“You’re thirty-four years old and somebody gave you a Jiffy Lube gift certificate for your birthday. Anybody would be bummed.”
She shuddered. “This is the same house I grew up in; did you know that? After Dad died, I was going to sell it, but I never got around to it.” Her voice developed a faraway sound, as if she’d forgotten Jodie was there. “I was doing research on ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions, and I didn’t want any distractions. Work has always been the center of my life. Until I was thirty, it was enough. But then one birthday followed another.”
“And you finally figured out all that physics stuff isn’t giving you any thrills in bed at night, right?”
She started, almost as if she’d forgotten Jodie was there. Then she shrugged. “It’s not just that. Frankly, I believe sex is overrated.” Uncomfortable, she looked down at her hands. “It’s more a sense of connection.”
“You don’t get much more connected than when you’re burning up the mattress.”
“Yes, well, that’s assuming one burns it up. Personally…” She sniffed and stood, slipping the tissues into the pocket of her trousers where they didn’t presume to leave a bump. “When I speak of connection, I’m thinking of something more lasting than sex.”
“Religious stuff?”
“Not exactly, although that’s important to me. Family. Children. Things like that.” Once again she drew her shoulders back and gave Jodie a brush-off smile. “I’ve gone on long enough. I shouldn’t be imposing on you like this. I’m afraid you caught me at a bad time.”
“I get it! You want a kid!”
Dr. J. delved into her pocket and yanked out the tissues. Her bottom lip trembled, and her entire face crumpled as she dropped back into the chair. “Yesterday Craig told me that Pamela is pregnant. It’s not… I’m not jealous. To be honest, I don’t care enough about him anymore to be jealous. I didn’t really want to marry him; I don’t want to marry anybody. It’s just that…” Her voice faded. “It’s just…”
“It’s just that you want a kid of your own.”
She gave a jerky nod and bit her lip. “I’ve wanted a child for so long. And now I’m thirty-four, and my eggs are getting older by the minute, but it doesn’t seem as if it’s going to happen.”
Jodie glanced at the kitchen clock. She wanted to hear the rest of this, but pregame was starting. “Do you mind if I turn on your TV while we finish this?”
Dr. J. looked confused, as if she weren’t exactly sure what a TV was. “No, I suppose not.”
“Cool.” Jodie picked up her mug and headed for the living room. She sat down on the couch, put her mug on the coffee table, and fished the remote out from under some kind of brainy journal. A beer commercial was playing, so she hit the mute button.
“Are you serious about wanting a baby? Even though you’re single.”
Dr. Jane had her glasses on again. She sat in an overstuffed chair with a ruffle around the bottom and the clam-shell painting hanging right behind her head, the one with that fat, wet pearl. She pressed her legs together, her feet side by side, anklebones touching. She had great ankles, Jodie noticed, slender and well shaped.
Once again that back stiffened, as if somebody had strapped a board to it. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I don’t ever plan to marry—my work is too important to me—but I want a child more than anything. And I think I’d be a good mother. I guess today I realized I have no way to make it happen, and that’s hit me hard.”
“I got a couple of friends who are single moms. It’s not easy. Still, you’ve got a lot better paying job than they do, so it shouldn’t be so tough for you.”
“The economics aren’t a problem. My problem is that I can’t seem to come up with a way to go about it.”
Jodie stared at her. For a smart woman, she sure was dumb. “Are you talking about the guy?”
She nodded stiffly.
“There’ve got to be a lot of them hanging around that college. It’s no big deal. Invite one of them over, put on some music, give him a couple of beers, and nail him.”
“Oh, it couldn’t be anyone I know.”
“So pick up somebody in a bar or something.”
“I could never do that. I’d have to know his health history.” Her voice dropped. “Besides, I wouldn’t know how to pick someone up.”
Jodie couldn’t imagine anything easier, but she guessed she had a lot more going for her than Dr. J. “What about one of those, you know, sperm banks?”
