we had one critical task to perform before leaving new yorkthe following morning. max freyberg, the cosmetic surgeon andpotential biological father of rosie, who was ‘booked solid’, hadagreed to see us for fifteen minutes at 6.45 p.m. rosie hadtold his secretary she was writing a series of articles for apublication about successful alumni of the university. i wascarrying rosie’s camera and would be identified as aphotographer.
getting the appointment had been difficult enough, but it hadbecome apparent that collecting the dna would be far moredifficult in a working environment than in a social or domesticlocation. i had set my brain the task of solving the problembefore we departed for new york, and had expected it to havefound a solution through background processing, but it hadapparently been too occupied with other matters. the best icould think of was a spiked ring that would draw blood whenwe shook hands, but rosie considered this socially infeasible.
214/290she suggested clipping a hair, either surreptitiously or afteridentifying it as a stray that would mar the photo. surely acosmetic surgeon would care about his appearance.
unfortunately a clipped hair was unlikely to yield an adequatesample – it needed to be plucked to obtain a follicle. rosiepacked a pair of tweezers. for once i hoped i might have tospend fifteen minutes in a smoke-filled room. a cigarette buttwould solve our problem. we would have to be alert toopportunities.
dr freyberg’s rooms were in an older-style building on theupper west side. rosie pushed the buzzer and a securityguard appeared and took us up to a waiting area where thewalls were totally covered with framed certificates and lettersfrom patients praising dr freyberg’s work.
dr freyberg’s secretary, a very thin woman (bmi estimatesixteen) of about fifty-five with disproportionately thick lips, ledus into his office. more certificates! freyberg himself had amajor fault: he was completely bald. the hair-plucking approachwould not be viable. nor was there any evidence that he wasa smoker.
rosie conducted the interview very impressively. freybergdescribed some procedures that seemed to have minimal clinicaljustification, and talked about their importance to self-esteem. itwas fortunate that i had been allocated the silent role, as iwould have been strongly tempted to argue. i was alsostruggling to focus. my mind was still processing thehand-holding incident.
‘i’m sorry,’ said rosie, ‘but could i bother you for something todrink?’
of course! the coffee swab solution.
‘sure,’ said freyberg. ‘tea, coffee?’
‘coffee would be great,’ said rosie. ‘just black. will you haveone yourself?’
‘i’m good. let’s keep going.’ he pushed a button on hisintercom.
‘rachel. one black coffee.’
215/290‘you should have a coffee,’ i said to him.
‘never touch it,’ said freyberg.
‘unless you have a genetic intolerance of caffeine, there are noproven harmful effects. on the contrary –’
‘what magazine is this for again?’
the question was straightforward and totally predictable. wehad agreed the name of the fictitious university publication inadvance, and rosie had already used it in her introduction.
but my brain malfunctioned. rosie and i spoke simultaneously.
rosie said, ‘ faces of change.’ i said, ‘ hands of change.’
it was a minor inconsistency that any rational person wouldhave interpreted as a simple, innocent error, which in fact itwas. but freyberg’s expression indicated disbelief and heimmediately scribbled on a notepad. when rachel brought thecoffee, he gave her the note. i diagnosed paranoia and startedto think about escape plans.
‘i need to use the bathroom,’ i said. i planned to phonefreyberg from the bathroom, so rosie could escape while hetook the call.
i walked towards the exit, but freyberg blocked my path.
‘use my private one,’ he said. ‘i insist.’
he led me through the back of his office, past rachel to adoor marked ‘private’ and left me there. there was no way toexit without returning the way we had come. i took out myphone, called 411 – dir-ectory assistance – and they connectedme to rachel. i could hear the phone ring and rachel answer.
i kept my voice low.
