Chapter Nine

"Good," I said, "because I really need to take a few days and think this over.""You should stay," he said, reaching to touch my hand. "I think the worst is well behind us. From here on, we can work together. In fact, what I actually wish you would do is come with me to my clinic in Central America. It's truly a place of miracles."I assumed he was referring to the "special place" he'd mentioned during our first interview. If Quetzal Manor was on the exotic side, I thought, what must that place be like? A documentary that took in the totality of who and what he was could be—"In fact," he went on, "I just learned I have to be going there later today. A quick trip to catch up on some things. So this would be an ideal time for you to come. We could go together."Well, I thought, I'd love to see what else he's up to, but this whole scene is getting out of control. When I first met Alex Goddard, we had a power balance, but now he's defi­nitely calling the shots."I don't think I'm ready for that kind of commitment yet.""As you wish." He smiled with understanding. "But let me just say this. It's not going to be easy, but nothing I've seen so far suggests there's any physical reason why you can't have a child. We just need to get you in touch with the energy centers in your body. Rightness flows from that.""You really think so?" In spite of myself I felt my hopes rising, even though I had definite mixed feelings about his kind of "holistic" medicine."I'm virtually certain. But whether you want to continue with the program or not is a decision you'll have to make for yourself.""Well, maybe when I'm feeling better we can talk some more about it." I definitely needed to reconsider my game plan. "For now, I think I'd better just get my things and—""As you wish." He sighed. "Your clothes are in your room. There's a closet in the corner by the window."I shot a glance at him. "Does my Blue Cross cover this?"“On the house." A dismissive wave of his hand, and an­other kindly smile.I was still feeling shaky as I moved back down the vacant hallway, but I refused to let either of them help me. Instead I left him to oversee Ramala as she shut down the equipment.Oddly, the place still seemed vacant except for me, though there was a large white door that appeared to lead to another wing. What was in there? I wondered. The questions kept piling up.It soon turned out I was wrong about the clinic being empty. When I reached the door to the room where I'd been, I thought I heard a shuffling sound inside. I pushed it open gingerly and saw the room was dark. It hadn't been when I left. The shuffling noise—I realized it was somebody closing the Venetian blinds—immediately stopped.I began feeling along the wall for the light switch."Please leave it off," said a spacey female voice. "It's nice when it's dark."As my eyes became accustomed to the eerie half-light, I finally made out a figure. It was a short woman, childlike but probably mid-twenties."What are you doing in here?""I just wanted to, like, be with you." She'd done her dark hair in multiple braids, with a red glass bead at the end of each. "You're special. We all know it. That's why he brought you over here, to this building. To be near them.""What do you mean, 'special'?" I asked, heading for the closet and my black jeans. Then I wondered. Near who?Now she was reaching into a fanny pack she had around her waist and taking out a baggie filled with plastic vials. "These are herbs I've started growing here. I picked them for you. If you'll—""Slow down," I said, lifting my jeans off the hanger and starting to struggle into them. Finally I took the baggie, moved to the window, and tilted up the blind. Inside it were clear plastic medicine bottles containing various gray and green powders and flakes.My God, what's she trying to give me? And why?"Listen," she went on, insistent. "Take those. Put two teaspoons of each in water you've boiled and drink it. Every day for a week. They'll make you strong. Then you'll be—""Hey, I'm going to be just fine, really." I set them aside and studied her, still a ghostlike figure in the semi dark. There was a wildness in her eyes that was very disturbing.At that moment, Alex Goddard appeared in the doorway. He clicked on the light, looking puzzled."Couldn't find the switch?" Then he glanced around. "Tara, did you get lost? I thought you were doing your medi­tation. It's Sunday. Afterwards, though, you can weed the north herb boxes if you want."She nodded silently, then grabbed the baggie and glided out, her brown eyes filled with both reverence and what seemed like fear."Who was that?" I asked, staring after her, feeling unset­tled by the whole experience. "She seemed pretty intense.""Tara's been pretty intense for some time, perhaps for much of her life," he declared with a note of sadness as he closed the door behind her. "I've not been able to do anything for her, but I've let her stay on here since she has nowhere else to go. She loves the gardens, so I've let her work out there. It seems to improve her self-esteem, a kind of benign therapy, her own natural path toward centering."Well, I thought, she certainly could use some "centering.""Look, Dr. Goddard, let me get my things, and then I've got to be going. I can't start on anything right now. Not the way I'm feeling. And visiting your other clinic is completely out of the question, at least for the moment.""I have great hopes for you," he said again, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder. "I'm sorry we can't begin to work together immediately. But do promise me you'll recon­sider and come back soon.""Maybe when I'm feeling better." Keep the option open, I told myself. For a lot of reasons."In that case, Ramala can show you out. I've arranged for her to give you some herbal extracts from the rain forest that could well start you on the road to motherhood. Whether you decide to come back or not, I know they'll help you."And he was gone, a wisp of white moving out the doorway. It was only then that I realized I'd again been too preoccupied to ask him about Kevin and Rachel, the beautiful siblings born six months apart. Instead all I had left was a memory of those penetrating eyes. And the power, the absolute power.Chapter NineAfter giving me a small bag with two bottles, Ramala led me out, and I discovered I reallyhadbeen in a different building, the one situated across the long-term parking lot and all but hidden in the trees. It was new, one-story, and probably larger than it appeared from the front. Again I won­dered what went on in there, since it seemed so empty.Check it out and soon, I told myself as I slipped my key into the ignition. You've got to find out a lot more about this place.On the drive back to the city, my main thought was that I'd lost a day of my life. It'd just sort of slipped away. But that wasn't all. I also began to meditate on the fact that Alex Goddard could have an immense influence over my body (or was it my mind?) with a simple touch. Give him his due, he could definitely make things happen. First my cold and now this. Perhaps he could give me a child, if I got "centered," whatever that meant. But why should I trust him?And there was another problem. For a baby I'd need Steve, the man I loved, the guy who'd promised to be with me through thick and thin. Did he really mean it? He'd have to fly in, which meant a serious piece of change for the airfare. Finally, could he face another chance of failure? My spirits sank at the prospect of having to ask him. Were we both just going to be humiliated one more time?He'd made his home base in Belize, that little Rhode Island of a country abutting big, bad Guatemala. He liked the fact they used English, more or less, as the official language and they hadn't gotten around to murdering two hundred thou­sand Maya, the way Guatemala had. In a romantic moment, I'd programmed his Belize hotel number into the memory of my cell phone—the telephones down there are amazingly good, maybe the Brit legacy—though I'd never actually tried it. (I'd called him from home about half a dozen times, but he was rarely there.) Well, I thought, the time has come. Maybe it was the sensual feelings released by all the Chi flowing around, but for some reason I found myself feeling very lonely. He hadn't called recently, though. . . .It took ten rings, but eventually the hotel answered. A moment later, they were trying his room. I guess I was half afraid a woman might pick up, but it was him and there were no hushed tones or cryptic monosyllables. I heaved a minor sigh of reassurance."Baby, I can't believe it's you," he declared. "I've actually been trying to reach you for a day now.""You finally get around to missing me?" It was so good to hear his voice, full of life and energy."All the time. Never didn't. You've just got to understand it's crazy down here. All last week I was in Honduras, hag­gling over permits. Don't ask." He paused. "So, when are you coming down? They've got a national park here that's a pure chunk of rain forest, jaguars everywhere." He laughed. "But forget that. If you come down, we'll never get out of the hotel. Just room service all day.""No immediate plans," I said, immediately wondering how I could swing it. "But you never know."I wasn't entirely sure how to approach Steve anymore. There was something about the abrupt way he took off that left things up in the air. A tiny sliver of uneasiness was slipping into my head-over-heels trust, the camel's nose under the tent."First the good news," I declared. "David's talking to Orion about a theatrical release forBaby Love."Steve knew how deeply I longed for a theatrical—it would be my first—and he enthused appropriately. But he also knew I wouldn't call him early Sunday morning just to tell him that. There was only one other thing that would inspire such an unsocialized act."Uh, should I be asking how the other baby project is going?" he said.For a moment I wasn't sure what to say, since I didn't really even know myself."Still a work in progress," I said finally. Then; "Honey, I've just been to see a doctor who's . . . well, he's a little unconventional. And nervous-making. But everything else has failed."Whereupon I gave him a quick, cell-phone summary of what I'd just been through at Quetzal Manor."So are you going to go back eventually?" He sounded uneasy. "For the full 'program'?"He had a way of zeroing in on essentials. The truth was, my baby hopes and my sense of self-preservation were at war with each other. . . ."Morgy, are you there?""I'm here. And I guess the answer