When the Nines Roll Over (28 page)

“Alexander,” said Kislyany. “What's the matter? Are you feeling all right?”

He was one of the heroes of the great medical victory, and success had treated him well. He leaned against the door frame, handsome and urbane, one hand in the pocket of his gray wool cardigan. His initial expression was of warmth and concern. The look on my face changed his mind; he raised his palms to me before I said a word.

“You let him die,” I said. “You knew what was happening and you let him die.”

I didn't think I was speaking loudly, but the two young men turned to stare at me. Kislyany stepped out of his office and nodded to them.

“Give me a minute, gentlemen.” He closed the door behind him.

“He never got real pills, did he?”

“Why don't we take a walk, Alexander.” Kislyany tried to rest his hand on my elbow but I pushed it off. “Alexander—”

“Did he?”

“No. He was part of the control group.” Kislyany saw the way my face twisted and he quickly added, “This is the way medical research works. It has to be this way.”

“You let him die. You were his doctor for his two years and you gave him nothing but sugar pills. You let him die.”

He grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me close, his eyes narrow and angry. “You think I work this hard because I want people to die? Listen to me. We didn't know if the pills would work when we started. Nobody knew. This is brand-new research; for all we knew the pills would kill more people than the virus. Okay? It has to be done this way. The drugs have to be tested. There always has to be a control group.”

The phrase
control group
hung there in the fluorescent light, cold, precise, and merciless.

“But why did he have to be in it? He would still be here, Doctor. Why did you pick me? Who told you to pick me?”

He released my collar and shook his head. “I didn't pick you. It's all random. A computer selects the names randomly. It was just luck, Alexander.”

My legs felt boneless below me; I feared I would collapse onto the linoleum floor. I didn't want to be weak now; I prayed for strength.

“He would've beaten it,” I said quietly. “If you gave him the drugs, he would've beaten it.”

“It was double-blind. He didn't know, I didn't know. That's the way all tests are conducted. It's the way it has to work. I'm not the bad guy, Alexander. I know you want a bad guy, but there is none. Not me, not the FDA, nobody. This is my life, this
is it
, trying to find a cure for this goddamn disease. Two years ago we didn't know if the pills worked. Now we know. Those men in there,” he said, nodding toward the closed door, “they have a chance to live long lives.”

I rested my face against the beige wall, my cheek flush with the cold paint. I could hear the gurgle of water running through pipes, and hammering from somewhere below us; I imagined I could feel the flow of electricity running through copper wires.

“I don't want a bad guy, Doctor. I want Hector.”

He nodded. “I'm sorry, Alexander. I saw him dance once.
Sleeping Beauty.
I know nothing about ballet but—” He shrugged and smiled. “He had the whole audience in the palm of his hand. Listen, we've probably got these two guys in here panicked. Let me finish up with them and we'll go get something to eat.” He gripped my arm for a moment and then reached for the doorknob.

“Doctor,” I said, and he paused there, waiting. “You knew. You knew my pills were working, you knew for a long time. Don't say anything for a second, okay? Please, don't say anything. When you saw what was happening, you could have given him the real drugs. Maybe it would have been too late, I don't know. But you could have tried. Hector could have—”

Kislyany's face closed down on me. He entered his office and shut the door behind him. In that moment, while the door was still partway open, I saw the two young lovers sitting a few feet apart, holding hands across the gap. One of them looked right at me, his eyes fearful and curious. The other stared out the window.

The stewardess returns with the co-pilot, a broad-jawed man, his sleeves rolled to the elbows. He scowls as he comes close and waves at the air with his hand.

“How long has he been sitting like this?” he asks the stewardess, his voice low but angry.

“Maybe fifteen minutes. I think he's sick, Jimmy.”

“You think he's sick? No kidding he's sick.” The co-pilot bends toward me, until his face is inches from mine. “Look at me, buddy,” he whispers. He wrinkles his nose. “Look at me.”

I look at him. We stare at each other for several seconds.

“Last chance,” he says. “Come with us or we're carrying you back there.”

He waits for me to answer. When he sees that I won't, he reaches forward to unbuckle my belt. I don't interfere; this has gone on long enough. I don't want to be here anymore, among these people.

The co-pilot signals the steward and then kneels down to grab my ankles. The steward holds me by the armpits and together they hoist me from my seat, grunting as they go. Most of the passengers are standing now. They watch in silence, already rehearsing the stories they will tell when they're back on the ground, about the madman on their flight.

I go limp in the crewmen's arms and let them carry me to the rear of the plane. They shove me into the lavatory. “I'm standing right here,” the steward says before closing the door. “You're not going anywhere until we land.”

Here at last I strip off my soiled clothes. I wet paper towel after paper towel and sponge the filth from my body. I pump liquid soap into my hands and clean myself as best I can.

There were days when I wanted to see Kislyany's daughter bleeding from the eyes. I wanted him to come to me, desperate and weeping, begging for help. I would hand him sugar cubes and say, “Feed her these. She's part of the control group. This is the way it works.”

I'm past that now. I wish the girl a long life and happiness. But I want her to know that the grass she walks on is lush with the rot of beautiful men.
And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure.
What grows from the dung is what feeds us; we graze upon the graves. I want Kislyany's daughter to know that. I want the country to know that.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have made it work. Hector would be a movie star and I would film his every move, twenty-four framed Hectors per second. Twenty-four still-lifes. He would shimmer on screens everywhere, and then to video, Hector in every family's living room. He'd play Prince Desiré on sets across the nation; kiss Aurora and wake her from the hundred-year slumber, rewind and wake her again, rewind and wake her again.

I sit naked on the closed toilet seat and fall asleep to the engine's steady hum. We fly west, thirty thousand feet above nighttime America.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Sherwin B. Nuland's beautiful book,
How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter,
was a great help in the writing of “Merde for Luck.” I thank my wonderful teachers: Ernest Hebert, Geoffrey Wolff, and Michelle Latiolais. Thank you, Molly Stern; I wish you could edit the rest of my life. Thanks also to my fellow students at U.C. Irvine, to my agents Owen Laster, Alicia Gordon, and Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, and to D. B. Weiss, whose wise counsel and late-night emails saved me from writing even worse sentences than the ones you've already read.