第 11 页

I did not have any gay friends, but this was related to my overall small number of friends rather than to any prejudice. Perhaps Rosie was gay? She worked in a gay bar, although the clients were all males. I asked the barman. He laughed.

‘Good luck with that one,’ he said. It didn’t answer the question, but he had moved on to serve another customer.

As I finished lunch at the University Club the following day, Gene walked in, accompanied by a woman I recognised from the singles party – Fabienne the Sex-Deprived Researcher. It appeared that she had found a solution to her problem. We passed each other at the dining-room entrance.

Gene winked at me, and said, ‘Don, this is Fabienne. She’s visiting from Belgium and we’re going to discuss some options for collaboration.’ He winked again, and quickly moved past.

Belgium. I had assumed Fabienne was French. Belgian explained it. Gene already had France.

I was waiting outside the Marquess of Queensbury when Rosie opened the doors at 9.00 p.m.

‘Don.’ Rosie looked surprised. ‘Is everything okay?’

‘I have some information.’

‘Better be quick.’

‘It’s not quick, there’s quite a lot of detail.’

‘I’m sorry, Don, my boss is here. I’ll get into trouble. I need this job.’

‘What time do you finish?’

‘Three a.m.’

I couldn’t believe it! What sort of jobs did Rosie’s patrons have? Maybe they all worked in bars that opened at 9.00 p.m. and had four nights a week off. A whole invisible nocturnal subculture, using resources that would otherwise stand idle. I took a huge breath and a huge decision.

‘I’ll meet you then.’

I rode home, went to bed, and set the alarm for 2.30 a.m. I cancelled the run I had scheduled with Gene for the following morning to retrieve an hour. I would also skip karate.

At 2.50 a.m. I was riding through the inner suburbs. It was not a totally unpleasant experience. In fact, I could see major advantages for myself in working at night. Empty laboratories. No students. Faster response times on the network. No contact with the Dean. If I could find a pure research position, with no teaching, it would be entirely feasible. Perhaps I could teach via video-link at a university in another time zone.

I arrived at Rosie’s workplace at exactly 3.00 a.m. The door was locked and a ‘Closed’ sign was up. I knocked hard. Rosie came to the door.

‘I’m stuffed,’ she said. This was hardly surprising. ‘Come in – I’m almost done.’

Apparently the bar closed at 2.30 a.m. but Rosie had to clean up.

‘You want a beer?’ she said. A beer! At 3 a.m. Ridiculous.

‘Yes, please.’

I sat at the bar watching her clean up. The question I had asked sitting in the same place the previous day popped into my mind.

‘Are you gay?’ I asked.

‘You came here to ask me that?’

‘No, the question is unrelated to the main purpose of my visit.’

‘Pleased to hear it, alone at three in the morning in a bar with a strange man.’

‘I’m not strange.’

‘Not much,’ she said, but she was laughing, presumably making a joke to herself based on the two meanings of strange. I still didn’t have an answer to the gay question. She opened a beer for herself. I pulled out my folder and extracted the party photo.

‘Is this the party where your mother was impregnated?’

‘Shit. Where did this come from?’

I explained about my research and showed her my spreadsheet. ‘All names are listed. Sixty-three males, nineteen obviously non-Caucasian, as determined by visual assessment and supported by names, three already eliminated.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding. We’re not testing … thirty-one people.’

‘Forty-one.’

‘Whatever. I don’t have an excuse to meet any of them.’

I told her about the reunion.

‘Minor problem,’ said Rosie. ‘We’re not invited.’

‘Correct,’ I said. ‘The problem is minor and already solved. There will be alcohol.’

‘So?’

I indicated the bar, and the collection of bottles on shelves behind it. ‘Your skills will be required.’

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘Can you secure employment at the event?’

‘Hang on, hang on. This is getting seriously crazy. You think we’re going to turn up at this party and start swabbing people’s glasses. Oh man.’

‘Not us. You. I don’t have the skills. But, otherwise, correct.’

‘Forget it.’

‘I thought you wanted to know who your father was.’

‘I told you,’ she said. ‘Not that much.’

Two days later, Rosie appeared at my apartment. It was 8.47 p.m., and I was cleaning the bathroom, as Eva the short-skirted cleaner had cancelled due to illness. I buzzed her upstairs. I was wearing my bathroom-cleaning costume of shorts, surgical boots and gloves but no shirt.

