Consumed by David Cronenberg

felt a twinge of … could it be separation anxiety? Her nest wasn’t busy enough. She slid out of bed and began to gather electronic devices, dumping them on the duvet as she found them. “But you’re not in the air yet. How can they divert you?”
    â€œI diverted myself. I’ll email you the address and stuff.”
    Naomi jumped back under the covers again, the nest reconstructed, ramparts, moats, drawbridges. “What’s going on? Toronto? What, Sunnybrook Hospital?”
    Nathan’s voice went sotto. Paranoia thickened in his brain like Alzheimer’s plaque, as it always did when he got that shiver of a great idea for a piece. “You remember Roiphe’s disease?”
    â€œOh, sure. The thing that killed Wayne Pardeau. But they cracked it, didn’t they? Extincted it. Only samples left in stainless-steel containers. After that, pas grand-chose , as I recall.”
    â€œIn itself, as diseases go, ultimately, pas grand-chose , no. But extinct, also no.”
    â€œYou have a brilliant angle on it?”
    Nathan’s sharp, involuntary intake of breath went unremarked. “Let’s say compelling. I have a compelling angle on it.”
    By now Naomi was on the same pages Nathan had been on—with the Air, not the old MacBook Pro for the moment—and she was looking at Roiphe’s house in Toronto in Google Street View. A freshly built faux chateau, Victorian kitsch pastiche of the worst kind. Oh, well. What did you expect? An old Canadian Jewish doctor with some money. But nice leafy street. “Roiphe’s there, isn’t he? In Toronto. You’re going to see him.”
    Nathan had heard the rustle of Naomi’s keyboard, but out of his inexpressible guilt he wanted to compliment her. “Hey, that’s pretty good for somebody who doesn’t do medical. Try this. Do you know Roiphe’s first name?”
    â€œAre we playing Faster Fingers or are we thinking?” Faster Fingers was their code for supplanting brain/memory with Google Search.
    â€œToo late for the first-name thing, I guess.”
    â€œI’m looking at Barry’s face right now,” said Naomi. “Rabbinical Jimmy Stewart, somehow. Holy Blossom Temple or something in my Toronto past. Do you know Alzheimer’s first name? No fingers.”
    â€œSure: Aloïs. But did you know that Alzheimer’s assistant turns out to be Creutzfeldt of Creutzfeldt-Jakob’s? You know, human mad cow disease? Sort of ?”
    â€œI forgot what you do.”
    Nathan, starting to cook now—and it was in articulating things to Naomi that the cooking really happened, part of their closeness, though he worried it didn’t really work in the opposite direction—edged himself down lower into the lounge’s carpeting, bringing the phone closer to floor level. He didn’t want his lips read. “What happens if this guy, Barry Roiphe, the guy the disease was named after, what if he’s lucky enough to discover another hot disease? Do they call it Roiphe’s 2?”
    â€œThat would be lucky?” Naomi was drifting, fingers of her left hand working the iPad, her right the Air, both all over the net and some juicy SMSs rolling in on the iPhone. The juiciest: “Greetings from Tokyo, Naomi. Here’s the email address you wanted: [email protected] . Let’s talk soon.” The avatar in the message bubble was an actual photo of a pleasant-looking young Japanese woman that was framed like a painting; a little 3D-rendered brass plate at the bottom of the antiqued frame bore the signature “Yours, Yukie.”
    Nathan was himself drifting into an imagined conversation with Dr. Barry Roiphe: “It helps with the research grants if your particular field of study touches a public nerve, don’t you think?”
    â€œIs that it?” said Naomi. “Is that your hook? Roiphe’s 2: The Sequel?” Naomi was never