“Absolutely not. Too many sperm donors are medical students.”
“So?”
“I don’t want anyone who’s intelligent fathering my child.”
Jodie was so surprised, she neglected to turn up the volume on the pregame show, even though the beer commercial had ended and they’d begun to interview the Stars’ head coach, Chester “Duke” Raskin.
“You want somebody stupid to be the father of your kid?”
Dr. J. smiled. “I know that seems strange, but it’s very difficult for a child to grow up being smarter than everyone else. It makes it impossible to fit in, which is why I could never have had a child with someone as brilliant as Craig or even chance a sperm bank. I have to take into account my own genetic makeup and find a man who’ll compensate for it. But the men I meet are all brilliant.”
Dr. J. was one weird chick, Jodie decided. “You think because you’re so smart and everything that you’ve got to find somebody stupid?”
“I know I do. I can’t bear the idea that my child would have to go through what I did when I was growing up. Even now… Well, that’s neither here nor there. The point is, as much as I want a child, I can’t just think about myself.”
A new face on the screen caught Jodie’s attention. “Oh, jeez, wait a minute; I got to hear this.” She snatched the remote and hit the volume button.
Paul Fenneman, a network sportscaster, was doing a taped interview with Cal Bonner. Jodie knew for a fact that the Bomber hated Fenneman’s guts. The sportscaster had a reputation for asking stupid questions, and the Bomber didn’t have any patience with fools.
The interview had been pretaped in the parking lot of the Stars Compound, which was located on the outskirts of Naperville, the largest town in DuPage County. Fenneman spoke into the camera, looking real serious, like he was getting ready to cover a major war or something. “I’m speaking with Cal Bonner, the Stars’ All-Pro quarterback.”
The camera focused on Cal, and Jodie’s skin went clammy from a combination of lust and resentment. Damn, he was hot, even if he was getting old.
He stood in front of this big Harley hog wearing jeans and a tight black T-shirt that outlined one of the best sets of pecs on the team. Some of the guys were so pumped up they looked like they were getting ready to explode, but Cal was perfect. He had a great neck, too, muscular, but not one of those tree trunks like a lot of the players had. His brown hair had a little curl to it, and he wore it short so he didn’t have to bother with it. The Bomber was like that. He didn’t have any patience with stuff he thought was unimportant.
At a little over six feet, he was taller than some of the other quarterbacks. He was also quick, smart, and he had a telepathic ability to read defenses that only the finest players share. His legend had grown nearly as big as the great Joe Montana’s, and the fact that it didn’t look like Jodie would ever have number eighteen hanging in her closet was something she could never forgive.
“Cal, your team had four turnovers against the Patriots last week. What are you going to do against the Bills so that doesn’t happen again?”
Even for Paul Fenneman, that was a stupid question, and Jodie waited to see how the Bomber would handle it.
He scratched the side of his head as if the question was so complicated he had to think it over. The Bomber didn’t have any patience with people he didn’t respect, and he had a habit of emphasizing his hillbilly roots in situations like this.
He propped one boot up on the footpeg of the Harley and l
ooked thoughtful. “Well, Paul, what we’re gonna have to do is hang on to the ball. Now, not having played the game yourself, you might not know this, but every time we let the other team take the ball away from us, it means we don’t have it ourselves. And that ain’t no way to put points on the board.”
Jodie chuckled. She had to hand it to the Bomber. He’d gotten old Paul right in the numbers with that one.
Paul didn’t appreciate being made to look like a fool. “I hear Coach Raskin’s been real happy with the way Kevin Tucker’s been looking in practice. You’re going to be thirty-six soon, which makes you an old man in a young man’s game. Any worries Kevin’ll be taking over as starter?”
For a fraction of a second, the Bomber’s face stiffened up like a big old poker, then he shrugged. “Shoot, Paul, this ol’ boy ain’t ready for the grave yet.”
“If only I could find somebody like him,” Dr. Jane whispered. “He’d be perfect.”
