Mortimer is magister of his vials and vats. He likes to dwell in the back room, the depths of his pharmacy where only his aunt is allowed. It is nothing like the bottles and shelves that greet the visitor in front. It is a chantry of blinking machines and liquids softly bubbling behind glass. Mortimer loves his ampoules and serpentine tubes with so much promise in their phosphorescent flow. He has towering urns where medicinal plants lean to binary incantations over his amulets and dielectric charms. Encrypted molecular codices guide the composing of his balms and drops. He strolls down his aisles of vessels, fingers runes on the screens, tweaks the trickle of aliquots that without him would keep their secrets forever. He has glassware for the transmutation of all human fluids and subatomic feelers to untwist the DNA from exhumed skulls. His lab is filled with reading consoles and soft-voiced machines that brew the drams his customers so crave. He has enzymes that prolong life and others that make what’s left of it less grim. Given a splat of your DNA he can divine its hidden message and solve riddles that troubled great minds of the past–who died without wisdom Mortimer has at a whim.
Supplicants come to him, credit cards in hand and usually with a touching story he codifies on molecular sheets. For an obscure case involving a six year old with a gambling disorder, Mortimer employs his Ouija planchette and reassures the mother in obsequious tones. With equal aplomb he gauges pregnancy and painful emotions of stock market losses: then gives advice at modest cost. With his instruments Mortimer discerns the secret consonance between the darkest mood of the bereaved and collusion of malign proteins. He orchestrates electron hoards that dance with synchronized spins and leap over Planckian gaps to touch the astral body of the afflicted. His aunt the phlebotomist, at home in her accustomed chair, gathers the needed fluid facts. Then with an understanding smile Mortimer sells a philtre to a debutante or a jade scarab to a widow.
Out in front again, he confides with Cici who is still in awe of his mystique:
“For the man who is all thumbs I’ll grow a new finger. A harelip I heal with contact cement and an electrophoretic stapler. What nature beats down I can plump up.”
With his shopkeeper’s sense of possession he closes the cash tray and tells his aunt to mind Germaine, the lady who has just come in, knowing it is more than Menephron his assistant can handle.
“It’s the eyes,” the woman says in a tremulous voice. “I’m so worried that the color won’t be right.”
The aunt knows well this concern.
“White or tangerine?” she says.
“Oh,” Germaine wonders putting her hand to her cheek. She had thought the choice would be wider but a smaller palette makes it less confusing, she has to admit. She is frazzled and in a hurry between shifts on her job. “One of each,” she blurts. “Won’t that be good?”
She watches the aunt’s face for some sign of guidance, the wisdom of experience. Are there warning signs, caveats? She knows she is missing many technical details. The aunt dips her head to reflect.
“That’ll be extra.”
“Oh. Well, whatever’s best for the child.”
The aunt taps on her console. She grabs Germaine’s hand and pulls her index finger to swell with blood. A quick jab and the hand is dropped into a cushioned dish that folds soft arms around it. Lute tones arise and soon Germaine’s hand is tenderly returned with a lilting “Thank you,” from the dish which adds in light ascending chords: “It is all for the best.”
Germaine regards the dish and wonders: How would it know? But she thinks it would be insensitive to broach a doubt to someone who is, after all, providing a service. On the aunt’s side a glass phial slides into her hand and she passes it to Germaine.
“Three drops in your tea a day before you ovulate, on those special days of course, when it matters. I’ll put it on your tab.”
“Oh, what does it matter the expense?” Germaine says weaving back and forth. She cannot decide whether to speak more or run. But she doesn’t know rightly what she would say. “At a time like this. I have so many things to think about. I’m not even pregnant and there’s another thing I have to do.”
“Wise to plan ahead,” counsels the aunt. “And that’s good for forty days. Refills at a discount. Your receipt is in our files.”
Germaine had hoped for more understanding and the impassivity of the aunt doesn’t help. There is probably some telling question Germaine should ask but she can’t think of it now. She glances at and away from the phial strangely perched between her fingers. What is it really? It sparkles. Isn’t that a clue? It is an especially alien article in an especially alien world. She stuffs it in her purse and hurries down the aisle. Watching her go, Mortimer leans with a speculative air over the rack of his pep pills and jolly beans. He scratches his chin of two days growth.
“One eye white and the other tangerine? Kid’s going to be a chimaera.”
“We don’t pass judgment,” says the aunt. “We’re only here to help.”
With quiet fortitude she slinks to the side, down his corridor of pipes and wires and out the back way. There is so much more to be done.
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