by Harlan Coben
When I came back, Zia and I set up One World, and we were on our way. I love what I do. Perhaps our work is like an extreme sport, but it also has a very—pardon the pun—human face. I like that. I love my patients and yet I love the calculating distance, the necessary coldness, of what I do. I care about my patients so much, but then they are gone—intense love mixed with fleeting commitment.
Today’s patient presented us with a rather complicated challenge. My patron saint—the patron saint of many in reconstructive surgery—is the French researcher René LeFort. LeFort tossed cadavers off a tavern roof onto their skulls to see the natural pattern of fracture lines in the face. I bet this impressed the ladies. Today we name certain fractures for him—more specifically, LeFort type I, LeFort type II, LeFort type III. Zia and I checked the films again. The Water view gave us the best look, but the Caldwell and lateral backed it up.
Simply put, the fracture line on this eight-year-old was a LeFort type III, causing a complete separation of the facial bones and the cranium. I could pretty much rip off the boy’s face like a mask if I wanted to.
“Car accident?” I asked.
Zia nodded. “Father was drunk.”
“Don’t tell me. He’s fine, right?”
“He even remembered to put on his own seat belt.”
“But not his son’s.”
“Too much trouble. What with him being tired from raising a glass so many times.”
Zia and I started our life’s journey in two very different places. Like the Stories’ classic seventies song “Brother Louie,” Zia is black as the night while I am whiter than white (my skin tone, as described by Zia: “underwater fish belly”). I was born at Beth Israel Hospital in Newark and grew up on the suburban streets of Kasselton, New Jersey. Zia was born in a mud hut in a village outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Sometime during the reign of Papa Doc, her parents became political prisoners. No one knows too many details. Her father was executed. Her mother, when released, was damaged goods. She grabbed her daughter and escaped on what might liberally be dubbed a raft. Three passengers died on the journey. Zia and her mother survived. They made their way to the Bronx where they took up residence in the basement of a beauty parlor. The two spent their days quietly sweeping hair. The hair, it seemed to Zia, was inescapable. It was on her clothes, clinging to her skin, in her throat, in her lungs. She lived forever with that feeling that a stray strand was in her mouth and she couldn’t quite pull it out. To this day, when Zia gets nervous, her fingers play with her tongue, as though trying to pluck out a memento of her past.
When the surgery was over, Zia and I collapsed onto a bench. Zia untied her surgical mask and let it fall to her chest.
“Piece of cake,” she said.
“Amen,” I agreed. “How did your date go last night?”
“It sucked,” she said. “And I don’t mean that literally.”
“Sorry.”
“Men are such scum.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“I’m getting so desperate,” she said, “I’m thinking of sleeping with you again.”
“Gasp,” I said. “Woman, have you no standards?”
Her smile was blinding, the bright white against the dark skin. She was a shade under six feet tall with smooth muscles and cheekbones so high and sharp you feared they might pierce her skin. “When are you going to start dating?” she asked.
“I date.”
“I mean, long enough to have a sexual encounter.”
“Not all women are easy as you, Zia.”
“Sad,” she said, giving my arm a playful punch.
Zia and I slept together once—and we both knew that it would never happen again. It was how we met. We hooked up during my first year of medical school. Yep, a one-night stand. I have had my fair share of one-night stands, but only two have been memorable. The first led to disaster. The second—this one—led to a relationship I will cherish forever.
It was eight o’clock at night by the time we got out of our scrubs. We took Zia’s car, a tiny thing called a BMW Mini, to the Stop & Shop on Northwood Avenue and picked up some groceries. Zia chatted without letup as we wheeled carts down the aisles. I liked when Zia talked. It gave me energy. At the deli counter Zia pulled a call number. She looked at the specials board and frowned.
“What?” I said.
“Boar’s Head ham on sale.”
“What about it?”
“Boar’s Head,” she repeated. “What marketing genius came up with that name? ‘Say, I have an idea. Let’s name our premium cold cuts after the most disgusting animal imaginable. No, check that. Let’s name it after its head.’ ”
“You always order it,” I said.
She thought about it. “Yeah, I guess.”
We moved to the checkout line. Zia put her stuff up front. I placed the divider down and unloaded my cart. A portly cashier began to ring up her items.
“You hungry?” she asked me.
I shrugged. “Guess I could go for a couple of slices at Garbo’s.”
“Let’s do it.” Zia’s eyes drifted over my shoulder and then jerked to a stop. She squinted and something crossed her face. “Marc?”
“Yeah.”
She waved it off. “Nah, can’t be.”
“What?”
Still staring over my shoulder, Zia gestured with her chin. I turned slowly and when I saw her, I felt it in my chest.
