“Good morning, Dr. Abraham,” he said, hating himself a little for the way he pitched his voice lower. He already had a pretty deep voice; when he talked to Gerald Abraham he sounded like he was auditioning to play Darth Vader. He’d never wanted to get paged so bad in his life, but unless he heard the chime on his phone, he knew he was well and truly stuck. Dr. Abraham was his direct superior in the emergency department, but even if he wasn’t, pretty much everyone in this hospital knew what Will had learned in the eight months since he’d been hired out of his fellowship as an attending physician at this hospital: you could not walk away from this guy, not when he asked you a question. He was five foot six of fifty-six-year-old dead seriousness, with an encyclopedic knowledge of hospital policy and absolutely zero sense of humor.
“A person called Donny, you mentioned?”
Will turned to look down at his boss, but the man was doing what he was usually doing when they stood anywhere together, which is to say: not looking back at him. Unless Will was seated and Dr. Abraham was standing, eye contact in general was a no-go, though Will had learned not to take it personally. Right now Dr. Abraham was staring at the coffee counter with absolutely fixed concentration, but Will knew the truth.
He was waiting on an answer.
“No one important,” Will tried.
“I certainly hope you are not referring to a patient.”
“Certainly not.”
Will drank a too-hot gulp of coffee instead of wincing. In addition to the Vader voice, he also hated the way he always ended up weirdly mimicking Dr. Abraham’s formalities. A lately deceased kinsman, his Abraham-infected brain said, and out of sheer annoyance at his inner voice he blurted, “My dead uncle.”
That almost got the man to turn his head. Instead, he cleared his throat, rocked back on his heels in that way he had. If he did this while you were on the floor, giving orders for meds or settling on a diagnosis, you knew you’d done something he didn’t like, something he’d tell you later was an “unusual choice” or a “departure from our normal procedures.”
Will waited.
“I assume he’s done something pre- or postmortem to deserve this language?”
Where to begin? Will thought. But he only took another sip of his coffee and said, “He left me his apartment.”
Everything in it, too. Near as he could tell, the same brown recliner was still there. It smelled the same, a fact that flooded him with terrible memories of that terrible day. Getting out of there, it’s what had sent him onto the balcony in the first place. Where he’d met the—
“An unusual reason to curse someone,” Abraham said. Janine was handing him his coffee across the counter. Frankly, she looked nervous, too, so Will sent her what he hoped was an I get it smile when Dr. Abraham stepped forward to take it, briefly nodding his thanks. Abraham wasn’t just a know-it-all; he was also bare-minimum polite, a fact that was confirmed when he turned to leave the cafeteria, clearly intending for Will to follow.
And since the man wrote his performance reviews, Will did.
“The apartment is here?” Abraham said, once Will was in step with him again.
Will felt himself clenching his jaw again, his back teeth grinding together, a knee-jerk instinct to shut down this conversation. This was the problem, really. Since he’d gotten the call he’d known he should be thinking about this, the situation with Donny’s estate—paperwork, probate, everything—but instead he’d stayed busy, stayed moving. He stayed late here, or he took an extra shift at the clinic where he worked as a doc-in-the-box on his off days, crowding out the noise that kicked up in his head every time he thought about Donny and his damned apartment. Last night, lying wide awake in his bed, counting the hours until his alarm went off, he’d decided he’d had enough of the ruminating, ridiculous avoidance. He’d taken the shortest of showers, thrown on his scrubs, and made his way to the address he’d been staring at on legal paperwork for more than a week.
He’d been determined to do the practical thing. The responsible thing.
But then there had been that bolting desperation to get out onto the balcony, away from Donny’s things. And ever since, this unruly instinct to keep his mind fixated on a woman whose name he didn’t even know, instead of on the problem at hand. And now, this pressured impulse to shut down a completely innocuous conversation about it?
He was being a fucking child.
“North,” he answered, determinedly. “Up around Logan Square.”