is, I'm still trying to decide. Like I said, he's into Eastern medicine and Native American . . . I'm not sure what. But if I need you, are you still in the project?""What do you mean?""Darlin', don't play dumb. You know exactly what I mean. Could you come back if I needed you? Really needed you?"There was a long pause, wherein the milliseconds dragged by like hours. Trees were gliding past, throwing shadows onmy windshield, and I still felt vaguely dizzy. I also had a residual ache in my abdomen where Alex Goddard had given me those damned muscle-relaxant shots. Why was I even considering going back?Finally: "You're not making this easy, you know. Down here, without our . . . project on the front burner every day, I've been reassessing . . . well, a lot of things. If we had a baby, it would turn our lives upside down. I mean, it's not like we just bought a sheepdog and chipped in on the groom­ing. This is a human life we're talking about. Are we really prepared to do justice to a child?"There it was. I didn't know whether I wanted to burst into tears, or strangle the man."Well, why don't you just think about it," I told him. "This doesn't sound like a conversation we should be having on a cell phone." Blast him. "If that's the way you feel now, then I might just have a baby on my own." How, I wasn't sure. I'd been so certain we were a couple, I'd not given it any real thought. "Or then again, I might just go ahead and adopt, with or without you.""Look, I'm not saying I won't do it. I'm just saying it's not a trivial thing." He paused. "So where does that leave us?"Translation: second thoughts."I don't know where that leaves us, Steve. In the shit, I guess. But I'd still like to know if I can count on you, or am I going to have to go to a sperm bank or something?""Jesus. Let me think about this, okay? Do I have to answer you now?""No. But I'm not going to wait forever either.""All right." Then he paused. "Morgy, I miss you. I really do. I just need some time to think about our next step. Are you sure you're okay? You sound a little out of it.""Thanks for asking. I've just got a lot on my mind."Turmoil, dismay, and hope, all tossed together, that was what I had on my mind. I really didn't need mixed signals from Steve at the moment.A few more awkward pleasantries and I clicked off the phone, wiped the streaks from my cheeks, and abruptly sensed Alex Goddard's face floating through my psyche. Why was that? Then I looked down at the bottles on the seat beside me, the "herbal extracts" Ramala had given me on the way out. What, I wondered, should I do about them? For that matter, what were they anyway? And what did they have to do with "centering"? If I started on his homeopathic treat­ments, what would I be getting into? Then I lectured myself: Never take something when you don't know what it is.Hannah Klein. That's who I should ask.I was so focused, I pushed the number I had stored for her in my phone memory before I remembered it was Sunday. Instead of getting her office, I got an answering service."Do you want to leave the doctor a message?" a south­ern-sounding voice enquired.Without thinking, I heard myself declaring, "No, this is an emergency."What am I saying? I asked myself. But before I could take it back, Hannah was on the line.I know how intruded on I feel when an actor calls me at home on Sunday to bitch. Better make this good, I told my­self."I was at an infertility clinic yesterday and passed out," I began. "And now I have some herbs to take, but I'm . . . well, I'm not sure about them.""What 'clinic'?" she asked. There was no reprimand for calling her on Sunday morning.When I told her about Alex Goddard, she said little, but she did not sound impressed. Looming there between us like the dead elephant on the living room floor was the fact that she'd specifically warned me not to go near him. And after what had just happened, there was a good case she might be right."Can I buy you brunch?" I finally asked, hoping to lure her back onto my case. "I'd really like to show you these herbs he gave me and get your opinion.""I was just headed out to Zabar's to get something," she said, somewhat icily. Well, I suppose she thought she had good reason. "I'll get some bagels and meet you at my of­fice."Sunday traffic on upper Broadway was light, and I lucked out and found a parking space roughly two blocks from her building. It was one of the low-overhead "professional" types with a single small elevator and no doorman. When I got there, the lobby was empty.Her suite was on the third floor, and I rang the bell before I realized the door was open. She was back in her office, behind the reception area, taking off her coat, when I marched in.While she was unwrapping her sesame bagels, smoked sturgeon, and cream cheese with chives, she got an earful. My feeling was I'd better talk fast, and I did. I told her ev­erything I could think of about what had happened to me at Quetzal Manor. I didn't expect her to make sense of it from my secondhand account, but I wanted to set the background for my next move."When I was leaving, his assistant gave me these two bottles of gel-caps. She said they're special herbal extracts he makes from plants in the rain forest. Do you think I ought to take them?"I suspected I already knew the answer. Given her pre­viously voiced views on Alex Goddard, I doubted she would endorse any potions he might dispense. But plant medicine has a long history. At least she might know if they presented any real danger.She was schmearing cream cheese on the bagels, but she put down the plastic knife, took the two bottles, and exam­ined them skeptically."These are not 'herbal extracts,' " she declared giving her first analysis before even opening them. "They're both manufactured drugs. The gel-caps have names on them. It's a Latin American pharmaceutical company."Then she opened the first bottle, took out one of the caps, crushed it between her fingers, and sniffed."Uh-huh, just what I thought." Then she touched a pinch of the white powder to her tongue. "Right." She made a face and wiped her tongue with a tissue. "Except it's much stronger than the usual version. I can tell you right now that this drug, in this potency, is illegal in the U.S."What was it? I wondered. Cocaine? And how could she tell its potency with just a taste? Then I reminded myself why I'd come to her in the first place: She'd been around the track many, many times."It's gonadotropin," she said glaring at me. Like, you damned fool. "I'm virtually certain. The trade name here in the U.S. is Pergonal, though that's not what this is. This is a much stronger concoction, and I can see some impurities." She settled the bottle onto her desk with what seemed almost a shudder. "This is the pharmaceutical equivalent of hundred-and-ninety-proof moonshine.""What is it? What's it supposed it do?" Jesus, I thought, what's he giving me?"It's a hormone extracted from the urine of menopausal women. It triggers a greater than normal egg production and release. It's sometimes prescribed together with Lupron, which causes your body to release a similar hormone. Look, if you want to try Pergonal, the real version, I'll write you a prescription, though I honestly don't think it's going to do you the slightest bit of good."I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I'd almost been considering giving Alex Goddard the benefit of the doubt, at least till I found out more about him, and now he hands me this.Now we both were looking at the other bottle."What do you think that is?" I asked, pointing.She broke the plastic seal, opened it, and looked in. It too was a white powder sealed in gel-caps, and she gave one a sniff, then the taste test."I have no idea."She set the bottle back on her desk, and I stared at it, terrified of what it might be. Finally I got up my courage and reached for it. A white sticker had been wrapped around it, with directions for taking . . . whatever it was . . . written on it. Then I happened to notice that one corner showed the edge of another label, one beneath the hand-applied first one. I lifted a letter opener off her desk and managed to get it under the outer label. With a little scraping and tugging, I got it off."Does this mean anything to you?" I asked her, handing it back. "It's in Spanish, but the contents seem to be HMG Massone.""I don't believe it," she said, taking the bottle as though lifting a cobra. I even got the distinct feeling she didn't want to leave any fingerprints on it. "That's an even more powerful drug to stimulate ovarian follicles and induce superovulation. It's highly illegal in this country. Anybody who gives these drugs in combination to a patient is flirting with an ethics charge, or worse."I think I gasped. What was he trying to put into my body?She settled the bottle back on the desk, her eyes growing narrow. "Since you say his 'nurse' or assistant or whatever she was gave you this, I suppose there's always the chance she made an innocent mistake. But still, what's he doing with this stuff at all? They manufacture it down in Mexico, and also, I've heard, somewhere in Central America, but it's not approved in the U.S. Anybody who dispenses this to a patient is putting their license at risk." She paused to give me one of those looks. "Assuming Alex Goddard even has a medical license. These 'alternative medicine' types sometimes claim they answer to a higher power, they're board-certified by God.""I don't for a minute think it was an 'innocent mistake.' " I was beginning to feel terribly betrayed and violated. I also was getting mad as hell, my fingertips tingling. "But why would he give me these drugs at all? Did he somehow—?""I think you'd better ask him," she said passing me a bagel piled high with cream cheese and sturgeon.She bit into her own bagel and for a while we both just chewed in silence. I, however, had just lost all my appetite. Alex Goddard who might well be my last chance for a baby, had just dispensed massive doses of illegal drugs to me. Which, my longtime ob/gyn was warning me, were both un­necessary and unethical."What do you think I should do?" I asked finally, breaking the silence but barely able to get my voice out.She didn't say anything. She'd finished her bagel, and now she'd begun wrapping up the container of cream cheese, fold­ing the wax paper back over the remaining sturgeon. I thought her silent treatment was her way of telling me my brunch consultation was over. She clearly was exasperated with me."Let me tell you a story," she said finally, as she carefully began putting the leftover