On Such a Full Sea (26 page)

As much as there was to purchase and take home, the primary draw was the food, especially for Vik. Each food tent was pretty much the same, the space approximately a four-by-five-meter rectangle with a cooking station centered against one long side and a counter and seats running along on the other three, the backs of the patrons sometimes brushed by a flap of the tarp. Again here was something one would never expect Charters (or even us B-Mors) to tolerate, food made and served practically outside, without the usual hygienic safeguards and standards. But this is precisely what drew this venturing lot, the chance to eat dishes prepared by an authentically ordinary person, one standing directly before you, dressed in unremarkable clothing, whose bare hands touched everything, from the raw ingredients to the plate. Whom you could speak to if you pleased. For a certain person, this was thrilling dining, an experience further heightened by the fact that the food itself was old-fashioned and indifferent to the Charter prerequisite of having to be healthful; you could get Belgian street frites, or a Hiroshima-style
okonomiyaki
, or a gravy-sopped plate of chicken and dumplings. They went to Vik’s favorite, the Chinese-Korean tent, where he ordered them bowls of chive
jajang
noodles and a small platter of braised sea cucumber, which Fan could not stop eating. Vik asked the proprietor where she had sourced the sea cucumber, as it was especially firm and sweet.

Where you think, the busy woman murmured, and not in the most friendly way. She was thick of waist, with a sturdy neck, and had prominent uplifted dark eyebrows that made one feel that she was already dubious. Ocean.

Pacific or Atlantic?

Which you want?

I don’t have a preference.

Okay. All of them.

Vik grinned, and the proprietor appeared to grin for a millisecond, too, before she went back to dipping strips of beef in batter and then into a pot of fry oil for the two men around the corner. The other four stools were unoccupied.

You like
hae-sam
, huh?

Fan nodded, assuming she was referring to the sea cucumber. She had just taken the last bite of it.

I like her, she said to Vik. Good appetite.

Vik smiled and asked Fan if she wanted to try the deep-fried beef with sweet-and-sour sauce. It’s excellent here. Fan said she did but that she was too full.

Better than other one, the proprietor said, which Fan took to mean the beef. But Vik didn’t respond, instead absently rooting with his chopsticks at the remaining noodles in his bowl. The woman made a deal of wiping her fingers of the batter before stepping over to the pair of men to refill their beer glasses, lingering to banter with them.

Vik took a sip of his tea. Fan now pictured what might have happened; he had left the apartment to pick up his girlfriend, who must have been back in town, and maybe come right here, but something had clearly gone wrong, a sharp disagreement or even a fight. That he had hidden his chagrin this well was something she found both sad and endearing. He was not at all like Reg, who if anything was too quick to express himself, leaping up with exuberance when a performance review went well or tugging at his hair in frustration when he couldn’t get the scooter started, though the acting out seemed to temper him, too, serve to settle him back more easily into his naturally clement rhythms. Vik, on the other hand, appeared in constant control, and when he shouldn’t be, such as right now, he invisibly exerted himself even more to master the chaos.

Do you like pies? There’s an old man here who makes ones with wild berries.

Fan was not particularly enamored of such pies but said she did, clear that Vik was restless. He paid the bill and the proprietor thanked him, murmuring, See you again. Vik crisply told her, Sure, giving a thumbs-up as they pushed the tarp out of the way to exit. Where the pies were sold it was busier, people always ready to have dessert, and they had to wait on a line that trailed outside the tent, people holding their shade umbrellas. There were no seats free inside so Vik bought two blackberry-pie slices to go plus a whole apple pie (just now in season) and they sat at one of the picnic tables, which were completely empty, despite the ideally temperate and dry day. Beyond the footprint of the villages and their scrim of projected sky domes, Charters stayed out of the sun whenever possible. Vik had had them apply sunscreen in the car but otherwise seemed unconcerned; in fact, he was craning up his face, his dark sunglasses sparkling with the uncut plash of the sun. The pie was indeed excellent, as Vik said they were, much more tart and not half as sweet as the gloopy B-Mor versions Fan had tasted, the berries mostly whole and still with their seeds, the crust crumbly and light. Vik said it was made with lard. Fan observed to him that unlike most other Charters he didn’t appear worried about toxins in his food or, for that matter, the effects of the sun, even though he was a doctor.

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.

Betty had to greet the next guests and the helper ushered Vik and Fan into the rest of the house, pointing them forward to where the party was before she peeled off to the kitchen with the pie. Vik had not brought up with Fan beforehand how he would explain her presence and they did not discuss it now, this being his style. But he had also grasped what everyone who met Fan clearly sensed about her, that among her numerous capacities there was her ready ability to acclimate to any temperature. She certainly wasn’t the kind to query him about the particulars of his relationship with Betty, despite how curious she was and what she was beginning to think. Of course, none of that mattered to Fan. It was Vik’s life to do with as he pleased, to follow as he pleased. She had come along to enjoy one final day’s outing with him, and she wondered when he left for the hospital tomorrow morning whether she would leave a good-bye note and resume her path, too.

