Race Across The Sky Part 3

"They're not paid to be comfortable with it," Shane ventured. Why not throw his real feelings out there, he figured?

Dennis studied him, eyes sparkling. "We don't do that here, you know."

Shane sat down. "That's what I wanted to talk with you about. I've been in pharma sales my whole career. And maybe it's me getting older, but I feel like it's moved somewhere I don't really want to be."

"Where is it you're looking to be, Shane?"

"I want to rep drugs that help people survive disease, not de-stress before the golf course. I'd like to go to work for a boutique. Do you think my experience is transferable? Is there a path from Big Pharma sales to start-ups?"

Dennis thought for a moment. "Well, the cliche says a good salesman can sell cars one day and raincoats the next. But I don't believe that. I think you need to have pa.s.sion for what you sell, feel and understand it as if you made it. We've hired quite a few pharma people. My feeling is they tend to think of our drugs as products. That's the way they were trained. But I don't think of them that way, I think of them as medicine. As lives."

Shane was nodding.

"So my question back to you Shane would be, your skills are transferable, but is your pa.s.sion?"

"I already have pa.s.sion for what your guys do."

"What do you know about biotech? I'd imagine being married to one of our best product managers, it's quite a lot."

"Not as much as I should. If I get a chance to interview somewhere, I'll tighten up."

"Give it a shot." Dennis's eyes sparkled.

"Okay. Well, the big idea of biomedicine, as I understand it anyway, is that all living things, plants, animals, fish, viruses, bacteria, insects, are all made of the same genes. And that these genes are interchangeable. Like Lego pieces. They will work the same way in any organism they are transferred to. So we can move a gene with a specific property from one organism to another."

Dennis was nodding encouragingly.

"For example, a major problem in cancer surgery is that surgeons leave microscopic particles of a tumor behind, which grow back. You guys took the enzyme from a firefly gene that causes its tail to glow and grafted it onto a chromosome in a human cancerous tumor. So that in surgery, every molecule of that tumor glows like a firefly."

"Two-hundred-million-dollar a year product, by the way."

"Congratulations. Orco made that much with a female v.i.a.g.r.a that was ineffective."

Dennis smiled. "What do you think our biggest challenge with internists is?"

"They still think that biotech is a cutting-edge new science. When actually, the Romans used biotechnology. Any time you add yeast to make bread, or wine, you're transplanting bacteria. Beer is biotech."

"Beer is biotech. I'll have the T-s.h.i.+rts printed this weekend."

Shane s.h.i.+fted in his seat. "So, you know who runs each sales department. Who do you think might be a good fit for me?"

"I have an opening for a sales director."

Shane blinked.

"I realize we have more than ten employees just in our mail room," Dennis shook his head, his voice dropping as he considered this.

"That's not why I came to see you."

"I know. And I know we're the opposite of a boutique or a start-up. But"-Dennis raised a finger and narrowed his eyes-"we started that way, and many of the people here can remember those days. That ethos hasn't gone anywhere. And I do have a solid position open. I'm supposed to interview someone for it after work tonight."

"Don't you guys have a nepotism policy?"

"You don't graft firefly cells onto human genes if you're following every policy."

"What's the director lead?"

"Sorion."

Shane swallowed a wash of disappointment. Sorion was Helixia's marquee drug; the nanosecond it had been approved, in 1994, their stock had doubled. Its use had spread so quickly that conferences detailing its growth had to be rewritten quarterly. The time to be working on it, Shane felt, was fifteen years ago.

Dennis read his eyes. "It's a good place to learn our business. It's stable. You can make connections, get your footing. And there's none of the frantic all-night panics of a Phase Three."

"I like all-night panics," Shane told him.

Dennis smiled, revealing surprisingly yellow teeth. "Oh, don't worry," he a.s.sured him, "you'll get them."

hat evening, he and Janelle walked into a small n.o.b Hill steakhouse.

They were greeted by dim lighting and a somber jazz. The whole vibe seemed too down for Shane's mood, but it was too late for a change of plan. Doctor Wenceslas Chin and his wife Cynthia were waiting for them at the bar, and Wenceslas loved his steak. Shane felt lighter the instant he saw them.

Wenceslas was an internist at Greenbrae Medical a.s.sociates, a general practice catering to Marin's elite. He had a wide South Chinese face and behind his round eyegla.s.ses lay happy eyes. He and Shane had become close friends these last years, played countless rounds of golf, and shared many bottles of Shane's beloved Was.h.i.+ngton State reds at medical conferences, on Orco. This dinner would be their last with the Saint Louis pharma picking up the check, without the accompaniment of an infant, their last before so many things promised to change.

"Oh my G.o.d," Cynthia laughed, hugging Janelle. "When are you due, today?"

"Next week."

Her eyes fell to Janelle's protruding belly. "Can I touch it?"

"Go crazy."

Watching Janelle lean forward stirred Shane. Nine months of pregnancy had only made her more alluring to him. She wore a black and gold top over ashen maternity cigarette pants that expanded over her belly. Her black hair was parted down the middle, the steakhouse's soft light showcasing its maroon highlights. When he touched her arm and back, her skin seemed moist. Small black moles had begun to appear on her body, and a slight vertical line had developed from her navel southward, as if her seams were showing.

