“No. He wants to wrestle.”
“Don’t let him! I know the doctor said it wasn’t transmissible, but—”
“Don’t worry. Not a fucking chance of wrestling.”
“You’re not touching him?”
“And he’s not touching me. He’s getting pretty pissed off about it.”
“You’re putting on the plastic gloves to change him?”
“Yes yes yes yes, tortures of the damned, when I take them off the skin comes too, blood and yuck, and then I get so itchy.”
“Poor babe. Just try not to do anything.”
Then he had to chase Joe out of the kitchen. Anna hung up.
Frank looked at her. “Poison ivy?”
“Yep. He climbed into a tree that had it growing up its trunk. He didn’t have his shirt on.”
“Oh no.”
“It got him pretty good. Nick recognized it, and so I took him to urgent care and the doctor put some stuff on him and put him on steroids even before the blistering began, but he’s still pretty wiped out.”
“Sorry to hear.”
“Yeah, well, at least it’s something superficial.”
Then Frank’s phone rang, and he went into his cubicle to answer. Anna couldn’t help but hear his end of it, as they had already been talking—and then also, as the call went on, his voice got louder several times. At one point he said “You’re kidding” four times in a row, each time sounding more incredulous. After that he only listened for a while, his fingers drumming on the tabletop next to his terminal.
Finally he said, “I don’t know what happened, Derek. You’re the one who’s in the best position to know that … Yeah that’s right. They must have had their reasons … Well you’ll be okay whatever happens, you were vested right? … Everyone has options they don’t exercise, don’t think about that, think about the stock you did have … Hey that’s one of the winning endgames. Go under, go public, or get bought. Congratulations … Yeah it’ll be fascinating to see, sure. Sure. Yeah, that is too bad. Okay yeah. Call me back with the whole story when I’m not at work here. Yeah bye.”
He hung up. There was a long silence from his cubicle.
Finally he got up from his chair, squeak-squeak. Anna swiveled to look, and there he was, standing in her doorway, expecting her to turn.
He made a funny face. “That was Derek Gaspar, out in San Diego. His company Torrey Pines Generique has been bought.”
“Oh really! That’s the one you helped start?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, congratulations then. Who bought it?”
“A bigger biotech called Small Delivery Systems, have you heard of it?”
“No.”
“I hadn’t either. It’s not one of the big pharmaceuticals by any means, midsized from what Derek says. Mostly into agropharmacy, he says, but they approached him and made the offer. He doesn’t know why.”
“They must have said?”
“Well, no. At least he doesn’t seem to be clear on why they did it.”
“But it’s still good, right? I thought this was what start-ups hope for.”
“True …”
“You’re not looking like someone who has just become a millionaire.”
He quickly waved that away, “It’s not that, I’m not involved like that. I was only a consultant, UCSD only lets you have a small involvement in outside firms, and I had to stop even that when I came here. Can’t be working for the feds and someone else too, you know.”
“Uh-huh.”
“My investments are in a blind trust, so who knows. I didn’t have much in Torrey Pines, and the trust may have gotten rid of it. I heard something that made me think they did. I would have if I were them.”
“Oh well that’s too bad then.”
“Yeah yeah,” frowning at her, “but that isn’t the problem.”
He stared out the window, across the atrium into all the other windows. There was a look on his face she had never seen before—chagrined—she couldn’t quite read it. Distressed.
“What is then?”
Quietly he said, “I don’t know.” Then: “The system is messed up.”
She said, “You should come to the brown-bag lecture tomorrow. Rudra Cakrin, the Khembali ambassador, is going to be talking about the Buddhist view of science. No, you should. You sound like them, at least sometimes.”
He frowned as if this were a criticism.
“No, come on. You’ll find it interesting, I’m sure.”
“Okay. Maybe. If I finish a letter I’m working on.”
He went back to his cubicle, sat down heavily. “God damn it,” Anna heard him say.
Then he started to type. It was like the sound of thought itself, a rapid-fire plastic tipping and tapping, interrupted by hard whaps of his thumb against the space bar. His keyboard really took a pounding sometimes.
He was still typing like a madman when Anna saw her clock and rushed out the door to try to get home on time.
The next morning Frank drove in with his farewell letter in a manila envelope. He had decided to elaborate on it, make it into a fully substantiated, crushing indictment of NSF, which, if taken seriously, might inspire some changes. He was going to give it directly to Diane Chang, head of NSF. Private letter, one hard copy. That way she could read it, consider it in private, and decide whether she wanted to do something about it. Whatever she did, he would have taken his shot at trying to improve the place, and could go back to real science with a clean conscience. Leave in peace. Leave some of the anger in him behind. Hopefully.
He had heavily revised the draft he had written on the flight back from San Diego. Bulked up the arguments, made the criticisms more specific, made some concrete suggestions for improvements. It was still a pretty devastating indictment, but this time it was all in the tone of a scientific paper. No getting mad or getting eloquent. Neither chicken nor ostrich. Five pages single-spaced, even after he had cut it to the bone. Well, they needed a kick in the pants. This would certainly do that.
He read it through one more time, then sat there in his office chair, tapping the manila envelope against his leg, looking sightlessly out into the atrium. Wondering, among other things, what had happened to Torrey Pines Generique. Wondering if the hire of Yann Pierzinski had had anything to do with it.
Suddenly he heaved out of his chair, walked to the elevators with the manila envelope and its contents, took an elevator up to the twelfth floor. Walked around to Diane’s office and nodded at Laveta, Diane’s secretary. He put the envelope in Diane’s in-box.
“She’s gone for today,” Laveta told him.
“That’s all right. Let her know when she comes in tomorrow that it’s there, will you? It’s personal.”
“All right.”
Back to the sixth floor. He went to his chair and sat down. It was done.
He heard Anna in her office, typing away. He recalled that this was the day she wanted him to join her at the brown-bag lecture. She had apparently helped to arrange for the Khembali ambassador to give the talk. Frank had seen it listed on a sheet announcing the series, posted next to the elevators:
“Purpose