Vigil Read online

  There was the sound of a few seats creaking as various students sat up to take better notice.

  “Looks like a dinosaur fossil,” a girl said, from somewhere toward the back; it sounded like Katie Coyne, one of his better students. “One of the smaller carnivores.”

  “Okay, good. But what makes you say that?”

  “Nothing does. I thought of it all by myself.”

  There was a wave of laughter, and now he knew it was Katie.

  “Let me rephrase, Ms. Coyne,” Carter said, trying to regain control. “What makes you think, for instance, that it’s a meat eater?”

  “From here, it looks like whatever it was had sharp teeth, maybe even serrated—”

  “That’s good—because it did.”

  “—and although it’s tough to make out, maybe its feet had claws, like one of the raptors. But I can’t really tell that for sure.”

  “So you’re looking down at this area,” Carter said, touching his pointer to the bottom of the slide; there, the creature’s feet were splayed apart and did indeed look clawed. But even in its entirety, the fossil image didn’t offer much in the way of clues. It was really no more than an impression of faint gray and black lines—twisted and broken and in some spots doubling back on themselves—set against a blue-gray backdrop of volcanic ash. Katie had done a good job of picking out some of its most salient characteristics. Still, she’d missed the most important.

  “But what do you make this out to be?” Carter asked, raising his pointer to the top of the slide, where a bony protuberance twisted upward and ended with a blunt flourish. Even Katie was silent.

  “Maybe a tail, with something on the end of it,” another student hazarded.

  “An armored spike,” Katie said, “for warding off other predators?”

  “Not exactly. On closer examination, which this slide is probably inadequate to provide, that little clump at the end of the tail—and it is a tail—turned out to be,” and he took a second for dramatic effect, “a plume of feathers.”

  The hum of the projector was all that could be heard. Then Katie said, “So I was wrong? It’s not a dinosaur—it’s a bird?”

  “No, you’re right, in a way, on both counts: it’s a dinosaur, with feathers, called—and be prepared, I’ll expect all of you to spell this on the final—Protoarchaeopteryx robusta. It was found in western China, it dates from the Jurassic era, and it’s the best proof to date that present-day birds are in fact descendants of the dinosaurs.”

  “I thought that theory had been discredited,” Katie said.

  “Not in this class,” Carter said. “In here, that theory is alive and kicking.”

  The bell—more of an annoying buzzer, really—sounded, and the students started gathering their books and papers together. The projectionist turned up the lights in the lecture hall, and the slide instantly paled into obscurity on the screen.

  “So that thing you just showed us,” Katie said, “whatever it was called, did it fly?”

  “Nope, doesn’t look like it,” Carter replied, as the other students shuffled toward the door. Katie was always the last to go, always had one more question for him before she buttoned up her army surplus jacket and headed out herself. She reminded Carter a little of himself at that age, always trying to tie up one more loose end or get one more piece of the puzzle. Usually he hung around after the class to answer any remaining questions, but not today; today—and he’d put a yellow Post-it on his lecture notes so he wouldn’t forget—he had an appointment to get to.

  He pulled on his leather jacket, stuffed his notes in his battered briefcase, and left through the side door, just behind Katie.

  “So, do you believe that T. rex had feathers, too?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “It’s not inconceivable,” he said.

  “Guess they’re going to have to reshoot Jurassic Park then.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure they’ll do that,” he said, “and while they’re at it, maybe they ought to call it Cretaceous Park.”

  “How come?”

  “Because T. rex didn’t actually show up till then. See you next Thursday.”

  Outside, it was crisp and autumnal, the kind of day when New York actually seemed to sparkle, when the store windows gleamed, the falling leaves littered the pavement, and even the pretzel carts looked tempting. For a second, Carter thought about stopping at one—all he’d had for lunch was a microwaved burrito—but then he remembered the New York Post exposé about the vermin in the warehouse where the carts were kept overnight, and he kept on walking. At times like this, he was often sorry he’d ever read that article.

