The Rosie Project

27




We had one critical task to perform before leaving New York the following morning. Max Freyberg, the cosmetic surgeon and potential biological father of Rosie, who was ‘booked solid’, had agreed to see us for fifteen minutes at 6.45 p.m. Rosie had told his secretary she was writing a series of articles for a publication about successful alumni of the university. I was carrying Rosie’s camera and would be identified as a photographer.

Getting the appointment had been difficult enough, but it had become apparent that collecting the DNA would be far more difficult in a working environment than in a social or domestic location. I had set my brain the task of solving the problem before we departed for New York, and had expected it to have found a solution through background processing, but it had apparently been too occupied with other matters. The best I could think of was a spiked ring that would draw blood when we shook hands, but Rosie considered this socially infeasible.

She suggested clipping a hair, either surreptitiously or after identifying it as a stray that would mar the photo. Surely a cosmetic surgeon would care about his appearance. Unfortunately a clipped hair was unlikely to yield an adequate sample – it needed to be plucked to obtain a follicle. Rosie packed a pair of tweezers. For once I hoped I might have to spend fifteen minutes in a smoke-filled room. A cigarette butt would solve our problem. We would have to be alert to opportunities.

Dr Freyberg’s rooms were in an older-style building on the Upper West Side. Rosie pushed the buzzer and a security guard appeared and took us up to a waiting area where the walls were totally covered with framed certificates and letters from patients praising Dr Freyberg’s work.

Dr Freyberg’s secretary, a very thin woman (BMI estimate sixteen) of about fifty-five with disproportionately thick lips, led us into his office. More certificates! Freyberg himself had a major fault: he was completely bald. The hair-plucking approach would not be viable. Nor was there any evidence that he was a smoker.

Rosie conducted the interview very impressively. Freyberg described some procedures that seemed to have minimal clinical justification, and talked about their importance to self-esteem. It was fortunate that I had been allocated the silent role, as I would have been strongly tempted to argue. I was also struggling to focus. My mind was still processing the hand-holding incident.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Rosie, ‘but could I bother you for something to drink?’

Of course! The coffee swab solution.

‘Sure,’ said Freyberg. ‘Tea, coffee?’

‘Coffee would be great,’ said Rosie. ‘Just black. Will you have one yourself?’

‘I’m good. Let’s keep going.’ He pushed a button on his intercom. ‘Rachel. One black coffee.’

‘You should have a coffee,’ I said to him.

‘Never touch it,’ said Freyberg.

‘Unless you have a genetic intolerance of caffeine, there are no proven harmful effects. On the contrary –’

‘What magazine is this for again?’

The question was straightforward and totally predictable. We had agreed the name of the fictitious university publication in advance, and Rosie had already used it in her introduction.

But my brain malfunctioned. Rosie and I spoke simultaneously. Rosie said, ‘Faces of Change.’ I said, ‘Hands of Change.’

It was a minor inconsistency that any rational person would have interpreted as a simple, innocent error, which in fact it was. But Freyberg’s expression indicated disbelief and he immediately scribbled on a notepad. When Rachel brought the coffee, he gave her the note. I diagnosed paranoia and started to think about escape plans.

‘I need to use the bathroom,’ I said. I planned to phone Freyberg from the bathroom, so Rosie could escape while he took the call.

I walked towards the exit, but Freyberg blocked my path.

‘Use my private one,’ he said. ‘I insist.’

He led me through the back of his office, past Rachel to a door marked ‘Private’ and left me there. There was no way to exit without returning the way we had come. I took out my phone, called 411 – directory assistance – and they connected me to Rachel. I could hear the phone ring and Rachel answer. I kept my voice low.

‘I need to speak to Dr Freyberg,’ I said. ‘It’s an emergency.’ I explained that my wife was a patient of Dr Freyberg and that her lips had exploded. I hung up and texted Rosie: Exit now.