Plus, Janelle had a new way of looking at him, with swollen eyes, and a slightly upturned mouth, that made him feel something very deep that he could not quite identify. Shane took her hand as they walked to an oddly high table, which added to his mounting sense of silliness.

"Hey"-Wenceslas leaned across the table-"I got one of those checks."

Shane nodded. The Big Pharmas had begun sending unrequested checks for between ten and a hundred thousand dollars to doctors. Fine print explained that cas.h.i.+ng them was the equivalent of signing a contract for exclusive prescriptions. The FDA, Shane felt, would come down very hard on these companies and doctors soon. Except that after a decade, they still hadn't.

"How much?"

"Thirty thousand. With a letter about being a valuable doctor at an important practice."

"You cash it?"

"I shredded the thing." Wenceslas looked horrified. "My patients expect me to write the best script available. If they knew I was pledged to one drug company?" He shook his head no.

But Shane shrugged. "One day doctors will put up signs like the ones about which insurance companies they accept. Except about which drug companies they work with. 'Greenbrae Medical a.s.sociates only prescribes drugs from Merck,' or something."

"Ah," Wenceslas nodded. "If we did that, they wouldn't need you. How much money would pharmas save with no reps?"

Shane considered this. The amount seemed too staggering to verbalize.

"They're about to get that money back anyway," Janelle grinned across the table.

Wenceslas stared at him. "Really? Where are you going?"

"Helixia."

A prolonged whistle escaped from Wenceslas's lips.

Cynthia asked, "Is that a different drug company?"

"It's a different category. It's biotech. Where Janelle works."

"What's the difference?"

Janelle explained, "Pharmaceutical companies create chemical compounds that are delivered into the body to cause a specific reaction. But the body reacts to these foreign chemicals in a myriad of ways, and you get side effects. If you have a stuffed nose, Sudafed unstuffs it. But it also makes your heart race and your mouth dry. Biotechnology treatments use natural proteins from the body, which it recognizes, and never fights. So only the intended reaction happens."

"Sounds amazing," Cynthia said happily. "Congratulations."

"We can play a celebratory round at Peac.o.c.k this Sunday," suggested Wenceslas.

Shane raised his eyes. "Love to, but I'm going to Boulder this weekend."

"Last romantic getaway before the baby and the job?"

"I don't know about romantic. I'm going to see my brother."

"I didn't know you had a brother. You never mention him."

Shane drank more wine. "Don't I?"

"Boulder sounds fun," Cynthia told him.

"Oh, fun fun fun," Shane said. Janelle pressed his leg under the table.

She started to tell an amusing story about a lactation video she'd seen online. He tried to pay attention, but Caleb had hijacked his thoughts again. What would he find at this house in Boulder? Who would he see there, calling himself his brother?

As they rode in their taxi back toward the Marina, Janelle leaned against his shoulder. Outside, a neon blur of North Beach topless bars created sparks against the city sky.

"Have you told your parents you're going?" she asked softly.

He shook his head no. "Think I should?"

"They'll want to come with you."

"Let's not start a full-scale intervention. They can see Caleb when I get him home."

"Is that your plan? What if he just wants you to watch a race?"

"He's wasting his life."

"What if he's happy?"

Shane frowned out the window.

"Seek first to understand, baby."

"Seek first to kick his a.s.s."

Janelle looked at him, concerned. "I know you take it personally that he disappeared on you, but give him two minutes before you put him in a half nelson and throw him in the car. If you turn him off, you'll never hear from him again."

"Okay," Shane nodded, exhaling. "I'll give him nothing but love. But the guy that runs that place? Him not so much."

The taxi wound through the wharf toward the tiny house they had invested everything in. He realized that this might be the last time they would ever approach it as just the two of them, focused only on each other. He kissed Janelle's cheek and glanced out at the bright buoyant lights of Tiburon and Sausalito, and the curve into the cold Pacific beyond.

"I'm going to get him out of there," Shane stated quietly.

In the morning, he left for the airport.

5.

"Your bro's coming today?"

It was just before nine in the morning; Caleb had been running for four hours. b.u.mblebees nearly the size of eggs skittered through the gaillardias. A cl.u.s.ter of bluebirds burst over his head. Moving at a good speed, Caleb felt an ascension of joy that he supposed cla.s.sical composers and Renaissance painters had touched. Running was art, he knew, and its masters were also capable of masterpieces.

As he galloped through the familiar trails, Caleb visualized the Hardrock 100 course that awaited him next month. He saw himself in its hundred miles through thirteen soaring peaks of the San Juan Mountains, its fields of wildflowers, its granite peaks covered with snowpack. He felt he was there. Running trails, he could imagine anything he wished with stunning clarity.

He was in the midst of this revelry when Mack jumped out from behind an especially bountiful white ash.

"Caley!"

Caleb stopped suddenly; immediately his body began to overheat.

Appearing unexpectedly at the end of a run to add more time was a favorite training technique of Mack's. He'd written about it in You Can Run 100 Miles! Ultramarathon courses are full of unpredictability. A sudden rainstorm might create a mudslide, an animal might carry off a course marker, a lateral muscle might tear. Unforeseen requirements to double the body's effort without notice were part of the sport and so, Mack taught, it should be part of the training. But today, instead of shouting his usual "add ten" Mack asked about his brother.