Wild (21 page)

“There it is. I was wondering what happened to it,” Carmela exclaimed as she pulled out some outfit from the back of her closet.

The outfit was hideous. The outrageous color combination of oranges, greens and blues didn’t detract from the awful pattern and overly broad collar. I stared at her in disgust.

“You are not honestly going to have me wear that?”

She laughed. “Of course not. It’s an original. I’ll wear it at the party on Saturday.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Monica is throwing a 70s party. You should come. It’s going to be fun dancing to seventies tunes, wearing outrageous clothes.”

A seventies party. I remembered the photos I had seen of Vince at a seventies party. Looking at Carmela I just couldn’t picture him as the guy who would go to a seventies party. It didn’t sound like him at all. It was Carmela’s kind of gig, not Vince’s.

Carmela seemed to have noticed that I had suddenly gone quiet.

“What’s wrong?”

“Can you imagine Vince at a seventies party?”

I could tell she found the question strange.

“Vince? In hideous flares and awful colors? No way. But if you want to bring him, I’m sure Monica won’t mind.”

I stared blankly into the room.

“Can I use your internet?” I heard myself ask Carmela.

“Sure, but don’t you want to get ready?” She seemed perplexed.

“Later,” I told her as I walked over to her computer and booted it up. It seemed to take forever until the screen came up and I was able to log into the internet. I typed in only two words: Vincent Mesaros.

The search came back with a long list of hits. I didn’t know where to start, so I started from the top.

The first was a newspaper article titled
Promising researcher wins Young Investigator Award
. The picture in the article was too grainy for me to recognize anybody. I looked at the date: March 1976. It had to be his father, I concluded after a short calculation in my head.

I went onto the next. It was a list of graduates from a high school in Boston. I found his name, but the date was in the sixties: again his father.  The third hit was a medical research paper and I skipped it. It was too much medical jargon I couldn’t understand.

Four more research articles later I started to get frustrated. It appeared as if Vince just didn’t exist. All I could find was information about his father.

The next search result was a newspaper articles from the San Francisco Chronicle. It looked promising – finally something local. The headline screamed
Researcher disappears after lab burns out.
A large photo of UCSF’s campus was shown. I scrolled further down to read what had happened.

The article reported that a laboratory at UCSF had burned down and all records had been destroyed and the researcher whose lab it was, had disappeared right after the fire. As I scrolled to the end of the page, there was another photo. It was undoubtedly Vince. The caption read
Vincent Mesaros MD disappeared in the wake of the fire and has not been heard of since.

The article indicated that the cause of the fire was arson. What had he done and why? I scrolled back up to reread the article for any clues and froze when my eyes locked in on the date of the paper: October 12, 1978.

My heart stopped beating for an instant. I held my breath. How could it be? It had to be wrong. But I knew instinctively that it wasn’t.

Class of ’71.
Suddenly the graduation diploma from medical school flashed back into my mind. It was his, not his father’s. The photos weren’t photos of a Seventies party, but of a party
in the Seventies.

I went back to the research papers and read through them, understanding less than ten percent. However, the little I did understand was what his research was about: aging, or how to turn off the gene which controlled aging. There was no doubt now that he had told me the truth about one thing: the research was his, not Entwhistle’s.

I went back to the graduation records of the Boston high school and calculated. He was sixty-three or sixty-four. I had passionately kissed a man who was ready to collect his Social Security check!

I gasped. I desperately needed some air. I was glad Carmela had decided to take a shower while I was busy on her computer.

I had been ready to jump into bed with a man forty years my senior! In fact, I had tried to seduce him at every turn.

I knew from the few things Vince had told me about his lab mice, that he had found the switch as he had called it. He had to have found it back in seventy-eight just when he had disappeared.

The whole setup of his home now made sense: no windows, elaborate security, the lab downstairs. The lab: I remembered the mouse he had euthanized and what he had explained about the side effects, but wondered whether he had told me the full story about those effects. I guessed he hadn’t. There was more to the side effects than he would let on.

A heightening of the senses:
did this mean he felt my kisses much more intensely than somebody else would? Was that why he had tried to take things slow? I didn’t see what was so bad about those side effects.

I switched off the computer just as Carmela came back into the room.

“You look a little pale. Maybe you should wear some makeup,” she suggested as she looked at me.

“Yes,” I said as if on autopilot, and got up. My legs buckled and I had to hold on to the foot of the bed, so I wouldn’t collapse.

Carmela rushed toward me to support me. She helped me onto her bed.

“You haven’t eaten, have you?”

I shook my head.

“I’ll make you some soup.”

I wanted to protest. “No, you’re not supposed to be the one looking after me. I’m supposed to help you.”

“I’m perfectly fine, thanks to your boyfriend. So, just lie down for a minute.”

She got up and seconds later I heard her in the kitchen.

It hit me like a ton of bricks: I was in love with a man in his sixties. All of a sudden a terrible thought struck me: what if the reason why he didn’t want to have sex with me was because he
couldn’t?
What if he was too old for it?

After I had had some food in my stomach, I looked at Carmela.

“Do you think age matters?”

She wasn’t quite sure what I meant. “In guys, you mean, or do you mean age difference?”

“Both.”

“Sure, it matters. Frankly I wouldn’t want to date an eighteen year old virgin – too much work!” She claimed. “Mind you, they are very grateful come to think of it.” Her eyes suddenly looked as if she was somewhere very far in the distance.

I could see she was clearly speaking from personal experience.

“How about the older ones?”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t touch anything over thirty-five. Too much baggage.”

That didn’t sound very encouraging.

“How old do you think Vince is?”

“Early, mid thirties, I’d say. Good body, if you haven’t already noticed.”