Jodie glanced over and saw her studying the television. “What are you talking about?”
Dr. J. gestured toward the screen. “That man. That football player. He’s healthy, physically attractive, and not very bright. Exactly what I’m looking for.”
“Are you talking about the Bomber?”
“Is that his name? I don’t know anything about football.”
“That’s Cal Bonner. He’s the starting quarterback for the Chicago Stars.”
“That’s right. I’ve seen his picture in the paper. Why can’t I meet a man like that? Someone who’s a bit of a dim bulb.”
“Dim bulb?”
“Not very intelligent. Slow.”
“Slow? The Bomber?” Jodie opened her mouth to tell Dr. Jane that the Bomber was the smartest, trickiest, most talented—not to mention meanest—sonovabitchen quarterback in the whole freakin’ NFL when this big dizzy rush hit her smack in the middle of her head, an idea so wild she couldn’t believe it had even come into her brain.
She sank back into the couch cushions. Holy shit. She fumbled for the remote and pushed the mute button. “Are you serious? You’d choose somebody like Cal Bonner to be the father of your baby?”
“Of course I would—assuming I could see his medical records. A simple man like that would be perfect: strength, endurance, and a low IQ. His good looks are an added bonus.”
Jodie’s mind ran in three different directions all at once. “What if…” She swallowed and tried not to get distracted by an image of Kevin Tucker standing naked right in front of her. “What if I could arrange it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“What if I could set it up so you could get Cal Bonner in bed?”
“Are you joking?”
Jodie swallowed again and shook her head.
“But I don’t know him.”
“You wouldn’t have to.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
Slowly, Jodie told her story, leaving out a part here and there—like what a badass the Bomber was—but pretty much being honest about the rest. She explained about the birthday present and the kind of woman the guys wanted. Then she said that with a little cosmetic enhancement, she thought Dr. J. herself could fit the bill.
Dr. J. got so pale she started looking like the little girl in that old Brad Pitt vampire flick. “Are you— Are you saying you think I should pretend to be a prostitute?”
“A real high-class one because the Bomber doesn’t go for hookers.”
She rose from her chair and began pacing around the room. Jodie could almost see her nerd brain working away like a calculator, adding up this and that, pushing plus buttons and minus buttons, getting a look of hope around her eyes and then sagging back against the fireplace mantel.
“The health records…” She gave a deep, unhappy sigh. “Just for a moment I thought it might actually be possible, but I’d have to know his health history. Football players use steroids, don’t they? And what about STDs and AIDS?”
“The Bomber doesn’t touch drugs, and he’s never been too much for sleepin’ around, which is why the guys are setting this up. He broke up with his old girlfriend last winter and doesn’t seem to have been with anybody since.”
“I’d still have to know his medical history.”
Jodie figured between Junior and Willie, one of them could sweet-talk a secretary into giving her what she needed. “I’ll have a copy of his medical records by Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“His birthday is in ten days,” Jodie pointed out. “I guess what it all comes down to is whether or not you’ve got the guts to go for it.”
Chapter Two
What had she done? Jane Darlington’s stomach took a turn for the worse as she made her way into the ladies’ room at Zebras, where Jodie Pulanski had brought her to meet the football player who was driving her to Cal Bonner’s condominium that very night. Ignoring the women chatting at the basins, she headed into the nearest stall, latched it, and leaned her cheek against the cold metal divider.
Was it only ten days since Jodie had shown up at her door and turned her life inside out? What insanity had possessed her to agree to this? After years of orderly thinking, what had convinced her to do something so reckless. Now that it was too late, she realized she’d made a high-school student’s mistake and forgotten the second law of thermodynamics: order inevitably leads to disorder.
Maybe it was a regression. As a youngster, she was always getting herself into scrapes. Her mother had died several months after her birth, and she’d been raised by a cold, withdrawn father who only seemed to pay attention to her when she misbehaved. His attitude, combined with the fact that she was bored in school, had led to a series of pranks that had culminated in her elementary-school principal’s house being painted a bright shade of pink by a local contractor.