sturgeon back into the Zabar's bag. "When I was eight years old all the Jews in our Polish ghetto were starving because the Nazis refused to give us food stamps. So my father bribed a Nazi officer to let him go out into the countryside to try to buy some eggs and flour, any­thing, just so we could eat. The farmer came that Saturday morning in a horse-drawn wagon to pick up my father. At the last minute, I asked to go with him and he let me. That night the Nazis liquidated our entire ghetto, almost five thou­sand people. No one else in my family survived. Not my mother, not my two sisters, not anyone."Her voice had become totally dispassionate, matter-of- fact, as though repression of the horror was the only way a sane person could deal with it. She could just as easily have been describing a country outing as she continued. I did no­tice, however, that her East European accent had suddenly become very prominent, as though she was returning there in her thoughts."When we learned what had happened, my father asked the farmer we were visiting to go to a certain rural doctor we knew and beg him to give us some poison, so we could commit suicide before the Nazis got us too. The doctor, how­ever, told him he had only enough poison for his own family. He did, however, give him a prescription for us. But when my father begged that farmer to go to a pharmacy and get the poison, he and his entire family refused. Instead, they hid us in their barn for over a year, even though they knew it meant a firing squad if the Nazis found us." She glared at me. "Do you understand what I'm saying? They told us that if we wanted to do something foolish because we were des­perate, we would have to do it without their help."It was the first time I ever knew her real story. I was stunned."What, exactly, are you driving at?" I think I already knew. The long, trusting relationship we'd shared was now teetering on the brink. By going to see Alex Goddard—even if it was partly a research trip to check him out—I had disappointed her terribly. She'd lost respect for me. She thought I was desperate and about to embark on something foolish."I'm saying do whatever you want." She got up and lifted her coat off the corner rack. "But get those drugs out of here. I don't want them anywhere near this office. I tried everything legal there was to get you pregnant. If that wasn't good enough for you and now you want to go to some quack, that's your affair. Let me just warn you that combining go­nadotropin and HMG Massone at these dosages is like put­ting your ovaries on steroids; you get massive egg production for a couple of cycles, but the long-term damage could be severe. I strongly advise you against it, but if you insist and then start having complications, I would appreciate not being involved."Translation: If you start fooling around with Alex God­dard, don't ever come back.It felt like a dagger in my chest. What was I going to do? One thought: Okay, so these drugs aren't the way, but you couldn't help me get pregnant. All I did was spend twenty thousand dollars on futile procedures. Not to mention the heartbreak."You know," I said finally, maybe a little sharply, "I think we ought to be working together, not at cross-purposes.""You're welcome to think what you like," she bristled. "But I have to tell you I don't appreciate your tone."I guess I'd really ticked her off, and it hurt to do it. Then, finally, her own rejection of me was sinking in."So that's it? You're telling me if I try anything except exactly what you want me to, then just don't ever come back.""I've said all I intend to." She was resolutely ushering me toward the door, her eyes abruptly blank.Well, I told myself, going from anger to despair, then back to anger, whatever else I might think about Alex Goddard, at least he doesn't kick people out because of their problems, even a sad soul like Tara.Still, what about these illegal drugs? There I was, caught in the middle—between an honorable woman who had failed, and Alex Goddard, who'd just lived up to my worst suspi­cions. Heading down in the elevator, alone, I could still hear Hannah Klein's rejection, and warning, ringing in my ears. Maybe she had just confirmed that still, small voice of ra­tionality lecturing me from the back of my mind.I marched out onto the empty Sunday streets of upper Broadway, and when I got to the corner, I stood for a long moment looking up at the pitiless blue of the sky. The sun was there, but in my soul I felt all the light was gone.Finally I opened the first bottle and then, one by one, I began taking out the gel-caps and dropping them into the rainwater grate there at my feet, watching them bounce like the metal sphere in an old pinball machine before disappear­ing into the darkness below. When both bottles were empty, I tossed them into the wire trash basket I'd been standing next to.The next time I saw Alex Goddard, he was going to have a hell of a lot of explaining to do. Beginning with why he'd given me a glimmer of hope, only to then cruelly snatch it back. I found myself hating him with all my being.Chapter TenIheaded on back downtown, planning to take a bath, change clothes, and then recalibrate my game plan. Maybe, I thought, I ought to just go up to the editing room at Applecore, try some rote work to help tranquilize my thoughts.But first things first. About halfway there, at Thirty-eighth Street, I pulled over and double-parked by a Korean deli, and surveyed the flowers they had out front, an array of mul­ticolored blooms that virtually blocked entry to the doorway of the tiny grocery. Azaleas, chrysanthemums, birds-of-paradise, but I wanted the pink roses. At ten dollars a bunch, they seemed the right touch. I dug out a twenty and picked two.Still standing on the street, I pulled them to me and inhaled deeply. As far back as I could remember, I'd always loved the scent of roses. I'd never really thought myself pretty, the natural-blond often-dyed-brown hair notwithstanding, but just having roses around somehow made me feel that way. I wanted to be engulfed in them, especially any time confusion threatened to get the upper hand.Five minutes later and I was at Twenty-first Street. I'd arrived. My refuge, my one-bedroom cocoon. Time to col­lapse into a hot bath, wonder why Alex Goddard had given me illegal drugs, and contemplate roses.  I was looking for a parking space when my cell phone rang. No, don't bother, I told myself. Enough intrusion for one day. Then I remembered I'd sprung for the caller-ID feature, and I glanced down at the little liquid crystal slot. It was a number I happened to know, Lou's place downtown. One eye still on the street, I reached over and picked it up."Finally got you," he boomed. "Where the heck are you?""I just got home from—""Yeah, I know where you been. Dave told me." He paused, as though he was holding off on some important announce­ment. "Hang on a sec. There's somebody here might like to speak to you."I thought about Lou's makeshift digs, lots of "heir­loom"—worn-out—family furniture he'd lugged along with him. Sarah and I used to play on the couch, and it still had a dim mauve stain where I'd once dumped a glass of "grape" Kool-Aid on her head when she was six. Whatever else, defi­nitely not a Soho look.Then I heard a whispery voice."Hi, Morgy."It was a tentative utterance I'd heard only once before, when she was waking up after falling off a playground swing. She'd been knocked out cold for a moment and I'd been frantic, wetting a handkerchief in the nearby fountain and desperately rubbing it over her face. When she came to, she'd gazed up into my eyes and greeted me as though we'd just met.My God!Before I could recover and say anything, Lou came back on. "We're practicing eating chicken-noodle soup. And we're trying to do a little talking. Why don't you come on down? She asked about you earlier this morning, said, 'Where's Morgy?' ""Lou! This is incredible!""You gotta believe in miracles, right? Just come on down.""Is she . . . God, you've got it." My hopes went into orbit as I clicked off the phone and revved my engine.I could have swamped him with a lot of questions then and there, but I immediately decided I wanted to see her first, with my own eyes. I still couldn't quite believe it was true. On the other hand, a weekend partial recovery was not totally beyond the realm of medical possibility. With a coma, so little is understood that anything's possible. Lou was right. This was definitely a weekend of the unexpected.I'd been close to the deaths of people near to me, both my parents for starters, but I'd never been close to the restoration of life. It's hard to explain the rush of joy when you think somebody is gone for good and then they pop up again, like they'd never been lost. And with Sarah that feeling was es­pecially jarring. It was almost as though some part of me had come back alive.The fact is, since Sarah and I were both only children, we'd identified a lot with each other. True, we'd traveled our separate paths, each looking, perhaps, for something to fill the lonely void in our lives that a sibling might have taken. As a child of the dusty, empty plains of West Texas, I didn't see other kids very much during the summer, and I made up reasons why she and I should visit each other as often as possible.Once, when I was plowing, turning over oat stubble—yes, my dad warily let me do that if I asked—I unearthed a rabbit nest full of little baby cottontails. Sarah was coming to visit the next day, and I rescued the infants so we could play nurs­ery. We fed them milk with little eyedroppers, and before long Sarah decided she was actually a reincarnated mother rabbit. That was when she became a vegetarian, and she re­mained so—by her account—till she finished college. It was just another of those magic moments of childhood I ended up sharing with her.I also sometimes wondered, as you might have guessed, what it would've been like to be born a boy. I was definitely a tomboy, had a real collie (my own version of Lassie), liked to climb trees and dig holes in the hardscrabble West Texas earth. Maybe that was why I felt so at home—free associat­ing now—when I filmed my documentary of the Maya vil­lage in Mexico's Yucatan. It was hot and dry and lay under a pitiless sun, a blazing white bone in the sky that seared the spare landscape. None of my crew could understand how anybody could bear to live in such a place, but to me it seemed perfectly natural, almost like home.Thoughts of which now made me sad. I only wish my parents had lived long enough to see that