“What do you mean? Like teleporting? ‘Beam me up, Scotty’? That sort of thing?”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“Where do they go?”
“No one knows.”
“Sounds like science fiction to me.”
“Me too. Except it’s reality.”
“Huh.” She sounds more interested now. Peers over my shoulder as if she’s going to stay for a while.
Her perfume really is nice.
I try to redirect my attention from her to the books.
“Let me read you a quote.” I flip through the pages, but it takes me awhile to find the one I’m looking for. “Okay. Here: ‘Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.’”
She considers that for a moment. “Sure. Even solid objects are mostly space, the electron orbiting the nucleus. Who wrote that? Dr. Tanbyrn?”
“Not quite. A little bit before his time.”
“Einstein?”
“Democritus. He died in 370 BC.”
“That’s amazing.”
I hand her one of the books. “Here. You can read this one if you want. I highlighted all the good stuff. Up to chapter 9.”
But she straightens up. “Actually, I was thinking I’d take a quick shower, freshen up. It was a long day in the car.”
“Ah, yes. Well, maybe later.”
She pats my shoulder. “I’ll let you do all the heavy lifting. You can fill me in when you’re done.”
Then she leaves me alone to my reading, and I settle in with my pen, highlighter, and the shorter, more recent of the two textbooks, and flip to the chapter on quantum entanglement and theories about the results of a meta-analysis of studies on identical twins. As I do, I can’t help but think of Drew and Tony, who, just like so many identical twins, seemed to communicate with each other in unexplainable ways — finishing each other’s sentences, making up words that the other boy seemed to instinctively know the meaning of, even, at times, giving the impression that they knew what each other was thinking.
As I begin to read, the memory of my two sons pinches my heart, and I can’t help but wonder if this research will help me to understand them better or just make me miss them all the more.
Riah Colette showed her ID to the security guard in the RixoTray Pharmaceuticals corporate headquarters’ lobby, took the elevator to the top floor, and entered the suite where her paramour worked in his corner office.
Whenever Cyrus was in his office — no matter what time of day — his secretary, Caitlyn Vaughn, would be stationed at the reception desk out front. Riah nodded to her, and the young woman gave her a half-frown but waved her through.
Since Cyrus was a married man, he’d wanted to avoid his place from the beginning of their relationship, and Riah never let him come to her apartment, so that limited their choices. Sometimes they would slip off to a hotel room, but more often than not they stayed here in his office.
Riah had the sense that the twenty-something redhead was jealous of her liaisons with her boss, and she wondered how many times Caitlyn had leaned close to the door to listen to the sounds coming from inside the office during her visits. It was something to think about. Perhaps she would ask her about it one of these days.
Quietly, Riah gave the door a light one-knuckle knock, just enough to let Cyrus know someone was there, but then entered before he had a chance to call her in.
He was on the phone, and she could tell he was taken aback by her arrival, but he quickly put on a smile and signaled to her that he would be with her in a moment, then gestured toward a chair: Have a seat.
She chose not to, but instead angled toward the window.
Impeccably dressed in a suit that cost more than most people’s entire wardrobes, Cyrus looked sharp, powerful, confident. But also stern. Any gentleness he might’ve tried to portray was betrayed by his eyes, which were like two steel balls, blank and emotionless. Two miniature shot puts embedded in his head. Riah had seen him enjoy himself, oh yes, but had never seen him happy, not really. And that intrigued her. Because she couldn’t remember a time when she’d been happy either.
He let his gaze drift from her face and slide down her body, along the curves of her dress, and she didn’t discourage it. She felt no shame in using her looks and figure in her research into human nature, into attraction, into love. She kept in shape for this, and at thirty-four she’d been told that she was still striking, and she was used to eyes following her wherever she went.
Long ago, Riah had learned that sex was the way to please men. And when they’re pleased they trust you, and when they trust you they share their secrets with you. As she’d overheard a female co-worker say one time, “If you can’t tell someone your secrets, you make intimacy off-limits.”
So, it seems, sharing secrets leads to intimacy.
Riah wasn’t sure yet if intimacy would lead to the one thing she wanted to feel most — love — but she held out hope that in time it would.
She knew Cyrus’s office welclass="underline" the wide windows overlooking central Philly, his framed degrees and awards hanging prominently on the walls, bookshelves that were neatly lined with medical textbooks and packed with paraphernalia from his travels around the world. In the center of the room sat his imposing mahogany desk that she and Cyrus would clear off sometimes when they decided not to use the leather couch in the corner.
And of course, at the far side of the room, the two aquariums: one filled with buzzing emerald jewel wasps, the other with inch-and-a-half-long cockroaches. It was a curious thing. Riah had asked him about that, but he’d never explained why he kept them.
She went to the shelf and picked up the voodoo — or, more accurately, vodou—doll that he’d brought back from his medical humanitarian visit to Haiti after the earthquake. In one sense, it was oddly appropriate that he’d brought it here to Philly. After all, there was a large Haitian population in the city, and some people said there were between five hundred and one thousand houses where people practiced voodoo in their basements. With estimates of twenty to fifty people participating in the services, that meant there might be as many as 50,000 serious voodoo worshipers in Philadelphia, putting it on par with Miami and even New Orleans.
The cloth doll had a painted-on face with pin marks through the eyes and in the groin area. Most of Cyrus’s visitors found the doll disturbing, and he seemed to enjoy using it as a conversation piece and a chance to offhandedly mention his volunteer work in developing countries. Personally, Riah wasn’t bothered by the doll, just wondered who, if anyone, the pins had been intended to harm.
Holding the doll, she stood beside the window and looked at central Philadelphia’s streets spreading out before her like spokes from a wheel. She’d always thought that there were too many one-way streets in downtown Philly, probably caused by the disrupted traffic patterns around the monolithic city hall.
A proud city.
The city of the nation’s birth.
And, historically, a good place to base a medical center or a pharmaceutical firm.
While studying medicine at Drexel, she’d learned that Philadelphia was the home of the first public hospital in 1751, the first school of pharmacy in 1812, the first private biomedical research institute in 1892.
In addition, the greater Philadelphia area was the home of eleven other pharmaceutical firms’ corporate headquarters. RixoTray, though the smallest of the twelve, actually had the second-highest profit margin. Due, in large part, to having Dr. Cyrus Arlington at the helm.
Riah stared out the window at Philadelphia’s nighttime skyline while she waited for Cyrus to finish his call. Tonight she would ask him for the first time to come over to her place after work, and when they got there she would see how he responded to the surprises she had waiting for him.