanted to go out for dinner. Ted begged off, family commitment, but Art and I shrugged and said sure, why not. Neither of us, apparently had anything pressing on the schedule tonight. We had a short discussion about where to go and no one had a preference, so we settled on TGIF. We often ate lunch there, but never dinner. Perhaps we were hoping for a miraculous transformation in the food or decor that kicked in at four o’clock.

We were disappointed to find neither of those had happened. Same place, same food, just louder and more people. We had to wait for a booth, but it wasn’t overly long, so we sat, got menus thrown at us, and asked what we wanted to drink.

It was burgers all around, and I ordered a beer. The other two got mixed drinks, something with fruit juice. Art and I teamed up and gently needled Frank about Eden Mallory. It seemed the two of them had been spending a considerable amount of time together on the weekends discussing recent developments in the field of biochemistry. At least, that was what he would have us believe.

We mostly needled him because it was fun to watch him change color. The pink moved up from his neck above his collar until it reached his face. I think Sara had been correct: It would just be a short time before they moved in together.

Frank finally said goodnight and left us, looking a little relieved. I still had part of my drink left, as did Art, so we chatted about work and vacation plans while we finished.

Around us the energy level was picking up, which surprised me, until I noticed the sign by the bar: “Friday Night Trivia Contest, cash prizes!” It looked like there were groups who were seriously into this, to the point of wearing matching tee-shirts.

A table near us held several young women who were looking frustrated. I heard one of them yell, “Where is she?” while another frantically dialed a cell phone and got voice mail. One of them, looking desperate, started looking around the bar, until her eye fell on us. She said something to her friends, and then jumped up and came over to us.

“Excuse me, are you on a team already?”

“A team for what,” asked Art, who hadn’t seen the sign.

“Trivia. Are you already on a trivia team?”

I said, “We just came for dinner, not trivia, but no, we’re not on a team.”

“Are you smart?” she asked, which I thought was a little personal.

“Smarter than the average bear,” said Art, which got a smile from me, but no recognition at all from the woman.

“Look, one of our team members is a no-show, and three people isn’t enough to play this game and have a chance at the prizes. You need at least four. You guys want to play on our team?”

Art thought about it and said that he’d probably pass, trivia wasn’t his thing, but thanks for asking. She turned to me.

“C’mon, how about it? A chance at some bucks, you get to hang out with hot women and show off your knowledge.”

“It’s a compelling argument,” I said, “but I don’t have much practice at this.”

“Look, you either know something or you don’t, and if you don’t maybe someone else on the team will. Having a fourth just ups our odds. Please?”

She said this last with a look that reminded me of my teenage sister when she was begging to be allowed to go to a concert she knew my parents didn’t approve of.

With the proviso that I’d have to leave no later than ten, I agreed, and she actually jumped up and down and clapped her hands. She grabbed my hand and pulled me back to her table. I just had time to grab my glass and say goodbye to Art.

“Okay,” she shouted over the bar roar, “I found us a substitute. This is ... what is your name, anyway?”

“I’m Sam.” I got introduced around the table, and hoped I pick up the names later. Apparently this was a regular thing for them. They’d won a couple of times, but the competition had gotten tougher. They all worked in the same office building not far away, doing some kind of clerical tasks, and Fridays were their chance to cut loose and show off their knowledge.

I checked with them on the rules and there didn’t seem to be many. First team with a correct answer got points. A wrong answer got points taken off. The leader after a certain number of questions won the round and some cash. There was a final round where the winners, if there was more than one, got to face off for the biggest cash prize.

It was fascinating to watch the girls. There were wound as tight as could be, and I was pretty sure it was due to excitement and not alcohol. The MC stepped up with a microphone, and an assistant was there to keep tabs on points.

He made a few introductory remarks (“Don’t forget to tip the wait staff!”) into a too-loud mic and the first round was underway.

“What is the least likely color to find in a bag of M&M’s?”

Oh, I know this, it’s brown. But too late, because some other team had already shouted out the answer.

I checked in with the team on the proper way to do this, and the consensus was, if you were sure you knew the answer, shout it out. If you weren’t a hundred percent sure, you could ask your team, and they’d agree or disagree and hope no one jumped in to answer before you.

The MC asked, “Which African country was formerly known as Abyssinia?”

I knew this. “Ethiopia,” I shouted.

Point to us. “What’s the name of your team?” I asked.

“The Know-It-Alls,” Martha, the one who kidnapped me, confided. I thought, “Of course you are.”

The MC again: “Who wrote the ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ books?”

My favorites as a kid. “A. A. Milne!” I shouted. Point. Fist pumps and back slaps from the table.

By this time I thought I had sorted the name problem. Martha was the one who came up to our table. She was twenty-something, pretty in the way that young women often are until they start to age, with blondish hair that looked like it needed a color touchup. Maybe a bit shallow for me. She sat directly across from me.

To my left was Sandy, also in her twenties, brunette, with some intelligence in her eyes. She had a wry way of commenting on people, at work or here in the bar, and was amusing. She had a loose-fitting blazer on over her shirt.

On my right was Maria, who had a kind of intensity and focus that made me believe she’d be good at whatever she did. She had really dark hair, almost black, and remarkable almond-shaped blue eyes. Because of the lighting, I couldn’t get a good look at any of their bodies, but they all seemed to be trim, and Maria, when she moved in her seat, made me think she had large-cup boobs.