‘i need to speak to dr freyberg,’ i said. ‘it’s an emergency.’ iexplained that my wife was a patient of dr freyberg and thather lips had exploded. i hung up and texted rosie: exit now.
the bathroom was in need of eva’s services. i managed toopen the window, which had obviously not been used for along time. we were four floors up, but there seemed to beplenty of handholds on the wall.
i eased myself through the window and started climbing down,slowly,216/290focusing on the task, hoping rosie had escaped successfully. ithad been a long time since i had practised rock climbing andthe descent was not as simple as it first seemed. the wall wasslippery from rain earlier in the day and my running shoeswere not ideal for the task. at one point i slipped and onlyjust managed to grasp a rough brick. i heard shouts frombelow.
when i finally reached the ground, i discovered that a smallcrowd had formed. rosie was among them. she flung herarms around me.
‘oh my god, don, you could have killed yourself. it didn’tmatter that much.’
‘the risk was minor. it was just important to ignore the heightissue.’
we headed for the subway. rosie was quite agitated. freyberghad thought that she was some sort of private investigator,working on behalf of a dissatisfied patient. he was trying tohave the security personnel detain her. whether his positionwas legally defensible or not, we would have been in a difficultposition.
‘i’m going to get changed,’ said rosie. ‘our last night in newyork city. what do you want to do?’
my original schedule specified a steakhouse, but now that wewere in the pattern of eating together, i would need to select arestaurant suitable for a sustainable-seafood-eating ‘vegetarian’.
‘we’ll work it out,’ she said. ‘lots of options.’
it took me three minutes to change my shirt. i waiteddownstairs for rosie for another six. finally i went up to herroom and knocked.
there was a long wait. then i heard her voice.
‘how long do you think it takes to have a shower?’
‘three minutes, twenty seconds,’ i said, ‘unless i wash my hair,in which case it takes an extra minute and twelve seconds.’
the additional time was due primarily to the requirement thatthe conditioner remain in place for sixty seconds.
217/290‘hold on.’
rosie opened the door wearing only a towel. her hair was wet,and she looked extremely attractive. i forgot to keep my eyesdirected towards her face.
‘hey,’ she said. ‘no pendant.’ she was right. i couldn’t use thependant excuse. but she didn’t give me a lecture oninappropriate behaviour. instead, she smiled and steppedtowards me. i wasn’t sure if she was going to take anotherstep, or if i should. in the end, neither of us did. it was anawkward moment but i suspected we had both contributed tothe problem.
‘you should have brought the ring,’ said rosie.
for a moment, my brain interpreted ‘ring’ as ‘wedding ring’,and began constructing a completely incorrect scenario. then irealised that she was referring to the spiked ring i hadproposed as a means of obtaining freyberg’s blood.
‘to come all this way and not get a sample.’
‘fortunately, we have one.’
‘you got a sample? how?’
‘his bathroom. what a slob. he should get his prostatechecked. the floor –’
‘stop,’ said rosie. ‘too much information. but nice work.’
‘very poor hygiene,’ i told her. ‘for a surgeon. apseudo-surgeon.
incredible waste of surgical skill – inserting synthetic materialspurely to alter appearance.’
‘wait till you’re fifty-five and your partner’s forty-five and see ifyou say the same thing.’
‘you’re supposed to be a feminist,’ i said, though i wasbeginning to doubt it.
‘it doesn’t mean i want to be unattractive.’
‘your appearance should be irrelevant to your partner’sassessment of you.’
218/290‘life is full of should-be’s,’ said rosie. ‘you’re the geneticist.
everyone notices how people look. even you.’
‘true. but i don’t allow it to affect my evaluation of them.’
i was on dangerous territory: the issue of rosie’s attractivenesshad got me into serious trouble on the night of the faculty ball.
the statement was consistent with my beliefs about judgingpeople and with how i would wish to be judged myself. but ihad never had to apply these beliefs to someone standingopposite me in a hotel bedroom wearing only a towel. itdawned on me that i had not told the full truth.
‘ignoring the testosterone factor,’ i added.