“That would add considerable commuting time each day, but—”
“I can’t live there,” Will said, more sharply than he intended. He thought of the mustard wallpaper, the unnerving, possibly haunted wall sconces, the messy detritus of Donny’s life. “I need to get rid of it.”
“My sister is a Realtor,” Abraham said, clearly unfazed by Will’s tone. Probably because ninety-three percent of his own sentences were delivered sharply. Once Will had seen Dr. Abraham tell a crying, concussed twelve-year-old that football was a “fool’s sport.”
“The terms of the will say I need to keep it for a year.”
Abraham cocked his head, his brow furrowing. “Odd, that. Is it legal? You know, my brother is a lawyer.”
How many conveniently employed siblings did this man have? Will figured he’d better not bring up his recent insomnia, or else he’d be learning about a sleep therapist sister next. He also better not mention the fact that he’d briefly entertained the idea that the woman he’d had a conversation with at four thirty this morning had also been the girl who’d thrown tomatoes at his head one summer day sixteen years ago.
That’d mean a regular therapist sister, probably.
“I spoke to a lawyer. He said I could contest it while it’s in probate, but that might end up delaying things even more.”
I’ll bet you a hundred bucks you end up keeping it the twelve months, the attorney had said, blustering and genial. Donny loved that apartment. Will was pretty sure that couldn’t be true, and that was before he’d even seen the place.
It couldn’t be true because he didn’t think Donny could love anything.
He thought of the stray cats, felt another spike of anger. What an insult.
They turned a corner down the long hallway that would lead them back to the ED, and out of habit, Will’s pace increased. The ED was like that, sort of a speed vortex, even when not all that much was going on. You got close to it, you moved faster, your attention necessarily pulled to whatever problem was right in front of you. Will had always liked that about it.
But then Dr. Abraham stopped.
So Will stopped, too. They were, obviously, still standing, so no eye contact allowed. They both simply stared at those double doors, like they were preparing to storm a castle.
“My ex-wife,” Abraham began, and Will almost, almost laughed. Another relative, Jesus. This was an extremely unre-latable area for Will personally.
“She owns three apartments in this city.”
Will raised his eyebrows. Must be nice. Up until a few days ago, he owned exactly zero apartments, and hadn’t planned to until he’d paid off some more of his truly astronomical student loan debt. Before he’d learned about this twelve-month condition, the best thing he could say about inheriting Donny’s apartment was that selling it would at least help him put a sizable dent in his monthly bill from the federal government. It still would, he guessed, but not soon enough.
“Short-term rentals, all of them. She’s quite successful.”
Will looked over then, something about Abraham’s tone less pedantic than usual. The man was smoothing the lapel of his white coat, and for one second—not even one second, probably not even half a second—he looked entirely unsure of himself.
Odd, that, Will thought, Abraham-echoing. He took another sip of coffee, wondered if Janine had accidentally given him decaf.
“That’s—” he began, once he’d swallowed, but it was clear this was the kind of conversation where he was not supposed to participate
with actual replies, because Abraham talked over him.
“She uses a website. It seems that once one gets the units up and running, they rather pay for themselves. And they must require very little intervention. She travels a lot.”
There was that lapel-smoothing again. Abraham was the only doctor in the ED who even wore the white coat with any regularity, which up until this minute Will had always chalked up to the man’s pathological insistence on something he called “professional rectitude.” But clearly there was also a lapel-smoothing pathology happening, too.
It was a good idea, a short-term rental. He’d stayed in a few during his fourth year of med school, four weeks at a time at various programs where he’d done his acting internships. But those places had been bland and sterile, the furniture inside neutral and inoffensive, the hallways outside entirely absent of dangly chandeliers and cherubic sconces and textured wallpaper.
He thought of the woman on the balcony again, felt that stubborn hiccup in his heart.
“I’ll call her for you,” Abraham said.
Will blinked. “Wait, who?”