  The appointment he had to keep, in just forty minutes, was in midtown, and right now he was only in Washington Square. But if he walked briskly, he figured he could still make it in time. A cab would cost a fortune, and the idea of descending into the subway on such a beautiful afternoon was too painful. Zipping up his jacket, with his briefcase bulging at his side, he set off, up Fifth Avenue, for an appointment that he was, in all honesty, not that eager to get to.

  It was another doctor appointment, this time with a fertility specialist, one that Beth had found through her friend Abbie. Beth was only thirty-two, and Carter one year older, but they’d been trying the baby thing for over a year, and so far nothing was happening. Part of Carter wanted to know what the problem was—and part of him didn’t—but this afternoon, he was afraid he was going to find out either way.

  They’d been married for six years, and for most of that time the whole subject of kids had been tabled. No, he couldn’t even say that it had been tabled; it just hadn’t come up at all. For one thing, they were both so wildly passionate about each other, the idea of actually making love for some other purpose—to start a family—would have seemed absurd; sex was just for sex, and why would they have wanted to confuse the issue with . . . issue? That wasn’t a bad way to put it, he thought. They’d existed, quite happily, in a kind of little bubble, and there was nothing inside that bubble but each other. And it didn’t feel like anything was missing.

  The other consideration had been their work—Carter had always said he didn’t even want to think about starting a family until he knew that he was going to get his career on track—until he knew, for instance, that he was going to get tenure somewhere. His nightmare was to wind up like so many of the other postdocs he knew, a gypsy scholar drifting from one temporary post to another, one year in New Haven, two years in Ann Arbor, with a wife to support and a couple of kids in tow, and nowhere to write, no time to think, no freedom to go where he needed to go in order to get the work done that would make his reputation. But that was not a problem anymore. Eighteen months ago, New York University had given him tenure—along with the newly funded Kingsley Chair of Paleontology and Integrative Biology—so there went that excuse.

  At Thirty-first Street he made a right and headed toward the stretch of First Avenue he’d come to think of as Medical World. When he’d once been involved in a cab accident, this was where the ambulance had taken him. When he went to see an orthopedist about a climbing injury to his right leg, this was where he’d come. And when he’d had to undergo some physical therapy afterward, the clinic, too, had been just half a block from the avenue. All things considered, he was entering pretty familiar territory.

  But that didn’t mean he felt comfortable there.

  Dr. Weston’s office suite was on the second floor of an undistinguished hospital annex. A pair of polished oak doors bore his name on them in raised gold letters six inches high, and below that the letters P.C.—for “private corporation.” Since when, Carter wondered, had doctors started to seem more like businessmen? As he was ushered through the elegantly appointed reception area and down the hall—polished wood, with an antique Persian runner on it—to Dr. Weston’s inner sanctum, Carter felt more and more like he’d entered an investment banking house and not a medical office—an impression that was only bolstered when he got to the private office with the view of the East
River.

  Beth was already there, sitting on one of two chairs set up in front of the doctor’s ornate, antique desk. As Carter came in, Dr. Weston, wearing not a white lab coat, but a sleekly cut dark suit, stood up to shake his hand; the only thing in the office that even suggested medicine was a light box mounted on one wall, where, presumably, X rays were sometimes viewed.

  Carter felt distinctly underdressed.

  “Your wife was just telling me a little bit about her work at the gallery,” Dr. Weston said, sitting back down in his high-backed, red leather swivel chair. He was a lean man, who looked to Carter like one of those guys he’d see running laps around the reservoir. “I collect art myself, as it happens.” He gestured at a huge, and hideous, abstract oil hanging beside the door; Carter knew it was just the kind of thing Beth would detest.

  “It’s a Bronstein,” he added, proudly.

  Carter stole a glance at Beth, who had a pleasant, but cryptic, smile on her face. Her black hair was pulled straight back, into a tight ponytail, and the look in her rich brown eyes remained noncommittal. “I’m afraid our gallery specializes in much older pieces,” she said. “For us, Renoir is cutting-edge.”

