Chapter Sixteen
“In A Minor Key”

I. Toccata

"Shelby, what the hell is this stuff?"

"I don't know." Shelby lifted her head from the microscope, turned to look at the woman standing by the lab table. "Actually, that's not true. I know what it is. I even know how to make it. What I don't know is what it does. Why it does what it does. Or even how it does what it does. Careful—don't inhale too closely to that beaker."

Lisa Morowitz straightened up, running a hand through her hair. "Okay—it's a major hallucinogen, right?"

"It's a toxin. A poison, Lisa. It happens to have hallucinogenic side effects. It can also be quite lethal."

"Oh." For a moment they simply stared at each other. Lisa drew in a long breath. Noisily she let it out.

"What the fuck was Jack doing working with this stuff?"

"He invented it."

"WHAT?"

"About a year and a half ago. From what I can tell from his lab notes. Based on some government research. By the time I came on board he was working on refining the process. I've been doing most of the actual lab work since last May."

"How could you? How could you if this shit is that dangerous?"

"I didn't know, okay? I didn't know. I began to get a feel for what it could do last summer. So I went to Minneapolis and did some reading up in the few obscure government reports I could find." Shelby got down off the lab stool, began to pace. "What it can do is pretty scary. But—" She shook her hair loose from its holder, trying to rub the tension out of her neck. "I still don't know how it works. What activates it. What inhibits it. Sometimes I get so close—" She broke off, looked up at Lisa.

"Listen, I'm going to be here for a couple more hours. Why don't you go home."

Lisa didn't answer. Shelby walked over to the other woman, put an arm around Lisa's waist, let the other hand slide up Lisa's back, twined her fingers in Lisa's hair.

"I'll be okay. Really. Besides, Madam Professor, don't you have papers to grade?"

Ever so slightly, Lisa smiled. She rested her hands on Shelby's hips. "No papers, actually. But I do have work to do. As do you."

They kissed, slowly, thoroughly. They disengaged reluctantly. Lisa took Shelby's face gently between her hands.

"You be careful. Call me when you're ready to leave and I'll come pick you up."

"I can walk."

"I'll come pick you up."

"Okay."

Shelby watched Lisa pick up her briefcase and her coat, watched her walk out of the lab. Then she went back to her lab stool, back to her microscope. She sat there, thinking about everything she hadn't told Lisa. That Jack was a much better practical chemist than she would ever be. That she had never made PMD80 without his help. That she didn't know if she could make it. Or unmake it. And that she had no idea how much PMD80 Jack had made—or where any of it was.

"Shit," Shelby thought and went back to staring at carbon chains.

•

II. Fugue

 
I walk among sleepers in gauze sarcophagi.
The red night lights are flat moons. They are dull with blood.
I am the sun, in my white coat,
Gray faces, shuttered by drugs, follow me like flowers.
                                            —Sylvia Plath


It was one in the morning. People should have been asleep. Very few of them were. They were awake, listening.

Ev heard only the dull, distinct hum of her white-noise maker. Stephanie, sitting in the shower, heard the pounding of the water, louder and so much harder than rain. The heavy metal groupies in O'Henry had apparently mellowed for the evening; they were listening to the Beatles.

“Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies....”

In his room in Saki, Christian was reading aloud to Brittany, who was nursing Tom Collinses and valium. He addressed the opening lines of an Eliot poem to her:

“Shall we go then you and I
Till the evening reaches the sky...”

Shelby and Lisa, snug in their bed, were listening to Debussy.

And as for Cecil—

Over one bed in the ward, a small blue light
Announces a new soul. The bed is blue.
Tonight, for this person, blue is a beautiful color.
The angels of morphia have borne him up.
He floats an inch from the ceiling....

Cecil was calling in his sleep. Sometimes he called for Dave. Sometimes he called for Riggs.

The words tumbled over and over each other.

Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes...

Riggs heard nothing but the chirping of the crickets.

Till human voices wake us...

She emptied the vial into the reservoir.

...and we drown.

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