documentary. Maybe then they'd have understood how terribly lonely I'd been as a child, a loneliness I shared so deeply with Sarah. Would we ever be together again?On my hurried trip downtown, I kept wondering what I was about to encounter. Was it going to be the fantasy-bound Sarah of her girlhood, perhaps the same Sarah who'd spun out some stuttering vision of a jade mask? Or would all that be past and would she again be the ambitious, sparkling pre- med student she'd become when she was in college?Getting to Soho took only about ten minutes, scant time to think. Lou's place was in what had once been a garment factory sweatshop. He'd rented it from another agent at the bureau, who had inherited it from a cousin, a well-known downtown artist, lately dead of AIDS. Lou paid virtually no rent, was there mainly to keep out squatters, and couldn't care less that he was living in one of New York's trendier sections. All he knew was that there was plenty of room, and free parking on the street for his old Buick.I'd been down many times before. Inside, the space was still inhabited spiritually by the dead artist, with acrylic paint spattered on walls and graffiti I didn't fully understand in the bathroom. The place seemed to be a broom-free area, with layers of the past littered on the floor like an archae­ological excavation. And the old Kool-Aid-stained furniture, fitting right in.What always struck me, though, was the number of photos of Sarah. They were everywhere in the open space, on tables, the desk, several on the walls. Mostly they were old, several blown up and cropped from snapshots, grainy. The space felt like a shrine to her memory.When Lou let me in, I was greeted by a spectral face, a wheelchair, and a valiant attempt at smiling normalcy. Maybe Lou thought it was real, was progress, but I was immediately on guard.It was Sarah's eyes that caught me. They pierced into my soul and we seemed to click, just like always, only this time it was as though all our life together passed between us. I had the sense she was trying to tell me something with her eyes that went beyond words, that she was trying to reach out to me, perhaps to recapture that shared understanding we'd had years ago.Lou introduced me to a Mrs. Reilly, a kindly, Irish-looking practical nurse who was part of the outpatient package the hospital provided. She wore a white uniform and was around sixty, with short-bobbed gray hair and an air of total author­ity. She'd just finished feeding Sarah a bowl of soup, and was brushing out her cropped blond hair, what there was of it.Mrs. Reilly glanced at me, but never broke the rhythm of her strokes. "She's tired now, but she's already stronger than she was."Then Lou spoke up. "They called me early yesterday morning. But by the time I got around to trying to reach you, you'd vanished. So I rang Dave and he told me where you were, up there with that crackpot." He was grinning. No, make that beaming like the famous cat. "By last night, she was walking with some help, so they said she might as well be here. Like I said, it's a miracle.""You brought her home just this morning?" I couldn't believe the hospital would discharge her so soon, but this was the HMO Age of medical cost-cutting."Only been here a couple of hours." He pointed to a shiny set of parallel steel railings in the corner. "That's for physical therapy. Right now she can only walk with somebody on either side holding her, but in a few days, I figure . . ." His voice trailed off, as though he didn't want to tempt fortune. Then he turned toward Sarah. "In a few days, right, honey?"She nodded, then finally spoke directly to me. "Morgy, I want some clothes. Please. I hate these horrible hospital things. I never want to see them again."I noticed that she'd started crying, a line of tears down each emaciated cheek. Was it something to do with seeing me? I wondered. Then she began trying to struggle out of the blue bed shift she was wearing, though she didn't have the strength."I'll get you something great, Sar, don't worry." I reached to stay her hand. It was, I thought, extraordinarily cold, even though the loft itself was warm as toast. What kind of clothes should I buy for her? I found myself wondering. Blouses with buttons? Pullovers? What could she manage? Maybe I'd bring some items from home first and let her try them out. We used to be about the same size, though now she was all skin and bones.I moved a chair next to her, took her other hand, and leaned as close as I dared. I desperately wanted to put my arms around her, but I wasn't sure how she would respond to my touch. Her eyes, however, were clear and had never looked a deeper blue. "Sar, what's the matter? Why're you crying? You should be happy. Your dad's right here and he loves you and we're going to take wonderful care of you.""Who? Him?" she asked, looking straight at Lou, her blue eyes like an unblinking camera's lens.The plaintive question took my breath away. Hadn't they been talking for two days?"Don't pay any attention when she says things like that," Mrs. Reilly declared, her voice just above a whisper. "She's still not quite herself. She drifts in and out."She seemed to be drifting in and out at the moment, though it was mostly out.Then she looked directly at me, only now her eyes were losing their laser-like focus, were starting to seem glazed. "Who're you?" She reached out and touched my unwashed hair, running her hands through the tangled strands.Next she stared off, terrified, her eyes full of fear."The smoke," she whispered. "The knife. I'm next."Abruptly she was off again in the reverie that had enfolded her that first time in the hospital. Or at least that was what I guessed."What are you talking about?" I felt like shaking her, except I was too shook-up myself.She turned back, and for a moment she just stared glassy- eyed, first at me, next at Lou, and finally at Mrs. Reilly. Then she reached for a glass of orange juice on the table beside her. She looked at it as though it were some potion, then slowly drank it off, not pausing once. Outside, a faint police siren could be heard, and I was afraid it was distracting her. Anyway, something told me her momentary séance was played out. Her face had grown calm and rested, though I could barely repress a tremble."Whatever you think," I said finally, slipping an arm around her shoulder, "we're both right here. And we love you and we want to help you get better."She didn't say anything more, just closed her eyes and drifted away. But it wasn't back into a coma, since her breath­ing was growing heavier. I wanted to grab her and yell at her and demand that she come back to us, but I was fearful of what effect it might have."What the hell was she talking about?" Lou asked finally, his voice quavering."I don't know," I said, as puzzled as he was.That was when Mrs. Reilly spoke up. She was the only one not upset."When they come out of a coma, sometimes they're not right for a while." She patted Sarah's hand then gave it a solicitous squeeze. "I once had a man wake up and start talking about magic trips through the air, about how he was a dual citizen of the earth and the sea. He was talking like a lunatic. One day he would know his family, and the next he would look at them and start screaming they'd come to kill him. You just never know how these things will go at first. But she'll be herself before long." She lifted Sarah's limp hand up to her cheek, then kissed it. "You're going to be all right, dear. I've seen enough like you to know.""Then what do you make of what she just said?" Lou asked her, having given up on me. "Earlier this morning she was fine. Knew who I was, everything. Then the minute Mor­gan comes in, she starts making up that loony jabber."The sanguine Mrs. Reilly just shrugged as if it didn't re­ally matter.For my own part, I didn't necessarily like him implying my arrival had caused her to relapse into her dream world of terror. It seemed to me that whenever I showed up, she started trying to tell me what was really eating away at her soul.Well, I told myself finally, maybe she's regressed back to when we were kids, when we only had each other to share our secrets with. What if we've rebonded in some new, spe­cial way? It would be natural, actually. She's trying to reach out to me, like long ago.Now she appeared to be dozing off, exhausted, her head tipping downward toward her blue hospital shift. Mrs. Reilly took that as a hint, and slowly began wheeling her toward the bedroom, leaving me alone with Lou.I glanced over at him, thinking more and more that I had to do something, track down what had happened to her. I wanted to do it for me, but even more for him. I'd never seen him so despondent. Maybe it was the thing scholars call the curse of rising expectations. Back when she was hardly more than a vegetable, he was overjoyed by a flickering eyelid. Now that she was talking, he wanted all of her back. Instead, though, it seemed as if she had returned to us for a moment, only to be snatched away again. I could tell it was killing him."Look, I'm sorry that when I showed up, she started going off the deep end." I wanted desperately to help, but at that moment I felt powerless. "Maybe I should just stay away for a while.""Nah, she loves having you here. Don't worry. But any­way, Dave said something about you taking a couple of days off. Maybe I can use that time to be here with her and settle her down." Then he grimly took out her locket and rubbed its worn silver in his fingers, his eyes brimming with his heartache. "This is all just so damned confusing."Was he telling me, indirectly, that I should go away and leave them alone? First Hannah Klein rejects me, and nowet tu, Lou? Maybe, I thought, he's taking out his despair on me, blaming me for her relapse. Truthfully, I guess I was blaming myself a bit too."Listen, I'm going to go home now and leave you two alone," I said. "But why don't you see if you can get her to talk some more? Without me around, maybe she'll make more sense.""If she wants to say something, I'll listen." He gave me a strong, absent embrace, his eyes still despondent. "But no way am I gonna start pushing her."I edged into the bedroom, unsure if I really should, to say good-bye to Sarah and to give her one last hug. Her eyes were open again and she just stared at me for a second, then whispered a word I couldn't quite make out. It might have sounded like "Babylon," but that made no sense at all. Fi­nally she covered her eyes with her hands and turned away, gone from me, leaving me more alone than I'd ever felt.