The bathroom was in need of Eva’s services. I managed to open the window, which had obviously not been used for a long time. We were four floors up, but there seemed to be plenty of handholds on the wall. I eased myself through the window and started climbing down, slowly, focusing on the task, hoping Rosie had escaped successfully. It had been a long time since I had practised rock climbing and the descent was not as simple as it first seemed. The wall was slippery from rain earlier in the day and my running shoes were not ideal for the task. At one point I slipped and only just managed to grasp a rough brick. I heard shouts from below.

When I finally reached the ground, I discovered that a small crowd had formed. Rosie was among them. She flung her arms around me. ‘Oh my God, Don, you could have killed yourself. It didn’t matter that much.’

‘The risk was minor. It was just important to ignore the height issue.’

We headed for the subway. Rosie was quite agitated. Freyberg had thought that she was some sort of private investigator, working on behalf of a dissatisfied patient. He was trying to have the security personnel detain her. Whether his position was legally defensible or not, we would have been in a difficult position.

‘I’m going to get changed,’ said Rosie. ‘Our last night in New York City. What do you want to do?’

My original schedule specified a steakhouse, but now that we were in the pattern of eating together, I would need to select a restaurant suitable for a sustainable-seafood-eating ‘vegetarian’.

‘We’ll work it out,’ she said. ‘Lots of options.’

It took me three minutes to change my shirt. I waited downstairs for Rosie for another six. Finally I went up to her room and knocked. There was a long wait. Then I heard her voice.

‘How long do you think it takes to have a shower?’

‘Three minutes, twenty seconds,’ I said, ‘unless I wash my hair, in which case it takes an extra minute and twelve seconds.’ The additional time was due primarily to the requirement that the conditioner remain in place for sixty seconds.

‘Hold on.’

Rosie opened the door wearing only a towel. Her hair was wet, and she looked extremely attractive. I forgot to keep my eyes directed towards her face.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘No pendant.’ She was right. I couldn’t use the pendant excuse. But she didn’t give me a lecture on inappropriate behaviour. Instead, she smiled and stepped towards me. I wasn’t sure if she was going to take another step, or if I should. In the end, neither of us did. It was an awkward moment but I suspected we had both contributed to the problem.

‘You should have brought the ring,’ said Rosie.

For a moment, my brain interpreted ‘ring’ as ‘wedding ring’, and began constructing a completely incorrect scenario. Then I realised that she was referring to the spiked ring I had proposed as a means of obtaining Freyberg’s blood.

‘To come all this way and not get a sample.’

‘Fortunately, we have one.’

‘You got a sample? How?’

‘His bathroom. What a slob. He should get his prostate checked. The floor –’

‘Stop,’ said Rosie. ‘Too much information. But nice work.’

‘Very poor hygiene,’ I told her. ‘For a surgeon. A pseudo-surgeon. Incredible waste of surgical skill – inserting synthetic materials purely to alter appearance.’

‘Wait till you’re fifty-five and your partner’s forty-five and see if you say the same thing.’

‘You’re supposed to be a feminist,’ I said, though I was beginning to doubt it.

‘It doesn’t mean I want to be unattractive.’

‘Your appearance should be irrelevant to your partner’s assessment of you.’

‘Life is full of should-be’s,’ said Rosie. ‘You’re the geneticist. Everyone notices how people look. Even you.’

‘True. But I don’t allow it to affect my evaluation of them.’

I was on dangerous territory: the issue of Rosie’s attractiveness had got me into serious trouble on the night of the faculty ball. The statement was consistent with my beliefs about judging people and with how I would wish to be judged myself. But I had never had to apply these beliefs to someone standing opposite me in a hotel bedroom wearing only a towel. It dawned on me that I had not told the full truth.

‘Ignoring the testosterone factor,’ I added.

‘Is there a compliment buried in there somewhere?’

The conversation was getting complicated. I tried to clarify my position. ‘It would be unreasonable to give you credit for being incredibly beautiful.’

