“State of the art,” Dad said. “It’s the new design from Merseir Group.”
“That thing is insane!”
Alix couldn’t help but feel a little surprised at how beautiful it looked. The yacht was huge and sleek, and with party lights strung on it, it looked festive and welcoming.
“Are those sails?” she asked.
Her father nodded. “Fixed wing sails. She’s a hybrid. Very efficient. She can sail, or she can run on three Rolls Royce gas turbines and two MAN diesel engines. She’s green when she wants to be, and she’s one of the fastest things on the ocean when she decides she wants that. The only other person who has one is a prince in Dubai.” He had his own face pressed to glass, looking almost as wonderstruck as Jonah at the sight. “I spoke with Mr. Geier. He said he’ll have the captain give you a tour, Jonah.”
For once, Jonah was completely silent. Looking at the two of them, staring out at the boat, Alix was struck at how similar they were. Two kids delighted by the sight of a high-tech toy.
The limo dropped them off, and they joined the line of people being checked against security lists as they boarded the ship.
Alix spied Sophie and Kala waving at her from the starboard rail.
Mr. and Mrs. Geier were welcoming people aboard. Alix smiled on cue and shook their hands while her hijacked brain tagged Geier with all the information she’d dug up before she went to the party.
Kimball-Geier Pharmaceuticals, trading publicly on the NYSE, stock price around 20…
Kimball-Geier’s last blockbuster drug had been Ventipren, another asthma medication. Azicort was the follow-up, a slight chemical variation that passed through FDA approvals without comment and replaced Ventipren because clinical trials showed it worked better. Kimball-Geier was a survivor. It had had one class action about Ventipren settled and sealed. But Kimball-Geier outright won another lawsuit related to its plant emissions’ impact on a neighboring town. Yet another lawsuit had been thrown out by a lower court for lack of scientific evidence. That was the one Tank had apparently been part of. The one that claimed Azicort caused comas and sometimes death, depending on the dosage.
But that case got thrown out.
She realized Mr. Geier had said something to her. Alix smiled and nodded.
“I love it,” she gushed, and walked off, wondering what he’d been talking to her about.
She made her way to the upper deck, snagging a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter. She leaned against the rail, taking in the view of the city. Below her, she glimpsed Mr. Geier and her father and Jonah walking away from the main group, gesturing and laughing and pointing at features on the boat. They looked so comfortable and normal that Alix felt uncharitable for entertaining doubts about them.
Sophie interrupted her thoughts. “You’ve been scarce.” She jostled Alix affectionately as she leaned against the rail. She had a glass of champagne of her own.
“Busy. Yeah.” Alix shrugged. “I don’t know.”
They both sipped their champagne. Sophie tried again, “You’ve been a little off, ever since…” she trailed off uncomfortably.
“Since Cynthia?” Alix supplied.
“Yeah. And that whole kidnapping thing.” She shook her head. “You’re lucky they didn’t murder you or something.”
“Or something,” Alix agreed.
Sophie’s father was a partner in a big law firm. Galen & Tate. Alix tried to remember if the firm was one that had shown up in her research. The name sounded familiar, but it was probably a coincidence. They can’t all be rotten, she thought. Sometimes a law firm is a just a law firm.
“So how come you’re here?” Sophie asked.
“Kimball-Geier is my dad’s client.”
“Same here,” Sophie said.
“Oh.”
Alix suddenly remembered where she’d seen the name. Galen & Tate was the law firm that had gotten the Azicort class action suit thrown out for lack of scientific evidence. Alix’s skin crawled.
Maybe there really wasn’t any evidence.
The yacht cast off, easing away from the dock. The skyline of Manhattan slowly revealed itself as they slipped toward open ocean. It was warmer than she’d expected, considering the season. As the yacht picked up speed and pulled away from shore, she enjoyed the feeling of the wind. It was beautiful.
She looked down on the lower deck, where most of the adults were gathering. Her father was still talking to Mr. Geier. What are you two talking about? Alix felt dirty and uncharitable, thinking it, but she couldn’t scrub the question out of her head.
She didn’t fit here. Everyone was drinking and laughing and having a good time, and yet to her, it all felt somehow claustrophobic. As if her world had become an impossibly tight straitjacket. She couldn’t escape, she couldn’t breathe, and the more she watched the party, the worse it got. Alix forced herself to grip the rail and sip her champagne and exchange small talk with Sophie.
This is what normal people do. Why can’t you just be normal?
A couple of men Alix didn’t recognize joined her dad and Mr. Geier, and they all shook hands. Dad talked a moment longer, and then he was on the move, working his way through the crowd. Shaking hands with men, giving women hugs, clapping the occasional close friend on the back, exchanging words with lawyers and CEOs, inheritors of old corporate money.
Alix was surrounded by the cream of her society, living the good life with a champagne glass and a phenomenal view of the Manhattan skyline, and yet all she wanted to do was unzip the straitjacket of her unclean skin and leap off the yacht into the water. Anything to get away from this feeling.
George Saamsi was working his way through the crowd, making his own rounds of handshakes and back slaps.
George Saamsi. BA in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Chicago. Hired by the tobacco company Philip Morris, eventually rising to a title of senior researcher. She’d read an actual transcript of George being deposed on the topic of secondhand smoke, where she’d first seen the term “environmental tobacco smoke” used.
It had been interesting to read George’s deposition transcripts because he was always careful to never make any conclusions. He only spoke of unknowns and uncertainties that needed more study. He’d spent time researching how people felt about their smoking habits and how that might skew data when they reported whether or not they had been harmed by secondhand smoke. He spent time trying to decide how much secondhand smoke affected SIDS deaths versus how much smoking during pregnancy affected it. Even back in the nineties, he’d been focused on always finding as many questions as possible, while avoiding coming up with answers. Anything that might lead to more doubt, more research, more delay.
Alix assumed that the secondhand smoke work was where her father and George had met. There were overlaps with Philip Morris and The Weinberg Group around that subject, so it made sense. In the years following, George left Philip Morris but kept up the doubt work. He showed up in a lot of testimony at a lot of trials. He showed up in cases related to asbestos and beryllium. He testified regarding a chemical called diacetyl, which had been used in butter flavoring for microwave popcorn until it turned out it was destroying workers’ lungs and was phased out, at least from popcorn, around 2007. And as 2.0 had said, he showed up testifying for Kimball-Geier Pharmaceuticals, saying that no definitive study had concluded that Azicort could be traced to any instance of sudden coma. According to George, a number of other factors were likely to blame and required additional study.