THE DRONE
Manhattan
Six shots of Versed straddled the seam of the sofa cushion. A ketamine chaser rode shot gun. Detente between insomnia and the amygdala. Lately, hard to tell if the meds were a counterattack or a preemptive strike. Memory was a foreign country: different rules applied.
Cole was high on Kush, stretched out in the dark, watching the lionfish dart around his dead father’s fish tank. Could they see him? Their only interest was harassing the blue tangs. Mayssa Karaa sang from the overhead speakers on a loop he’d set hours ago. He shut his eyes and rolled a vial between his lips. How many nights in a row could you slow-dose benzos before the Journal of Sleep Medicine got interested?
Every insomniac imagines they're an anesthesiologist at least once in the middle of the night. To possess the faculties to self-sedate? To drag one's mind into a fortified slumber? Cole Moreau had lived with insomnia ever since he’d begun volunteering for Médecins Sans Frontières as a med student. In the beginning, his restlessness was a kind of sympathetic insomnia, because Lina Kassis, his girlfriend was cabin crew with Emirates, and her sleep was wildly disordered. After Cole’s tour in Afghanistan ten years ago, he'd developed chronic intermittent insomnia. Self-diagnosed. He could handle the physiological effects, brutal for some. But the pernicious memories that fed his sleeplessness—his brain stem’s capacity to remind him of the truth—were painful, and had driven Cole to dose short-term amnesia meds like he was about to have his chest cracked open. Who’d want to remember that? If he couldn’t sleep, at least he could forget.
When his phone buzzed, disrupting the memory-free peace he’d just brokered, he felt the perk of arousal, thinking Lina had landed, but it was Felix Ramal, asshole neurosurgeon and Cole’s friend, only friend, by default, calling in the middle of the night. Cole took another drag and held it as he texted. Fuck off I’m sleeping
The fuck you are. You’re faffing around that mausoleum you call a home probably nursing a joint staring into nothingness. Answer your fucking phone
When his phone rang again, Cole pulled another drag and released the smoke through his nose before answering.
“Are you all there, Moreau?” Felix’s accent was thick with fatigue.
“I’m here. You on-call?”
“At the Drone actually. Tied up at the moment, not much use to anyone.”
Felix and the fucking Drone. “And that’s my problem at God o’clock?”
“There’s a situation. Your presence is required.”
Cole groaned at the early hour. He’d just swallowed ten ccs.
“Quickly, Cole.”
“Christ, what’d you do?”
“Come now.” Felix hung up.
Cole appraised himself, still in the tux he’d worn to last night’s gala, still hoping Lina would show up. Fucking hell. With a disinterest he found reassuring, he cracked his neck, thinking Felix rarely made demands, especially now. He was with Cole last night, and he fucking knew he’d be recovering.
God, he swallowed two liters of water before his lips quit sticking together, before he was coherent enough to look for the car’s key fob, which he found with his shoes upstairs on the foyer sideboard with that fucking invitation from the White House. Amelia’s pointless condolence and her hand-written plea on the back: ‘It’s Christmas, take your father’s place.’ Like she’d want an addict war doctor at her State Dinner, passing blinis and toasting tech bros, trading stories with war criminals. She'd signed it ‘A.M.’ like they were secret sharers. He fiddled with the laces and stood.
Hold up. He called the Dakota’s north lobby from the house phone in the butler's pantry and asked for a driver. He counted the heartbeats in his throat, where they throbbed all night, every night. Die. Hope. Die. Within minutes, Cosmo, whom he didn’t know, the third floor’s new body man or porter, fuck if he knew his title, called from the garage. He sounded thrilled.
With no clue why the fuck he was heeding Felix’s vague request, Cole took the apartment’s private elevator to the garage, headed for Hell’s Kitchen.
The Drone Social Club occupied an antique brownstone tucked into the side of the 70 Vestry building, a concrete and glass plutocracy rising on the edge of Manhattan. These days, the Drone traded on the prestige of its celebrity neighbors, wrapped its walls in sound-absorbing velvet, maintained NSA-level secrecy, and hosted parties so exclusive they may never have happened. Still, it was a singles club. Felix loved the concept, matching discreet, financially secure New Yorkers with similar tastes, a 3D platinum-plated Tinder for Millennials. He’d pitched the Drone to Cole after Kunduz had imploded, ten fucking years ago. No thanks. Cole turned up from time to time, to dine at the omakase bar or hear Reza Negaristani lecture on the future of rationalist inhumanism, and he occasionally enjoyed watching Felix juggle his hook ups. But Cole had a regularly prescribed thing with Lina, his quixotic, on again off again roommate-with-benefits, fifty nights a year. They’d met in the dark and stayed there for thirteen years. Felix’s exploits paled compared to how Cole and Lina spent their limited time together. Benefits was a funny word.
Cole Moreau, Assistant Professor of Clinical Anesthesiology at Weill Cornell Medical College, Chief Attending Anesthesiologist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, board-certified in plastics and reconstructive surgery, cardiothoracic, pediatric, perioperative and critical care, veteran of a dozen Médecins Sans Frontières missions, French National Order of Merit, King Faisal Prize, Honorary Flemish citizen, GQ’s Man of the Decade, Lasker Awardee, International Red Cross Humanitarian, Carnegie Medalist, designated Citizen of the World™, slipped into the Ransom Suite of this fucking sex club and eased the door closed. It was past five in the morning. Incubus thrummed from somewhere and the walls glowed deep orange reflecting the sunrise through the window blinds. A sloppy bed dominated the room and Felix Ramal sat on the floor, his back propped against the foot of the bed, jade eyes full of guilt. Behind him, face down on the duvet, lay a lithe brunette in a black set and garters. Place smelled like sex, laced with another scent he couldn’t place.
”Doctor Moreau,” Felix drawled, voice lower than the music. “Your shirt’s mis-buttoned, friend. I’d greet you properly, but…”
Felix would make an elegant devil, with his cropped stubble and dark widow’s peak. No surprise, he still wore his tux, although his shirt was undone, chest exposed. Whatever else was going on, Cole didn’t inspect. He eyed the woman on the bed, irritated.
“Who is she?” Cole asked. The woman turned her head to his voice. Young. At least her skin looked warm. She was off, though. Definitely not part of Felix’s usual MO, which over the time Cole had known him, rarely wavered from blonde and bound. Asshole, dragging him out. Cole fiddled with his shirt buttons as he tried to piece the scene together. The woman reached for Felix and Cole zoned in on her nail polish, a haphazard mess, bleeding into her skin like pepper juice. “She’s a child,” he said.
“You noticed.”
“Who is she?” He kicked Felix’s foot. She twisted around. Cole eased closer, put off by her rheumy eyes. She was too made up, too severely drawn for her pretty features. Her expression was flat, banal. Was she wearing a wig? What the fuck. “I’m leaving.”
“Like hell.” Felix lit a cigarette. “You just arrived.”
“My dad died. Forgive me—”
“Months ago. This is Jules Divine. I met her tonight upstairs, with Scarlett and Dessie.” Ah, she knew the owner. Felix ran his thumbnail down her shoulder as she wriggled to turn over, and he handed her clothes. Cozy. What had gone on? “Jules, meet Cole. He’s a doctor.”
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