Читаем The Corrections полностью

In Gary’s opinion, too many people were breathing the air in Ballroom B. A ventilation problem somehow. As the lights came up to full strength, silent wait-personnel fanned in among the tables bearing luncheon entrées under chafing lids.

“My first guess is salmon,” Denise said. “No, my only guess is salmon.”

Rising from talk-show chairs and moving to the front of the dais now were three figures who reminded Gary, oddly, of his honeymoon in Italy. He and Caroline had visited a cathedral somewhere in Tuscany, maybe Siena, in the museum of which were big medieval statues of saints that had once stood on the roof of the cathedral, each with an arm raised like a waving presidential candidate and each wearing a saintly grin of certainty.

The eldest of the three beatific greeters, a pink-faced man with rimless glasses, extended a hand as if to bless the crowd.

“All right!” he said. “All right, everybody! My name is Joe Prager, I’m the lead deal attorney at Bragg Knuter. To my left is Merilee Finch, CEO of Axon, to my right Daffy Anderson, the all-important deal manager at Hevy and Hodapp. We were hoping Curly himself might deign to join us today, but he is the man of the hour, he is being interviewed by CNN as we speak. So let me do a little caveating here, wink-wink-wink, and then turn the floor over to Daffy and Merilee.”

“Yo, Kelsey, talk to me, baby, talk to me,” Gary’s young neighbor shouted.

“Caveat A,” Prager said, “is please everyone take note that I’m stressing that Curly’s results are extremely preliminary. This is all Phase One research, folks. Anybody not hear me? Anybody in the back?” Prager craned his neck and waved both arms at the most distant tables, including Gary’s. “Full disclosure: this is Phase One research. Axon does not yet have, in no way is it representing that it has, FDA approval for Phase Two testing. And what comes after Phase Two? Phase Three! And after Phase Three? A multistage review process that can delay the product launch by as much as three more years. Folks, hello, we are dealing with clinical results that are extremely interesting but extremely preliminary. So caveat emptor. All righty? Wink wink wink. All righty?”

Prager was struggling to keep his face straight. Merilee Finch and Daffy Anderson were sucking on smiles as if they, too, had guilty secrets or religion.

“Caveat B,” Prager said. “An inspirational video presentation is not a prospectus. Daffy’s representations here today, likewise Merilee’s representations, are impromptu and, again, not a prospectus …”

The waitstaff descended on Gary’s table and gave him salmon on a bed of lentils. Denise waved away her entrée.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” Gary whispered.

She shook her head.

“Denise. Really.” He felt inexplicably wounded. “You can surely have a couple of bites with me.”

Denise looked him square in the face with an unreadable expression. “I’m a little sick to my stomach.”

“Do you want to leave?”

“No. I just don’t want to eat.”

Denise at thirty-two was still beautiful, but long hours at the stove had begun to cook her youthful skin into a kind of terra-cotta mask that made Gary a little more anxious each time he saw her. She was his baby sister, after all. Her years of fertility and marriageability were passing with a swiftness to which he was attuned and she, he suspected, was not. Her career seemed to him an evil spell under the influence of which she worked sixteen-hour days and had no social life. Gary was afraid—he claimed, as her oldest brother, the right to be afraid—that by the time Denise awakened from this spell she would be too old to start a family.

He ate his salmon quickly while she drank her imported water.

On the dais the CEO of Axon, a fortyish blonde with the intelligent pugnacity of a college dean, was talking about side effects. “Apart from headaches and nausea, which are to be expected,” said Merilee Finch, “we haven’t tracked anything yet. Remember, too, that our platform technology has been widely used for several years now, with no significant deleterious effects reported.” Finch pointed into the ballroom. “Yes, gray Armani?”

“Isn’t Corecktall the name of a laxative?”