you the assignment. You're the best chemist in the house, Greg. I know that, and I'm depending on you.'
'Yes, sir,' he said, standing. 'Thank you, Mr. McWhortle.'
Those worry lines were gone from his face. He was such an innocent.
'And remember, I cautioned him, 'absolute secrecy is a must. Not a word of this to anyone.'
The moment he was out of the office, I looked at my watch again and picked up my private phone.
The line doesn't go through our switchboard. I called Jessica Fiddler.
She picked up on the second ring.
'Hello, Jess honey,' I said. 'It's Mac. Got time for me?'
'Oh, daddy,' she said huskily, 'I was hoping you'd call.
I'm out at the pool in my new bikini. Bright red! You'll love it.
Can you come over now?'
'On my way,' I said, and hung up.
'Got a golf date, Mrs. Collins,' I told my secretary. 'If anything important comes up, you can leave a message at the club.'
'Yes, Mr. McWhortle,' she said.
Life can be beautiful.
I had bought the house for Jessica. It was in her name, the best investment I ever made. it wasn't a mansion, but it was a comfortable two-bedroom ranch with a patio and pool that faced south. Jess kept the fridge filled with my favorite snacks and the wet bar supplied with potions I preferred. Jess was twenty-one, looked sixteen, and was on the McWhortle Laboratory payroll as a consultant. I consulted her frequently.
I sat on the patio in the shade, sipping a Michelob Dark, while Jessica lolled in a chaise in the sunlight, her top off.
Her body was the stuff of dreams. She had an apricot suntan, and she just gleamed. I loved everything about her. And if I was three times as old as she, so what?
'Have you been working hard?' she asked lazily.
'Too hard,' I said. 'But I've got to make a lot of money.
Baby needs new shoes.'
'You better believe it,' she said, laughing. 'What are you working on now?'
I enjoyed discussing business with Jessica. My wife couldn't care less. Gertrude wants to talk about her garden and when are we going to buy a summer place in North Carolina. But Jess was really interested in the work being done at the lab. I had warned her never to repeat what I told her, and I figured she was smart enough to know that her income depended on her discretion.
'We landed a big government research contract,' I told her, and explained how we hoped to develop a testosterone pill that would increase a soldier's aggressiveness.
She listened, fascinated. 'You think it will really work?
'It may or it may not. But we get paid either way so how can we lose?'
She rose and came over to stand close to me. I put an arm about her and leaned close to kiss her flat stomach. She ran a palm over my bald head.
'Well, if that ZAP pill works,' she said, 'I don't want you trying it.
You're powerful enough for me just the way you are.'
'Let's go inside,' I said.
I was a deca-millionaire, I lived in a nineteen-room beachfront home, I drove a white Mercedes-Benz 560SEL, but nothing I owned gave me as much pleasure as Jessica Fiddler.
Holding that young, springy body in my arms made me young again, I could forget my hairless scalp, dentures, a ticker that keeps acting up. Making love to Jess was turning back the clock, to a time when I thought I'd live forever.
I liked to think I gave her something, too. I don't mean just the house, the salary, the gifts. I mean understanding companionship, a real interest in her health, her feelings, her hurts and her dreams. I also liked to think she enjoyed my lovemaking. She continually said she did and if actions speak louder than words, she was telling the truth, she would do anything I asked her to do.
If you want to believe it was more obsession than love on my part, you may be right. But love is an obsession, is it not? All I knew was that if I could no longer hold that tight, fervid body in my arms, feel it, kiss it, I would suddenly become an old man. uddle seemed to me a cornball name for a new C perfume, but the client pays the piper and calls the tune. So when I saw that article, 'The Cuddle Hormone, ' naturally I was interested and read it again on Monday morning to make certain I fully understood what the author was writing about.
Briefly, his subject was oxytocin, a hormone secreted by the pituitary gland, which stimulates uterine contractions during childbirth. It has been synthesized and for years women in labor have been given the synthetic form to ease pains and speed up birth.
But recent research indicated a more important role for oxytocin. It was found that it aided sexual arousal and, after intercourse, contributed to a feeling of satisfied relaxation.
More curiously, in animal tests it seemed to result in increased affection, including stroking, grooming, and nuzzling.
Although for a long time oxytocin was studied for its physiological effects on women, it had now been discovered that heightened levels of the hormone were present in a man's blood during copulation and ejaculation. In fact, experiments were underway to see if added doses of oxytocin might help impotent men.
But it was the hormone's ability to foster feelings of pleasure and satisfaction that interested me, especially after I read that an aerosolized form of synthetic oxytocin had been developed. It seemed possible that such a spray might be used in a dilute amount in the new perfume.
If it succeeded, the hormone-enhanced fragrance would give women who wore it a desire for close affection and warm intimacy, and would arouse the same feelings in men who sniffed the scent.
The effects of oxytocin on human behavior mentioned in the article seemed to indicate 'love' rather than ilpassion'-exactly what the proposal from Darcy amp; Sons had stated was to be the leitmotiv of Cuddle.
Mulling all this, I wandered to my office window, looked down and saw morning sunlight glinting off the bald pate of Mr. McWhortle. He was practicing on his putting green, and even as I watched, he missed a shot that couldn't have been more than six inches. I laughed and went back to my desk. I wrote out a requisition to the supply department asking them to obtain what I estimated would be an ample supply of the aerosolized form of synthetic oxytocin.
It was quite possible, of course, that the addition of a hormone would have no effect whatsoever on the new perfume. So I spent the remainder of the morning jotting down several combinations of conventional scents I thought might serve for Cuddle if oxytocin proved a failure.
I like to lunch early in the employees' cafeteria, and so does Greg.
We usually sit together at a table in a far corner, where we are away from the crush and have a small measure of privacy.
Greg was already seated when I filled my tray. We had both selected the same items, chef's salad, iced tea, key lime pie.
He helped me unload my tray and gave me one of his buttered rolls because I had neglected to pick up my own at the serving counter.
'I don't know how I could have forgotten,' I said.
'Probably too much on your mind,' he said. 'How is the new perfume coming along?'
'Slowly,' I said. 'And your project?'
'Even more slowly,' he said, and we both smiled. Greg is notorious for his meticulous research. Then, not looking at me, he asked in a low voice, 'And how are things at home?'
I hesitated a long moment before I replied. 'Greg, I'm going to tell you something, and I know you won't repeat it to anyone.
I'm thinking seriously of divorce.
Then he looked at me but said nothing.
'I want to avoid it,' I said. 'Because of Tania. But now I wonder which is worse for her, being a child of divorced parents or living in a home where all she sees and feels is coldness between Herman and me.
It's such an unhappy situation for her.'
