Lightning People (36 page)

“We need his venom.” Sarah said matter-of-factly. “A lot of facilities have their venom shipped in from private suppliers, but there have been too many tainted samples, blood and puss and a whole saturation of I'm not sure what. I prefer the extractions performed on-site. Fresh and cold, less chance of outside spoilers. Sorry. I have a tendency to go on.”

“No, I'm interested,” Del entreated. “You know, I studied here. Undergraduate. I was a biology major. I never got this far down in the building. Dr. Isely, I hope you don't mind if I ask. Why do you want rattlesnake venom?”

Sarah opened the box and peered in at Apollo, inspecting her latest venom-maker. Then she glanced back up at Del, whose eyes were still holding the question out for her.

“Do you know anything about the Furcifer labordi chameleon?” Sarah asked.

“Green little lizard. Lives in Madagascar. About the size of my hand.”

“That's right,” Sarah said, clearly impressed. “You know, then, that its entire life cycle is a little under one year from conception to death. It's the shortest living tetrapod on earth. You figure out Furcifer's genetic makeup, determine what molecules are responsible for shoving it out of existence so quickly, find those analogues in human cells, wipe them out, and you've got the recipe for the fountain of youth. Or at least you turn eighty-year-olds into the new middle-agers. Of course, then you get into the problems of delayed mortality, but with STD rates among the elderly spiking the way they are, I guess humans always manage to figure out new ways to kill themselves early.” Sarah clasped Del's arm affectionately and then closed the carrier, lifting it to rest against her hip.

“But what's that have to do with rattlesnakes?” Del persisted.

“It's the same principle. What does venom do when it hits the bloodstream?”

“Bleeding, nausea, dilated pupils, cramping, vomiting, heart attack . . . ” Del had repeated this list so many times, she was proud of how quickly it poured from her lips.

“Those are outward symptoms. And they're the same symptoms as heart failure, aren't they? But I'm asking what the venom does inside. It drops blood pressure. It clots the blood and causes paralysis, allowing time for more toxic poisons to take effect. Now imagine what those isolated molecules could potentially do for congestive heart failure. Essentially, they could relax the heart muscle and allow blood to flow in and out of its passageways. Voila. Rattlesnakes, the answer to the biggest grim reaper in America.”

“That's brilliant,” Del said in astonishment. She had read some journal findings on this subject but had never been so close to an actual scientist working the case. Del's self-appointed rattlesnake study seemed so limited, so superficial—a book on mothers? Crosshatching diamond patterns in a notebook?—while women like Sarah Isely were digging deeper, turning the holy terror of teeth into real scientific possibilities.

“It's all research for now,” Sarah said, smiling. “You stare at
cells all day under a microscope, you start thinking that all of life's problems can be discovered in a petri dish. But we've made some strides. We've already begun testing, but we have miles to go yet.” Sarah consulted her watch and drew a conclusive breath, indicating she had somewhere more pressing to be.

“Thank you for your time,” Del said, folding up the release papers in her pocket and again offering her hand. “I'm glad you'll put Apollo to good use.”

“Apollo?”

“His name,” she said, blushing. “That's what I called him.”

When Del returned to the zoo, she spent the afternoon wandering around the grounds. As the last visitors funneled out into the dusk, she sat on a bench and listened to the animals. Their cries in the darkness were slow and piercing, a birdcall answered by a chorus of primates. They weren't crying from hunger or thirst, as those needs no longer concerned them. The cries rose from somewhere deep in their blood, and Del made no attempt to speculate on their causes or origins. For a few hours after closing time, she simply listened to the noises that saturated the park, drifting through the bars and cages in an acoustic collision of continents and ecosystems. By day, the institution exaggerated comforting connections between animals and humans. A mural outside the Monkey House depicted Darwin's familiar evolutionary chain of progress from slumped ape to straight-backed Homo sapien, with one last slot empty where visitors stood for photographs, demonstrating in their nylon running jackets and baggy Levi's that they were inheritors of an unfinished project that would surely, at some future date, even render them obsolete drafts. But at night, there were only these invisible, lone cries, spilling into each other like some mirror city where no human brain could outthink the real connections: desperation and survival, the noise of night no matter where anyone stood on that long chain of progress.

