Dead and Alive

Lalique flute.
    As it unfolded, the day just past seemed to be a chain of crises and frustrations. The discoveries during the Harker autopsy. Werner’s meltdown. The first of Victor’s triumphs, now calling itself Deucalion, not dead after all but alive in New Orleans. The brief encounter with Deucalion in Duchaine’s house, the tattooed one’s mystifying escape. Erika having dinner in the living room—
living room!
—on a priceless eighteenth-century French escritoire, as if she were an ignorant hillbilly.
    The Harker and Werner situations might seem like calamities to unimaginative types like Ripley, but they were opportunities. From every setback came knowledge and stunning new advancements. Thomas Edison developed hundreds of prototypes of lightbulbsthat failed, until at last he discovered the right material for the filament.
    Deucalion was a mere amusement. He could not harm his maker. Besides, the tattooed wretch killed Victor’s first wife, Elizabeth, two centuries earlier, on the day of their wedding. The freak’s return would give Victor a chance to take long-overdue vengeance.
    Victor had not loved Elizabeth. Love and God were myths he rejected with equal contempt.
    But Elizabeth had
belonged
to him. Even after more than two hundred years, he still bitterly resented the loss of her, as he would have resented losing an exquisite antique porcelain vase if Deucalion had smashed that instead of the bride.
    As for Erika Five’s breach of etiquette: She would have to be disciplined. In addition to being a brilliant scientist, Victor was to an equal degree a brilliant disciplinarian.
    All in all, everything was moving along nicely.
    The New Race that he had worked so hard to create with Hitler’s generous financing, the later effort financed by Stalin, a subsequent project in China, those and others had been necessary steps toward the glorious work at the Hands of Mercy. This time, thanks to the billions earned from his legitimate enterprise, Bio-vision, he was able to fund 51 percent of the current project and prevent meddling by minority partners, which included a consortium of South American dictators, the ruler of an oil-rich kingdom eager to replace his restive population with obedient new subjects, and an Internet superbillionaire idiot who believed Victorwas creating a race that did not exhale CO2, as did humans, and would thereby save the planet.
    Soon the tank farms would begin producing thousands of the New Race, and the Old would be on the doorstep of oblivion.
    For every minor setback, there were a hundred major successes. The momentum—and the world—was Victor’s.
    Soon he would be able to live again under his true name, his proud and storied name, and every person in the world would speak it reverently, as believers speak the name of their god with awe:
Frankenstein
.
    When eventually he got out of the spa, he might return to the mirrored meditation room for just a few more minutes.

CHAPTER 20
    CARSON AND MICHAEL SAT in the Honda, near Audubon Park, engine running, headlights on, air conditioner blowing. They were eating the crispy-fried-redfish poor boy and side dishes, their chins greasy, fingers slippery with tartar sauce and cole-slaw dressing, so content with the Acadiana food that the incessant drumming of the rain on the roof began to seem soothing, when Michael said, “Here’s something.”
    Carson looked up from her sandwich and saw him squinting through the sheet of water that shimmered down the windshield and blurred the view. She switched on the wipers.
    Sprinting toward them along the middle of the street—deserted at this hour, in this weather—was a German shepherd, and in pursuit of the dog were a man and a woman, both nude.
    The shepherd raced past the Honda faster thanCarson had ever seen a dog run. Even barefoot, the man and woman were faster than Olympians, as if they were in training to compete in NASCAR without a vehicle. The man’s genitals flapped, the woman’s breasts bounced exuberantly, and their facial expressions were equally ecstatic, as if the dog had promised to lead them to Jesus.
    The dog didn’t bark, but as the two-legged runners passed the Honda, Carson heard them shouting. With the windows closed and rain pummeling the roof, she couldn’t discern what the woman was saying, but the man excitedly shouted something about pizza.
    “Any of our business?” Michael asked.
    “No,” Carson said.
    She raised her poor boy to her mouth, but instead