“Only,” Marilee continued, “he had made a kickback deal with the treasurer and was salting half the money away in a Jamaican bank.”
“Wow.”
“Are you ready to order?” a tall waiter in a bright green three-piece suit asked.
Martin gestured for Marilee to go first. It was at that moment she decided to take him home.
2.
“That was amazing,” she said in her own bed, lying next to Martin Hull, a man she had met only six hours before.
“Yeah,” Martin said, unable to suppress his toothful grin.
“I never had a man pay such close attention to my body.”
“Well, you know,” Martin said shyly, “when you’re a little guy with no hidden talents you have to learn to work harder.”
“I’m still trying to catch my breath.”
“Want me to get you some water?” he asked.
“Is that the doctor talking?”
“You know, I liked your idea about online voting,” he said. “The negative side of democracy is that people usually vote either for their pocketbooks or against what they’re afraid of.”
“I’m sorry I said that stuff about brain surgeons,” she said then, feeling that she should be nice to the plain little man with the magic kisses. “I’m sure plastic surgeons do good work too.”
“I do a lot of community-service stuff,” he agreed. “You know . . . reconstructive work for those that can’t afford it.”
“Like harelips?”
“Or old scars . . . even regrettable tattoos,” he said. “It would be cool if you could vote at home every night. Just turn your smart TV to the political choices channel and make your mark.”
“Why do you keep doing that?”
“What?”
“Every time I ask about you, you say one thing and then turn the subject back to me. Is that one of the ways you try harder?”
“I guess it is. I mean, I know that people like talking about themselves, and there’s not much I have to say.”
“You seem interested in the brain.”
“Yeah, but whenever I start talking about it, people always point out that I’m a plastic surgeon.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Marilee said.
“It’s OK. You’re right. I should be more, um, revealing.”
“You said you were married once?”
“To Sonora Simonson,” he said, sitting up with the words.
“That’s an odd name.”
“Yeah. Her mother named her but never said why she chose it. They’d never been to Mexico, and no one in the entire family spoke Spanish. I asked them all one Christmas.”
“Why did you two split?”
“I was conferring with an intestinal-tract expert, Philip Landries. He’d come to our apartment quite often. Sonora made dinner for us whenever he stayed late. One day I came home and found a note from her saying that she was out with a girlfriend at a movie. Philip was supposed to drop by, but he didn’t. Sonora didn’t come home, and Philip was gone for good. I got a letter from them nineteen months later. He’d gotten a job in Amsterdam and asked her to go with him.”
“And they left, just like that?” Marilee asked. “Didn’t even say anything?”
“Not to anyone. The police investigated me for over a year. They were sure that Phil and Sonny were having an affair and that I killed them. There was credit-card evidence of them staying in a Midtown hotel.”
“Oh my God. Did they arrest you?”
“Not formally, but I was called down to the local station six times. Once they questioned me for over eight hours.”
“Did you get a lawyer?”
“No. I knew I hadn’t killed them, and so I just continued with my work.”
“You don’t sound like you were very broken up over their betrayal.”
“There was a kind of a, of an unconscious trade-off,” Martin said, frowning and allowing his head to tilt to the side.
“A trade-off?”
“Phil was in research,” the plastic surgeon explained. “The intestines of all living beings are rife with various kinds of parasites. Many of these creatures, these parasites, are symbiotic. They live in harmony with the systems they inhabit. You gotta love that Darwin.”
“What does that have to do with your wife running off with your friend?” Marilee asked.
“Phil wasn’t really my friend. I paid him to consult with me about the more exotic intestinal parasites. That’s where I learned about the hydra-monotubular-tridacteri.”
“The what?”
Martin repeated the name and said, “It’s a microscopic parasite that can be bred and altered in a fairly simple controlled environment. You can suppress its reproductive cycles and implant it with differing forms of DNA, which it, in turn, blends into the host system. Those traits make it one of the greatest possible biological and genetic delivery systems.”
“And the man that gave this to you was fucking your wife.”
“Painful,” Martin admitted. “But in the grand scheme of things a minor indiscretion.”
“Minor? A woman does that to you and you aren’t devastated?”
“No, no,” Martin said, though he wasn’t really denying her implied accusation. “I mean, I felt bad, but three days before they went off, Phil brought me a rare specimen that I dubbed hydra-monotubular-tridacteri-1.”
Unable to think of a response or even a question, Marilee sat up too.
“It’s what they call a microsite, almost exactly the same as the original HMT but mutated, with a slightly different DNA count,” Martin Hull continued. “I realized that by crossbreeding the species, you could, theoretically, create an HMT hinny.”
“A what?”
“It’s like a mule. A creature that exists but cannot reproduce, making it a perfect biological delivery system, because after it does its job it dies.”
There was now a kind of ecstasy in Martin’s smile. Marilee felt moved by a deep passion, even if she didn’t understand the ramifications. Years later, after Martin had been sentenced to 117 years in prison, she was still aroused by the memory of his fervor.
She reached out with both hands and pinched his nipples —hard.
Martin bent sideways and tipped over, pretzel-like, in the bed.