"Good," I said, "because I really need to take a few days and think this over."

"You should stay," he said, reaching to touch my hand. "I think the worst is well behind us. From here on, we can work together. In fact, what I actually wish you would do is come with me to my clinic in Central America. It's truly a place of miracles."

I assumed he was referring to the "special place" he'd mentioned during our first interview. If Quetzal Manor was on the exotic side, I thought, what must that place be like? A documentary that took in the totality of who and what he was could be—

"In fact," he went on, "I just learned I have to be going there later today. A quick trip to catch up on some things. So this would be an ideal time for you to come. We could go together."

Well, I thought, I'd love to see what else he's up to, but this whole scene is getting out of control. When I first met Alex Goddard, we had a power balance, but now he's defi­nitely calling the shots.

"I don't think I'm ready for that kind of commitment yet."

"As you wish." He smiled with understanding. "But let me just say this. It's not going to be easy, but nothing I've seen so far suggests there's any physical reason why you can't have a child. We just need to get you in touch with the energy centers in your body. Rightness flows from that."

"You really think so?" In spite of myself I felt my hopes rising, even though I had definite mixed feelings about his kind of "holistic" medicine.

"I'm virtually certain. But whether you want to continue with the program or not is a decision you'll have to make for yourself."

"Well, maybe when I'm feeling better we can talk some more about it." I definitely needed to reconsider my game plan. "For now, I think I'd better just get my things and—"

"As you wish." He sighed. "Your clothes are in your room. There's a closet in the corner by the window."

I shot a glance at him. "Does my Blue Cross cover this?"

“On the house." A dismissive wave of his hand, and an­other kindly smile.

I was still feeling shaky as I moved back down the vacant hallway, but I refused to let either of them help me. Instead I left him to oversee Ramala as she shut down the equipment.

Oddly, the place still seemed vacant except for me, though there was a large white door that appeared to lead to another wing. What was in there? I wondered. The questions kept piling up.

It soon turned out I was wrong about the clinic being empty. When I reached the door to the room where I'd been, I thought I heard a shuffling sound inside. I pushed it open gingerly and saw the room was dark. It hadn't been when I left. The shuffling noise—I realized it was somebody closing the Venetian blinds—immediately stopped.

I began feeling along the wall for the light switch.

"Please leave it off," said a spacey female voice. "It's nice when it's dark."

As my eyes became accustomed to the eerie half-light, I finally made out a figure. It was a short woman, childlike but probably mid-twenties.

"What are you doing in here?"

"I just wanted to, like, be with you." She'd done her dark hair in multiple braids, with a red glass bead at the end of each. "You're special. We all know it. That's why he brought you over here, to this building. To be near them."

"What do you mean, 'special'?" I asked, heading for the closet and my black jeans. Then I wondered. Near who?

Now she was reaching into a fanny pack she had around her waist and taking out a baggie filled with plastic vials. "These are herbs I've started growing here. I picked them for you. If you'll—"

"Slow down," I said, lifting my jeans off the hanger and starting to struggle into them. Finally I took the baggie, moved to the window, and tilted up the blind. Inside it were clear plastic medicine bottles containing various gray and green powders and flakes.

My God, what's she trying to give me? And why?

"Listen," she went on, insistent. "Take those. Put two teaspoons of each in water you've boiled and drink it. Every day for a week. They'll make you strong. Then you'll be—"

"Hey, I'm going to be just fine, really." I set them aside and studied her, still a ghostlike figure in the semi dark. There was a wildness in her eyes that was very disturbing.

At that moment, Alex Goddard appeared in the doorway. He clicked on the light, looking puzzled.

"Couldn't find the switch?" Then he glanced around. "Tara, did you get lost? I thought you were doing your medi­tation. It's Sunday. Afterwards, though, you can weed the north herb boxes if you want."

She nodded silently, then grabbed the baggie and glided out, her brown eyes filled with both reverence and what seemed like fear.

"Who was that?" I asked, staring after her, feeling unset­tled by the whole experience. "She seemed pretty intense."

"Tara's been pretty intense for some time, perhaps for much of her life," he declared with a note of sadness as he closed the door behind her. "I've not been able to do anything for her, but I've let her stay on here since she has nowhere else to go. She loves the gardens, so I've let her work out there. It seems to improve her self-esteem, a kind of benign therapy, her own natural path toward centering."

Well, I thought, she certainly could use some "centering."

"Look, Dr. Goddard, let me get my things, and then I've got to be going. I can't start on anything right now. Not the way I'm feeling. And visiting your other clinic is completely out of the question, at least for the moment."

"I have great hopes for you," he said again, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder. "I'm sorry we can't begin to work together immediately. But do promise me you'll recon­sider and come back soon."

"Maybe when I'm feeling better." Keep the option open, I told myself. For a lot of reasons.

"In that case, Ramala can show you out. I've arranged for her to give you some herbal extracts from the rain forest that could well start you on the road to motherhood. Whether you decide to come back or not, I know they'll help you."

And he was gone, a wisp of white moving out the doorway. It was only then that I realized I'd again been too preoccupied to ask him about Kevin and Rachel, the beautiful siblings born six months apart. Instead all I had left was a memory of those penetrating eyes. And the power, the absolute power.

After giving me a small bag with two bottles, Ramala led me out, and I discovered I reallyhadbeen in a different building, the one situated across the long-term parking lot and all but hidden in the trees. It was new, one-story, and probably larger than it appeared from the front. Again I won­dered what went on in there, since it seemed so empty.

Check it out and soon, I told myself as I slipped my key into the ignition. You've got to find out a lot more about this place.

On the drive back to the city, my main thought was that I'd lost a day of my life. It'd just sort of slipped away. But that wasn't all. I also began to meditate on the fact that Alex Goddard could have an immense influence over my body (or was it my mind?) with a simple touch. Give him his due, he could definitely make things happen. First my cold and now this. Perhaps he could give me a child, if I got "centered," whatever that meant. But why should I trust him?

And there was another problem. For a baby I'd need Steve, the man I loved, the guy who'd promised to be with me through thick and thin. Did he really mean it? He'd have to fly in, which meant a serious piece of change for the airfare. Finally, could he face another chance of failure? My spirits sank at the prospect of having to ask him. Were we both just going to be humiliated one more time?

He'd made his home base in Belize, that little Rhode Island of a country abutting big, bad Guatemala. He liked the fact they used English, more or less, as the official language and they hadn't gotten around to murdering two hundred thou­sand Maya, the way Guatemala had. In a romantic moment, I'd programmed his Belize hotel number into the memory of my cell phone—the telephones down there are amazingly good, maybe the Brit legacy—though I'd never actually tried it. (I'd called him from home about half a dozen times, but he was rarely there.) Well, I thought, the time has come. Maybe it was the sensual feelings released by all the Chi flowing around, but for some reason I found myself feeling very lonely. He hadn't called recently, though. . . .

It took ten rings, but eventually the hotel answered. A moment later, they were trying his room. I guess I was half afraid a woman might pick up, but it was him and there were no hushed tones or cryptic monosyllables. I heaved a minor sigh of reassurance.

"Baby, I can't believe it's you," he declared. "I've actually been trying to reach you for a day now."

"You finally get around to missing me?" It was so good to hear his voice, full of life and energy.

"All the time. Never didn't. You've just got to understand it's crazy down here. All last week I was in Honduras, hag­gling over permits. Don't ask." He paused. "So, when are you coming down? They've got a national park here that's a pure chunk of rain forest, jaguars everywhere." He laughed. "But forget that. If you come down, we'll never get out of the hotel. Just room service all day."

"No immediate plans," I said, immediately wondering how I could swing it. "But you never know."

I wasn't entirely sure how to approach Steve anymore. There was something about the abrupt way he took off that left things up in the air. A tiny sliver of uneasiness was slipping into my head-over-heels trust, the camel's nose under the tent.

"First the good news," I declared. "David's talking to Orion about a theatrical release forBaby Love."

Steve knew how deeply I longed for a theatrical—it would be my first—and he enthused appropriately. But he also knew I wouldn't call him early Sunday morning just to tell him that. There was only one other thing that would inspire such an unsocialized act.

"Uh, should I be asking how the other baby project is going?" he said.

For a moment I wasn't sure what to say, since I didn't really even know myself.

"Still a work in progress," I said finally. Then; "Honey, I've just been to see a doctor who's . . . well, he's a little unconventional. And nervous-making. But everything else has failed."

Whereupon I gave him a quick, cell-phone summary of what I'd just been through at Quetzal Manor.

"So are you going to go back eventually?" He sounded uneasy. "For the full 'program'?"

He had a way of zeroing in on essentials. The truth was, my baby hopes and my sense of self-preservation were at war with each other. . . .

"Morgy, are you there?"

"I'm here. And I guess the answer is, I'm still trying to decide. Like I said, he's into Eastern medicine and Native American . . . I'm not sure what. But if I need you, are you still in the project?"

"What do you mean?"

"Darlin', don't play dumb. You know exactly what I mean. Could you come back if I needed you? Really needed you?"

