Elementary, My Dear Watkins (28 page)

Finally, the four girls reached the stairs without incident and went up to the second level, where the guys mostly worked the phones. If she held her nose, closed her eyes, and just listened, Alexa thought the place could be mistaken for any office, any business. They spoke of shipments and deliveries and profit margins. The only difference was, if the lookouts up on the roof pressed the buzzer, these guys could close up shop and be out of the building without a trace in less than a minute.

“You girls wanna do some running?” one of the guys called out to them as they went past.

“Not tonight, hon. We’re just going up top.”

They took the stairs two more flights—past the guys with their test tubes and chemicals and hot plates—climbed out a huge, open window, and used the outside fire escape to reach the roof. The roof was where Alexa liked to be. Up here, nobody was allowed to get high because they had to keep their eyes peeled for the cops. Instead, they mostly sat around and watched the streets down below and passed the time together by talking. Alexa had a spot she liked to sit, leaning against an old exhaust chimney. But instead of watching for cops, she would tilt her head back to gaze up at the stars. She loved the stars.

Of course, in the old days, she could never sit still for long. Usually, she’d get bored with the sky pretty soon and start throwing spit bombs at the other buildings or braiding somebody’s hair or making up jokes and songs about the teachers at school or doing whatever else passed the time.

Now, after greeting more of her old friends, she claimed the familiar spot by the chimney, sat down, and looked up at the sky. She realized she couldn’t see nearly as many stars from here as she could at the old lady’s place. Here, there was so much light coming up from the city that it blotted out all but the brightest planets. She wondered why she never realized that before—and why she used to be willing to settle for so much less than what was really out there.

Alexa sat for a long time, an hour or so, just listening to the conversations that swirled around her, contributing to the talk once in a while herself. Somehow, it all seemed so inane, so wasteful. Was this really how she used to spend most of her time? Sitting on the roof of a giant drug factory and hanging out with a bunch of losers?

Slowly, she realized something, and with that knowledge came a strange lightness in the pit of her stomach. She really
was
lucky.

Tripping on that train track and blowing the aneurysm in her brain was the single best thing that ever could have happened to her.

Danny was up and dressed and ready for the day before Luc was even out of bed. Despite Danny’s proddings, however, the Frenchman refused to move at all, until finally Danny told him that if he hadn’t made it downstairs by the time they were finished with breakfast, they would be taking the car without him and Luc would just have get to GMM on his own.

Mr. Bashiri was just stepping off the elevator into the lobby as Danny came down the stairs. He greeted the photographer, who was looking crisp and fresh in cotton khaki shirt and pants. As Danny locked the equipment into the car and they walked to the café together, Danny told him that Luc was running late and would be joining them later.

Breakfast was a quick and tasty array of fresh fruit and pastries, eaten at an outdoor table in the early morning sunshine. Luc still hadn’t shown up by the time they were finished eating, so Danny took the wheel of the van himself, relieved to find that it wasn’t difficult to get the hang of driving in Zurich. Fortunately, he had paid enough attention on their previous maneuverings that he was able to find GMM’s headquarters without even needing to consult the directions. He parked in their private lot and they went inside to find that the place was already buzzing with activity and excitement.

He realized that it must be this way every time GMM sent off a fresh batch of doctors to a foreign location. Tomorrow’s contingent was actually going to be big, with not just the doctors but also a number of nurses and aides and even a couple of dentists—not to mention a certain pair of photographers. On top of that, this afternoon the GMM staffers would be packing the plane with tons of equipment—medical instruments and medicines and other supplies. Danny was looking forward to photographing that, or at least observing Mr. Bashiri as he photographed it. Now that Danny fully understood the man’s artistic intentions, he thought he could learn a lot by seeing how they were carried out.

Danny carried their equipment into the warehouse area, where a number of people were busily moving among the supplies, checking off lists, and taking an inventory. With Danny’s help, Mr. Bashiri quietly went to work, assembling the cameras and then capturing the scene on film.

“I had a thought,” Danny said to the photographer after a time, hoping it wouldn’t be too forward of him to make a suggestion.

“Yes?”

“How about a bird’s eye view from the top of that ladder, with a supertight ap and an extended shutter speed?”

Mr. Bashiri considered his suggestion for a moment and then nodded, understanding that what Danny was suggesting would create an interesting perspective where all of the boxes would remain sharply in focus but the people would appear on the film as a bunch of blurs moving among them. It also helped that the boxes were gray and the people all wore blue GMM shorts—two colors that were in keeping with the theme of “coldness.”

“Yes,” Mr. Bashiri said finally, adding some thoughts about the settings. “I like that idea very much.”

Stifling a grin, Danny set up an unused ladder that had been propped against the wall, climbed up with the camera, a cable release, and a tabletop tripod, and went to work. He didn’t know if the pictures would come out quite like he expected, but he did know that he’d never had so much fun in his life—and that he was thankful to his very core for the opportunity to get a second chance.

Alexa told her friends that she had to leave, and then she headed back down alone, this time using the fire escape all the way. It creaked and moaned as she went, but at least she didn’t have to walk through the first floor again. And except for a few broken steps, it was safe enough.

