Eric swallowed and reached out his hand. The wall clock, one of those noisy kinds that schools used, read five ten a.m. When was the last time he had left the clinic? Eric did a little quick math. Forty hours ago. He needed sleep something terrible, but all of a sudden he felt wide-awake.
He glanced down at the photograph and remained silent for a moment. Eric knew what the readings meant, but he kept staring at them anyway, as though he could make the bands on the photograph slide lower or higher by just concentrating on them. “Let me take a look at the ELISA test.”
Winston sighed. “We’ve already looked at it twice.”
“I want to look at it again. You sure you used the right sample?”
Winston looked at him strangely. “Are you kidding?”
“I want to make sure.”
“You were standing here when I did it,” Winston said. “I don’t make mistakes on these kinds of things. Neither do you.”
Eric lowered his head. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Winston crossed the room and opened a door that looked like it belonged on a refrigerator. His hand reached in and extracted a plate. “Here. And here’s the digital readout of the optical density.”
“Get me the T cell study too.”
“Again?”
Eric nodded.
“Here,” Winston said a moment later. “What the hell you looking for, Eric?”
Eric did not respond. He examined all the tests and studies at least a dozen more times. Somewhere in the background he could hear Winston sigh and curse under his breath every time Eric asked to look at the same thing again.
“For crying out loud,” Winston half snapped, “how many times are you going to view this stuff? There’s no mistake here. Shoot, we’ve never made a mistake on this test—ever.”
“It can’t be,” Eric muttered. “It just can’t be.”
“We’ve had hundreds of positive HIV tests come through here,” Winston continued. “Why all the double checking on this one? I’ve run the ELISA and the Western on this guy twice now. There’s no question about the results.”
Eric moved to a chair as though stunned by a blow to the head. He slowly picked up the phone and dialed.
“Who you calling?” Winston asked.
His voice came from far away. “Harvey.”
“I’ll put this stuff away, then.”
“No,” Eric said. “Harvey will want to look at it too.”
“But both of us have already—”
“He won’t believe us,” Eric said. “He’ll have to see this one for himself.”
9
HARVEY buttoned his shirt and smiled toward the rumpled bed. If Jennifer could see him now . . .
“I still can’t believe you’re here,” he said.
Cassandra leaned back on the bed and stretched. A thin, white sheet was all that covered her body. “Why not? This is Day Number Four already, Harv.”
“Happy?”
“Blissful,” she replied. And it was true. From their first kiss she had felt intoxicated. It was strange, but even now she could feel her heart swell in her chest just thinking about him.
“No complaints?” he asked.
“Just one,” she said. “I don’t care much for your hours.”
“I warned you.”
“Yeah, but two hours a night?”
“Sorry.”
“Not your fault, I guess,” she said. “Anyway, it makes me appreciate my nine to seven at the agency more.”
Harvey searched the clothes-cluttered floor, found a pair of pants crumpled in a corner, and put them on. “When are you making your presentation to the airline?”
“This afternoon. Northeastern Air. I have a meeting with their handsome marketing director. Jealous?”
“Should I be?”
She looked at him. “No.”
“Good,” Harvey said with a goofy grin. “Because I really like you.”
She laughed. “God, you’re corny.”
He shrugged. “Just out of practice,” he said. “So what ad slogan did you come up with?”
She thought a moment. “Fly the friendly skies of Northeastern?”
“It’s been used.”
“How about ‘We’re Northeastern Airlines, doing what we do best’?”
“Sorry.”
“ ‘I’m Candy, fly me’?”
“Might work if you show some cleavage.”
“No problem,” Cassandra said. “I majored in cleavage in college.”
“I bet.” He found a red tie crumpled into his loafer. “I probably won’t be back here until the day after tomorrow.”
“I have to go home anyway. I’m running out of clothes.”
“And leave my palatial penthouse?”
Cassandra glanced around Harvey’s sloppy, one bedroom dump on One Hundred Fifty-eighth Street. She looked at him skeptically.
“Okay,” he admitted, “Versailles it’s not.”
“A human dwelling it’s not.”
“Granted, it might need a little work.”
“It might need a bulldozer.”
“You are spoiled rotten.”
Cassandra smiled. “Bet your ass.” She sat up and put the pillow behind her head. “Harv, is it true? Do you really have a cure for AIDS?”
“Not a cure exactly,” he said, tying his tie and then loosening it. “More like a treatment.”
“I had a good friend die of AIDS,” she said slowly. “He was my ad partner at Dunbar Strauss. God, he was so creative, so alive. I remember visiting him at the hospital until he was in so much pain he wouldn’t let anyone see him.”
Harvey nodded. “It’s an ugly disease, Cassandra.”
“How does your treatment work?”
He stopped. “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
Harvey sat on the edge of the bed and held her hands. “AIDS,” he began, “or Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome, does not, in and of itself, kill people. You see, the AIDS virus, known as HIV, attacks the immune system. It causes the immune system to break down to the point where the patient is readily susceptible to illness and infection. Eventually these illnesses or infections become fatal. With me so far?”
“I think so,” she said. “You’re saying that the AIDS virus tears down the wall that protects you from disease.”
“Exactly. How the HIV destroys the immune system is a bit complicated, so I’ll try to be as nontechnical as possible.”