The interior of the house was an open plan, dominated by a long central living room with an exceedingly high ceiling and an exposed, intricately engineered steel catwalk offering access to the five bedrooms, two on each side and the master at the far head. The main level felt like a chapel that had been cleared of its pews and filled with multiple conversational sets of furniture, though all the sofas and armchairs were empty now with everyone gathered in the rear under an immense full-height conservatory with operable glass panels that were darkened when needed. The conservatory was essentially the backyard but a backyard screened and lighted and plumbed and under complete climate control, the size, it seemed to Fan, of one of the natural-light B-Mor grow nurseries where they didn’t also raise fish.

Some people caught sight of Vik and waved him over, drinks in their hands. They were a group of younger doctors like Vik, both women and men, perhaps a bit more ruffled and unkempt in the hair and clothes than the other guests, who were mostly in their thirties and forties, and children, seemingly scores of very young ones, each being held or closely trailed by a nanny wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt. Vik’s colleagues hardly acknowledged the niece-of-a-friend Fan, partly for her presumed age, but mostly because of how focused they were on the subject of the Cheungs’ windfall, reportedly worth not only cash and stock but also offered a contract for Oliver to continue directing the development of his therapy for the next five years at twice his current salary at the medical center. He hadn’t decided what to do yet, naturally torn between wanting to guide the research on his brainchild and doing absolutely nothing, at least as far as working was concerned.

I know what I’d do, one of the women said, swirling her glass of white wine. She was gangly and sallow with frizzy dirty-blond hair, her dark brown roots grown out too long. I would have gone in and quit this morning and then chartered my own global for a six-month tour of vineyards. Vineyards in every continent. But I wouldn’t care if it was just one. I haven’t been anywhere!

None of us has! the other woman responded. How could we? We’ve all been in school forever and then went right to work!

And will do so forever! an unshaven man piped in. He wore a funny little brimmed hat that seemed too small for his big swarthy head.

I took a global to Fiji in the spring, another of the men offered.

I think I remember that, the second woman said. Wasn’t that just for a long weekend?

A regular weekend, actually. But it was really great.

What’d you do?

Swam some. Mostly slept.

Solid.

The first woman said, Do they have vineyards in Fiji?

The Fiji fellow said he thought not but couldn’t be sure.

Would you go on your trip all by yourself? the funny-hatted man asked the woman with the wineglass. She thought about it.

I’d bring a man with me, maybe even several men, for the company but also so I would be sure to get pregnant.

You could get pregnant now.

But I don’t have the time. I don’t yet have the money. And when I finally have both, I’ll be too old even to take drastic measures.

You can keep.

Don’t be icky.

I think we’ll all change our minds about that.

Not me.

I’d go on your global, the Fiji man said. I like those flights. But you can’t get something for nothing. You’d have to buy my loving.

Maybe I would.

They all laughed nervously, though maybe not Vik. Being nudged by their huddle, Fan had drifted a few steps away and now stood among some children who were picking at the many rectangular platters of delicious-looking food on the catering tables, though to Fan it all tasted invisibly misted with the same half-stale sauce.

And what about you, Vik, would you ride my global? I’d pay lots for you. I’d pay twice your salary.

I wouldn’t let you, Vik told her, accepting a beer from a roving waiter. Love should be free.

You’re terribly wise, Vik, the funny-hatted man said.

It’s because I’m much older than all of you.

What, by four or five years? You’re the same age as Oliver, aren’t you?

From eleventh year on, we were in the same form and section.

Wow, the man said. Must have been a drag to have all that brilliance with you the whole way through. I’d have gone blind.

We all did, Vik said, subscribing to the mood. But Oliver is too charming to despise.

And Oliver knows it, someone said brightly from behind Vik.

It was Oliver.

Hail Caesar! the group quickly roared.

Ditch the rotgut, he told them. With him were three waiters, one of them cradling an inordinately large bottle of Champagne—a double magnum—by its bottom and neck, the other two ready with flutes. Oliver gave hugs to the two women and chest-and-shoulder bumps to the men, with maybe an extra-heavy bump for Vik. Oliver was the shortest person among them and a bit stocky, though, as with his wife, there was something highly crafted about him, plus in his case also unmistakably, irrefutably, clean, as though he had showered twice, a third time, then gone back and fine-scrubbed himself again. He scanned Fan as Vik repeated what he’d already said about her, though to Fan it was clear that Oliver wasn’t in the least believing him. But he didn’t say anything, simply shaking her hand, or rather giving her his to shake, not exerting the slightest bit of pressure.