There was a long pause, wherein the milliseconds dragged by like hours. Trees were gliding past, throwing shadows on

my windshield, and I still felt vaguely dizzy. I also had a residual ache in my abdomen where Alex Goddard had given me those damned muscle-relaxant shots. Why was I even considering going back?

Finally: "You're not making this easy, you know. Down here, without our . . . project on the front burner every day, I've been reassessing . . . well, a lot of things. If we had a baby, it would turn our lives upside down. I mean, it's not like we just bought a sheepdog and chipped in on the groom­ing. This is a human life we're talking about. Are we really prepared to do justice to a child?"

There it was. I didn't know whether I wanted to burst into tears, or strangle the man.

"Well, why don't you just think about it," I told him. "This doesn't sound like a conversation we should be having on a cell phone." Blast him. "If that's the way you feel now, then I might just have a baby on my own." How, I wasn't sure. I'd been so certain we were a couple, I'd not given it any real thought. "Or then again, I might just go ahead and adopt, with or without you."

"Look, I'm not saying I won't do it. I'm just saying it's not a trivial thing." He paused. "So where does that leave us?"

Translation: second thoughts.

"I don't know where that leaves us, Steve. In the shit, I guess. But I'd still like to know if I can count on you, or am I going to have to go to a sperm bank or something?"

"Jesus. Let me think about this, okay? Do I have to answer you now?"

"No. But I'm not going to wait forever either."

"All right." Then he paused. "Morgy, I miss you. I really do. I just need some time to think about our next step. Are you sure you're okay? You sound a little out of it."

"Thanks for asking. I've just got a lot on my mind."

Turmoil, dismay, and hope, all tossed together, that was what I had on my mind. I really didn't need mixed signals from Steve at the moment.

A few more awkward pleasantries and I clicked off the phone, wiped the streaks from my cheeks, and abruptly sensed Alex Goddard's face floating through my psyche. Why was that? Then I looked down at the bottles on the seat beside me, the "herbal extracts" Ramala had given me on the way out. What, I wondered, should I do about them? For that matter, what were they anyway? And what did they have to do with "centering"? If I started on his homeopathic treat­ments, what would I be getting into? Then I lectured myself: Never take something when you don't know what it is.

Hannah Klein. That's who I should ask.

I was so focused, I pushed the number I had stored for her in my phone memory before I remembered it was Sunday. Instead of getting her office, I got an answering service.

"Do you want to leave the doctor a message?" a south­ern-sounding voice enquired.

Without thinking, I heard myself declaring, "No, this is an emergency."

What am I saying? I asked myself. But before I could take it back, Hannah was on the line.

I know how intruded on I feel when an actor calls me at home on Sunday to bitch. Better make this good, I told my­self.

"I was at an infertility clinic yesterday and passed out," I began. "And now I have some herbs to take, but I'm . . . well, I'm not sure about them."

"What 'clinic'?" she asked. There was no reprimand for calling her on Sunday morning.

When I told her about Alex Goddard, she said little, but she did not sound impressed. Looming there between us like the dead elephant on the living room floor was the fact that she'd specifically warned me not to go near him. And after what had just happened, there was a good case she might be right.

"Can I buy you brunch?" I finally asked, hoping to lure her back onto my case. "I'd really like to show you these herbs he gave me and get your opinion."

"I was just headed out to Zabar's to get something," she said, somewhat icily. Well, I suppose she thought she had good reason. "I'll get some bagels and meet you at my of­fice."

Sunday traffic on upper Broadway was light, and I lucked out and found a parking space roughly two blocks from her building. It was one of the low-overhead "professional" types with a single small elevator and no doorman. When I got there, the lobby was empty.

Her suite was on the third floor, and I rang the bell before I realized the door was open. She was back in her office, behind the reception area, taking off her coat, when I marched in.

While she was unwrapping her sesame bagels, smoked sturgeon, and cream cheese with chives, she got an earful. My feeling was I'd better talk fast, and I did. I told her ev­erything I could think of about what had happened to me at Quetzal Manor. I didn't expect her to make sense of it from my secondhand account, but I wanted to set the background for my next move.

"When I was leaving, his assistant gave me these two bottles of gel-caps. She said they're special herbal extracts he makes from plants in the rain forest. Do you think I ought to take them?"

I suspected I already knew the answer. Given her pre­viously voiced views on Alex Goddard, I doubted she would endorse any potions he might dispense. But plant medicine has a long history. At least she might know if they presented any real danger.

She was schmearing cream cheese on the bagels, but she put down the plastic knife, took the two bottles, and exam­ined them skeptically.

"These are not 'herbal extracts,' " she declared giving her first analysis before even opening them. "They're both manufactured drugs. The gel-caps have names on them. It's a Latin American pharmaceutical company."

Then she opened the first bottle, took out one of the caps, crushed it between her fingers, and sniffed.

"Uh-huh, just what I thought." Then she touched a pinch of the white powder to her tongue. "Right." She made a face and wiped her tongue with a tissue. "Except it's much stronger than the usual version. I can tell you right now that this drug, in this potency, is illegal in the U.S."

What was it? I wondered. Cocaine? And how could she tell its potency with just a taste? Then I reminded myself why I'd come to her in the first place: She'd been around the track many, many times.

"It's gonadotropin," she said glaring at me. Like, you damned fool. "I'm virtually certain. The trade name here in the U.S. is Pergonal, though that's not what this is. This is a much stronger concoction, and I can see some impurities." She settled the bottle onto her desk with what seemed almost a shudder. "This is the pharmaceutical equivalent of hundred-and-ninety-proof moonshine."

"What is it? What's it supposed it do?" Jesus, I thought, what's he giving me?

"It's a hormone extracted from the urine of menopausal women. It triggers a greater than normal egg production and release. It's sometimes prescribed together with Lupron, which causes your body to release a similar hormone. Look, if you want to try Pergonal, the real version, I'll write you a prescription, though I honestly don't think it's going to do you the slightest bit of good."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I'd almost been considering giving Alex Goddard the benefit of the doubt, at least till I found out more about him, and now he hands me this.

Now we both were looking at the other bottle.

"What do you think that is?" I asked, pointing.

She broke the plastic seal, opened it, and looked in. It too was a white powder sealed in gel-caps, and she gave one a sniff, then the taste test.

"I have no idea."

She set the bottle back on her desk, and I stared at it, terrified of what it might be. Finally I got up my courage and reached for it. A white sticker had been wrapped around it, with directions for taking . . . whatever it was . . . written on it. Then I happened to notice that one corner showed the edge of another label, one beneath the hand-applied first one. I lifted a letter opener off her desk and managed to get it under the outer label. With a little scraping and tugging, I got it off.

"Does this mean anything to you?" I asked her, handing it back. "It's in Spanish, but the contents seem to be HMG Massone."

"I don't believe it," she said, taking the bottle as though lifting a cobra. I even got the distinct feeling she didn't want to leave any fingerprints on it. "That's an even more powerful drug to stimulate ovarian follicles and induce superovulation. It's highly illegal in this country. Anybody who gives these drugs in combination to a patient is flirting with an ethics charge, or worse."

I think I gasped. What was he trying to put into my body?

She settled the bottle back on the desk, her eyes growing narrow. "Since you say his 'nurse' or assistant or whatever she was gave you this, I suppose there's always the chance she made an innocent mistake. But still, what's he doing with this stuff at all? They manufacture it down in Mexico, and also, I've heard, somewhere in Central America, but it's not approved in the U.S. Anybody who dispenses this to a patient is putting their license at risk." She paused to give me one of those looks. "Assuming Alex Goddard even has a medical license. These 'alternative medicine' types sometimes claim they answer to a higher power, they're board-certified by God."

"I don't for a minute think it was an 'innocent mistake.' " I was beginning to feel terribly betrayed and violated. I also was getting mad as hell, my fingertips tingling. "But why would he give me these drugs at all? Did he somehow—?"

"I think you'd better ask him," she said passing me a bagel piled high with cream cheese and sturgeon.

She bit into her own bagel and for a while we both just chewed in silence. I, however, had just lost all my appetite. Alex Goddard who might well be my last chance for a baby, had just dispensed massive doses of illegal drugs to me. Which, my longtime ob/gyn was warning me, were both un­necessary and unethical.

"What do you think I should do?" I asked finally, breaking the silence but barely able to get my voice out.

She didn't say anything. She'd finished her bagel, and now she'd begun wrapping up the container of cream cheese, fold­ing the wax paper back over the remaining sturgeon. I thought her silent treatment was her way of telling me my brunch consultation was over. She clearly was exasperated with me.