“I’ve only seen her in pictures,” Zia said, “but isn’t that . . . ?”
I managed a nod.
It was Rachel.
The world closed in around me. It shouldn’t feel this way. I knew that. We had broken up years ago. Now, after all this time, I should be smiling. I should feel something wistful, a passing nostalgia, a poignant remembrance of a time when I was young and naïve. But no, that was not what was going on here. Rachel stood ten yards away and it all flooded back. What I felt was a still-too-powerful yearning, a longing that tore through me, that made both the love and heartbreak feel fresh and alive.
“You okay?” Zia said.
Another nod.
Are you one of those who believe that we all have one true soul mate—one and only one preordained love? There, across three Stop & Shop checkout lanes and under a sign readingEXPRESS LANE —15ITEMS OR LESS , stood mine.
Zia said, “I thought she got married.”
“She did,” I said.
“No ring.” Then Zia punched my arm. “Oooh, this is exciting, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Exhilaration city.”
Zia snapped her fingers. “Hey, you know what this is like? That crappy old album you used to play. The song about meeting the old lover in the grocery store. What’s the name of it?”
The first time I’d seen Rachel, when I was a lad of nineteen years, the effect was relatively gentle. There was no big boom. I’m not even sure that I found her overly attractive. But as I’d soon learn, I like a woman whose looks grow on you. You start off thinking, Okay, she’s pretty decent looking, and then, a few days later, maybe it’s something she says or the way she tilts her head when she says it, but then, wham, it’s like getting hit by a bus.
It felt like that again now. Rachel had changed but not by much. The years had made that sneaky beauty harden maybe, more brittle and angled. She was thinner. Her dark blue-black hair was pulled back and tied into a ponytail. Most men like the hair down. I’ve always liked it tied back, the openness and exposure of it, I guess, especially with Rachel’s cheekbones and neck. She wore jeans and a gray blouse. Her hazel eyes were down, her head bent in that pose of concentration I knew so well. She had not seen me yet.
“ ‘Same Old Lang Syne,’ ” Zia said.
“What?”
“The song about the lovers in the grocery store. By Dan Somebody. That’s the title. ‘Same Old Lang Syne.’ ” Then she added: “I think that’s the title.”
Rachel reached into her wallet and plucked out a twenty. She began to hand it to the cashier. H
er gaze lifted—and that was when she saw me.
I can’t say exactly what crossed her face. She did not look surprised. Our eyes met, but I did not see joy there. Fear, perhaps. Maybe resignation. I don’t know. I also don’t know how long we both stood there like that.
“Maybe I should move away from you,” Zia whispered.
“Huh?”
“If she thinks you’re with a chick this hot, she’ll conclude that she has no chance.”
I think I smiled.
“Marc?”
“Yeah.”
“The way you’re standing like that. Gaping like a total whack job. It’s a little scary.”
“Thanks.”
I felt her hand push on my back. “Go over and say hello.”
My feet started moving, though I don’t remember the brain issuing any commands. Rachel let the cashier bag her groceries. She stepped toward me and tried to smile. Her smile had always been spectacular, the kind that makes you think of poetry and spring showers, a dazzler that can change your day. This smile, however, was not like that. It was tighter. It was pained. And I wondered if she was holding back or if she could no longer smile like she used to, if something had dimmed the wattage permanently.
We stopped a yard away from each other, neither sure if the proper protocol called for a hug, a kiss, a handshake. So we did none of the above. I stood there and felt the hurt everywhere.
“Hi,” I said.
“Good to see you still have all the smooth lines, ” Rachel replied.
I feigned a rakish grin. “Hey, baby, what’s your sign?”
“Better,” she said.
“Come here often?”
“Good. Now say, ‘Haven’t we met before?’ ”
“Nah.” I arched an eyebrow. “No way I’d forget meeting a foxy lady like you.”
We both laughed. We were both trying too hard. We both knew it.
“You look good,” I said.
“So do you.”
Brief silence.
“Okay,” I said, “I’m out of uncomfortable clichés and forced banter.”
“Whew,” Rachel said.
“Why are you here?”
“I’m buying food.”
“No, I mean—”
“I know what you meant,” she interrupted. “My mother moved into a condo development in West Orange.”
A few of the strands had escaped her ponytail and fell across her face. It took all my willpower to stop from pushing them away.
Rachel glanced away and then back at me. “I heard about your wife and daughter,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“I wanted to call or write but . . .”
“I heard you got married,” I said.
She wiggled the fingers on her left hand. “Not anymore.”
“And that you were an agent with the FBI.”
Rachel put her hand back down. “Also not anymore.”
