Perfect People

15

Naomi, belted in her seat, locked in her thoughts, was only dimly aware that they were travelling up a ramp, that John was driving, that they were stopping at a booth. It was hot inside the car; airless, stuffy, and the litter of paper in the footwell rustled and crunched as she moved her feet. John powered down his window and handed the car-park attendant the ticket. The man scrutinized the validation stickers with the rigour of an immigration officer studying a passport from a terrorism hotbed, then raised the barrier. John shut his window.

She was perspiring.

As they pulled out into the street, a fallen palm frond skimmed across in front of them, and moments later she sensed the car rock in a gust. High-rise walls rose sheer on either side of them, making it feel as if they had entered a canyon, and she peered up, feeling trapped suddenly. Above them, jet-black clouds jostled for space in the narrow corridor of sky. A spot of rain struck the windshield and trickled down.

They had been talking about the weather on television this morning, saying it was unseasonable for July. It seemed that for the entire seven years they had lived in Los Angeles, the weather had been unseasonable.

Global warming was to blame for the whole world’s weather patterns being out of kilter – that was the considered opinion. Scientists messing with nature were to blame. Scientists were becoming the new heretics. First the bomb, then pollution, then GM food. And next? Designer babies?

Fear pounded inside her.

OK, good. Congratulations. You’re going to have a girl.

If he couldn’t get that right – Dettore, Dr Dettore (call me Leo! ) – if he couldn’t get that one absolute fundamental right, then… ?

Oh God, what have we done?

John drove the grimy grey Volvo out of the car park and made a left, followed by another left, then stopped in a queue at the lights of the junction with La Cienega. He indicated right. South.

Naomi pulled her iPhone out of her handbag and quickly glanced through her afternoon schedule. She’d gone straight from Oliver Stone’s company to a six-week assignment for a company called Bright Spark Productions, which had made a documentary series about young filmmakers. The first show was going out on the Bravo channel in two weeks’ time.

At two-thirty she had a meeting at UCLA film school. It was now twenty past twelve. Her car was at home, but she needed to go via the office to pick up some material. A twenty-five-minute drive, if the traffic wasn’t too bad. She needed about half an hour there to put some stuff together. Then allow thirty minutes to the film school. Not much of a margin left; she hated to be late when she was working.

‘What an asshole that guy is!’ John said angrily, finally breaking the long silence between them since they had left Dr Rosengarten’s office. ‘What a total fucking asshole.’

Naomi said nothing. At five she was meant to be having a drink at the Four Seasons with a journalist friend who worked for Variety. She couldn’t cancel, but how the hell was she going to get through the afternoon? She lowered her window. The gust of air, even laden with petrol fumes, felt good, better than the smell of the interior, of warm, old plastic. John inched forward. A tractor-trailer rumbled past them.

His cellphone rang. She was grateful that he killed the call. Moments later her own phone rang. She switched it off, with a tinge of guilt, knowing it was probably someone from the office but not able to deal with a work conversation at this moment.

‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ she said, finally.

‘He’s wrong.’ John tramped the gas pedal, making a more violent turn than he had intended, pulling out inches in front of a bus, which blasted its horn in anger.

‘He has to be wrong,’ she agreed.

‘No one can know for sure at twelve weeks,’ he said. ‘It was dumb of him to claim he could.’

‘He’s arrogant. He doesn’t care about us, we’re little people. If you or I were A-list celebs, he wouldn’t have made that mistake. He wouldn’t have dared.’

The bus filled John’s rear-view mirror as they crossed San Vincente and Wilshire. ‘His mind wasn’t on it.’

‘We should get a second opinion.’

John negotiated the junction with Olympic in silence, then he said, ‘We’ll get one. He’s an asshole, he’s made a mistake. Sixteen weeks is the earliest you can tell, all the books say that. We’ll go and see someone again when you are sixteen weeks.’

‘I don’t want to wait four weeks – I can’t wait that long, John, I have to know. We have to know.’

‘There’s stuff on the net about a blood test called free foetal DNA, but I’m not sure how reliable it is. It may not be possible – to be totally accurate – until sixteen weeks. I don’t think we should panic.’

‘I’m worried,’ Naomi said. ‘If the sex is wrong, the other genes might also be wrong. There must be some one hundred per cent accurate way we can check on the sex without waiting a month. Surely? What about a DNA test – wouldn’t that be a possibility?’

‘Other than this free foetal method, it’s invasive to do that. I looked up a load of stuff on the web the other day about testing foetuses. There’s a risk of miscarriage. It’s a small risk, but – do you want to take any chances?’

Did she? Any chances? She tried desperately to think straight. If Rosengarten had made a mistake, it would be crazy to risk everything by panicking. But ‘If it comes to it, we’ll fly back to the clinic. Confront Dettore.’

‘You think Dettore would tell us the truth? You think if he’s made a mistake he’s going to admit it to us?’

John started to say something, then fell silent for some moments. Then he said, ‘He – he doesn’t have any reason-’

Swallowing back a knot of fear in her throat, she said, ‘Reason to what?’

‘To give us a girl when we’ve asked for a boy.’

‘Phone him,’ she said. ‘You have his number, phone him now.’

They were less than half a mile from home, but John pulled off the road onto the forecourt of the small shopping mall. He looked up the number on his BlackBerry then, holding the phone to his ear, dialled.

Naomi watched his face. After some moments, he said, ‘This is John Klaesson. I need to speak to Dr Dettore very urgently. Please ask him to call me back on my cellphone.’ He gave the number, then he hung up.

‘Voice mail?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’ John looked at his watch. ‘They’re on East Coast time – which means they’re three hours ahead. It’s twenty after twelve. Twenty after three on the ship. Maybe there’s some problem with the switchboard. I had this difficulty getting hold of him a few times in the past.’

‘I didn’t see any switchboard on the ship, John.’

He wedged the phone back into the cradle. ‘There’s a lot of things we didn’t see.’

She said nothing.