Chapter Thirteen

The news about Saul had not been good, but after she cradled him and sobbed for the better part of the day yesterday, Miriam resigned herself to the fact that her beloved cat would need to be put to sleep. The other realization she had to accept was that she was not ready to put the cloning in motion. While she was used to being a problem solver, she was also fairly realistic when it came to her rare failures. Besides, she had moved on to bigger things. The idea of pulling a Victor Frankenstein, and creating a man, tantalized her. She had even reached out to a few scientists around the country who were doing work with organ cloning. Dr. Tal Bimni in North Carolina had had amazing luck with cloning kidneys and Dr. Stephanie Vinter at Columbia had successfully cloned a human heart. Mary Shelley based her theories on Galvanism, and her fictional doctor gave new life to dead tissues through electrical impulses. It was all terribly crude of course, by today's standards. The amazing thing is that all of this was no longer the stuff of horror films or science fiction. It was all possible.

Miriam was wrapped up in the flow of  sketching out her plan when the house phone rang. She was tempted to ignore it thinking that anyone whom she actually wanted to speak to would try her on her cell phone. However, after the fifth ring, she grabbed the receiver.

"Yes," she said in a tone that was noticeably clipped.

"Hi. Is this Miriam?"

"Who is this?"

"Is this Miriam?"

"Who is calling?"

This ping-pong like silliness might have continued if the male caller had not put a stop to it.

"Miriam. I know that's you. I recognize your sexy voice. This is Henry. Henry Gordon."

Miriam's voice softened and warmed as if one suddenly wrapped a popsicle in a fur jacket.
"Oh, Henry. Ha...makes me think of that old candy bar. But we aren't old, are we?"

"Certainly not. In fact, that would be why I'm calling."

"To remind me that I'm still young?" And there was a coquettishness in Miriam's tone that hadn't been there since she actually was young.

"After seeing you at Jeff's place last week, I'm sure you don't need any reminder. Speaking of Jeff, he said I shouldn't call you."

"Really?" And Miriam could feel her defenses going up. Why the heck wouldn't Jeff want his father to call her? Didn't he like her? She'd always thought that he'd admired her when he was a young man.

"Nope, he said I should friend you on Facebook. When I told him I have a face and I have a book but I see no need to have a Facebook, he just shrugged and told me I should text you."

Miriam laughed.  "Perhaps you could have tweeted."

"Tweet, Schmeet. What are we? Birds?"

"Well, I completely disagree with Jeff about all this techno-babble.  And you can tell him that I said
 that calling was the perfect thing to do!"

"Believe me, I will! He's a smart cookie, but every once in a while I relish being able to tell him he's wrong."

"I know exactly what you mean!"

"I actually did have a reason for calling...other than proving my son wrong about contemporary communication skills."

"I'm all ears."

"That's funny. When I saw you, you seemed to have a few other body parts as well."

Geez! What was happening here? If she didn't know better, Miriam would have thought Henry was flirting with her! Could he be flirting? Would she even recognize flirting if it slapped her on the rear? It had been so very long.

"Look, I don't want to take too much more of your time, Mims, but I happen to have come into possession of two tickets for this Josh Groban kid at the Pembrook Outdoor Theater this weekend.
Jeff promised me its not that rap stuff. Swears we'll like it and it won't bust out our eardrums. What do you say?"

Miriam thought about it for a minute--because Miriam thought about everything before she did it...and then she said, "Sounds lovely."

So she had been mourning the loss of Saul, and then plotting the creation of a man, and then a man called and asked her out on a date. Life was full of surprises!