Abraham broke the no eye-contact rule to look over and up at him, his expression annoyed. “My ex-wife,” he snapped.
“Right,” Will said, the back of his neck heating. “My apologies.”
My apologies, Christ. He pushed up his glasses. It was a good idea, the short-term rental. Maybe exactly the right idea. It was absolutely more productive than insomnia, or than thinking compulsively about ten minutes of conversation with a woman who’d made him feel like a teenager.
“It couldn’t hurt to take a phone call,” Abraham said. He was using his full-on “professional rectitude” voice, which meant Will was taking too long to answer.
“No,” he said finally. “It couldn’t.”
A phone call was the least of it.
At the end of his shift, Will was back in the cafeteria, sitting across from a small, brightly clothed woman who’d introduced herself as “Sally no-longer-Abraham” and who preferred hugs to handshakes as a form of greeting. She was a day and a half away from a two-week Caribbean vacation, and despite Will’s insistence in their initial phone call—during which Dr. Abraham had stayed unnervingly close—that there was nothing urgent about his situation, she’d insisted on an in-person meeting.
“Time is money!” she’d said, assuring Will that she loved nothing more than “talking about the biz.”
And based on the way this meeting had gone so far, that was . . . absolutely true.
She had not stopped.
Sally’s three units were all in Wicker Park: a basement apartment on North Elk Grove, quiet but close to a bunch of shops on Milwaukee; one on West Le Moyne; a “problem child” for its window AC and its unreliable building elevator; and finally, her prized showpiece, a loft on Western Avenue with free parking and a per-night price that soared in the summertime. She had pictures of each one on her tablet, queued up on the rental website she used and ready for Will’s inspection, and as he swiped through, she provided commentary that could only be described as thorough. Will now knew where she’d gotten every carefully chosen area rug; he also now knew, incidentally, about the incredibly detailed thought processes Sally had for placement of said area rugs. He might not have needed to know about the area rug placement, but he appreciated it, all the detail. Already he felt invested in this idea, focused on it.
But he was still harboring some doubts, especially when Sally handed the tablet over so that he could scroll through the truly impressive number of five-star reviews she’d racked up on each unit, even the window AC one. As Will scanned the all-caps parade of them (“AMAZING!” “CHARMING!” “STEPS FROM THE BLUE LINE!”), he started to feel guilty, as though it was his fault that there was such a gigantic, insurmountable gap between Donny’s apartment and the ones Sally was so deservedly proud to show him.
He felt like he was about to break bad news to a patient.
He set down the tablet, cleared his throat.
“The thing is,” he said, while she paged through a neon-pink three-ring binder she’d brought along, “the place I have . . . it’s not in as good of shape as what you’re showing me here. It needs a lot of work.”
Sally waved a hand, used the other to reach over the binder to take the tablet back. “That’s easy. I’ve got names of contractors out the wazoo, and they’re loyal to me. You could have it fixed up before I get back from sunning myself in paradise!”
He shifted in his chair, the bad-news-breaking feeling even heavier now.
“That’s probably not in the cards,” he said, trying to keep his voice light. He couldn’t blame her for thinking that hiring a bunch of contractors to do speedy work would be easy for him. A lot of people thought doctors wiped their asses with money, and Will guessed some of them probably did. But that was so far from his own experience it was almost comical. “I wouldn’t have a lot of start-up costs for something like this.”
Sally looked up at him, fixed him with a problem-solving stare. Will thought the contractors were probably a little afraid of her, in addition to being loyal. He almost wished Dr. Abraham had come down to this meeting, too. It might’ve been nice to see the guy get put in his place, for once.
“Do you have time? Because time is almost as good as money when it comes to something like this. My places”—she tapped at the tablet with her index finger—“they look sharp now, but they didn’t always.”
She turned the tablet, showing a picture from her personal photo gallery—the cluttered living room of what he thought was the North Elk Grove place. It looked dark and neglected, the furniture sagging and the walls stained. It looked . . . not all that different from Donny’s place.