The memory still gave her satisfaction. The man had been a sadistic child-hater, and he’d deserved it. Luckily, the incident had also forced the school authorities to see the light, and they began to accelerate her through the system so that she had no more time for mischief. She’d buried herself in her increasingly challenging studies while she shut herself off from a peer group that regarded her as a freak, and if she sometimes thought she liked the rebellious child she had been better than the intense, scholarly woman she had become, she’d simply regarded it as one more price she’d had to pay for the sin of being born different.
Now it seemed that rebellious child still lived. Or maybe it was simply fate. Although she had never placed any credence in mystical signs, discovering that Cal Bonner’s birthday fell exactly at her most fertile time of the month had been too portentous for her to ignore. Before she’d lost her courage, she’d picked up the telephone and called Jodie Pulanski to tell her that she was going to go through with it.
By this time tomorrow, she might be pregnant. A distant possibility, it was true, but her menstrual cycle had always been as orderly as the rest of her life, and she wanted this so badly. Some people might think she was being selfish, but her longing for a baby didn’t feel selfish. It felt right. People saw Jane as a person to be respected, to be held in awe. They wanted her intellect, but no one seemed to want the part of her that she most needed to share, her capacity to love. Her father hadn’t wanted that, and neither had Craig.
Lately she had imagined herself sitting at the desk in her study lost in the data being displayed on the computer screen before her—the intricate calculations that might someday unlock the secrets of the universe. And then in her vision a noise would disturb her concentration, the sound of an imaginary child coming into her study.
She would lift her head. Cup her hand over a soft cheek.
“Mama, can we fly my kite today?”
In her vision she would laugh and turn from her computer, abandoning her search for the secrets of the universe to explore the heavens in a more important way.
The flush of the toilet in the next booth brought her out of her reve
rie. Before she could fly any kites, she had to get through tonight. That meant she had to seduce a stranger, a man who would know far more about seduction than someone who’d only had one lover.
In her mind she saw Craig’s pale, thin body, naked except for the black socks he wore because he had poor circulation. Unless she had her period or he had one of his migraines, they’d made love nearly every Saturday night, but it was over quickly and not very exciting. Now she felt ashamed of having spent so long in such an unsatisfactory relationship, and she knew loneliness had driven her to it.
Male companionship had always been a problem for her. When she’d been in school, her classmates were too old for her, a problem that had persisted even after she had her degree. She wasn’t an unattractive woman, and a number of her colleagues had asked her out, but they were twenty years her senior, and she’d been vaguely repulsed. The men who had attracted her, the ones her own age, were the graduate students taking her seminars, and dating them violated her sense of ethics. As a result, she’d earned the reputation of being aloof, and they’d stopped asking.
That had finally changed when she’d received the Preeze fellowship. She was investigating top quarks as part of the ultimate quest for every physicist, the search for the Grand Unification Theory, that simple equation, much like Einstein’s E=mc2, that would describe all the parts of the universe. One of the scientists she had met at a University of Chicago seminar had been Craig.
At first she’d thought she’d found the man of her dreams. But, although they could rethink Einstein’s Gedanken experiment without ever growing bored, they never laughed, and they never exchanged the sort of confidences she’d always imagined lovers should share. Gradually, she accepted the fact that their physical relationship was little more than a convenience for both of them.
If only her relationship with Craig had better prepared her to seduce Mr. Bonner. She knew men didn’t consider her sexy, and she could only hope he was one of those awful creatures who didn’t care very much with whom he was sexually engaged as long as he was physically satisfied. She feared he would recognize her for the fraud she was, but at least she would have tried, at least she would have a chance. And she had no alternative. She’d never use a sperm bank and risk having a brilliant child who would grow up as she had, a lonely freak of nature who felt disconnected from those around her.