Fire in the Firefly (19 page)

“Still holding tight on that one. But since you're here, look at this.” Roebuck held up the pheromone dispenser and, once Greenwood stepped into range, allowed himself a purging squeeze …

He doesn't see the ticket until he's pulled out into traffic. Roebuck unbuckles at the next light, hops out to yank it off the windshield, and almost doors a cyclist; he is not as apologetic as the circumstances warrant. More bad Karma. It has now been
twenty-three
days, exactly, since Roebuck staged his show with Yasmin in his office. He has indeed been counting. According to his calculations, Yasmin will be in the sweet spot of her cycle this coming Monday. Again his plans are in ruins. And what was he thinking, not feeding the meter?

As expected, he has missed his teleconference.

“Sleep in?”

Greenwood is wearing that look he gets whenever he senses the moral advantage has tilted in his favour.

“Nose to the grindstone, Daniel.” Roebuck heads for his office, yellow parking ticked crumpled in one fist. “No rest for the weary.”

Greenwood looks as if he's not quite certain whether the remark was meant for him. “You know,” he calls out, “I had to throw that shirt away. Did I mention that? Two times to the cleaners and it
still
stinks!” But Roebuck has already passed out of hearing.

Almost always, now, there's some new treat waiting in his private inbox.

It's been an interesting tutorial, these last weeks, on the finer points of human oogenesis. He is glad he had no need for all this earlier in life. With Anne there was no science. It took a little longer than expected the first time, with Katie, and for a while there they started to worry. But after that, all the mechanics just fell into place. They had sex, they had kids; they had sex, they had kids. In retrospect, so elegantly simple. Yasmin monitors her ova like FedEx tracks its waybills. She set up Hushmail accounts, early on, to facilitate the flow of information. Roebuck has only to log in, now, to receive his daily update. “I've begun the Luteal Phase,” she informed him back at the start of things, which to his ear sounded like the title of a Michael Crichton novel.

Though the Luteal, as it turned out, was by and large a friendly interval, at least at the onset. A week or so later, when a message headed “The Ischemic!”
blazed in (he had to Google that one, too), things turned decidedly hostile. This was when Yasmin coldly informed him of her preference for freezing his sperm in order to accomplish their objective with a minimum of personal contact. Subsequent investigation, luckily, revealed that the process called for liquid nitrogen and a range of technical abilities well beyond the scope of home enthusiasts. As the cycle advanced, her interest in cryogenics quietly ebbed.

Menstruation itself, by comparison, was a fairly calm and quiet time. But things took a radical turn once the Follicular Phase commenced in all its fearsome splendour.

The Follicular, as Roebuck has now amatively grasped, is where the rubber truly hits the reproductive highway. Throughout this past week, Yasmin's estrogen levels have been twitching skyward. A newly bathed and scented ovum now quivers at the gates, straining for release. In one of the most bizarrely erotic texts ever to have shivered down the length of Roebuck's spine, she has described for him in detail how the mucus in her cervix has changed from thick and clumpy to slippery and thin.

Roebuck is barely able to withstand the strain.

The
Follicular Phase, as he knows, is not the big day. But the big day is just around the corner.

And once again he is going to have to take a pass.

Though almost not. Roebuck very nearly convinces himself to go ahead and damn the consequences. He has, after all, completed all twenty ejaculations, plus. It
has
been a full two months, plus. The considered sum of Roebuck's intuition is advising that he must by now be safely shooting blanks.

Except that, from the start of this, he has set rules in place.

Roebuck's respect for his own standards has bound him to the sovereignty of reason. And it isn't just Yasmin. It's Lily, too, who is expecting him for more than lunch, come Monday. He gets up to close the door, then contritely opens it again. This sort of thing has been happening too much lately. There's a recession, after all; revenues are down. His people have reason to be nervous. That sudden, emergency flight to Manila didn't help, though Roebuck has a strong sensation that one, at least, is going to work out in the long run; a very strong feeling that that piece of theatre may have achieved much more than was intended. Wheels are in motion. He makes a mental note to stand a round or two this Friday night at Matrix Three and hint that something big is in the works, which calms and reminds him, too, that it's time to bring Daniel in on this.

But first, a far more noxious piece of business. Roebuck won't commit himself. Not yet. But he has been turning this over and over and still hasn't come up with anything better. He is running out of thinking room and clearly—this time—it will have to be spectacular.

