1.7.1 Cleo's Dream
Hôtel-Restaurant les Dhuits, Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, France.
About 2 am, Wednesday 2 April 1987
Cleo Kirwan lay tense and sleepless in the darkness of the little attic room she shared with a stash of folded bed sheets and pillow cases. The preceding day had been a long and busy day for the lively sixteen-year-old Bennett High graduate. A significant one, too--it was day one of the tenure of the "Junior Genius" Research Grant awarded to her by the American Hysterical Society for her "significant original insights into the history of the Prohibition Era." After such a day, it seemed to her, she ought to be totally beat, totally limp and already well into a good twelve hours of solid dreamless. Especially factoring in the jet lag from the flight over. So why was she so on edge?
Okay, she reasoned--guilty conscience. It was true she'd cut a few corners--hacked into Dr Lynch's om, lied about her age to get the waitress job, bribed the concierge where she was supposed to be staying in Paris. But hey, it was all in the interest of research, wasn't it? Of course it was. She relaxed.
Drowsy, Cleo let her mind slide back to her senior year at Bennett. It had been agonizingly awkward in some ways. Younger than the other girls, she was left out of their buzz about boys and stuff. But she'd already mastered all her courses and some assorted APs as well, so academically it was pretty easy. Too easy, really. Bored, she'd started disrupting classes with snippy comments, sarcasm and irony that at the time she'd thought really, really clever. And when that got old she'd tried other, more dangerous ennui busters. Like shoplifting--like making off with that glossy purple eggplant at the Central-Buffalo farmers' market. Some thrill! But of course the excitement quickly faded....
She'd been on track to big trouble when Bennett High's history teacher showed her a safer yet more exciting dopamine fix--the history of the early Prohibition Era, intertwined as it was with the personal story of its principal protagonist, Edith Bolling.
And what a story that was!--the evolution of Mrs Edith Bolling Wilson, dimensionally disadvantaged Washington businesswoman, socialite and wife of the President, to svelte, magisterial United States President in her own right. President Edith Bolling, battler for Prohibition and, in the eyes of many, more effective than any president since Thomas Jefferson in promoting reason and science as the surest guide to human health and happiness.
An inspiring tale, and one that presented a couple of intriguing puzzles: By what magic did the whale-shaped First Lady reduce eel-thin President? By what mental make-over did that worldly woman reinvent herself as champion of science?
Cleo smiled in the gloom as she recalled how established historians were baffled by these questions, while for her they were a snap. They were about a woman in love, and that was a subject she knew a lot about from reading steamy classics of the romance genre, Collette mainly, in the original French.
With the aid of the search engines that were coming into vogue at the time, Cleo quickly found documentary support for her woman-in-love hypothesis in old newspapers, hospital records, letters and stuff: sure enough, the lady had a secret lover, a young French scientist about whom nothing was known except his name, Paul D Beaucaillou. Beyond reasonable doubt this intriguing rascal had sired the father of the baby girl born to Bolling on the very day she was elected President--Tuesday 4 November 1924.
Satisfied that this scenario accounted plausibly for both the President-elect's genuine if belated interest in science and her sudden thinning-down, Cleo had lost no time writing up her work and publishing it in the school magazine, the Bennett Beacon. The kindly history teacher brought the piece to the attention of the Junior Genius committee, and the award followed.
To Cleo the award was a Gaea-send. She could hardly believe her good fortune! There were so many loose ends to the story, so many juicy questions, and now she had a chance to follow them up before the old-geezer type professional historians could boot up their search routines.
Question number one: Who was Paul D Beaucaillou? There wasn't much to go on. Just one thing known for sure--he'd conducted scientific research that led to a conclusion as unexpected as it was inconvenient for certain powerful interests: except for the very young of the same species, animal's milk is carcinogenic. Though long since accepted as settled science, this finding was quite startling at the time since milk had been long accepted as okay for human consumption, even for children. And of course the finding lent critical support to Prohibition and to Bolling's election campaign. It would have brought Paul D Beaucaillou fame and fortune if he'd stuck around. But he'd disappeared. Or had been disappeared.
Number two: The baby--was it really Ada Lynch? More than one female born at Johns Hopkins on 4 November 1924 had been given up for adoption.
And number three, the overall approach--Academic? Historical? Investigative journalistic with an ironic slant? No question, really. Irony had wicked charm, so ironic it had to be....
The questions kept popping until exhaustion supervened.
1.7.2 Ada's Nightmare
Aboard Air France Flight 004
About 10 pm Tuesday 1 April 1987
"Why do we have to have a war? Why don’t we simply let this small minority of substance abusers go ahead with their self-destructive diet habits and suffer the torments of CHAOS AND OUCH, if that’s what they want?"
"Why do we have to have a war?" In Ada’s nightmare, Willa t’Hellenbach puts the question squarely, right at the beginning of the interview: Politely, she insists on an answer. She draws out the confused, stammered response. She waits, elaborately patient, flashing white shark’s teeth in her famous ironic half-smile. Finally, she delivers a brief, dismissive, career-crushing summing-up, devastatingly quotable….