‘Wow.’ She stared at me for a few moments. ‘This is what martial-arts training does, is it?’ She appeared to be referring to my pectoral muscles. Then suddenly she jumped up and down like a child.

‘We got the gig! I found the agency and I offered them shit rates and they went yeah, yeah, yeah, don’t tell anyone. I’ll report them to the union when it’s over.’

‘I thought you didn’t want to do this.’

‘Changed my mind.’ She gave me a stained paperback. ‘Memorise this. I’ve got to get to work.’ She turned and left.

I looked at the book – The Bartender’s Companion: A Complete Guide to Making and Serving Drinks. It appeared to specify the duties of the role I was to perform. I memorised the first few recipes before finishing the bathroom. As I prepared for sleep, having skipped the aikido routine to spend further time studying the book, it occurred to me that things were getting crazy. It was not the first time that my life had become chaotic and I had established a protocol for dealing with the problem and the consequent disturbance to rational thinking. I called Claudia.

She was able to see me the next day. Because I am not officially one of her clients, we have to have our discussions over coffee rather than in her office. And I am the one accused of rigidity!

I outlined the situation, omitting the Father Project component, as I did not want to admit to the surreptitious collection of DNA, which Claudia was likely to consider unethical. Instead I suggested that Rosie and I had a common interest in movies.

‘Have you talked to Gene about her?’ asked Claudia.

I told her that Gene had introduced Rosie as a candidate for the Wife Project, and that he would only encourage me to have sex with her. I explained that Rosie was totally unsuitable as a partner, but was presumably under the illusion that I was interested in her on that basis. Perhaps she thought that our common interest was an excuse for pursuing her. I had made a major social error in asking her about her sexual orientation – it would only reinforce that impression.

Yet Rosie had never mentioned the Wife Project. We had been sidetracked so quickly by the Jacket Incident, and after that things had unfolded in a totally unplanned way. But I saw a risk that at some point I would hurt her feelings by telling her that she had been eliminated from consideration for the Wife Project after the first date.

‘So that’s what you’re worried about,’ said Claudia. ‘Hurting her feelings?’

‘Correct.’

‘That’s excellent, Don.’

‘Incorrect. It’s a major problem.’

‘I mean that you’re concerned about her feelings. And you’re enjoying time together?’

‘Immensely,’ I said, realising it for the first time.

‘And is she enjoying herself?’

‘Presumably. But she applied for the Wife Project.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Claudia. ‘She sounds pretty resilient. Just have some fun.’

A strange thing happened the next day. For the first time ever, Gene made an appointment to see me in his office. I had always been the one to organise conversations, but there had been an unusually long gap as a result of the Father Project.

Gene’s office is larger than mine, due to his higher status rather than any actual requirement for space. The Beautiful Helena let me in, as Gene was late in returning from a meeting. I took the opportunity to check his world map for pins in India and Belgium. I was fairly certain that the Indian one had been there before, but it was possible that Olivia was not actually Indian. She had said she was Hindu, so she could have been Balinese or Fijian or indeed from any country with a Hindu population. Gene worked on nationalities rather than ethnicities, in the same way that travellers count the countries they have visited. North Korea predictably remained without a pin.

Gene arrived, and commanded The Beautiful Helena to fetch us coffees. We sat at his table, as if in a meeting.

‘So,’ said Gene, ‘you’ve been talking to Claudia.’ This was one of the negatives of not being an official client of Claudia: I did not have the protection of confidentiality. ‘I gather you’ve been seeing Rosie. As the expert predicted.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but not for the Wife Project.’ Gene is my best friend, but I still felt uncomfortable about sharing information about the Father Project. Fortunately he did not pursue it, probably because he assumed I had sexual intentions towards Rosie. In fact I was amazed that he didn’t immediately raise the topic.

‘What do you know about Rosie?’ he asked.

‘Not very much,’ I said honestly. ‘We haven’t talked much about her. Our discussion has focused on external issues.’

‘Give me a break,’ he said. ‘You know what she does, where she spends her time.’

‘She’s a barmaid.’

‘Okay,’ said Gene. ‘That’s all you know?’

‘And she doesn’t like her father.’

Gene laughed for no obvious reason. ‘I don’t think he’s Robinson Crusoe.’ This seemed a ludicrous statement about Rosie’s paternity until I recalled that the reference to the fictional shipwreck survivor could be used as a metaphorical phrase meaning ‘not alone’ or in this context ‘not alone in not being liked by Rosie’. Gene must have noticed my puzzled expression as I worked it out, and elaborated: ‘The list of men that Rosie likes is not a long one.’

