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.