Rockets Versus Gravity (9 page)

Impact

im-pact

ˈimˌpakt

1. The action of one object coming forcibly into contact with another

(as a rocket striking the Earth).

2. Have a strong effect on someone or something.

A
s the limousine cruises north up Yonge Street, James Yeo feels like the rock star he once thought he might become. He watches the women and girls on the sidewalks; they have traded their long coats and warm boots for low-cut tops and short skirts. They have put on their high heels and they've let their hair down. He's glad that he had his sunglasses in his jacket pocket.

After so many months of stone-grey skies, the intense sunlight makes the whole city seem surreally bright. The sleepy-sounding announcer on the radio refers to the heat as “thermonuclear”; James thinks that this might be overstating it a bit, but then he remembers that this is Toronto, where the news media once named a four-inch snowfall “Snowmageddon.”

The radio plays a Valium-mellow version of Jimmy Cliff's “I Can See Clearly Now,” and the singer's oozing voice reminds James of melting marshmallows.

James leans forward and says to the limousine driver, “Hey, how about you turn the dial to the Mighty Q, my brother! And crank it!”

“Pardon me, sir?”

The driver's black suit is crisply pressed, and the bill of his chauffeur's cap shines as brightly as his patent leather shoes. The brass plaque on his lapel reveals that his name is Carl.

“Carl, my man,” James says, in a classic rock DJ voice, “
one-oh
-
seven
-point-one on your FM dial,
s'il vous plaît.
”

Carl wants to roll his eyes, but his Code of Professional Conduct prevents him from doing so. His boss, Harry Riskey, has told him about James, about how Harry's going to “put the loser on the ejector seat” as soon as “he gets some baby batter” into his daughter's “inheritance oven.”

“I'm sorry, sir,” Carl intones, “Mr. Riskey prefers that the radio remain at a low volume, tuned to the easy-listening station.”

“Aw, c'mon, Carl! What Harry doesn't know won't hurt him! Just flip it back to
Foot-in
-
the
-Grave FM after you drop me off.”

Carl sighs and reaches for a button on the tuner.

Predictably, Steppenwolf's “Born to Be Wild” thunders through the car's premium sound system. James drums along with his fingers on the back of the front seat headrest, and he's filling his lungs to belt out the anthemic chorus when Carl pushes the power button and the song dies a sudden death.

“Yonge and Eglinton,” the driver says. “Your destination, sir.”

Carl gets out and opens the passenger door for James, who hands him a folded five-dollar bill and then bounces and jives up the sidewalk toward the doctor's office, singing,
“Ah nevahhh wannah
DIII-EEEE
-IIIIIIIIIIIIIE
!”

Carl slides back into the limo, tosses the five on the seat beside him, and says, “At least I make more than he does.”

A
ll of the plastic seats in the waiting room are occupied by other patients, so James leans on the check-in counter just inside the door. The receptionist hasn't even noticed him yet. The phone rings, and she grabs it before it can sound a second time.

Doctor Brown, who looks like he might be younger than James himself, bursts into the waiting room.

“Is it time?” he yelps at the receptionist. “Is it time?”

“Not yet,” she says, sighing. “I'll come and get you if there's any news. Okay?”

The doctor turns on his heels and retreats into the examination room.

When the call is finished, the receptionist finally acknowledges James's presence by saying, “Name?”

“Um, James. James Yeo.”

James's hormones have already been supercharged by the sunshine and short skirts outside, and this effect is multiplied exponentially by his proximity to the attractive receptionist. He doesn't remember seeing her on his first visit to Doctor Brown's office; he definitely would remember her. He is taken by her soft voice with its slightly rural accent; today she's dressed for the weather in a scoop-necked sundress, and as she leans forward on her elbows, James finds something else about her to admire.

“Health card number?” she asks, without looking away from her computer screen.

