Double Helix Read Free Page B

bastard about my giving him money directly.
    Which he would be.
    Inside our small brick building, I grabbed the mail and took the stairs two at a time to the fourth floor. I let myself into the apartment, which, after three years, still retained the unmistakably empty feel of the temporary.
    My father was not there. Sometimes he went to the nursing home after work. Other times I didn’t know what he did.
    I changed out of the suit and wondered if I ought to take it to the dry cleaner’s. I put on a pot of water for the ramen noodles. I was still fantasizing about the money. Maybe I could buy a car. That would help a lot next year because Viv’s college was an hour away by public transportation, but only twenty minutes by car.
    A car . . .
    I had a thick folder in my backpack describing all the Wyatt Transgenics employment benefits. They ranged from the trivial to the terrifying, from discounted movie tickets to death and disability insurance. I thought I remembered something in there about a credit union that gave loans for used cars. I hauled the folder out and flipped it open.
    Confidential counseling support in times of personal and family difficulties—I dropped that brochure as if it were printed in fire. Stock option purchase plan. Tax-sheltered retirement investments.
    I couldn’t find the credit union information, but I found myself frowning at the thick folder that contained all the details about the health insurance plan. There’d been an odd little scene at Wyatt Transgenics, after Dr. Wyatt had left me with the Human Resources director. The scene had involved health insurance . . . at first.
    I had tried to tell the HR director, Judith Ryan, that I - didn’t need to sign up for the health plan. That I was never sick. But apparently this was one thing about which there was little choice. You could only get out of it if you were covered by some other plan.
    â€œYou need health insurance,” Judith Ryan said. She had the whitest hands I’d ever seen. There was a heavy crystal bowl of hard candies on her desk and, on the wall behind her head, a poster of an owl accompanied by the words: If you attend to the details, the details will attend to you .
    â€œAfter all, things happen. Let’s suppose you’re right, and you never get sick.” Her voice told me she thought I was an idiot. “You could always get hit by a car.”
    She was indisputably right. But that didn’t make me like her. However, it floated into my mind that I already had health insurance through my father’s coverage. Surely it would be cheaper for my father if I took this on for myself?
    I said, “You’re right. I could get hit by a car. Or fall into an elevator shaft. Or, hey! Get infected by deadly microbes right in this building. You’d better sign me up.”
    â€œWhat did you just say?” I stared across the desk; Judith Ryan had drawn her body up fully in her seat, like a hooded cobra preparing to strike.
    I was flummoxed. I searched my memory. “Sign me up?” I ventured.
    â€œBefore. That.”
    I thought she might haul off and hurl the crystal bowl of candy into my face. I was so unnerved that it actually took me a second to remember. Elevator shafts. Deadly microbes. “I was just joking.”
    â€œWyatt Transgenics is a scientific laboratory. We do not joke about microbes and loose safety procedures.”
    Now I really was feeling like an idiot. “Okay,” I said. I raised my hands in a placating gesture. “Okay. I get you. Sorry.”
    But she wasn’t through. “We do not joke about these matters at work. We do not joke about these matters at home. We do not”—her glare grew more ferocious—“joke about them at school. Not to anyone. Not to friends, girlfriends, parents.” Her nose squinched. “Not in messages written while inebriated.”
    She had read my email. Judith Ryan had read my embarrassing,