  “Still, I’d like to see what you’ve got sometime. You never know what might catch my eye,” he said, now returning to some notes he’d been taking. “And Carter, I see here that you’re a . . . scientist?”

  “Paleontology, chiefly.”

  Dr. Weston dipped his head, as if in professional acknowledgment. “You teach, then?”

  “At NYU.”

  “Very good. I did my internship at NYU-Bellevue.”

  Weston kept his head down, glanced at a chart in the open folder on his desk. For a few seconds he was silent as he studied the information. Carter assumed the chart contained their personal stats, ages, medical histories, and so on. He’d already answered some of these questions with a nurse over the phone. Carter reached over and squeezed Beth’s hand.

  “Was I late?” he murmured.

  “Not for you,” she said, smiling. “Your lecture go okay?”

  “It’d be hard for it to go very wrong—I feel like I’ve delivered it a hundred times already.”

  “And you’ve been trying to conceive for how long now?” Dr. Weston interrupted without looking up.

  “About a year,” Carter replied.

  “Fourteen months and counting,” Beth said.

  Weston made a correction in the chart. Then kept reading.

  “Want to go to Luna’s tonight?” Carter asked Beth.

  “Can’t. We’ve got a private reception for some clients.”

  “What time’ll it be over?”

  Beth shrugged. “If it looks like they’re in a buying mood, it could go late. Eight-thirty, nine.”

  Weston looked up at them now. “During these fourteen months, how often have you had intercourse on a regular basis?”

  Even if Carter was supposed to be a fellow scientist, the question kind of took him by surprise.

  “Four or five times a week,” Beth answered.

  Was that right? Carter had to think about it.

  Weston noted it down.

  Yes, that did seem about right, now that Carter thought about it. But was that the usual rate for married couples? You could never really know.

  “Okay, then,” Dr. Weston said, sitting back in his chair and pulling on his cuff.

  Carter couldn’t help but notice that he wore gold cufflinks.

  “You’re both young, so unless we find some difficulty down the line, I believe we have a very high probability of success here.”

  “But why haven’t we succeeded so far?” Beth asked. “I mean, what kind of difficulty do you think we could find, somewhere down that line?”

  Dr. Weston brushed it off. “A lot of things can impede conception, from a blocked tube to a low sperm count, but the good news is we have ways of getting around nearly all of the problems now. Here’s what I suggest we do.”

  And for the next ten or fifteen minutes, Dr. Weston outlined a number of steps for them to take, from keeping a record of their sexual intercourse activities to changing the positions they used in order to maximize the possibility of conception; Carter, specifically, was advised to switch to boxer shorts instead of briefs—“they keep the temperature in the scrotal sac lower, which in turn produces more, and more motile, sperm”—and to make an appointment with the office for a count.

  “So, you’ll want me to come in and . . . leave a sperm sample?” Carter said.

  “Yes. We’ll want you to refrain from any sexual intercourse—more to the point, from ejaculating—for twenty-four hours before coming in. Mornings are the best time.”

  Beth was advised to make her own appointment for a complete examination, and suddenly Dr. Weston was standing up and offering his hand across the desk again. “I think we’re going to have an extremely successful outcome here,” he said.

  “I’m not looking for triplets,” Beth said. “One will do.”

  “Fine. Then that’s how we’ll do it—one at a time.”

  On the way out, Carter had to leave a credit card imprint with the nurse at the front desk, and then he and Beth were back outside, standing on a windswept corner of First Avenue. He put his briefcase down on the sidewalk between his feet, then began fastening the buttons of Beth’s long olive-green slicker.

  “So what time does that reception start?” he said.

  “Not for a few hours,” she said, glancing down as he wrestled with a reluctant button. “How about you? Do you have another class?”