‘is there a compliment buried in there somewhere?’
the conversation was getting complicated. i tried to clarify myposition. ‘it would be unreasonable to give you credit for beingincredibly beautiful.’
what i did next was undoubtedly a result of my thoughtsbeing scrambled by a sequence of extraordinary and traumaticincidents in the preceding few hours: the hand-holding, theescape from the cosmetic surgery and the extreme impact ofthe world’s most beautiful woman standing naked under atowel in front of me.
gene should also take some blame for suggesting that earlobesize was a predictor of sexual attraction. since i had neverbeen so sexually attracted to a woman before, i was suddenlycompelled to examine her ears. in a moment that was, inretrospect, similar to a critical incident in albert camus’ theoutsider, i reached out and brushed her hair aside. but inthis case, amazingly, the response was different from thatdocumented in the novel we had studied in high school. rosieput her arms round me and kissed me.
i think it is likely that my brain is wired in a non-standardconfiguration, but my ancestors would not have succeeded inbreeding without219/290understanding and responding to basic sexual signals. thataptitude was hardwired in. i kissed rosie back. she responded.
we pulled apart for a moment. it was obvious that dinnerwould be delayed. rosie studied me and said, ‘you know, ifyou changed your glasses and your haircut, you could begregory peck in to kill a mockingbird.’
‘is that good?’ i assumed, given the circumstances, that it was,but wanted to hear her confirm it.
‘he was only the sexiest man that ever lived.’
we looked at each other some more, and i moved to kiss heragain.
she stopped me.
‘don, this is new york. it’s like a holiday. i don’t want you toassume it means anything more.’
‘what happens in new york stays in new york, right?’ it wasa line gene had taught me for conference use. i had neverneeded to employ it before. it felt a little odd, but appropriatefor the circumstances. it was obviously important that we bothagreed there was no emotional continuation. although i did nothave a wife at home like gene, i had a concept of a wife thatwas very different from rosie, who would presumably step outon the balcony for a cigarette after sex. oddly, the prospectdidn’t repel me as much as it should have.
‘i have to get something from my room,’ i said.
‘good thinking. don’t take too long.’
my room was only eleven floors above rosie’s, so i walked upthe stairs. back in my room, i showered, then thumbedthrough the book gene had given me. he had been right afterall. incredible.
i descended the stairs to rosie’s room. forty-three minutes hadpassed. i knocked on the door, and rosie answered, nowwearing a sleeping costume that was, in fact, more revealingthan the towel. she was holding two glasses of champagne.
‘sorry, it’s gone a bit flat.’
220/290i looked around the room. the bed cover was turned down,the cur-tains were closed and there was just one bedside lampon. i gave her gene’s book.
‘since this is our first – and probably only – time, and youare doubtless more experienced, i recommend that you selectthe position.’
rosie thumbed through the book, then started again. shestopped at the first page where gene had written his symbol.
‘gene gave you this?’
‘it was a present for the trip.’
i tried to read rosie’s expression, and guessed anger, but thatdisappeared and she said, in a non-angry tone, ‘don, i’msorry, i can’t do this. i’m really sorry.’
‘did i say something wrong?’
‘no, it’s me. i’m really sorry.’
‘you changed your mind while i was gone?’
‘yeah,’ said rosie. ‘that’s what happened. i’m sorry.’
‘are you sure i didn’t do something wrong?’ rosie was myfriend and the risk to our friendship was now at the forefrontof my mind.
the sex issue had evaporated.
‘no, no, it’s me,’ she said. ‘you were incredibly considerate.’
it was a compliment i was unaccustomed to receiving. a verysatisfying compliment. the night had not been a total disaster.
i could not sleep. i had not eaten and it was only 8.55 p.m.
claudia and gene would be at work now, back in melbourne,and i did not feel like talking to either of them. i considered itinadvisable to contact rosie again, so i rang my remainingfriend. dave had eaten already, but we walked to a pizzarestaurant and he ate a second dinner. then we went to abar and watched baseball and talked about women. i do221/290not recall much of what either of us said, but i suspect thatlittle of it would have been useful in making rational plans forthe future.
