- Say, wouldn't you want a baby?
- Now?
- Yeah … I want to. I want to!
- Two minutes, I put something.
Without waiting, Alban pulls my hand quickly, my sweater goes too big, my shoulder is released, my legs follow me with difficulty.
- Hey there! Slowly!
- Enough, it’s going to close!
I love his words of love.
He pushes me in the elevator. The silent mechanics descend to the center of the earth, where babies are made. I know how babies are made. I know my parents have always lied to me about it.
“It will be necessary to act quickly,” said Alban, ill of love.
It’s romantic, full of tenderness and precipitation. Yes, honey, let’s hurry …
The reception is like a welcome home, that is reassuring. Fortunately, I’m not claustrophobic. We are five floors underground. The center was created on the site of the former car parks. In much better. Everything is made to be pleasant to future parents. The colors, the ambient music, the large armchairs, the plastic plants and the smile of the hostess.
To which Alban answers. I pinch his arm to wake him up.
- It’s for a baby? the hostess asks, addressing mainly to Alban’s eyes.
- Yes, I answer, to bring it back to reality.
The hostess smiles at me with another, more professional smile, and hands me a registration file:
- It will fill this and give it to admission to start the procedure.
I look at Alban to find an answer on his face. He managed to tell me:
- Yes, take this file because we want a baby, is not it, my love!
Admirably summed up by a slight nod. We understand each other very well, I understand it easily, in half-word.
May his will be done. let’s concretize. (I understand myself …)
- Boy or girl?
- Boy!
- Girl!
“In general, we get along well”, I said. Only slight disputes from time to time. As at this moment, for example. But never anything nasty. Alban slice anyway.
- It will be a boy! A guy. A real!
- Uh … you know, if it’s a girl, it’ll be a real one too …
The service geneticist clears her throat to signify her impatience.
- What dose of testosterone do I put?
- Max!
- …
- You will have a gorilla, launches the specialist.
- And what do you do with femininity, Alban? You know that’s what I like about you.
Little stifled laugh of the hostess.
- Exactly, replies Alban. Exactly. It takes a man at home! We must save the family. We must secure the future.
- With a monster swollen with testosterone? How do you see our future? A baby with a bazooka in each hand?
He chases the image of a shrug.
- Immediately the excesses.
- Fifty-fifty? proposes the geneticist.
- Is not it going to make us a hermaphrodite?
- Alban!
- I dunno. I am looking that up. Is not there a risk of twins?
The white woman ignores her question. She focuses again on our sheet.
- And the brain? she asks most seriously of the world.
- Of course, he needs a brain! exclaims Alban.
- I mean: rather straight or rather left?
- ???
She applies to specify:
- The right brain mainly commands the instinct, the imaginary, the feelings; the left is more mathematical, more concrete, more …
- Manly, says Alban.
- We can simplify like that, admits the doctor.
- So, a left brain, slice Alban.
I speak in a small voice:
- With a majority of estrogens, then. If possible.
The geneticist gives me a worried glance and takes note.
- He will love sports and cars, Alban dreams by giving in to a broad smile open to happy prospects.
- Eye color?
“I let you choose,” said Alban to me in nobleman. I look at his, who are deep brown.
- Blues!
- We guarantee an IQ of 120 minimum. Do you want an option?
- An option?
- The elite is between 130 and 150. Beyond, they are geniuses.
She looks at us and analyzes us with fairly sustained attention then concludes:
- In my opinion, 120 should be enough for you.
- Go for a 120, I say. That we come to understand our child, anyway …
- Are you giving it to us fully equipped? Alban asks always pragmatically.
- Absolutely. With the cradle, the pram, a supply of diapers, a stock of dehydrated milk … Unless Madame wants to breastfeed herself … She looks down at my inexistent chest, looking for in the folds of my sweater, makes a grin. Take the options, she advises.
-“That”, it is for personal use only, laughs Alban, with a finesse that no one notices.
- You have 48 hours to think, announces the doctor, closing his file. This is just a start.
-“Preliminaries, so to speak,” said Alban, who, obviously, know what he’s talking about.
The joke will not echo.
The doctor crushes our request under a vigorous stamp. Alban and I bend over the desk to make sure that the sheet containing our desire for pregnancy is not fully pounded. it is seized between two fingers and thrown in a beige plastic basket.
- There you go! You will be able to pass to the levy.
- …
Alban feels his pockets, worried, feverish. We went out so quickly that we forgot to take our test tubes.
We go back home frustrated, dissatisfied. sheepish, Alban apologizes. Me, I stay with a kind of lack.
- I’m sorry, he said cowardly. this is the first time that it happens to me.
- I prepare a pasta dish, I say, turning on the TV.
- Al dente, says Alban.
I know. Last time, they were all soft …