He fumbles for his wallet, and as he pulls out the requested card, several others fall out. They fly everywhere as he tries to catch them. He stoops to pick them up, and his sunglasses slip from his collar and clatter on the tiled floor. When James finally stands upright again, he offers the cute receptionist his Star Trek fan club membership card.

“It's okay,” the receptionist giggles, “I've already found your number on the computer.” She finally looks at him with summer-blue eyes. “Sorry about the wait. Doctor Brown's wife's due date was last week, and every time the phone rings, he runs out here. It's slowed things down a little.”

James inhales deeply through his nostrils;
she smells like lavender.
She leans forward on her elbows again. James can see her sheer, light-purple bra.

“We are
so
backlogged,” she sighs, glancing at the packed waiting room. “The pipe is about to burst!”

Gawd
, James muses,
I am so backlogged. MY pipe is about to burst.
He thinks about Sidney pushing him away again this morning, then steals another glance at the receptionist's cleavage. A crucifix and a silver ring, suspended from a slender chain, are nestled between her breasts.

Maybe the ring means she's married, too,
James thinks, vividly imagining a vigorous extramarital hotel-room tryst. He can almost feel that ring and crucifix dangling against his face.
Providing a sample won't be a problem today.

“My name's Clementine, by the way.”

“Hi, Clementine,” James says.

“Hey, has anyone ever told you that you look just like another James? There was this musician named James Why. He used to play the clubs a couple of years ago, when I was still in nursing school.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” James says.

Actually, James
never
gets this; Clementine is the first person outside his circle of friends to ever mention his former musical alter ego in a non-deprecating way.

“So,” James says, drumming his fingers on the desktop, “you're a nurse? How come you're working the reception desk?”

“Nursing jobs are scarce right now,” she says, taking note of his wedding ring. “It's a lot more expensive in the city than it was back home, and I'm a single mom with an
eight-year
-old kid.”

She's dropped the Poor Single Mom bomb, and now she is staring obviously at the wedding ring on his finger, but James continues to smile at her. So Clementine smiles back at him.

Doctor Brown bursts into the waiting room again.

Clementine sighs. “I
told
you I'd come get you as soon as —”

“Is this Mr. Yow?”

“It's pronounced
Yeo
, Doctor Brown,” Clementine says.

Doctor Brown squints at a chart inside a folder, the way that doctors do, and mutters, “I'd better take you now. Follow me, Mr. Yow.”

“It's Yeo,” James says. “As in, ‘yo, yo, daddy-o!' ”

Doctor Brown subtly rolls his eyes. “Right, right, sorry,” he grumbles. “Can't read my own damn writing.”

Or maybe he said “handwriting.” Doctor Brown is difficult to understand when he's mumbling, which is most of the time.

The other patients moan and sigh as James follows the doctor into the examination room. Their glares betray their collective complaint:
This guy strolls in wearing
Ray-Bans
, flirts shamelessly with the receptionist, and then he gets to jump the queue? Who does he think he is?

James answers their glares with a dismissive glance, which says:
I'm James Why. I came in a limo. I sing and play the guitar. And ah nevahhh wannah
DIII-EEEE
-IIIIIIIIIIIIIE
!

O
n the countertop, there are boxes of latex gloves and generic tissues. The concrete-block wall is painted that Digestive Tract Bile shade of greenish-yellow only ever seen in medical facilities, and hanging from it is a
blood-pressure
-reading apparatus and an empty Dixie cup dispenser. Other than the industrial-sized squirt-bottle of K-Y Personal Lubricant, the only thing that distinguishes the fertility doctor's examination room from any other is that, instead of the usual
six-month
-old
Time
and
Golf Addict
magazines, there are stacks of
Ass Master
,
Juggs
,
Biker Mamas
, and
MILF International
, as well as a few back issues of
Playboy
and
Penthouse
for those with more refined tastes.

James understands that he is more or less contractually obligated to impregnate Sidney, and that even when he's
imagining
having sex, he is supposed to imagine being inside of
her
, and no one else. He usually pictures her in the kind of provocative poses that she never agrees to assume for him anymore, draped in the kind of sexy lingerie that she never wears for him anymore, saying the sort of enticing things that she never says to him anymore, and usually the hydraulic pressure builds up right away.

