"Something simple," she replied immediately, swinging to one side so she could rest her feet on the couch and set her glass of wine on the coffee table. She sank down into the black leather upholstery and closed her eyes. "I just want to try to figure out a way to recover from this disaster. We've put five years into this project. I hate to think we've flushed all that money down a rat-hole."
"I'll put something together," he promised. He leaned over the couch and kissed her cheek. "And I'm sure you'll figure something out. You always do."
*****
"Ah, this is good," she said, an hour later, biting into a taco. They were sitting down at the dining room table, which, since Linda was away at Minnesota State, only contained the two of them. "Takes me back to my white-trash roots. Tacos on a Friday night. All we need is to be in a big old farmhouse with no air-conditioning, and your grandpa drinking Bud Light and listening to the ballgame on the radio."
"Grandma and Grandpa aren't white trash," he protested, spooning meat and onions and hot sauce into a taco shell. "Just because you grew up in a small town doesn't automatically mean that our family is a bunch of inbred hicks who like to molest the livestock."
"Really?" she smiled, her bad humor forgotten. Like his sister Linda, her moods were mercurial, and could turn on a dime. "I don't know. Your great-uncle Elmer...there was always something a bit off about him, I thought."
"Not listening," he grunted.
Her grin widened, her blue eyes sparkling. Like his sister, his mother was a corn-fed, blond-haired, midwestern beauty. She had changed out of her work clothes into jeans, a t-shirt, and loose sweatshirt, and the only way someone could tell that she was over forty, rather than in her teens, was the faint crows-feet that peeped from the corners of her eyes when she smiled. Otherwise, she and Linda could have been taken for sisters. Veronica might be a hair taller, and Linda might have darker skin, the result of going to the tanning salon during the winter, but they both had the same curvy bodies that made them the targets of every man in sight.
Linda loved the chase. Veronica pretended it didn't even exist anymore.
"What about your drug?" he asked, changing the subject. "Any ideas?"
"Just one," she said. She took a bite of her salad. "Mentothal works by taking away our ability to lie, both to other people and ourselves. What if we used it as a therapy drug? You know, for people who are having emotional issues? Anger management, childhood trauma, PTSD, that sort of thing?
"I've talked to some people in that field. One of their hardest problems is getting their patients to open up and be honest with them. And themselves. It's not always conscious, either. Sometimes we lie to ourselves for so long that it's all we know. Especially for people who have been abused. And people who were in combat, for instance, and come home with PTSD. They're so scared that being honest about their issues will make them seem weak that telling the truth about their experiences is almost impossible."
He nodded. "It sounds like a real good idea. If you can get it past the FDA."
"Yeah. That's the problem," she sighed. "We'd have to start over practically from scratch. A new set of trials, new paperwork submitted to the agency, new protocols, everything. It'll take months just to get the process started. The suits up in the boardroom might decide that we're throwing good money after bad and cancel the entire project."
"Huh. Too bad you can't just take a pill here at home and see if it works."
She nodded, taking another sip of her wine, then blinked, staring at him. Her eyes were suddenly intent. "Say that again."
Max suddenly understood what it must be like to work for Veronica Melton. That sudden, laser-like focus. "Um. I just said that it's too bad you couldn't take one of the pills here and see what happened. Kind of like a trial run, you know? If it worked, then you could move forward, maybe. And if it didn't, at least you wouldn't be wasting any more time."
"It a good idea. Damn good." She absently took another bite of her taco, staring into the middle distance as she chewed. "It wouldn't be scientifically valid, of course," she added quietly. She seemed to be talking to herself. "A one-person sample-size? Hah. No way I could use that as a basis for moving forward. No responsible journal would even think about publishing my results. Especially since dosing yourself with your own product breaks so many ethical rules that I don't want to think about it. But if I had a...a catcher, someone to observe me, then I could at least have some data to work with. And I've got a stash of pills in my bag." Her eyes came back to the present. "I never took any. But I always wondered. What life would look like, if we stripped all our little illusions away.
"But it's not going to be tonight." She finished her taco and pushed her plate away. "Why are you even home, anyway? It's Friday night. Shouldn't you be out?"
"Nah." Max leaned back in his chair. "Gwen and I are kind of cooling it down. Her choice, really. And mine. Ever since she decided she was going to Stanford and I was staying here and going to the U of M, we kind of decided that a long-term long-distance relationship wasn't going to work for us."
"That's too bad," his mother said. "She's a nice girl."
Max decided not to break his mother's illusions about exactly how 'nice' Gwen was. The cooling-off period had also, unfortunately, included a cool-down in their after-hours activities as well. Gwen was a tall, willowy blond, whose icy Nordic beauty disguised a young woman who was an absolute wildcat in the bedroom. But she had decided (without much input from him) that if they continued sleeping together it would make their inevitable parting in August that much more difficult.
So he had swallowed his disappointment and gone on with his life. But it was hard. And in more ways than one, lately. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair as his body reacted to the memory of Gwen's body, lying in a pool of winter sunlight on his bed one weekday afternoon last month while his mother was at work. Suddenly he was grateful that his lower body was hidden from his mother's penetrating gaze. She wouldn't remark on it, he knew. Her humor didn't tend towards the risqué. But knowing that she knew would be even worse.
If this was a movie, me and three of my friends would be going out tonight. And at least two of would get laid before morning.
Real life bites.
*****
Later that night, Veronica stepped out of the shower.
The night had passed like so many before. She and Max were comfortable with each other. Years of living together had given the two of them a shorthand that made some of her friends envious. And when they spoke of the difficulties they had with their own teenage children, she could only shake her head. By comparison, Max and Linda seemed almost indecently well-behaved.
Oh, she wasn't stupid enough to think that the two of them were angels, pure as the driven snow. But they didn't wallow around in a pool of their own self-indulgence, resentful of everything and everyone, either.
Like her ex-husband.
Damn the man.
Her lips pinched. Donny Wilson wasn't a bad man. But he had been a piss-poor husband. Veronica had been accepted into the University of Minnesota when she was only sixteen, having skipped a year in grade school, and then completing four years' worth of high school work in only three. Naïve and enthralled by Donny's shallow charm, she had allowed herself to become pregnant with their first child, Linda, when she was only nineteen. Infatuated with the allure of the sort of picture-postcard post-college life which she had been expected to believe in, she had let herself to be talked into marriage, even though she had, even at that point, suspected that she wasn't truly in love with Donny.
Suspicion had hardened into certainty over the next few years. She had born her child, Linda, and, two years later, another, who they had named Maxwell, after Donny's favorite uncle. But as she finished college, then graduate school, and had set her feet on the first rungs of the corporate ladder, she had been forced to face the reality that her husband was completely unsuited for marriage. If it wasn't his inability to hold a job for more than a year, it was his serial infidelities. It was as if Donny tried to make up for his many shortcomings by sleeping with as many women as possible.
