‘Of course, of course,’ I said, trying to maintain a rational and non-confrontational conversation while processing memories and rubbing oil into Rosie’s naked body. ‘I was just wondering how it happened. As a scientist.’
‘It was the Saturday morning after you went out and got breakfast and did your Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday.’ Rosie attempted her own impression. ‘You should always wear my clothes.’
‘Was I wearing my shirt when I did it?’
‘You do remember. You’re right. I had to tell you to take it off.’
First of June. The day my life changed. Again.
‘I didn’t think it would happen straight away,’ she said. ‘I thought it might take months, maybe years, like Sonia.’
In retrospect, this was the perfect moment to tell Rosie about Gene. But I did not realise until later that she was admitting that the contraception failure was deliberate and thus giving me an opportunity to make my own revelation. I was focused on the massage process.
‘Are you feeling less stressed?’ I asked.
She laughed. ‘Our baby is out of danger. Temporarily.’
‘Would you like a coffee? I put your blueberry muffin in the refrigerator.’
‘Just keep doing what you’re doing.’
The net result of continuing to do what I was doing was that the time window between breakfast and my aikido class disappeared, and there was no chance to discuss the Gene Problem. When I returned, Rosie suggested we cancel the museum visit to enable further work on her thesis. I used the freed-up time to research beer.
Dave drove us to a new apartment building between the High Line and the Hudson River. I was amazed to discover that the ‘cellar’ was actually a small bedroom in an apartment on the thirty-ninth floor, immediately below the top-floor apartment that it was to serve. The lower apartment was otherwise vacant. Dave had insulated the room with refrigeration panels and installed a complex cooling system.
‘Should’ve done more to insulate the ceiling,’ said Dave. I agreed. Any costs would have been rapidly recouped in electricity savings. I had learned a great deal about refrigeration since meeting Dave.
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Building management. I think they would have caved, but the client isn’t too worried about running costs.’
‘The client is presumably extremely wealthy. Or extremely fond of beer.’
Dave pointed upwards.
‘Both. He bought two four-bedroom apartments: he’s using this one just for the beer.’
He moved his finger to his lips in the conventional signal for silence and secrecy. A short, thin man with a craggy face and long grey hair tied in a ponytail had appeared in the doorway. I estimated his BMI as twenty and his age as sixty-five. If I had to guess his profession, I would have said plumber. If he was a former plumber who had won a lottery, he might be a very exacting client.
He spoke with a strong English accent. ‘’Ullo, David. Brought your mate?’ The plumber extended his hand. ‘George.’
I shook it according to protocol, matching George’s pressure, which was medium. ‘Don.’
Formalities completed, George inspected the room.
‘What temperature you setting it at?’
Dave gave an answer that I deduced as likely to be wrong. ‘For beer, we generally set it at forty-five degrees. Fahrenheit.’
George was unimpressed. ‘Bloody hell, you want to freeze it? If I want to drink lager, I’ll use the fridge upstairs. Tell me what you know about real beer. Ale.’
Dave is extremely competent, but learns from practice and experience. In contrast, I learn more effectively by reading, which is why it took me so long to achieve competence in aikido, karate and the performance aspects of cocktail-making. Dave probably had zero experience with English beer.
I responded on his behalf. ‘For English bitter, the recommended temperature is between ten and thirteen degrees Celsius. Thirteen to fifteen for porters, stout and other dark ales. Equivalent to fifty to fifty-five point four degrees Fahrenheit for the bitter and fifty-five point four to fifty-nine Fahrenheit for the dark ales.’
George smiled. ‘Australian?’
‘Correct.’
‘I’ll forgive you that. Go on.’
I proceeded to describe the rules for proper storage of ale. George seemed satisfied with my knowledge.
‘Smart fellow,’ said George. He turned to Dave. ‘I like a man who knows his limitations and gets help when he needs it. So it’ll be Don looking after my beer, will it?’
‘Well, no,’ said Dave. ‘Don’s more of a…consultant.’
‘I hear you loud and clear,’ said George. ‘How much?’
Dave has strong ethics about business practice. ‘I’ll have to work it out,’ he said. ‘Are you happy with the fit-out?’ Dave indicated the refrigeration equipment, insulation and plumbing that rose through the ceiling.
‘What do you reckon, Don?’ asked George.
‘Insufficient insulation,’ I said. ‘The electricity consumption will be excessive.’