What I did next was undoubtedly a result of my thoughts being scrambled by a sequence of extraordinary and traumatic incidents in the preceding few hours: the hand-holding, the escape from the cosmetic surgery and the extreme impact of the world’s most beautiful woman standing naked under a towel in front of me.

Gene should also take some blame for suggesting that earlobe size was a predictor of sexual attraction. Since I had never been so sexually attracted to a woman before, I was suddenly compelled to examine her ears. In a moment that was, in retrospect, similar to a critical incident in Albert Camus’ The Outsider, I reached out and brushed her hair aside. But in this case, amazingly, the response was different from that documented in the novel we had studied in high school. Rosie put her arms round me and kissed me.

I think it is likely that my brain is wired in a non-standard configuration, but my ancestors would not have succeeded in breeding without understanding and responding to basic sexual signals. That aptitude was hardwired in. I kissed Rosie back. She responded.

We pulled apart for a moment. It was obvious that dinner would be delayed. Rosie studied me and said, ‘You know, if you changed your glasses and your haircut, you could be Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird.’

‘Is that good?’ I assumed, given the circumstances, that it was, but wanted to hear her confirm it.

‘He was only the sexiest man that ever lived.’

We looked at each other some more, and I moved to kiss her again. She stopped me.

‘Don, this is New York. It’s like a holiday. I don’t want you to assume it means anything more.’

‘What happens in New York stays in New York, right?’ It was a line Gene had taught me for conference use. I had never needed to employ it before. It felt a little odd, but appropriate for the circumstances. It was obviously important that we both agreed there was no emotional continuation. Although I did not have a wife at home like Gene, I had a concept of a wife that was very different from Rosie, who would presumably step out on the balcony for a cigarette after sex. Oddly, the prospect didn’t repel me as much as it should have.

‘I have to get something from my room,’ I said.

‘Good thinking. Don’t take too long.’

My room was only eleven floors above Rosie’s, so I walked up the stairs. Back in my room, I showered, then thumbed through the book Gene had given me. He had been right after all. Incredible.

I descended the stairs to Rosie’s room. Forty-three minutes had passed. I knocked on the door, and Rosie answered, now wearing a sleeping costume that was, in fact, more revealing than the towel. She was holding two glasses of Champagne.

‘Sorry, it’s gone a bit flat.’

I looked around the room. The bed cover was turned down, the curtains were closed and there was just one bedside lamp on. I gave her Gene’s book.

‘Since this is our first – and probably only – time, and you are doubtless more experienced, I recommend that you select the position.’

Rosie thumbed through the book, then started again. She stopped at the first page where Gene had written his symbol.

‘Gene gave you this?’

‘It was a present for the trip.’

I tried to read Rosie’s expression, and guessed anger, but that disappeared and she said, in a non-angry tone, ‘Don, I’m sorry, I can’t do this. I’m really sorry.’

‘Did I say something wrong?’

‘No, it’s me. I’m really sorry.’

‘You changed your mind while I was gone?’

‘Yeah,’ said Rosie. ‘That’s what happened. I’m sorry.’

‘Are you sure I didn’t do something wrong?’ Rosie was my friend and the risk to our friendship was now at the forefront of my mind. The sex issue had evaporated.

‘No, no, it’s me,’ she said. ‘You were incredibly considerate.’

It was a compliment I was unaccustomed to receiving. A very satisfying compliment. The night had not been a total disaster.

I could not sleep. I had not eaten and it was only 8.55 p.m. Claudia and Gene would be at work now, back in Melbourne, and I did not feel like talking to either of them. I considered it inadvisable to contact Rosie again, so I rang my remaining friend. Dave had eaten already, but we walked to a pizza restaurant and he ate a second dinner. Then we went to a bar and watched baseball and talked about women. I do not recall much of what either of us said, but I suspect that little of it would have been useful in making rational plans for the future.