On the way home, she checked her messages to see if Raj had called. He hadn't. “Are you home yet?” she wrote in the electric halo of her phone. She rechecked her phone an hour later as she exited the subway. Raj still hadn't responded.

THE APARTMENT WAS dark when she returned. She found Joseph in bed, murmuring through a fit of sleep-talking delirium. “Tyson first, then Thomas,” he whispered against the pillow. She changed into a T-shirt, brushed her teeth, and sat on the edge of the bed to place her hand on his shoulder. His skin was wet with sweat and coarse from a chill. He woke when she lifted the blanket over him.

“I tried to wait up for you,” he said.

“Sleep,” she replied, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. “You're still sick.”

“Don't go yet,” he pleaded. “Stay and talk to me.”

She began to tell him of her visit to Columbia, her transfer of Apollo, and the scientific discovery of rattlesnake venom to cure heart attacks, but Joseph's eyelids had already closed. He looked like a child when he slept. When she cancelled out the nervous blue jabs of his eyes, the beams that lit his features with purpose, his face rounded and softened in innocence. He seemed too young to be married to her when he was asleep, too much like a Midwestern boy sleeping under a galaxy of fluorescent green stars that he once told her he affixed to his bedroom ceiling as a child. She gently patted his chest.

“I'll get you some water.”

Del walked through the living room raked in streetlight and down the hallway. She couldn't be sure whether the knocking had just started or she had only now come across it. The wood floorboards creaked under her bare feet, which brought more knocking on the front door. She froze. Her heart twisted as it always did late at night with anything involving a stranger. She leaned into the kitchen to consult the microwave clock. 12:17 AM. She thought it might be Raj, back today from Florida, but he never would have barged in uninvited. Raj would have called her first.

She shook her hair to bring some life to it, pressed her hands quietly against the door, and failed to make out the dark silhouette on the other side of the eyehole. She paused, waiting, but the stranger continued to knock. She pulled her thin, white T-shirt over her thighs, unbolted the lock, and cautiously opened the door.

William's hands straddled the sides of the door frame. His lips opened. He was all mouth.

“ I'M SORRY IF I woke you.”

William's lips, chapped and chewed, struggled with the words and offered the kind of insincere smile that must creep across the face of a drug smuggler when placing a suitcase in front of a custom's agent. He watched Del cover her breasts with her arm and her legs close together from the draft of the outer hallway.

“You did,” she replied. “We were sleeping.”

“Is Joseph here?” he asked, peering over her shoulder as if expecting to see him materialize out of the darkness.

“Of course he's here. He's in bed. This isn't a good time, William. Joe's sick.”

“Well,” he stammered. He pinched the back of his neck and then shook his hand through his tangled hair, greased into an accidental mohawk. “I was hoping, if it isn't too much of a problem, if I could crash here for the night.”

“He's really sick.”

“I don't have many other options right now.”

“Aren't you supposed to be out in California?”

He winced and nodded his head to indicate the million wrenches
thrown into that plan. His eyes suddenly dipped down to her thighs, and, in a pang of embarrassment, she clamped the white T-shirt lower down her legs.

“Okay,” she said, letting go of the door. She ran into the bathroom and returned a minute later with a towel tied around her waist. By then, William had already piled his bags underneath the windowsill. He was standing in the door frame of the bedroom, staring in at Joseph.

“What's wrong with him?”

“Be quiet,” she whispered. “He's got the flu or something.”

“He looks twelve, doesn't he?” he laughed. “Like it's all money and palm trees blowing through that head. Some people are always lucky like that. For some, the world makes sure there are a million arms ready in case of a fall. Other people just keep hitting rock.”

