Syndrome

Hi, Dad, from me and Zena, went the inscription.

Why was he thinking about her now? he wondered. The answer was, because he wanted her world to be different from the one he had known as a child. He hadn't had a father around, and that had left him with a lot of anger. He didn't want the same fate for her.

Amy's world, he knew, was going to be very different, no matter what he did. To be young like her and starting out was a daunting prospect these days. He wanted to make everything easier for her, but the only thing he could give her now was a measly $1,500 every month and his unshakable love.

Even so, that was more than his mother, Karen, got for child support-from a natural father he had never actually seen in the flesh until he was eleven. And that was a chance encounter. ..

So, if this book got some traction and he got some recognition, along with some economic security, he might be able to have Amy come back and live with him. It was something

she'd said she wanted to do, though he wasn't sure where he would keep Zena.

But all in good time. Now everything depended on the book. ..

The elevator door opened and he stepped out on the third floor. The receptionist, Rhonda, a dark-haired resident of Avenue A who usually tried to flirt, looked at him as though he'd just been convicted of a crime and nodded with her head toward the corridor leading to Jane's office.

'Stone, you'vereallyscrewed up this time. You'll never guess who's in there and after your scalp. What onearthdid you do?'

'You mean-'

'This is a guy I've only seen in newspaper pictures, though, needless to say, not in this upstanding rag.' In her dismay, she unthinkingly reached for the pack of Virginia Slims lying next to the phone, momentarily forgetting that smoking had long-since been forbidden in the building. 'You'd better get your ass in there. Jesus, he came in with a bunch of lawyers, but then he told them to split. 'I'm going to handle the fucker myself.' Quote, unquote. Right here by my desk.'

Stone didn't know, with absolute certainty, who she was talking about, but surely it had to be … My God, he thought with a thrill,maybe it worked. Maybe I've smoked him out.

'Truth tellers have nothing to fear, Rhonda.' He winked at her. 'I'm protected by the sword of the Lord. 'He is my rod and my staff. He leadeth me beside still waters.''

'You're crazy, you know that?' She'd remembered where she was and began putting the cigarette back into the pack. Then she smoothed her short black hair. 'He leadeth you into the shit, handsome. That's where He 'leadeth' you. You're adorable, but you're also a sane person's nightmare.'

'Thanks,' he said giving a thumbs-up as he walked past her desk. 'I appreciate your unstinting praise.'

He headed on down the hall, the plush gray carpet soft against his feet. Could this be the break? he wondered feeling his hopes cautiously rising. Had the Big Man himself shown up? Could it be that there was something funny going on with that patient who got dropped?

But what? He still didn't have a clue.

As he walked into the room, he felt as though time just stopped. He had fantasized about this moment more and more as the years went by. Now here it was. What next? He thought he had been emotionally prepared, but now he realized he wasn't. Were they going to acknowledge the past, or were they just going to act as though nothing existed between them?

That first chance meeting, when Stone was eleven, had been when his mother threatened to sue Bartlett for formal child support. The threat of publicity caused the matter to be immediately settled, as she'd hoped it would be. Stone had been sitting in the law firm's reception area when Bartlett walked through. Each knew who the other was, but Bartlett just stopped and glared at him for a moment before moving on. Stone had sized up the man who had abandoned his mother and only barely managed to suppress an urge to leap up and lash out at him, if only to say,Look at me. I'm here.

He had not been in the same room with his father since, but this time around he was definitely noticed.

Winston Bartlett looked just as he did in news photos. He was in his late sixties, with thinning blond hair that was cut too long and shaggy in the back. Stone's first thought was that the tightfisted old rou6 should spring for a better barber.

But it was Bartlett's eyes that really caught him. They were strong and filled with anger, but they also contained a hint of desperation. They were very different eyes from the haughty dismissal he remembered from a lifetime ago.

Good, Stone thought.I've finally made you squirm, Daddy dearest. Nothing else I've done has ever gotten the slightest notice from you.

For a moment they stood sizing up each other.

'Stone,' Jane said, 'this is-'

'I know,' he said.

Even though they had been practically married, he had never told her that he was the unacknowledged son of Winston Bartlett. He had never told anyone. To him, his father had died before he was born and that was the story he stuck to.

He naturally had a lot of complex feelings about that. He had seen his mother struggling to give them a decent life, hoofing in the chorus line of Broadway shows long after she should have, and a lot of his anger remained. Now, though, Stone Aimes wanted nothing from the old man. Except the truth.

'Miss Tully,' Bartlett barked, glowering at her, 'I think you’d better leave us alone.'

'Of course,' Jane said with a wry look, and in a tactful instant she had slipped past them and out, gently closing the office door behind her.

'I don't believe it,' Bartlett said turning back after he watched her leave. 'You're trying to blackmail me, you little prick. Which tells me you're not half as smart as I thought you were.'

Wait a minute! Did that mean Winston Bartlett has been following my career?Stone felt a thrill in spite of himself.

'I never knew you thought about me, one way or the other.'

He was experiencing a curious sensation. Although he was in the same room with his father for only the second time in his life, it felt natural. They were having one of those age-old arguments. The younger generation had just challenged the older generation, and because of that sparks were set to fly.

This was the kind of thing that was supposed to happen between fathers and sons all the time. In fact, it felt good. It felt normal. More than that, he was finally being acknowledged.

My God, he thought, I share DNA with this man and yet we have so little in common.

Then he had a more scary thought: Maybe we have a lot in common.

'I think it's time you told me what thehellyou're up to,' Bartlett declared, ignoring the jibe. 'How did you-'

'I'm trying to do us both a favor, but you're not cooperating. If the Gerex clinical trials are going half as well as I think they are, then it seems to me you've got everything to gain by publicity. I'm trying to write the first book that tells the Gerex story. So why thehellwon't your legal flunkies let me interview Karl Van de Vliet?'

'That's actually none of your business.' Bartlett's eyes abruptly turned cloudy. 'I want you to stay the hell away from-'

'Right now I'm the best friend you've got in this world. Believe me.' Stone couldn't believe he was saying this. For how many years had he loathed and despised this man? But now, for the first time, he actually needed something from him. 'I want to tell the real story of what Van de Vliet has accomplished. What Gerex has accomplished. It'll be the latest word on stem cell technology. But your office keeps giving me the runaround.'

'We have a damned good reason to keep our work proprietary just now,' Bartlett declared. 'This is like the Manhattan Project.' His eyes bored in. 'The results of the clinical trials are going to cause a press feeding frenzy, and I want to be in a position to control that when the time comes.'

This is incredible, Stone told himself.We're talking as though we have no history. You have a granddaughter by me whom you've never even seen. Don't you at least care about her?

'I've got a pretty good idea of what Gerex is doing and I think it's going to be a milestone in medical history.' Stone looked at him, trying to figure him out after all these years. For all his bluster, Winston Bartlett seemed like a