"Let me tell you a story," she said finally, as she carefully began putting the leftover sturgeon back into the Zabar's bag. "When I was eight years old all the Jews in our Polish ghetto were starving because the Nazis refused to give us food stamps. So my father bribed a Nazi officer to let him go out into the countryside to try to buy some eggs and flour, any­thing, just so we could eat. The farmer came that Saturday morning in a horse-drawn wagon to pick up my father. At the last minute, I asked to go with him and he let me. That night the Nazis liquidated our entire ghetto, almost five thou­sand people. No one else in my family survived. Not my mother, not my two sisters, not anyone."

Her voice had become totally dispassionate, matter-of- fact, as though repression of the horror was the only way a sane person could deal with it. She could just as easily have been describing a country outing as she continued. I did no­tice, however, that her East European accent had suddenly become very prominent, as though she was returning there in her thoughts.

"When we learned what had happened, my father asked the farmer we were visiting to go to a certain rural doctor we knew and beg him to give us some poison, so we could commit suicide before the Nazis got us too. The doctor, how­ever, told him he had only enough poison for his own family. He did, however, give him a prescription for us. But when my father begged that farmer to go to a pharmacy and get the poison, he and his entire family refused. Instead, they hid us in their barn for over a year, even though they knew it meant a firing squad if the Nazis found us." She glared at me. "Do you understand what I'm saying? They told us that if we wanted to do something foolish because we were des­perate, we would have to do it without their help."

It was the first time I ever knew her real story. I was stunned.

"What, exactly, are you driving at?" I think I already knew. The long, trusting relationship we'd shared was now teetering on the brink. By going to see Alex Goddard—even if it was partly a research trip to check him out—I had disappointed her terribly. She'd lost respect for me. She thought I was desperate and about to embark on something foolish.

"I'm saying do whatever you want." She got up and lifted her coat off the corner rack. "But get those drugs out of here. I don't want them anywhere near this office. I tried everything legal there was to get you pregnant. If that wasn't good enough for you and now you want to go to some quack, that's your affair. Let me just warn you that combining go­nadotropin and HMG Massone at these dosages is like put­ting your ovaries on steroids; you get massive egg production for a couple of cycles, but the long-term damage could be severe. I strongly advise you against it, but if you insist and then start having complications, I would appreciate not being involved."

Translation: If you start fooling around with Alex God­dard, don't ever come back.

It felt like a dagger in my chest. What was I going to do? One thought: Okay, so these drugs aren't the way, but you couldn't help me get pregnant. All I did was spend twenty thousand dollars on futile procedures. Not to mention the heartbreak.

"You know," I said finally, maybe a little sharply, "I think we ought to be working together, not at cross-purposes."

"You're welcome to think what you like," she bristled. "But I have to tell you I don't appreciate your tone."

I guess I'd really ticked her off, and it hurt to do it. Then, finally, her own rejection of me was sinking in.

"So that's it? You're telling me if I try anything except exactly what you want me to, then just don't ever come back."

"I've said all I intend to." She was resolutely ushering me toward the door, her eyes abruptly blank.

Well, I told myself, going from anger to despair, then back to anger, whatever else I might think about Alex Goddard, at least he doesn't kick people out because of their problems, even a sad soul like Tara.

Still, what about these illegal drugs? There I was, caught in the middle—between an honorable woman who had failed, and Alex Goddard, who'd just lived up to my worst suspi­cions. Heading down in the elevator, alone, I could still hear Hannah Klein's rejection, and warning, ringing in my ears. Maybe she had just confirmed that still, small voice of ra­tionality lecturing me from the back of my mind.

I marched out onto the empty Sunday streets of upper Broadway, and when I got to the corner, I stood for a long moment looking up at the pitiless blue of the sky. The sun was there, but in my soul I felt all the light was gone.

Finally I opened the first bottle and then, one by one, I began taking out the gel-caps and dropping them into the rainwater grate there at my feet, watching them bounce like the metal sphere in an old pinball machine before disappear­ing into the darkness below. When both bottles were empty, I tossed them into the wire trash basket I'd been standing next to.

The next time I saw Alex Goddard, he was going to have a hell of a lot of explaining to do. Beginning with why he'd given me a glimmer of hope, only to then cruelly snatch it back. I found myself hating him with all my being.

Iheaded on back downtown, planning to take a bath, change clothes, and then recalibrate my game plan. Maybe, I thought, I ought to just go up to the editing room at Applecore, try some rote work to help tranquilize my thoughts.

But first things first. About halfway there, at Thirty-eighth Street, I pulled over and double-parked by a Korean deli, and surveyed the flowers they had out front, an array of mul­ticolored blooms that virtually blocked entry to the doorway of the tiny grocery. Azaleas, chrysanthemums, birds-of-paradise, but I wanted the pink roses. At ten dollars a bunch, they seemed the right touch. I dug out a twenty and picked two.

Still standing on the street, I pulled them to me and inhaled deeply. As far back as I could remember, I'd always loved the scent of roses. I'd never really thought myself pretty, the natural-blond often-dyed-brown hair notwithstanding, but just having roses around somehow made me feel that way. I wanted to be engulfed in them, especially any time confusion threatened to get the upper hand.

Five minutes later and I was at Twenty-first Street. I'd arrived. My refuge, my one-bedroom cocoon. Time to col­lapse into a hot bath, wonder why Alex Goddard had given me illegal drugs, and contemplate roses.  I was looking for a parking space when my cell phone rang. No, don't bother, I told myself. Enough intrusion for one day. Then I remembered I'd sprung for the caller-ID feature, and I glanced down at the little liquid crystal slot. It was a number I happened to know, Lou's place downtown. One eye still on the street, I reached over and picked it up.

"Finally got you," he boomed. "Where the heck are you?"

"I just got home from—"

"Yeah, I know where you been. Dave told me." He paused, as though he was holding off on some important announce­ment. "Hang on a sec. There's somebody here might like to speak to you."

I thought about Lou's makeshift digs, lots of "heir­loom"—worn-out—family furniture he'd lugged along with him. Sarah and I used to play on the couch, and it still had a dim mauve stain where I'd once dumped a glass of "grape" Kool-Aid on her head when she was six. Whatever else, defi­nitely not a Soho look.

Then I heard a whispery voice.

"Hi, Morgy."

It was a tentative utterance I'd heard only once before, when she was waking up after falling off a playground swing. She'd been knocked out cold for a moment and I'd been frantic, wetting a handkerchief in the nearby fountain and desperately rubbing it over her face. When she came to, she'd gazed up into my eyes and greeted me as though we'd just met.

My God!

Before I could recover and say anything, Lou came back on. "We're practicing eating chicken-noodle soup. And we're trying to do a little talking. Why don't you come on down? She asked about you earlier this morning, said, 'Where's Morgy?' "

"Lou! This is incredible!"

"You gotta believe in miracles, right? Just come on down."

"Is she . . . God, you've got it." My hopes went into orbit as I clicked off the phone and revved my engine.

I could have swamped him with a lot of questions then and there, but I immediately decided I wanted to see her first, with my own eyes. I still couldn't quite believe it was true. On the other hand, a weekend partial recovery was not totally beyond the realm of medical possibility. With a coma, so little is understood that anything's possible. Lou was right. This was definitely a weekend of the unexpected.

I'd been close to the deaths of people near to me, both my parents for starters, but I'd never been close to the restoration of life. It's hard to explain the rush of joy when you think somebody is gone for good and then they pop up again, like they'd never been lost. And with Sarah that feeling was es­pecially jarring. It was almost as though some part of me had come back alive.

The fact is, since Sarah and I were both only children, we'd identified a lot with each other. True, we'd traveled our separate paths, each looking, perhaps, for something to fill the lonely void in our lives that a sibling might have taken. As a child of the dusty, empty plains of West Texas, I didn't see other kids very much during the summer, and I made up reasons why she and I should visit each other as often as possible.

Once, when I was plowing, turning over oat stubble—yes, my dad warily let me do that if I asked—I unearthed a rabbit nest full of little baby cottontails. Sarah was coming to visit the next day, and I rescued the infants so we could play nurs­ery. We fed them milk with little eyedroppers, and before long Sarah decided she was actually a reincarnated mother rabbit. That was when she became a vegetarian, and she re­mained so—by her account—till she finished college. It was just another of those magic moments of childhood I ended up sharing with her.

I also sometimes wondered, as you might have guessed, what it would've been like to be born a boy. I was definitely a tomboy, had a real collie (my own version of Lassie), liked to climb trees and dig holes in the hardscrabble West Texas earth. Maybe that was why I felt so at home—free associat­ing now—when I filmed my documentary of the Maya vil­lage in Mexico's Yucatan. It was hot and dry and lay under a pitiless sun, a blazing white bone in the sky that seared the spare landscape. None of my crew could understand how anybody could bear to live in such a place, but to me it seemed perfectly natural, almost like home.

Thoughts of which now made me sad. I only wish my parents had lived long enough to see that documentary. Maybe then they'd have understood how terribly lonely I'd been as a child, a loneliness I shared so deeply with Sarah. Would we ever be together again?