‘Not worth the trouble. Had enough strife with the building manager already. Doesn’t like me putting holes in the ceiling. I’ll save it up till I put the spiral staircase in.’ He laughed. ‘All right otherwise?’
‘Correct.’ I trusted Dave.
George took us upstairs. It was incredible as an apartment, but totally conventional as an English pub. Walls had been removed to incorporate three of the bedrooms into the living room, which was furnished with multiple wooden tables and chairs. A bar was equipped with six taps connected by lines to the beer cellar below, and a large TV screen was angled high on the wall. There was even a platform for a band with piano, drums and amplifiers in place. George was very friendly, and got us micro-brewery beers from one of the bar fridges.
‘Rubbish,’ he said as we drank them on the balcony, looking out over the Hudson to New Jersey. ‘The good stuff should be here on Monday. It came over on the same boat as us.’
George went back inside and returned with a small leather bag.
‘So, tell me the bad news,’ he said to Dave, who interpreted this as a request for an invoice and passed over a folded piece of paper. George looked at it briefly, then pulled out two large wads of hundred-dollar bills from his bag. He gave one to Dave and counted a further thirty-four bills from the second.
‘Thirteen thousand, four hundred. Close enough. No need to trouble the fiscal fiend.’ He gave me his card. ‘Call me any time you’ve got a worry, Don.’
George had made it clear that he wanted me to check the cellar morning and night, at least for the first few weeks. Dave needed the contract. He had left a secure job to start his own business before Sonia became pregnant, and was not making much money. Recently he had lacked funds for baseball tickets. Sonia planned to stop working when she had the baby, which would incur costs in its own right.
Dave was my friend, so I had no choice. I would have to change my schedule to accommodate a twice-daily detour via Chelsea.
Outside my apartment building I was intercepted by the superintendent, whom I generally
avoided due to the probability of some sort of complaint.
‘Mr Tillman, we’ve had a serious complaint from one of your neighbours. Apparently you assaulted him.’
‘Incorrect. He assaulted me, and I used the minimum level of aikido necessary to prevent injury to both of us. Also, he turned my wife’s underwear purple and insulted her with profanities.’
‘So you assaulted him.’
‘Incorrect.’
‘Don’t sound incorrect to me. You just told me you used karate on him.’
I was about to argue, but before I could say anything he made a speech.
‘Mr Tillman, we have a waiting list so long for apartments in this building.’ He spaced his hands in a way that was presumably meant to provide evidence for his assertion. ‘We throw you out, your apartment will be taken by someone, someone normal, the next day. And this isn’t no warning—I’ll be talking to the owners. We don’t need weirdos, Mr Tillman.’
5
My mother’s Saturday night Skype call from Shepparton came through on schedule at 7.00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time; 9.00 a.m. Australian Eastern Standard Time.
The family hardware store was surviving; my brother Trevor needed to get out more and find himself someone like Rosie; my uncle appeared to be in remission, thank God.
I was able to reassure my mother that Rosie and I were fine, work was also fine and any thanks for my uncle’s improved prognosis should be directed to medical science rather than a deity who had presumably allowed my uncle to develop cancer. My mother clarified that she was just using an expression, and not submitting scientific evidence of an interventionist god, God forbid, which was also just an expression, Donald. Our conversations had not changed much in thirty years.
Dinner preparation was time-consuming, as the mixed sushi platter had a substantial number of components, and by the time Rosie and I sat down to eat I had still not conveyed the Gene information.
But Rosie wanted to talk about the pregnancy.
‘I looked it up on the web. You know, the baby isn’t even a centimetre long.’
‘The term baby is misleading. It’s not much advanced from a blastocyst.’
‘I’m not calling it a blastocyst.’
‘Embryo. It’s not a foetus yet.’
‘Attention, Don. I’m going to say this once. I don’t want forty weeks of technical commentary.’
‘Thirty-five. Gestation is conventionally measured from two weeks prior to conception and our best guess is that the event occurred three weeks ago, following the Roman Holiday impression. Which needs to be confirmed by a medical professional. Have you made an appointment?’
‘I only found out I was pregnant yesterday. Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a baby. A potential baby, okay?’
‘A baby under development.’
‘Right.’
‘Perfect. We can refer to it as the Baby Under Development. B.U.D.’
‘Bud? It makes him sound like a seventy-year-old man. If it’s a “he”.’
‘Ignoring gender, it’s statistically likely Bud will reach the age of seventy, assuming successful development and birth and no major change to the environment on which the statistics are based, such as nuclear holocaust, meteorite of the kind that caused the dinosaur extinction—’
‘—being talked to death by his father. It’s still a male name.’
