The dancers were attractive enough, in their early to late twenties, startling in their blunt nudity, breasts rarely natural, as far as he could judge, with pubic hair shaved to a universal small exclamation point. Not one of them looked at him as he entered. In a few minutes it would be money smiles and money eyes, but from the start, there was nothing.

He ordered a Budweiser — the choices were Coors or Bud or Bud Lite — and leaned back against the wall. The woman currently on stage was young, thin, with dramatically projecting breasts that did not match her narrow rib cage. He watched her with little interest, and when she was finished with her ten-minute gyration and a few marble-eyed glances around the room, she donned a rayon thigh-high robe and descended the ramp to mingle.

Dicken had never quite learned the ropes in these clubs. He knew about the private rooms, but not about what was allowed there. He found himself thinking less about the women and the smoke and his beer than about the Howard University Medical Center tour the next morning, and about the meeting with Augustine and the new team members in the late afternoon…Another very full day.

He looked at the next woman on stage, shorter and a little more filled out, with small breasts and a very narrow waist, and thought of Kaye Lang.

Dicken finished his beer and dropped a couple of quarters on the scuffed little table and pushed his chair back. A half-naked redheaded woman offered him her stocking for money, her robe draped over a lifted leg. Like a fool, he stuffed twenty into the garter belt and looked up at her with what he hoped was nonchalant command, and what he suspected was nothing more than a stiff little glance of uncertainty.

“That’s a start, honey,” she said, her voice small but assured. She looked around quickly. He was the biggest unaccompanied fish currently swimming in the pool. “You been working too hard, haven’t you?”

“I have,” he said.

“A little private dance is all you need, I think,” she added.

“That would be nice,” he said, his tongue dry.

“We got a place,” she said. “But you know the rules, honey? I do all the touching. Management wants you to stay in your seat. It’s fun.”

It sounded awful. He went with her anyway, into a small room near the back of the building, one of eight or ten on the second floor, each the size of a bedroom and empty of furniture except for a small stage and a folding chair or two. He sat in the folding chair as the woman let slip her robe. She wore a tiny thong.

“My name is Danielle,” she said. She put her finger to her lips when he started to speak. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “I like mystery.”

Then, from a small black purse on her arm, she withdrew a limp plastic package and unwrapped it with a practiced little sweep of her wrist. She slipped a surgical mask over her face. “Sorry,” she said, voice even smaller now. “You know how it is. The girls say this new flu cuts through everything — the pill, rubbers, you name it. You don’t even have to be, you know, nasty to get in trouble anymore. They say all the guys carry it. I got two kids already. I don’t need time off from work just to make a little freak.”

Dicken was so tired he could hardly move. She got up on stage and took a stance. “You like fast or slow?”

He stood, accidentally kicking the chair over with a loud clatter. She frowned at him, eyes narrowing and brows knitting over her mask. The mask was medicine green.

“Sorry,” he said, and handed her another twenty. Then he fled the room, stumbled through the smoke, tripped over a couple of legs near the stage, climbed up the steps, held on to the brass rail for a moment, taking deep breaths.

He wiped his hand vigorously on his pants, as if he were the one who could get infected.

30

The University of Washington, Seattle

Mitch sat on the bench and stretched his arms out in the watery sunshine. He wore a Pendleton wool shirt, faded jeans, scuffed hiking boots, and no coat.

The bare trees lifted gray limbs over a trampled field of snow. Student pathways had cleared the sidewalks and left crisscross trails over the snowy lawns. Flakes fell slowly from the broken gray masses of clouds hustling overhead.

Wendell Packer approached with a narrow smile and a wave. Packer was Mitch’s age, in his late thirties, tall and slender, with thinning hair and regular features marred only slightly by a bulbous nose. He wore a thick sweater and a dark blue down vest and carried a small leather satchel.

“I’ve always wanted to make a film about this quad,” Packer said. He clasped his hands nervously.

“What sort?” Mitch asked, his heart aching already. He had had to force himself to make the call and come to the campus. Mitch was trying to learn to ignore the nervousness of former colleagues and scientist friends.

“Just one scene. Snow covering the ground in January; plum blossoms in April. A pretty girl walking, right about there. Slow fade: she’s surrounded by falling flakes, and they turn to petals.” Packer pointed along the path where students slogged to their classes. He made a swipe at the slush on the bench and sat beside Mitch. “You could have come to my office. You’re not a pariah, Mitch. Nobody’s going to kick you off campus.”

Mitch shrugged. “I’ve become a wild man, Wendell. I don’t get much sleep. I have a stack of textbooks in my apartment…I read biology all day long. I don’t know where I need to catch up most.”

“Yeah, well, say good-bye to elan vital. We’re engineers now.”

“I want to buy you lunch and ask a few questions. And then I want to know if I can audit some classes in your department. The texts just aren’t cutting it for me.”

“I can ask the professors. Any classes in particular?”

“Embryology. Vertebrate development. Some obstetrics, but that’s outside your department.”

“Why?”

Mitch stared out over the quad at the surrounding walls of ochre brick buildings. “I need to learn a lot of things before I shoot my mouth off or make any more stupid moves.”

“Like what?”

“If I told you, you’d know for sure that I was crazy.”

“Mitch, one of the best times I’ve had in years was when we went out to Gingko Tree with my kids. They loved it, marching all over, looking for fossils. I was staring down at the ground for hours. The back of my neck got sunburned. I realized that was why you wore a little flap on your hat.”

Mitch smiled.

“I’m still a friend, Mitch.”

“That really means a lot to me, Wendell.”

“It’s cold out here,” Packer said. “Where are you taking me for lunch?”

“You like Asian?”

They sat in the Little China restaurant, in a booth by the window, waiting for their rice and noodles and curry to be brought out. Packer sipped a cup of hot tea; Mitch, perversely, drank cold lemonade. Steam clouded the window looking out on the gray Ave, so-called, not an avenue in actuality but University Street, flanking the campus. A few young kids in leather jackets and baggy pants smoked and stamped their feet around a chained newspaper rack. The snow had stopped and the streets were shiny black.

“So tell me why you need to audit classes,” Packer said.

Mitch spread out three newspaper clippings on Ukraine and the Republic of Georgia. Packer read them with a frown.

“Somebody tried to kill the mother in the cave. And thousands of years later, they’re killing mothers with Herod’s flu.”

“Ah. You think the Neandertals…The baby found outside the cave.” Packer tilted his head back. “I’m a little confused.”

“Christ, Wendell, I was there. I saw the baby inside the cave. I’m sure the researchers in Innsbruck have confirmed that by now, they just aren’t telling anybody. I’ve written letters, and they don’t even bother to respond.”