But this isn't going to work today. There is an endless, discouraging loop playing on his mind's soundtrack, of Sidney sighing, “For gawd's sake, James! No time for
that
.… For gawd's sake, James! No time for
that.
…”
and projected on his mind's movie screen is an image of his wife gazing longingly at a texted digital photograph of the Red Buffoon's gold-encrusted dessert, which causes James's equipment to shrivel into a humiliated nub.

James knows that he has a job to do, though, so he will rise to the occasion by thinking about Clementine instead. He will imagine her atop the reception desk, the hem of her sundress tugged up to her waist, her lavender-coloured panties draped sassily over her computer screen, her jet-black Velcro strip invitingly exposed. “Yes, James,” she will say. “I want you. Take me. Take me right here, in front of everyone.”

James knows that this scenario is ridiculous, but it's
his
fantasy, and this time it will go the way that
he
wants it to go. He is pretty much ready to get started
now.

While Doctor Brown stands and squints at the contents of the file folder, James sits atop the examination table, listening to the sheet of sanitary paper crackle beneath his butt, and to the plain-faced clock ticking on the greenish-yellow wall:
tick … tick … tick … tick.

“So,” James jokes, “do you want me to strip down and put my feet in the stirrups?”

“Ha ha,” mumbles the doctor. “No.” He clears his throat and continues to study the charts.

James wonders if perhaps he should open a decade-old copy of
Playboy
, just to pass the time. For the timeless articles they publish, of course.

“Mr. Yow,” Doctor Brown finally says.

Instead of correcting the doctor's pronunciation again, James says, “You can call me James.”

“James, I've been studying the results of your tests, and there are some indicators here that are somewhat troubling.”

“Somewhat troubling?”

The doctor flips some pages.

“Your blood test shows, and your urine and semen tests confirm, that you have a rather rare condition called —”

Inside James's jacket pocket, his Riskey and Gamble–issued phone plays a ring tone version of Queen's sports arena anthem, “We Are the Champions.” Harry has warned James to change it back to the phone's standard, businesslike chime, but James hasn't managed to do it yet.

Doctor Brown glances up at the hand-lettered sign taped to the
Digestive-Tract
-Bile wall, which reads:

PLEASE TURN YOUR CELLPHONE OFF.

The word
off
has been outlined several times in black marker.

“Go ahead,” the doctor sighs. “Answer it.”

“Uh, hi, Harry,” James says into the phone. “Actually, I'm with the doctor right now. Can I call you back? Okay. As soon as I know. Yes. Right away. Okay, then. Don't worry, my sperm is in good hands.”

James switches off the phone and tucks it back into his jacket pocket. The doctor glares at James as if he just passed the most rancid of gasses, and James wonders what compelled him to make that last ridiculous comment.

“Sorry,” James says. “That was my
father-in
-law. The one who made my first appointment with you, actually. He's a bit —”

Clementine the receptionist bursts through the door.

“I just got the call,” she pants, “It's time for you to go now, Doctor.”

The doctor wriggles out of his white lab coat and tosses it atop the stack of
Ass Master
and
Juggs
, and then he sprints out into the hallway. Clementine rushes out behind him. Then their footsteps halt. Doctor Brown mumbles something.

“One month?” Clementine says.

“Her mess,” the doctor mumbles. Or maybe he said, “Or less.” Then he mumbles something else that James cannot decode.

“No way,” Clementine yelps. “No way! That's
your
job, not mine. That's why
you
make the big bucks.”

More mumbling, something about “not today of all days.” Then a door slams.

Clementine shuffles back into the examination room.

“Hi there,” she says, refusing to look James in the eyes. She's holding the folder that Doctor Brown had been squinting at. “The doctor has been called away. Is there any chance we could reschedule your appointment for next week?”