‘Also the name of a plant component. A precursor to a flower. Flowers are considered feminine. Your name has a flower connection. Bud is perfect. Reproductive mechanism for a flower. Rosebud, Rosie-bud—’
‘Okay, okay. I was thinking that the baby, speaking in the future tense, could sleep in the living room. Until we can find a bigger place.’
‘Of course. We should buy Bud a fold-up bed.’
‘What? Don, babies sleep in cribs.’
‘I was thinking of later. When it’s big enough for a bed. We could buy one now. So we’re prepared. We can go to the bed shop tomorrow.’
‘We don’t need a bed yet. We don’t even need to buy the crib for a while. Let’s wait till we know that everything’s okay.’
I poured the last of the previous evening’s pinot gris and wished there was more in the bottle. Subtlety was not getting me anywhere.
‘We need the bed for Gene. He and Claudia have split up. He has a job at Columbia and he’s staying with us until he can find somewhere else to live.’
This was the component of the Gene Sabbatical that may not have been well considered. I should probably have consulted with Rosie before offering Gene accommodation. But it seemed reasonable for Gene to live with us while he looked for his own apartment. We would be providing for a homeless person.
I am well aware of my incompetence in predicting human reactions. But I would have been prepared to bet on the first word that Rosie would say when she received the information. I was correct by a factor of six.
‘Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.’
Unfortunately, my prediction that she would ultimately accept the proposition was incorrect. My series of arguments, rather than progressively breaking down her resistance, seemed to have the opposite effect. Even my strongest point—that Gene was the best-qualified person on the entire planet to assist her in completing her thesis—was rejected on essentially emotional grounds.
‘No way. Absolutely no way is that narcissistic, cheating, misogynist, bigoted, unscientific…pig sleeping in our apartment.’
I felt that accusing Gene of being unscientific was unfair, but when I started to list Gene’s credentials Rosie went to the bedroom and shut the door.
I retrieved George’s card to enter it into my address book. It included the name of a band: Dead Kings. To my amazement, I recognised it. Due to my musical tastes being formed primarily by my father’s record collection, I was familiar with this British rock group whose music had been popular in the late 1960s.
According to Wikipedia, the band had become active again in 1999 to provide entertainment on Atlantic cruises. Two of the original Dead Kings were actually dead, but had been replaced. George was the drummer. He had accumulated four marriages, four divorces and seven children, but he appeared, relatively, to be the psychologically stable member. The profile did not mention his love of beer.
When I went to bed, Rosie was already asleep. I had made a list of further advantages of Gene living with us, but decided it would be unwise to wake her.
Rosie was, unusually, awake before me, presumably as a result of commencing her sleep cycle early. She had made coffee in the plunger.
‘I figured I shouldn’t be drinking espresso,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘Too much caffeine.’
‘Actually, plunged coffee has approximately 2.5 times the caffeine content of espresso.’
‘Shit. I try to do the right thing—’
‘Those figures are approximate. The espressos I get from Otha’s contain three shots. Whereas this coffee is unusually weak, probably due to your lack of experience.’
‘Well, you know who’s making it next time.’
Rosie was smiling. It seemed like a good time to introduce the additional arguments in favour of Gene. But Rosie spoke first.
‘Don, about Gene. I know he’s your friend. I get that you’re just being loyal and kind. And maybe if I hadn’t just discovered I was pregnant… But I’m only going to say this once and we can get on with our lives: we do not have space for Gene. End of story.’
I mentally filed the ‘end of story’ formula as a useful technique for terminating a conversation, but Rosie contradicted it within seconds as I swung my feet out of the bed.
‘Hey, you. I’ve got writing to do today, but I’m going to kick your arse tonight. Give me a hug.’
She pulled me back to the bed and kissed me. It defies belief that a person’s emotional state could be deduced from such an inconsistent set of messages.
In reviewing my interaction with Rosie, I concluded that her reference to kicking my arse was metaphorical, and should be interpreted positively. We had established a practice of attempting to outperform each other at The Alchemist. In general, I consider the artificial addition of competition to professional activities to be counterproductive, but our efficiency had shown a steady improvement. Time at the cocktail bar appeared to pass quickly, a reliable indication that we were enjoying ourselves. Unfortunately there had been a change of ownership. Any alteration to an optimum situation can only be negative, and the new manager, whose name was Hector but whom we referred to privately as Wineman, was demonstrating this.