I blushed. I had noticed the first day when I had seen him come out of the shower clad only in a towel. What did it matter that he was in his sixties, when his body looked and felt like he was in his thirties?

“So, what are you waiting for?”

She was right. What was I waiting for? I could only get the answer to my questions one way.

18. Vince’s Transformation

I had made up my mind. Standing in the shower, I went through my plan again. I would show up at the flat with a dozen red roses and ask her to give me a chance to explain. I would take her to a public place so she would feel safe. And then I would tell her the truth about me, all of it without leaving anything out.

It was the only way. And if she was still sitting opposite of me when I was done with my story, if she hadn’t run off yet, then I would tell her I couldn’t live without her, and that I wanted her to love me the way I loved her.

I was nervous and completely unsure about how she would react.

I stepped out of the shower and dried off. As I looked into the mirror, I hoped she would be able to love me. I still had the body of a thirty-three year old and my mind had never aged. My true age meant nothing.

But I was less worried about my age than the wild animal inside of me. How could she ever see past that and not live in constant fear of me?

A knock at the front door pulled me out of my thoughts. Nobody ever knocked at my door. I ran to the security monitor and saw her. I was about to storm downstairs when I realized I was still naked.

I rushed into my closet and jumped into a pair of shorts, not bothering with underwear. Seconds later I opened the door.

She looked beautiful. Her hair had a wonderful shine to it and the light breeze outside blew it into different directions. She wore a short summer dress which revealed more than it concealed. I guessed she wasn’t here to pick up her suitcases, not looking like that.

In my mind I made a note to myself to get Carmela a present, since I was petty sure she had a hand in this. I couldn’t stop staring at her. All I could think of was how beautiful she looked and that I wanted to kiss her.

“Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

I stepped aside. “Please.”

She brushed past me and started walking up the stairs. I noticed she still wore her bandage around her leg and supported herself on the railing.

I shut the door and followed her, shamelessly taking in the view from my vantage point as she walked up the stairs ahead of me. Her legs were slim and strong and her hips shifted from side to side with each step. I could feel myself getting aroused just looking at her legs. I was close enough to touch her, to run my hand up the inside of her legs. I was in dangerous territory. I wasn’t sure how far I would get with telling her my story if I continued looking at her.

She sat down on the couch and crossed her legs. She looked at me as I stood a few yards away from her.

“Can I get you anything?”

She nodded and I headed for the kitchen.

“Yes, an explanation.”

I stopped in my tracks and turned back to her. Obviously she had decided not to waste time with small talk and pleasantries. Well, at least it meant she would give me a chance to explain myself.

I sat down in the armchair furthest from her. I had rehearsed my speech, but now I wasn’t sure whether it was the right way to start.

“Annette, what I’m going to tell you is the truth, however incredible it may sound. And I want you to know I’ll never do anything to hurt you.” I paused. I couldn’t stall any longer.

“I was born in 1945 …” I started, but she waved me off instantly.

“I’ve figured that out. What I want to know is why you torched your lab at UCSF.”

I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. I jumped up, but she didn’t flinch.

“You know? But - but how?” I stared at her.

“You’re not the only one with a college education,” she shot back. “And mine is a little bit more recent than yours if I might add.”

She was incredible. I tried to find any sign in her face that she was disgusted with me, but I detected none. “How much do you know?”

“Most of it, but feel free to fill in the blanks.”

“And you came back nevertheless?” She knew my true age, and still she sat on my couch, where I had kissed her passionately, where I had caressed her breasts, as if sitting there was the most natural thing in the world.

“I need some answers, Vince.”

“Anything you want to know.”

“Why did you set fire to the lab? Why destroy everything you’ve worked for?”

I realized then that she didn’t know everything, that the most important thing about me was still a mystery to her.

“Annette, this is going to be difficult for you to hear, but …” I didn’t know how to say it. I started again. “I had to destroy everything so nobody would make the same mistake I did. Yes, I’ve found the fountain of youth, and yes, I’ve stopped aging, but at what a price.”

I looked at her. Her eyes were fixed at me. She wanted to know everything, whether it was good or bad.

“Do you remember the mouse I euthanized?”

She nodded.

“Then you know my research has flaws. I’m not myself anymore. When my emotions overpower me, I lose control and take on the characteristics of a wild animal.”

I watched her intently as I spoke the words. There was a flicker in her eyes.

Her voice was quiet when she spoke. “What animal, Vince?”

What did it matter? She held my gaze. I knew she needed an answer.

“A mountain lion.”

Her mouth fell open and I could feel she held her breath.

She got up, slowly. I had lost her. She wanted to leave. I wanted to scream, but I didn’t. I had to let her go. I owed her that much. I had had my chance. It wasn’t meant to be.

Slowly she walked away from the couch. But what was she doing? Instead of heading for the stairs, she stopped in front of me and looked up. Now it was I who couldn’t breathe.

“It was you.” Her voice sounded incredulous. “You were the creature who saved me.”

I nodded. There were no more secrets.

Did she really raise her hand and caress my cheek? Did she trace my lips with her fingers? I didn’t dare move. I looked into her eyes and I saw no fear, no disgust.

“Then I only have one more question.” She swallowed hard.

I wondered what else there was. She knew I was a wild beast inside and as incredible as it was she accepted it and didn’t run away screaming. Did she not realize the danger she was in?

“Did you not want to have sex with me because you
can’t?
” She emphasized
can’t
in a way which made it absolutely clear to me what she was referring to. But just in case I didn’t get it, she qualified. “I mean, has your sex drive sort of died because you’re over sixty?”

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her closer.

“There’s nothing wrong with my sex drive.”

“Can you prove that?”

I knew I could. As soon as I had put my arms around her waist and felt her breasts crushed against my naked chest, I could feel myself get rock-hard.