Once on the ground, she dusted herself off, rearranged her backpack, and started walking toward her mom’s apartment. Probably she wouldn’t even say hello, but it was hard to be this close and not even peek inside. She’d be seeing her mom on Friday anyway, since a visitation weekend was coming up.

Alexa had just reached the corner of her street when she spotted her Uncle Rick. He wasn’t really her uncle, just one of her mother’s ex-boyfriends. But of all the guys who’d been in and out of her life that way, Uncle Rick was the only one who ever seemed to care about Alexa. Tall and skinny with spiked-up hair and both arms covered in tattoos, he wasn’t handsome, exactly, but he had a nice smile. Even after he and her mom had broken up, probably two years ago, he tried to stay in touch with Alexa as much as he could. She had heard he’d moved away, across the river, so she couldn’t imagine what he was doing back here, sitting on the stoop in front of a bar by himself, smoking a cigarette.

“Uncle Rick?”

He looked up and broke into a wide grin.

“Alexabear!” he cried, standing up to give her a hug. “What’s happening, kid?”

She wrapped her arms around him and held on tight, thinking he was the closest thing to a dad she’d ever had.

“How come you’re not any taller, squirt?” he teased, patting her on the top of the head.

“How come you’re not any fatter, slim?” she replied, poking him in the stomach.

Laughing, they sat side by side on the concrete step, and for the first time all night Alexa didn’t even feel cold anymore. They talked for a while, but from the things he said, Alexa realized that something about him had changed.

It wasn’t until he started to apologize to her for some long-forgotten hurt—okay, he passed out and fell on her seventh-grade science fair project and crushed it the night before it was due, and she’d never really forgiven or forgotten—that she realized what was up.

“You doing a twelve-step program, Uncle Rick?”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “It works if you work it.”

“So why you hanging out in front of a bar?”

“Just waiting here for your mom,” he said, and in his eyes Alexa could see a lot of pain. Her mom did that to people, gave them pain. “She wasn’t ready to leave, but I didn’t think I should wait inside. Too tempting.”

“I’m proud of you.”

Though he seemed touched by her words, he shook his head, lighting his next cigarette off the one he’d been smoking.

“Don’t be proud. I’ve done a lot more things wrong than I’ve done right.”

He flicked the smoldering cigarette butt into the gutter.

“But isn’t that what the twelve steps are all about? Starting fresh? Getting another chance?”

He inhaled deeply on the new smoke, peering at her through squinted eyes.

“How’d you get so wise at fourteen?” he asked as he exhaled.

She held her breath until the smoke dissipated.

“I know all about second chances,” she said. “I’m a living example of a second chance.”

D
anny was beginning to feel embarrassed. They were nearly finished with the warehouse photos and Luc still hadn’t shown up. Mr. Bashiri brushed off Danny’s apologies, focusing instead on a discussion about which equipment they would be taking with them on the next leg of the trip, and which pieces they would be shipping back to Paris. It would have been nice to bring everything to the Congo, but that simply wasn’t prudent. Since they were flying down on the GMM jet, the less equipment they brought along, the more medical supplies could be carried in their stead.

They were making a list of the items that were absolutely necessary when Danny heard a woman calling his name.

“Danny Watkins?” she asked again, crossing the room to where they were working.

“Yes?”

“You are getting shots today,
ja? Die shutzimpfungen?
”

“Vaccinations, yes,” he replied, butterflies rising up and flitting around in his stomach.

“
Bitte
, the doctor would like to do that now, if you do not mind.”

Swallowing hard, Danny handed the list over to Mr. Bashiri and excused himself.

“If you are a good boy,” the photographer teased with a wink, “perhaps they will give you a lollipop.”

Steeling his nerve, Danny followed the woman from the warehouse into the main building and up the hallway to a small room, the inside of which looked very much like an American doctor’s office, complete with examining table, blood pressure cuff, and a scale.

Danny introduced himself to the doctor, a transplanted Australian wearing jeans and a faded T-shirt. The man apologized for his attire but said that he’d come today prepared only to load boxes, not to practice medicine.

“Not that I mind doing it, of course. A couple of last-minute volunteers also need to be inoculated.”

The doctor told Danny to sit on the table and then he pulled up a stool and sat. He took a brief medical history and then one by one, he named all of the vaccinations and boosters he felt Danny ought to get. The list was long and disturbing.

“I guess you can do ’em all,” Danny said bravely, “but will we really run into every one of those diseases down there?”

“Sure, mate, and lots of others too, I bet, including some that’ve got no vaccinations at all—nor even any cure.”

Before giving the shots, he gave Danny a rudimentary exam, taking his blood pressure and temperature, and then checking his ears and nose and throat. As he worked he talked about what he called “orphan diseases,” which were conditions rare enough that even though they were probably curable, the pharmaceutical companies weren’t willing to fund the research to find those cures.

“Developing new drugs costs an arm and a leg,” the doctor said as he pressed Danny’s wrist to find a pulse and then consulted his watch. “As a result, lots of needed drugs are never developed. It’s real sad. Take Buruli Ulcers, for example. We’ll see a lot of those down there, and they’re not pretty. They stink too.”

“Stink? Like bad breath?”