On my hurried trip downtown, I kept wondering what I was about to encounter. Was it going to be the fantasy-bound Sarah of her girlhood, perhaps the same Sarah who'd spun out some stuttering vision of a jade mask? Or would all that be past and would she again be the ambitious, sparkling pre- med student she'd become when she was in college?

Getting to Soho took only about ten minutes, scant time to think. Lou's place was in what had once been a garment factory sweatshop. He'd rented it from another agent at the bureau, who had inherited it from a cousin, a well-known downtown artist, lately dead of AIDS. Lou paid virtually no rent, was there mainly to keep out squatters, and couldn't care less that he was living in one of New York's trendier sections. All he knew was that there was plenty of room, and free parking on the street for his old Buick.

I'd been down many times before. Inside, the space was still inhabited spiritually by the dead artist, with acrylic paint spattered on walls and graffiti I didn't fully understand in the bathroom. The place seemed to be a broom-free area, with layers of the past littered on the floor like an archae­ological excavation. And the old Kool-Aid-stained furniture, fitting right in.

What always struck me, though, was the number of photos of Sarah. They were everywhere in the open space, on tables, the desk, several on the walls. Mostly they were old, several blown up and cropped from snapshots, grainy. The space felt like a shrine to her memory.

When Lou let me in, I was greeted by a spectral face, a wheelchair, and a valiant attempt at smiling normalcy. Maybe Lou thought it was real, was progress, but I was immediately on guard.

It was Sarah's eyes that caught me. They pierced into my soul and we seemed to click, just like always, only this time it was as though all our life together passed between us. I had the sense she was trying to tell me something with her eyes that went beyond words, that she was trying to reach out to me, perhaps to recapture that shared understanding we'd had years ago.

Lou introduced me to a Mrs. Reilly, a kindly, Irish-looking practical nurse who was part of the outpatient package the hospital provided. She wore a white uniform and was around sixty, with short-bobbed gray hair and an air of total author­ity. She'd just finished feeding Sarah a bowl of soup, and was brushing out her cropped blond hair, what there was of it.

Mrs. Reilly glanced at me, but never broke the rhythm of her strokes. "She's tired now, but she's already stronger than she was."

Then Lou spoke up. "They called me early yesterday morning. But by the time I got around to trying to reach you, you'd vanished. So I rang Dave and he told me where you were, up there with that crackpot." He was grinning. No, make that beaming like the famous cat. "By last night, she was walking with some help, so they said she might as well be here. Like I said, it's a miracle."

"You brought her home just this morning?" I couldn't believe the hospital would discharge her so soon, but this was the HMO Age of medical cost-cutting.

"Only been here a couple of hours." He pointed to a shiny set of parallel steel railings in the corner. "That's for physical therapy. Right now she can only walk with somebody on either side holding her, but in a few days, I figure . . ." His voice trailed off, as though he didn't want to tempt fortune. Then he turned toward Sarah. "In a few days, right, honey?"

She nodded, then finally spoke directly to me. "Morgy, I want some clothes. Please. I hate these horrible hospital things. I never want to see them again."

I noticed that she'd started crying, a line of tears down each emaciated cheek. Was it something to do with seeing me? I wondered. Then she began trying to struggle out of the blue bed shift she was wearing, though she didn't have the strength.

"I'll get you something great, Sar, don't worry." I reached to stay her hand. It was, I thought, extraordinarily cold, even though the loft itself was warm as toast. What kind of clothes should I buy for her? I found myself wondering. Blouses with buttons? Pullovers? What could she manage? Maybe I'd bring some items from home first and let her try them out. We used to be about the same size, though now she was all skin and bones.

I moved a chair next to her, took her other hand, and leaned as close as I dared. I desperately wanted to put my arms around her, but I wasn't sure how she would respond to my touch. Her eyes, however, were clear and had never looked a deeper blue. "Sar, what's the matter? Why're you crying? You should be happy. Your dad's right here and he loves you and we're going to take wonderful care of you."

"Who? Him?" she asked, looking straight at Lou, her blue eyes like an unblinking camera's lens.

The plaintive question took my breath away. Hadn't they been talking for two days?

"Don't pay any attention when she says things like that," Mrs. Reilly declared, her voice just above a whisper. "She's still not quite herself. She drifts in and out."

She seemed to be drifting in and out at the moment, though it was mostly out.

Then she looked directly at me, only now her eyes were losing their laser-like focus, were starting to seem glazed. "Who're you?" She reached out and touched my unwashed hair, running her hands through the tangled strands.

Next she stared off, terrified, her eyes full of fear.

"The smoke," she whispered. "The knife. I'm next."

Abruptly she was off again in the reverie that had enfolded her that first time in the hospital. Or at least that was what I guessed.

"What are you talking about?" I felt like shaking her, except I was too shook-up myself.

She turned back, and for a moment she just stared glassy- eyed, first at me, next at Lou, and finally at Mrs. Reilly. Then she reached for a glass of orange juice on the table beside her. She looked at it as though it were some potion, then slowly drank it off, not pausing once. Outside, a faint police siren could be heard, and I was afraid it was distracting her. Anyway, something told me her momentary séance was played out. Her face had grown calm and rested, though I could barely repress a tremble.

"Whatever you think," I said finally, slipping an arm around her shoulder, "we're both right here. And we love you and we want to help you get better."

She didn't say anything more, just closed her eyes and drifted away. But it wasn't back into a coma, since her breath­ing was growing heavier. I wanted to grab her and yell at her and demand that she come back to us, but I was fearful of what effect it might have.

"What the hell was she talking about?" Lou asked finally, his voice quavering.

"I don't know," I said, as puzzled as he was.

That was when Mrs. Reilly spoke up. She was the only one not upset.

"When they come out of a coma, sometimes they're not right for a while." She patted Sarah's hand then gave it a solicitous squeeze. "I once had a man wake up and start talking about magic trips through the air, about how he was a dual citizen of the earth and the sea. He was talking like a lunatic. One day he would know his family, and the next he would look at them and start screaming they'd come to kill him. You just never know how these things will go at first. But she'll be herself before long." She lifted Sarah's limp hand up to her cheek, then kissed it. "You're going to be all right, dear. I've seen enough like you to know."

"Then what do you make of what she just said?" Lou asked her, having given up on me. "Earlier this morning she was fine. Knew who I was, everything. Then the minute Mor­gan comes in, she starts making up that loony jabber."

The sanguine Mrs. Reilly just shrugged as if it didn't re­ally matter.

For my own part, I didn't necessarily like him implying my arrival had caused her to relapse into her dream world of terror. It seemed to me that whenever I showed up, she started trying to tell me what was really eating away at her soul.

Well, I told myself finally, maybe she's regressed back to when we were kids, when we only had each other to share our secrets with. What if we've rebonded in some new, spe­

cial way? It would be natural, actually. She's trying to reach out to me, like long ago.

Now she appeared to be dozing off, exhausted, her head tipping downward toward her blue hospital shift. Mrs. Reilly took that as a hint, and slowly began wheeling her toward the bedroom, leaving me alone with Lou.

I glanced over at him, thinking more and more that I had to do something, track down what had happened to her. I wanted to do it for me, but even more for him. I'd never seen him so despondent. Maybe it was the thing scholars call the curse of rising expectations. Back when she was hardly more than a vegetable, he was overjoyed by a flickering eyelid. Now that she was talking, he wanted all of her back. Instead, though, it seemed as if she had returned to us for a moment, only to be snatched away again. I could tell it was killing him.

"Look, I'm sorry that when I showed up, she started going off the deep end." I wanted desperately to help, but at that moment I felt powerless. "Maybe I should just stay away for a while."

"Nah, she loves having you here. Don't worry. But any­way, Dave said something about you taking a couple of days off. Maybe I can use that time to be here with her and settle her down." Then he grimly took out her locket and rubbed its worn silver in his fingers, his eyes brimming with his heartache. "This is all just so damned confusing."

Was he telling me, indirectly, that I should go away and leave them alone? First Hannah Klein rejects me, and nowet tu, Lou? Maybe, I thought, he's taking out his despair on me, blaming me for her relapse. Truthfully, I guess I was blaming myself a bit too.

"Listen, I'm going to go home now and leave you two alone," I said. "But why don't you see if you can get her to talk some more? Without me around, maybe she'll make more sense."

"If she wants to say something, I'll listen." He gave me a strong, absent embrace, his eyes still despondent. "But no way am I gonna start pushing her."

I edged into the bedroom, unsure if I really should, to say good-bye to Sarah and to give her one last hug. Her eyes were open again and she just stared at me for a second, then whispered a word I couldn't quite make out. It might have sounded like "Babylon," but that made no sense at all. Fi­nally she covered her eyes with her hands and turned away, gone from me, leaving me more alone than I'd ever felt.

Back to IndexNext