Ada snapped awake, heart thumping. No, it's nothing, she told herself after a moment, just a recurrence of my standard disaster dream. But her anxiety lingered. She opened her eyes to the dim light of the cabin. She became aware of the drone of the engines, the chill at her left shoulder from the black cold glass of the window. She adjusted the blanket and snuggled under it, willing herself to luxuriate in the sensation of warmth, in the pleasurable flex and stretch of her body in anticipation of the attentions of her current lover, whoever it might be…. Even so, she couldn’t quite shake off her disquiet. She knew she would have to rethink the whole business of the War on Substances.
But not now. Now was the time to think about her vacation. She forced herself to relax, to doze a little, to imagine a delightful lunch in a secluded country restaurant, a lunch centering on an appetizing green salad, followed perhaps by a platter of freshly steamed spring vegetables. And opposite, or possibly kitty-corner at a secluded table, a male companion of surpassing beauty in the blond and sinewy genre, murmuring extravagant compliments in that sexy Swedish accent of his. Stig—undependable, but--when he showed up--dependably virile Stig….
Ada sprang fully awake. Not Stig—now she was traveling with a different sort of lover, a user, and what’s more a U-person. His name came back to her—Alenby! The big guy! She put her fingers to her temples as the reality sank in. She was living dangerously, putting her entire career in jeopardy. The thing now, she told herself, is keep calm. Relax, breathe deeply, calm, calm….
She glanced at the bulky figure asleep under the blanket beside her. Gaea, he’s big, she thought, and she felt an echo of lust. She relaxed a little. It’ll all work out, she told herself. Just a matter of keeping a low profile. She congratulated herself on making reservations at out-of-the-way places like Pouzay. Restaurant Le Gardon in Pouzay--no one was likely to notice them there. No one, at any rate, with ties to PROFATPOL….
Of course, accidents can happen, Ada mused. Things can go wrong, and you have to be prepared. PROFATPOL roadblocks, for instance. If they were stopped, Alenby would surely cop a citation for elevated blood cholesterol, maybe additional counts of obesity and hypertension. Also diabetes, likely as not. At the very least he would have to go in for remedial treatment centered on a 21-day water-only fast at the nearest facility of the National Simone Weil Prison Complex. The publicity—gotta keep calm—the publicity would be gruesome.
Ada struggled with the roadblock scenario. Escape? Low-percentage option, she acknowledged. Her Mercedes had plenty of pep for a hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle or hycell as everyone seems to call them, but to evade the tough, seasoned pros of the Protein and Fat Police in their specially-designed gasoline-burning stinkpots—no, that simply wasn’t in the cards. She knew the Merc couldn’t outrun them. Alenby wouldn’t be any use at all. Primitive animal that he was, he probably didn’t know how to drive. Escape was out. The real question was how to handle the publicity angle of getting caught with a user….
She grasped at a new idea forming at the back of her mind. Maybe the damage could be kept under control. Better still, maybe this crazy escapade with Alenby could be turned into a career plus. With a little ingenuity it could be depicted as an attempt to get close to society’s problem group, the compulsive users. To find out the why and the how of their self-destructive habits. She would have to get some first-hand experience, nibble some of those substances that Alenby kept mumbling about in his sleep, like pâté de foie gras--a fatty paste of the liver of some sort of animal or bird by the sound of it. Weird idea. Weird--and intriguing. Also sickening, but she'd do it in a pinch....
She noticed Alenby moving about a little in his sleep. His bulk settled deeper into his seat, and his arm slid sideways and flopped deep into the province of window seat 8A.
Ada contemplated the sensation of the hand resting on her knee. Through the fabric of her skirt it felt hot and moist, like a thick slab of freshly-grilled eggplant. And just as inert, she thought with a stab of annoyance. The big lunk ought to be stirred up to the groping stage by now, even in his sleep. She had never had a man so slow off the mark. But then she had never had a substance user, either. According to the tabloids, users were notoriously lacking in libido, sperm count and all that sort of thing.
If Alenby hadn’t been such a big man, Ada would have given up on him right there. But a big man was a big turn-on, and she was determined to fire him up even if it meant messing with the chilly antiseptic exigencies of medical technology. Surely one or other of her lovers could help out in that department. Several of them, she recalled, were involved in the medical-supplies field, with offices in Paris....
She took her locket from behind her ear, plugged it into her om and started her search: impotence, erectile dysfunction, prosthetic devices....
***
After a time—Bingo! One eventuality prepared for. Relaxed now, Ada went back to sleep. Peaceful, dreamless sleep.
***
Awake again! This time it was the Stig the Slashing Swede. He was going to be fighting mad about getting bumped, might leverage his status as a sports celeb to get around the rules, bug her in flight.... How best to react? Rage, no question. Men like it when you show a bit of spirit, gives them the illusion you care about them....