“Shha—Vic-ha—tur, Vic-tor-r-r.”
“Yes, Grandma,” Victor responded, recoiling from the onerous chore he had come to do. He half-filled a teaspoon with some mashed potatoes and raised it to her mouth. After tickling her lips with the tip of the spoon, he got her to open enough to let him instill the first bite of her evening meal.
“This is going to take too long,” he grumbled to himself. He had far better things to do.
Her skin was wrinkled, thin, and ghostly pale. He reviewed the blue veins near her temples with revulsion. She was splotched with light-brown age spots.
“How’s co-o-ollege?,” she asked, lifting her left eyebrow a little.
“I’m through with my Master’s,” he replied, “and about to start on my Doctorate, working on a project called ‘Strings’.”
“She won’t understand,” he mused, but the words filled the silence, as he pushed bite after bite into her light-purple lips.
“How many days can this go on?” he wondered. Usually, Vic’s Mom handled this effort twice a day, but sometimes, he had to take her place, while she attended to other matters.
“Remember,” Mom had often reminded him, “Grandma Berkmann has made you the beneficiary of a large insurance policy. She has been so generous to us through the years. She’s paid all your educational expenses, and that insurance money will be a blessing to you, someday.”
“Strr-ings?” Grandma queried in a whisper.
“Yes,” Vic disclosed, “we’re going to try to do something useful with the very tiny strings that are the building blocks of the Universe.”
The squeak of rubber-soled shoes on the tile floor announced the entrance of Nurse Edith Kilmaury. She swept into the room, saying, “Well, I see, Sonja’s good looks got handed down to you! You always rev-up the female staff, when you come to visit us. Come on, now. Don’t look so glum. Give me your fabulous grin.”
Vic was handsome, “Hollywood Handsome”, the girls on staff said. Tall and tan, he walked in a majestic manner and spoke in mellow tones. His loosely curled, dark-brown hair, chestnut eyes, and full lips, framing a perfect smile, all combined to elicit the attention of the feminine gender.
Vic offered a slight smile. But, he wasn’t in the mood for pointless small-talk. This feeding routine was crimping his plans. Edith and the girls on her staff were not the “hotties” he was eager to woo.
Nevertheless, Edith was drawn to him. She placed her hand on his shoulder, gazed into his eyes, and asked, “Need some help?”
Vic ignored the advance and said, “No,” in a definite manner.
Edith shrugged. “Let me know when you’re done. I’ll clean up,” she droned as she left the room.
Vic persisted with the feeding. He wanted to get to Club Palladium. “There’ll be drinking, dancing and dames there!” he shouted to himself, repeating a favorite line his Dad had often broadcast to his pals. That declaration always embarrassed his Mom.
But, Vic wasn’t his Dad. He was a brilliant, Chemistry student, a polished young man, a great dancer, the life of every party he graced with his presence. He wasn’t a plumber, like his “old man”.
Finally, Vic finished his chore. He perfunctorily kissed his Grandma’s forehead, said a goodbye, and raced through the door. “God! I hate this nursing home,” he thought as he trotted to his car. “The smells ... the wrecked bodies I pass in the halls ... the moans and screams I hear bouncing through the corridors ... They’re all sickening. Is Grandma really alive inside that bag of bones? She’s such an inconvenience.”
...
The action at the Club was lame. so Vic was out of sorts. He had missed most of “Happy Hour”. “And,” he wondered, “where’s Shelly?”
As he downed a drink, sitting alone, several girls threw a flirty smile at him. He was thinking of dancing with one of them when his smartphone trilled. He glanced at the screen. It advised, “Material should be in your email, Sanji.”
Vic changed course. He headed for his apartment and hurried to his computer. He had been expecting the transmission from Sanji. He had requested, from an Indian university, digitized images of some recently discovered, Sanskrit writings. They were documents concerning pharmacology. Vic had become proficient in Sanskrit while pursuing his interest in the methods used by sophisticated men of medicine in ancient times. His remarkable intelligence had allowed him to become one of the few who could read the oldest Sanskrit dialects. These texts were written using the "Brāhmīlipi" alphabet. They opened a whole new world to him. Especially, he loved the thought that he might be the only scholar on Earth who could read these words.
Vic checked his emails. “There it is!” he exclaimed. “This should be intriguing.” These writings were the most interesting he had seen. They had been found hidden in an alcove of a remote, Hindu temple.
Vic dug in. He snacked and read into the evening.
Suddenly, he found himself in the middle of a murder mystery. In it, a prince posed a question to a trusted Hindu physician, “Is there a potion that will slay a traitorous acquaintance seven days after he has dined in my palace? The victim must remain unharmed for seven days and, then, die quietly. His death must look natural and not arouse a suspicion of poisoning. No one should suspect that the victim was harmed in my court.”
The wise man replied, “Yes, lord, I can prepare a kind of sugar from five forest plants. It may work in five days, but not sooner. Also, the recipient will seem to be getting healthier before he dies. His skin will take on a beautiful glow. Now, you must be very careful with the substance. If you touch it and then use your hands to raise food to your lips, you will incur the same fate as that of the traitor.”
There followed a recipe for making the sugar. Vic’s encyclopedic mind recognized the names of the plants involved. In fact, they were plants undergoing study on campus. He had seen them in the campus Plant Repository, which housed an Herbarium and an adjacent Greenhouse. His passion for ancient pharmacology had caused him to spend many hours there, fraternizing with the staff.
Vic leaned back in his chair. He munched some chips and swigged some cola. An evil spirit, deep within him, promulgated a suggestion, “What if Grandma swallowed some of this sugar? She would pass quietly ... You would never need to return to that nasty, nursing home ... And, you would be rich.”
“What a liberating thought!” Vic mused.
The phone rang. It was Shelly. Vic said, “Sure, come on over. I’m in a wonderful mood. We’ll taste of loves till morning!”
