'I see.'
Norma could see the effort Dr. Peabody made not to look disgusted.
'Tests.” She picked up her purse. “You might want this, then.” Norma brought an envelope out of her purse and put it on his desk. It looked a little dry so Norma got up and wet a paper towel and moistened the little thing. Even with the water, it was still dead.
'This is…?'
She put it in his hand and shrugged. “I have no idea. But that's what I got inside me. Coughed it up yesterday. Thought it might help.'
Dr. Peabody didn't answer. He was staring at the fleshy bit in his hand.
Dr. Peabody asked her to come back the following week. When she did, he wasn't alone. There were at least three other doctors there for moral support. The medical consensus was, apparently, that she had lung cancer of a rare if not unknown type. She should be admitted at once. In his office, Norma stared at the radiographs as if she were interested. Then she smiled at them sweetly and asked if she could go to the bathroom. They nodded, all together as if they were attached to the same string.
Outside the office, Norma walked down the hall and out through the parking garage. She went home and sat at her kitchen table, drinking a glass of wine and smoking one of her Reginalds.
Dr. Peabody called Lenny, of course. Before the afternoon was finished, Lenny was pounding on her door.
'What do you want, Lenny?” she asked from the other side.
'For Christ's sake, Mom. You know what I want. I want you to go to the doctor.'
She sipped her wine-the bottle was mostly gone now, dissolved into Norma's healthy glow.
'I don't want to.'
'What kind of answer is that? You want to die? Peabody said you got a good chance if you get some treatment now.'
She shook her head. Remembered Lenny couldn't see her and said, “No.'
'Are you drunk, Mom?'
'No!” she said defensively.
'You shouldn't be drinking at your age.'
'I had a deprived childhood and now I'm making up for it.'
'Come on, Mom! You got to go.'
Norma leaned her head against the door. “No,” she said clearly and quietly. “No, I don't.'
'Mom!'
'This is my choice,” she shouted back at him. “It's my lungs. They were my cigarettes. If I can't choose whether or not to die, what choice do I have?'
'Look. If you want to go all Christian Scientist on me, let's call up the Mother Church and ask them. They'll tell you to get your ass up to the hospital.'
'That's no way to talk to your Mother.'
'This is no kind of conversation to have through a door.'
'Why not?” She knocked on the wood. “It's a perfectly good door.'
He was silent for a minute. She could almost see him rubbing his forehead. “Let me come in.'
She shook her head again. “I'll talk to you tomorrow.'
Norma left him shouting at the door and walked unsteadily upstairs to bed. You should always have a good, hard bed, Norma reasoned. That way when you get too drunk to stand, you won't roll off.
She couldn't keep Lenny out of her house forever. She didn't even want to. Norma was proud of her son, shy and thin when he was young, now so strong and tall. She always did have a thing for a man in a uniform. That was what had attracted her to Tomas in the first place. The Turban-Kings had uniforms of a sort.
Lenny wanted a good, reasoned argument why she wouldn't go in for treatment. Norma didn't have one. Just a strong feeling that this was the body she came in with; it ought to be the body she went out with.
But he was wearing her down.
A week after she'd left Dr. Peabody, she went to the 7-11 for her regular rations of bread and ice cream. She came home to see a young man sitting on her stoop, a briefcase next to him.
He stood up as she came near. He was odd looking-too thin, for one. His obviously expensive suit that had been cleverly cut to hide it but still, like light through a window, his thinness shone through. His cheekbones were apparent and were it not for the fullness of his lips and his large eyes, he might have looked gaunt. As it was, he had a haunted, shadowed look, like a monk who regretted his vow.
He stepped forward.
'Miss Carstairs?” he asked, holding out his hand.
'Yes,” she said warily, stepping back.
'I'm Ben Cori.” He dropped his hand to his side. “I'm Reginald Cigarettes.'
She looked at him for a moment. Things clicked together in her mind. “This has something to do with my lung cancer.'
He smiled at her. “It does.'
'What's special about lung cancer if you're a smoker?'
'Can we talk inside?'
Norma shrugged. “Can't hurt me, I suppose.'
Ben's hands were long and delicate and his wrists seemed lost in the sleeves of his jacket. Now that he was sitting at her table, Norma had a sudden respect for Ben's tailor. The suit fooled the eye so that he merely appeared to be thin. Ben was a bundle of sticks in a sack.
'So, are you a lawyer?'
Ben put down his coffee. “No. Just the engineer. Also, CEO, COO and CFO. President and Board of Directors. Salesman and website designer. I had to hire a lawyer.'
She sat up. “I don't get it.'
Ben leaned back in his chair. The chair didn't so much as creak under his weight. “I designed the tobacco product. It's made in a small factory down in Cuba. Then, the factory ships the resulting product to a cigarette packing company in North Carolina. From there, the packs go to a shipping company in New Jersey. The website is hosted by a company in South Africa and sends the orders to New Jersey. The U.S. Mail delivers it to you. Reginald is incorporated in Hawaii. The only part of Reginald that really exists is an office in my home in Saint Louis.” Ben sipped his coffee.
'I see,” said Norma. “You design cigarettes?'
'No,” Ben said carefully. “Tobacco product. More precisely, I design small machines whose nature it is to take tobacco, tear it apart and rebuild it with reduced carcinogens and toxins. Dried tobacco leaves from all over the South come into the factory and something that resembles dried tobacco leaves come out of the factory. Tobacco product.'
'What's that got to do with me?'
Ben opened his briefcase and brought out two radiographs. He carefully placed the first one in front of Norma. “That's your lungs.'
'I've seen it. How did you get this?'
'I've been working the net for a while. You can find anything if you have enough time and money.” He placed a second radiograph next to the first. “That's a normal case of lung cancer.'
Next to each other, the differences were obvious. The normal lung cancer-if such a disease could actually be called normal-looked splotchy and irregular. Her lungs had something in them made up of lines and polygons.
Ben pointed to an irregular rectangle. “I'm pretty sure that's an amplifier. Next to it is a low pass filter. A pretty sophisticated filter from what I can tell. These circles are sensors of some kind.'
Looking at the picture made her chest hurt. “What the hell have I got inside of me?'
'I don't know.'
'Do you know how it happened?'
Ben nodded. “No. Whatever happened is impossible.'
'Impossible?” She pointed at the pictures. “It's right there in front of me.'
Ben nodded, smiled at her. “That it is.'
'Pretty big stretch to be impossible.'