He opens up Google and asks: “What can I eat to make myself throw up?”

Seconds later, Roebuck receives an astonishing sixteen million hits. For a few moments, even Yasmin fades from mind as he contemplates the scope of what this says about his species.

The good news, though, is that he finds what he requires right away.

Later he will learn that it's derived from the roots and rhizome of the ipecacuanha plant, a native of Brazil. He will also discover, subsequently, that many people in the
non-bulimic
world are legitimately familiar with this substance, too. He will be even more surprised to learn—months on and inadvertently—that once upon a time it was stocked in his own house, before the ban, by his judicious wife as precaution against accidental poisoning. But for the moment, syrup of ipecac is something Roebuck has never heard of, never once encountered.

Owing to the power of the Internet, he is rapidly caught up. It soon becomes apparent that the people who weigh in on this topic—the
mind-boggling
number of people who post on the subject of
self-induced
vomiting­—
self-sort
into cohorts. The first group Roebuck would characterize as
information-seekers
: folks requesting practical advice on the
how-to
's of regurgitation. A second, and significantly larger, category seems to be comprised of
answer-givers
: good Samaritans offering a wide assortment of useful tips. The third and final segmentation—which Roebuck deliberately ignores—is a loose collection of observers posting comments on the intellectual qualities of the previous two.

He refines his search, concentrating on utility. Mustard and milk mixed together seems to be a popular suggestion. Another one that turns up often is a litre of warm salty water, guzzled down in one big slurp. In Roebuck's case neither of these are likely to be feasible, but it doesn't matter because syrup of ipecac—by far the most frequent recommendation and obtainable at most pharmacies—is
tailor-made
to his requirements.

He clicks back to Google and drills a little deeper.

Wikipedia lays out its botanic origins and history as an herbal emetic. Roebuck skips through the account of its more recent popularity with hasty bulimics and begins to browse the dozens—hundreds—of homemade videos featuring boys with acne chugging ipecac so they can be filmed by hooting friends while throwing up. There's a dismal sameness to these postings, and he worries for a while that he's inclined to hurl himself, watching. But his time is well spent. Mostly, what he wants to know is how long the substance takes to work. Several of the videos have thoughtfully provided
count-down
clocks. In half an hour's viewing, Roebuck has determined that the interval between ingestion and emesis averages out to roughly fifteen minutes, give or take.

Closing down his browser, he returns to the world of sane people and taps out a quick note to Greenwood, asking him to drop by when he has a minute. Not a formal meeting, just a friendly chat.

Then he gives himself a little
healing-time
and composes a message for Lily. After his past
half-hour
, the exercise is comfortingly therapeutic.

What Is Man?

The Sun's Light when he unfolds it

Depends on the Organ that beholds it

Still on for Monday? I've booked us a table.

He has barely thumbed “Send” before Greenwood fills his doorway.

“Daniel! Aren't you prompt.”

“I'm heading out to Artemis so it's now or never.”

“What is it this time?” It occurs to Roebuck that he should probably know. Greenwood's thoughts, evidently, are running along similar lines; he rolls his eyes. “What is it you want to talk about?”

“Ripreeler. But if you have to go, you have to go. We can pick it up again next week.”

“Ripreeler? That's always been your baby. I've never worked on Ripreeler!”

“Only because there has been nothing, since you started here, that has required art direction on that particular account. Now there is.”

“Is that what that flash trip to the Philippines was all about? People were making it out as some kind of crisis.”

Roebuck smiles. “It's an opportunity, Dan. A very big one.”

Greenwood has been lusting for some
hands-on
time with their biggest account since the day he joined the agency. “All right, tell?”

“Later, Dan. We'll set aside a block of time next week. We have a lot of ground to cover.”

“Then it'll have to be Monday.” Greenwood is scowling at his mobile's calendar. “Monday. 11:00 AM. And my name is Daniel. Not Dan. Daniel.”

That better be Blake, not you, or I'm never letting you see my stuff again. Table, what table?

It's late afternoon; she must have been out. He is only now accessing her reply. Despite what he intends to engineer tomorrow, Roebuck's pleasure is restoratively real. He smiles as he composes his reply.

For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise. Frontispiece. (Yup, Wm. Blake.)

Think I'm capable of something so subliminal? There's a new seafood restaurant over in Corktown I'd like to try. Thought we'd have a bite then mosey back to your place if that is still on offer ...