Part 3 (2/2)
”I shredded the thing.” Wenceslas looked horrified. ”My patients expect me to write the best script available. If they knew I was pledged to one drug company?” He shook his head no.
But Shane shrugged. ”One day doctors will put up signs like the ones about which insurance companies they accept. Except about which drug companies they work with. 'Greenbrae Medical a.s.sociates only prescribes drugs from Merck,' or something.”
”Ah,” Wenceslas nodded. ”If we did that, they wouldn't need you. How much money would pharmas save with no reps?”
Shane considered this. The amount seemed too staggering to verbalize.
”They're about to get that money back anyway,” Janelle grinned across the table.
Wenceslas stared at him. ”Really? Where are you going?”
”Helixia.”
A prolonged whistle escaped from Wenceslas's lips.
Cynthia asked, ”Is that a different drug company?”
”It's a different category. It's biotech. Where Janelle works.”
”What's the difference?”
Janelle explained, ”Pharmaceutical companies create chemical compounds that are delivered into the body to cause a specific reaction. But the body reacts to these foreign chemicals in a myriad of ways, and you get side effects. If you have a stuffed nose, Sudafed unstuffs it. But it also makes your heart race and your mouth dry. Biotechnology treatments use natural proteins from the body, which it recognizes, and never fights. So only the intended reaction happens.”
”Sounds amazing,” Cynthia said happily. ”Congratulations.”
”We can play a celebratory round at Peac.o.c.k this Sunday,” suggested Wenceslas.
Shane raised his eyes. ”Love to, but I'm going to Boulder this weekend.”
”Last romantic getaway before the baby and the job?”
”I don't know about romantic. I'm going to see my brother.”
”I didn't know you had a brother. You never mention him.”
Shane drank more wine. ”Don't I?”
”Boulder sounds fun,” Cynthia told him.
”Oh, fun fun fun,” Shane said. Janelle pressed his leg under the table.
She started to tell an amusing story about a lactation video she'd seen online. He tried to pay attention, but Caleb had hijacked his thoughts again. What would he find at this house in Boulder? Who would he see there, calling himself his brother?
As they rode in their taxi back toward the Marina, Janelle leaned against his shoulder. Outside, a neon blur of North Beach topless bars created sparks against the city sky.
”Have you told your parents you're going?” she asked softly.
He shook his head no. ”Think I should?”
”They'll want to come with you.”
”Let's not start a full-scale intervention. They can see Caleb when I get him home.”
”Is that your plan? What if he just wants you to watch a race?”
”He's wasting his life.”
”What if he's happy?”
Shane frowned out the window.
”Seek first to understand, baby.”
”Seek first to kick his a.s.s.”
Janelle looked at him, concerned. ”I know you take it personally that he disappeared on you, but give him two minutes before you put him in a half nelson and throw him in the car. If you turn him off, you'll never hear from him again.”
”Okay,” Shane nodded, exhaling. ”I'll give him nothing but love. But the guy that runs that place? Him not so much.”
The taxi wound through the wharf toward the tiny house they had invested everything in. He realized that this might be the last time they would ever approach it as just the two of them, focused only on each other. He kissed Janelle's cheek and glanced out at the bright buoyant lights of Tiburon and Sausalito, and the curve into the cold Pacific beyond.
”I'm going to get him out of there,” Shane stated quietly.
In the morning, he left for the airport.
5.
”Your bro's coming today?”
It was just before nine in the morning; Caleb had been running for four hours. b.u.mblebees nearly the size of eggs skittered through the gaillardias. A cl.u.s.ter of bluebirds burst over his head. Moving at a good speed, Caleb felt an ascension of joy that he supposed cla.s.sical composers and Renaissance painters had touched. Running was art, he knew, and its masters were also capable of masterpieces.
As he galloped through the familiar trails, Caleb visualized the Hardrock 100 course that awaited him next month. He saw himself in its hundred miles through thirteen soaring peaks of the San Juan Mountains, its fields of wildflowers, its granite peaks covered with snowpack. He felt he was there. Running trails, he could imagine anything he wished with stunning clarity.
He was in the midst of this revelry when Mack jumped out from behind an especially bountiful white ash.
”Caley!”
Caleb stopped suddenly; immediately his body began to overheat.
Appearing unexpectedly at the end of a run to add more time was a favorite training technique of Mack's. He'd written about it in You Can Run 100 Miles! Ultramarathon courses are full of unpredictability. A sudden rainstorm might create a mudslide, an animal might carry off a course marker, a lateral muscle might tear. Unforeseen requirements to double the body's effort without notice were part of the sport and so, Mack taught, it should be part of the training. But today, instead of shouting his usual ”add ten” Mack asked about his brother.
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