“A gin and tonic,” he said to the bartender while setting his phone facedown on the bar. “Or, on second thought, make that a martini.”
“You have a preference for gin?”
“Whatever you’ve got on the top shelf.”
Another Motown song began playing, and Sam drummed on the bar, pleased with his ability to remember, or anticipate, the song’s infectious rhythms. But when the bartender returned with a martini served on the rocks in a whiskey glass, Sam couldn’t help but feel disappointed.
“That’ll be ten bucks,” said the bartender.
“Can I have it straight up?”
“We don’t have any martini glasses.”
“But what about the sign?”
“What sign?”
Sam considered explaining, but a large fellow in a baseball cap who was seated to his right turned to look him over.
“This is perfect,” Sam conceded as his phone began to vibrate again. “In fact, why don’t you set another one in motion?”
Sam was drunk. He could tell he was drunk because he was losing track of things. He’d lost track of the time. He’d lost track of how many “martinis” he’d had and how many times his phone had buzzed on the bar. He also couldn’t remember when the ill-shaven man—whose name was Beezer—had moved to the stool on his left, or how they had come to be talking about Sam’s father.
“A copper mine!” exclaimed Beezer, slurring his words. “I’d love to own a copper mine.”
“Believe me,” said Sam, slurring them back, “a mine is the last thing you’d love to own.”
Beezer looked incredulous, so Sam began ticking off reasons.
“Mature industry… undifferentiated product… labor-intensive… economically sensitive…”
Sam paused with a thumb and three fingers in the air, certain there was a fifth reason.
Meanwhile, Beezer nodded with the expression of one who was keenly interested but only half following.
“If all you say is true,” he asked, “then why would your old man buy one?”
“It was his dream,” said Sam, putting the word “dream” in its place by adding a pair of air quotes. Sam took a drink, then looked at his neighbor. “You want to know how bad the mining business is?”
“Sure.”
“One afternoon, when I was a senior in high school, my old man withdrew all our savings from the bank, drove six hours to Vegas, put the bundle on black, and let it ride: six… times… in a row.”
“No shit,” said Beezer. “You hearing this, Nick?”
The bartender, who was drying a glass, said: “I’m hearing it.”
Sam leaned toward Beezer. “Do you know what the odds are of black coming up on a roulette wheel six times in a row?”
Beezer shook his head.
“One in seventy-six. And with that once-in-a-lifetime stroke of good fortune, my father staved off the inevitable for another fourteen months.”
Sam raised his martini.
“To Chapter Eleven,” he said, then emptied the glass.
“Well, it looks like everything worked out,” said Beezer, gesturing to Sam’s suit and then toward the parking lot, presumably in the direction of the car.
“If everything worked out,” said Sam, “it was no thanks to my dad. That car out there, this suit…”
Sam shook his head without finishing his sentence. Then he shifted to a different point.
“I am forty-five years old, and I’m about to have my very first kid. And do you know why that is? Because I waited. I waited until I had money in my pocket, a cushion in the bank, and a three-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side with no mortgage. That’s why!”
“You’re having a kid!” exclaimed Beezer, as if it were the only thing he had heard.
“We’re in the process… ,” said Sam with a wave of the hand. “That’s why I’m out here.”
The smile left Beezer’s face. “That’s why you’re out where?”
“In one mile, take Exit 46, then bear left,” mimicked Sam.
“You mean Vitek?”
“None other.”
Beezer turned away from Sam to look at Nick in a meaningful way. At least, in a drunken sort of meaningful way. Then he turned back to Sam. “That’s one of them fertility clinics, right?”
“Not ‘one of,’” corrected Sam. “It’s the fertility clinic.”
“So, how does it work in there? You pay the fare and then you get to pick if it’s a boy or a girl, blue-eyed or brown?”
Sam laughed. “Boy or blue, girl or brown, that stuff’s for amateurs. At Vitek, you get to pick your kid’s contours.”
“Contours?”
“What sort of temperament he’s gonna have. What sort of career. What sort of life.”
“Top-shelf,” said Nick.
Sam looked at the bartender. He wanted to ask what sort of crack that was supposed to be, but Beezer spoke first.
“It’s just like I told you, Nick.”
Sam looked back at Beezer. “Told him what?”
Beezer leaned closer to Sam. “You know when Vitek opened?”
“About a year ago… ?”
“That’s right. But do you know what was in their building for the ten years before that?”
“No.”
“Raytheon.”
After letting this sink in, Beezer elaborated: “The Raytheon Company of Waltham, Massachusetts. One of the largest defense contractors in the world. For ten years they’re in that building with people coming and going at all hours of day and night. Then, one morning last September, suddenly all the cars are gone, the building goes dark, and the sign comes down. Two weeks later, the parking lot’s full, the lights are back on, and the sign says Vitek, Incorporated.”
Beezer gave Sam the nod of mutual understanding.
Sam gave Beezer the shake of solitary confusion.
“Two weeks later!” said Beezer. “Doesn’t that seem a little surprising to you? That one corporation could empty out a building overnight and a totally new corporation could take its place in fourteen days? There’s only one way that happens. And that’s if there was never any change in occupancy at all. And Vitek, Incorporated, isn’t really Vitek, Incorporated. It’s a division of Raytheon.”
Beezer leaned a little closer.
“Which, when you think about it, sort of figures.”
“Sort of figures how?”
“Because genetics is the future of defense.”
Sam had already gotten the sense that Beezer was a little crazy, but a chill ran down his spine nonetheless.
“They don’t call it birth control for nothing,” said Beezer. Then, after taking a drink of his beer, he added, “I’ve got it all written down.”
“What you’ve got,” said Nick, “is too much time on your hands.”
Beezer ignored Nick’s comment and squinted at Sam. “Let me ask you something: To do this fertility stuff, did they hand you a dirty magazine and send you into a little room and ask you for a sample?”
“Something like that,” said Sam.
“But they called it a sample, right?”
“I think so.”
Beezer nodded with the smile of the known-it-all-along. “That choice of words is no coincidence. They call it a sample because they want you to think it’s some little representative part of something else. But what you’re giving them isn’t some little representative part of something else. It’s the thing. In fact, it’s the whole kit and caboodle.”
“Sam had already gotten the sense that Beezer was a little crazy, but a chill ran down his spine nonetheless.”