  “No, just a few papers to grade. But they can wait.” Carter smiled and leaned in so close the ends of their noses touched. “Maybe we should put this time to some good use.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “Homework?” he said, suggestively. “I mean, we wouldn’t want to let the good doctor down, would we?”

  Beth furrowed her brow, as if she were trying to make up her mind about a particularly thorny problem. Then she said, “Maybe you’re right. It’s never a good idea to put things off, is it?”

  TWO

  “We’ll be on the ground in just a few minutes,” the pilot said over the cabin speaker. “Flight attendants, please prepare for arrival.”

  Ezra Metzger opened his silver pill case and took out another tranquilizer, swallowed it with the last of his Evian water. He’d made it this far, he reminded himself. Now he just needed to stay calm for the next hour or so.

  “Please buckle your seat belt,” the attendant said, reaching for his empty plastic cup. He gave it to her, then heard her say the same thing to the young woman who’d been sniffling in her seat behind him for the entire flight. Everyone had seemed very solicitous of this girl, and Ezra had wondered what it was all about. Was she some TV actress who’d suffered some public heartbreak? He knew he was pretty out of it when it came to popular culture. It wasn’t that he was so old—he’d just turned thirty. But he’d been living at the institute in Jerusalem for the past three years, almost around the clock, and even when he’d been living in New York he’d been more inclined to attend lectures at the Cooper-Hewitt than watch TV or go to the movies.

  As the plane descended, he closed his eyes and tried to stay relaxed. He knew that he had to appear perfectly at ease when he passed through the customs desk, that he had to look unruffled by any delay or question or request. He reminded himself to look the customs inspector straight in the eye, not to look away, or touch his nose, or rub his jaw, or do anything else that might betray his nervousness or anxiety. And if indeed he was unlucky enough to have his bags inspected, or to be interrogated at any length, to react with equanimity and unconcern. The secret, he told himself for the hundredth time, was to pretend he had nothing to hide, that he was just another American citizen happy to be home after an extended stay abroad.

  Even if nothing could be further from the truth.

  Once the plane had touched down and taxied to the gate, the girl behind him�
�pretty, chestnut brown hair, early twenties—was again given preferential treatment. While Ezra and the other first-class passengers waited, she was whisked off the plane first, and down the ramp. She still didn’t look familiar to Ezra, and he asked the well-dressed woman waiting in the aisle next to him who she was.

  “I don’t know her name, but I saw something about it in the Herald-Tribune. A honeymooner, from a nice family. Her husband was killed in a boating accident or something like that, near Naples.”

  Ezra took it all in, then realized the woman was looking at him, as if expecting him to react. “That’s very sad,” he said, dutifully. Focus, Ezra, focus.

  “Yes,” she said, “isn’t it,” before moving as far away as the narrow aisle would permit.

  As the people ahead of him shuffled toward the exit, Ezra took his cardboard tube out of the overhead bin and cradled it under one arm. Act normal.

  “Thank you for flying with Alitalia,” the attendant said with a heavy accent, as he made his way off the plane.

  Moving slowly, so that he’d gradually be caught up in the bigger crowd of passengers from the coach cabin, he followed the signs to Immigration and Passport Control. A woman in a blue uniform said, “Foreign national?” and touched him on the sleeve to direct him to the line on the far right.

  He jerked his arm back at her touch, and she seemed surprised.

  “Are you a foreign national, visiting this country?” the woman said, slowly, deliberately.

  “No, sorry, I’m not,” Ezra said. “I’m an American.”

  “Oh, then you can go to the lines on the left.”

  He nodded his thanks and moved toward the lines on the left, but he thought he could feel her eyes on him as he walked away. He had to get hold of himself. But he could see why she’d made the mistake—he was dark and intense, his clothes were of foreign manufacture, even his haircut probably looked wrong somehow. In his travels, he was often mistaken for everything from a Spaniard to a Greek, and when he ran a hand over his jaw, he felt the stubble that had grown in over the long flight. If only he’d thought to shave in the airplane bathroom . . .