The tone of William's voice was sharp and slow. He stared at the bed with a weird intensity, and Del grabbed his arm to lead him away from the door. William whipped his neck around when she touched him, as if startled, taking a long second to readjust his eyes on her.

“Why are you out of options?” she asked.

“I'm low on cash. And on friends. I don't have the strength to be subtle anymore.”

“What happened to the money, William?”

“What money?”

“The check I gave you,” she said, clearly irritated that he had forgotten the loan. “Two thousand dollars. Did you cash it?”

He grunted, and she let go of his arm.

“Why? Do you need it back already? Christ, I told you I'd repay you. You'd think Joseph could help me out a little bit. You know, I helped him out a lot when we were younger. I introduced him to his agent. He has balls to forget a thing like that.”

“I'm not trying to fight with you,” she replied. “I was just asking if you cashed that check.”

“Yes, I cashed it,” he said quietly, only now realizing the roughness of his voice. “I'm sorry. I'm just tired. I need to sleep.”

“I only asked because if you hadn't cashed the check yet, it wouldn't be any good,” she said, taking a step back.

“Why is that?” William sat down on the couch and kicked off his shoes. He placed the blanket over his lap and punched the pillow against the armrest. He was too exhausted to bother wondering why the living-room sofa was already doubling as a bed. Del walked to the bedroom door, took a breath, and exhaled slowly as she leaned against the wall.

“Because the account is closed,” she said. “My friend who wrote that check died. She was hit by a car in Tribeca over a week ago. So you can forgive me if I'm not a very good host right now.”

William's head jerked toward her with his mouth in an open lock. His eyes widened, and she couldn't help but compare those eyes to the white mice in the zoo lab on feeding day, scurrying into corners when she opened the cage like they somehow knew that the slowest would be caught and never brought back.

“What?” he rasped. “What was her name?”

“Madi Singh,” she said. As soon as she spoke her friend's name, grief exploded in her throat. “It was a hit-and-run.”

“No.”

“Yes. It's terrible.”

William buried his face in his hands. Then he lifted himself slowly from the couch and swerved blindly through the room. His hip slammed into the dresser, but the blow didn't slow him. He rushed into the bathroom, where he spit saliva in the sink and brought his head up to examine himself in the medicine cabinet mirror.

“Not possible, it's not possible,” he whispered to his reflection. He tried to decipher the sequence of events that connected Del and Joseph to the hit-and-run all the way to Quinn, but the synapses of his brain were failing to create a bridge. All he could say was, “it's not possible” over and over to his swollen face. When he turned, as if searching for help to put these pieces together and make sense of what he just heard, he saw Del disappear into the bedroom and shut the door behind her.

 

HE WANTED TO lie down and sleep, to disappear into the blackest pit of no-thought anywhere, to be unaccountable for eight hours, to leave Quinn and his death far behind him. But when he tried to shut
his eyes, he felt a mosquito skim his temple. He slammed his palm against the side of his head and then grabbed at it as it flew over his shoulder, clapping around in his blind spot. In a minute, its wings swam across his neck, and he jumped from the couch, yelling “piece of shit” as he tried to smack it between his hands. The insect was out for blood. When he lay back down on the couch, it flitted over his ear, blaring its hard battle whine, and again he bolted up, grabbed a magazine off the coffee table and swatted it through the air, chasing it into a corner, where he thought he finally crushed it against the wall. Out the window, dozens of moths were fluttering around the bulb of the streetlamp like pieces of satellite junk caught in orbit. Standing by the window frame, William waited for the mosquito to dance around his ear again. It did, buzzing like a radio frequency, and he went on the attack, slapping his face and neck. Finally, he caught it in his fist and squeezed his knuckles until a small drop of blood and black insect wire were smeared on his fingers. Probably Joseph's blood. Or Del's. Or maybe his own or someone else's in another part of town. There was a whole fleet of microscopic blood vials, samples of the population, drifting through the city air tonight.