‘She’s gay?’

‘Might as well be,’ said Gene. ‘Look at the way she dresses.’

Gene’s comment seemed to refer to the type of costume she was wearing when she first appeared in my office. But she dressed conventionally for her bar work and on our visits to collect DNA had worn unexceptional jeans and tops. On the night of the Jacket Incident she had been unconventional but extremely attractive.

Perhaps she did not want to send out mating signals in the environment in which Gene had encountered her, presumably a bar or restaurant. Much of women’s clothing is designed to enhance their sexual attraction in order to secure a mate. If Rosie was not looking for a mate, it seemed perfectly rational for her to dress otherwise. There were many things that I wanted to ask Gene about Rosie, but I suspected that asking would imply a level of interest that Gene would misinterpret. But there was one critical question.

‘Why was she prepared to participate in the Wife Project?’

Gene hesitated a while. ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘I don’t think she’s a lost cause, but just don’t expect too much. She’s got a lot of issues. Don’t forget the rest of your life.’

Gene’s advice was surprisingly perceptive. Did he know how much time I was spending with the cocktail book?

14

My name is Don Tillman and I am an alcoholic. I formed these words in my head but I did not say them out loud, not because I was drunk (which I was) but because it seemed that if I said them they would be true, and I would have no choice but to follow the rational path which was to stop drinking permanently.

My intoxication was a result of the Father Project – specifically the need to gain competence as a drinks waiter. I had purchased a cocktail shaker, glasses, olives, lemons, a zester and a substantial stock of liquor as recommended in The Bartender’s Companion in order to master the mechanical component of cocktail making. It was surprisingly complex, and I am not naturally a dextrous person. In fact, with the exception of rock climbing, which I have not practised since I was a student, and martial arts, I am clumsy and incompetent at most forms of sport. The expertise in karate and aikido is the result of considerable practice over a long period.

I practised first for accuracy, then speed. At 11.07 p.m., I was exhausted, and decided that it would be interesting to test the cocktails for quality. I made a classic martini, a vodka martini, a margarita and a cock-sucking cowboy – cocktails noted by the book as being among the most popular. They were all excellent, and tasted far more different from one another than ice-cream varieties. I had squeezed more lime juice than was required for the margarita, and made a second so as not to waste it.

Research consistently shows that the risks to health outweigh the benefits of drinking alcohol. My argument is that the benefits to my mental health justify the risks. Alcohol seems to both calm me down and elevate my mood, a paradoxical but pleasant combination. And it reduces my discomfort in social situations.

I generally manage my consumption carefully, scheduling two days abstinence per week, although the Father Project had caused this rule to be broken a number of times. My level of consumption does not of itself qualify me as an alcoholic. However, I suspect that my strong antipathy towards discontinuing it might do so.

The Mass DNA Collection Subproject was proceeding satisfactorily, and I was working my way through the cocktail book at the required rate. Contrary to popular belief, alcohol does not destroy brain cells.

As I prepared for bed, I felt a strong desire to telephone Rosie and report on progress. Logically it was not necessary, and it is a waste of effort to report that a project is proceeding to plan, which should be the default assumption. Rationality prevailed. Just.

Rosie and I met for coffee twenty-eight minutes before the reunion function. To my first-class honours degree and PhD, I could now add a Responsible Service of Alcohol certificate. The exam had not been difficult.

Rosie was already in server uniform, and had brought a male equivalent for me.

‘I picked it up early and washed it,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want a karate exhibition.’

She was obviously referring to the Jacket Incident, even though the martial art I had employed was aikido.

I had prepared carefully for the DNA collection – zip-lock bags, tissues, and pre-printed adhesive labels with the names from the graduation photo. Rosie insisted that we did not need to collect samples from those who had not attended the graduation party, so I crossed out their names. She seemed surprised that I had memorised them, but I was determined not to cause errors due to lack of knowledge.

The reunion was held at a golf club, which seemed odd to me, but I discovered that the facilities were largely for eating and drinking rather than supporting the playing of golf. I also discovered that we were vastly overqualified. There were regular bar personnel who were responsible for preparing the drinks. Our job was merely to take orders, deliver drinks and, most importantly, collect the empty glasses. The hours spent in developing my drink-making skills had apparently been wasted.