Sally swiped once, revealed the same room, freshly painted, light-colored furniture in a different arrangement.
“Bright walls and sturdy slipcovers did a lot for this one. After a while I started to turn enough profit that I could do more, but at first it was only me and my elbow grease.”
“It’s impressive,” Will said, focusing on the photo, imagining the truly outrageous elbow grease this must’ve taken. He didn’t even know what a slipcover was. Well, he didn’t mind hard work. And not minding it meant he was basically a workaholic, so he had a lot of personal leave stacked up. He could probably swing two full weeks. Maybe not before Sally’s vacation was over, but still. He could get the job done.
He reached out a finger, swiped back, and then forward again. He liked it, seeing this transformation. He absolutely didn’t relish spending two weeks in Donny’s apartment, going through all his things, but something about this—the stripping of it, the sanitizing of it, the starting-over feel of it—appealed to him. Two weeks to everything in that apartment boxed up and out of sight, out of mind. Two weeks to money in his pocket and a countdown started to this ridiculous condition’s end date. Two weeks to Donny being nearly nothing to him.
Two weeks was so much more manageable than twelve months.
“What about the registration?” he asked, intent now. He’d done a little reading when he had lulls in the action today. The site Sally used was locally owned, Chicago-specific, and for that reason it had a better reputation around here than the huge, international short-term rental sites that had run afoul of pretty much every building code in this city. But Will had skimmed a few Trib articles that’d suggested there’d been no shortage of attempts to block their licensing process, too.
“I’ve got an in on that, too,” she said, shrugging. “And if the association hasn’t already put itself on the prohibited-buildings list, they can’t do it once you’ve put in for the registration.”
She tapped her chin, her brow furrowing. “You said your place needs a lot of work, but what about the rest of the building? Has it been fixed up?”
Will snorted, thinking of the wallpaper. “God, no.”
But as soon as he said it, he felt oddly guilty. Not unlike the feeling of being watched by sentient, cherubic wall sconces.
Or by a woman on a third-floor balcony.
He shifted in his seat, frustrated. He’d been doing so well the past few hours, putting her out of his head, focusing on the right thing about this whole disaster. He did not have the time or inclination to be distracted. He did not have the time to be who he’d been this morning. He had to be responsible. To focus.
“That’s good, in terms of bylaws,” Sally said. “If the building’s neglected, their documents probably are, too.”
“I wouldn’t say neglected, exactly,” he said, for no good reason. He had no idea about the bylaws; they were in the same pile as all the other documents he’d taken with him from the attorney’s office. But still, he had that guilty feeling again.
Sally ignored him, picking up the tablet again.
“What’s the address?”
He rattled it off without thinking, then furrowed his brow as she tapped away. “What are you looking up there?”
“I’m seeing if any LLCs are already listed as unit owners. If so, it’s almost certain you won’t be the first to do a short-term rental.”
“You can see that?”
“Cook County website,” she said, tap tap tapping. She frowned. “Hmm.”
That didn’t sound great.
“Privately owned, all of them. That’s a bummer, but it’s not the worst thing. My place on Western was like that when I bought in. You’ll probably have to do some campaigning.”
Campaigning. He had a vision of himself in the now-treeless backyard, staring up at that third-floor balcony. His heart hiccupping, his hands full of half-eaten tomatoes.
But that was ridiculous, because he wasn’t that kid anymore.
And anyway: It. Wasn’t. Her.
“Have you had any contact with anyone in the building?” Sally asked.
He coughed. “Uh. Briefly. I spoke to a woman on the third floor this morning.” During the golden hour, his brain supplied, unhelpfully.
“Hey, no,” Will said, once he realized Sally had gone back to typing. Looking for an LLC, that was one thing. It didn’t feel right to get details about individual people who lived in the building this way, let alone about the woman on the balcony. “You don’t have to—”
Love at First Page 4