I don’t like to make a big deal of my birthday, but I still have three iron-clad rules:
- I will have finished a self-portrait and summed up the previous year in one word.
- I will take the day off from work and from doing anything I don’t want to do.
- I will eat cake.
Here’s the thing with cake and myself: neither of my parents were chefs. The food wasn’t terrible, but, they managed to collapse a Betty Crocker recipe every year. We called them Charlie Brown cakes, and I wish I could have one again.
Monday, I posted my portrait, I shuffled around my apartment, nowhere to be, and I had some cake. The rest of the day, I worked on my project. My friend Emily tells me people-watching is addictive, and I’m inclined to believe her. I needed my fix.
Luckily, I had accepted an invitation to the Blood Editors’ Retreat Dinner. The choice of cuisine meant I was having Indian food on my birthday, and I wasn’t paying for it, so happy birthday to me. The best part was that they served entrees tapas-style for sharing. Usually, I just order Tikki Masala (the Official Dish of England), but this dinner introduced me through so many exciting new dishes.
I took my seat at the end of the table, and the two people closest to me were Dr. Mario, an Italian, and Dr. Erica, from Australia. Dr. Mario’s accent was very thick, and the room was so loud as editors caught up and had a good time that I struggled to understand. He is from Pavia, which I’ve heard of, probably through Shakespeare.
Dr. Mario was very interested in where I’m from. I usually tell people I was raised in New Mexico and leave it at that. But that skips over Nebraska, Indiana, New York adjacent, Oklahoma, and Central Jersey, Qatar, etc. I stuck with the Southwest, and he told me how much he loved Ansel Adams.
I’m not entirely sure why I went off on a rant about Italian drivers in the presence of Dr. Mario and the Editor-in-Chief, but I committed to it once I did. “These guys will drive up what are clearly pedestrian walkways,” I said, “where there is not an atom between the car and the wall.” If they were serious about catching Vin Diesel, they’d send Italian cab drivers.
Dr. Erica did not want to talk about work, so she talked about me. These editors are academics and science writers, and they think fiction is magic. When Dr. Erica found out I’d written and (almost) published a novel, she had to tell everyone.
Blood publishes research papers, and when they find one that’s really good, they ask one of the peer reviewers to write a brief commentary on why the paper is worth reading. I tell you this to put some context into the following conversation, which took place among several accents.
“Which one of us is going to write the commentary for his novel then?”
“We can’t publish one in Blood without a hematology angle.”
“Jeremiah says it’s about a werewolf.”
“Do werewolves suck blood?”
“No, that’s vampires.”
“It’s a shame your book couldn’t be about vampires, Jeremiah.”
“Wait. Werewolves turn people into werewolves by biting them.”
“A pathogen then?”
“More of a transfusion.”
“I’m a transfusion specialist. I can write the commentary!”
I do have my limits, and I reached them shortly after the last course. I retreated home to enjoy a second slice of cake before curling up, while Oscar did the same, just out of arm’s reach.
Jeremiah Murphy 