More silence. Again I don’t know how long we stood there. The cashier had moved on to the next shopper. Zia came up behind us. She cleared her throat and jammed her hand toward Rachel. “Hi, I’m Zia Leroux,” she said.
“Rachel Mills.”
“Good to meet you, Rachel. I’m Marc’s practice partner.” Then, thinking about it, she added: “We’re just friends.”
“Zia,” I said.
“Oh, right, sorry. Look, Rachel, I’d love to stay and chat, but I have to run.” She jerked her thumb toward the exit to emphasize the point. “You two talk. Marc, I’ll meet you back here later. Great meeting you, Rachel.”
“Same here.”
Zia rushed off. I shrugged. “She’s a great doctor.”
“I bet she is.” Rachel took hold of her cart. “I have someone waiting in the car, Marc. It was good seeing you.”
“You too.” But surely, with all I’d lost, I must have learned something, right? I couldn’t just let her go. I cleared my throat and said, “Maybe we should get together.”
“I’m still living in Washington. I head back tomorrow.”
Silence. My insides turned to jelly. My breathing was shallow.
“Good-bye, Marc,” Rachel said. But those hazel eyes were wet.
“Don’t go yet.”
I tried to keep the pleading out of my voice, but I don’t think I was successful. Rachel looked at me, and she saw everything. “What do you want me to say here, Marc?”
“That you want to get together too.”
“That’s all?”
I shook my head. “You know that’s not all.”
“I’m not twenty-one anymore.”
“Neither am I.”
“The girl you loved is dead and gone.”
“No,” I said. “She’s right in front of me.”
“You don’t know me anymore.”
“So let’s get reacquainted. I’m not in a rush.”
“Just like that?”
I tried to smile. “Yeah.”
“I live in Washington. You live in New Jersey.”
“So I’ll move,” I said.
But even before the impetuous words came out, even before Rachel made that face, I could recognize my own false bravado. I couldn’t just leave my parents or dump my business with Zia or—or abandon my ghosts. Somewhere between my lips and her ears the sentiment crashed and burned.
Rachel turned to leave then. She did not say good-bye again. I watched her push the cart toward the door. I saw it automatically swing open with an electric grunt. I saw Rachel, the love of my life, disappear again without so much as a backward glance. I stayed still. I did not follow her. I felt my heart tumble and shatter, but I did nothing to stop her.
Maybe I hadn’t learned anything, after all.
chapter 10
I drank.
I am not a big drinker—pot had been my elixir of choice during my younger days—but I found an old bottle of gin in a cabinet over the sink. There was tonic in the fridge. I have an automatic icemaker in the freezer. You do the math.
I still lived in the old Levinsky house. It is much too big for me, but I don’t have the heart to let it go. It feels like a portal now, a lifeline (albeit a fragile one) to my daughter. Yes, I know how that sounds, but selling it now would be like closing a door on her. I can’t do that.
Zia wanted to stay with me, but I begged off. She did not push it. I thought about the corny Dan Fogelberg (not Dan Somebody) song where the old lovers talk until their tongues get tired. I thought about Bogie questioning the gods who would allow Ingrid Bergman into his, of all possible, gin joints. Bogie drank after she left. It seemed to help him. Maybe it would help me too.
The fact that Rachel could still pack this kind of wallop annoyed the hell out of me. It was stupid and childish really. Rachel and I had first met during summer break between my sophomore and junior years of college. She was from Middlebury, Vermont, and supposedly a distant cousin of Lenny’s wife, Cheryl, though no one could ascertain the exact relationship. That summer—the summer of all summers—Rachel stayed with Cheryl’s family because Rachel’s folks were going through a nasty divorce. We were introduced, and like I said before, it took some time for the bus to smack into me. Maybe that’s what made it all the more potent when it did.
We began to date. We doubled a lot with Lenny and Cheryl. The four of us spent every weekend at Lenny’s summer house on the Jersey shore. It was indeed a glorious summer, the kind of summer everyone should experience at least once in a lifetime.
If this were a movie, we’d be cueing up the montage music. I went to Tufts University while Rachel was starting out at Boston College. First scene of the montage, well, they’d probably have us on a boat on the Charles, me paddling, Rachel holding a parasol, her smile tentative then mocking. She’d splash me and then I’d splash her and then the boat would tip. It never happened, but you get the point. Next maybe there would be a picnic scene on campus, a shot of us studying in the library, our bodies entwined on a couch, me staring mesmerized as Rachel reads
from her textbook, her glasses on, absentmindedly tucking a hair behind her ear. The montage would probably close on two bodies tussling under a white satin sheet, even though no college student uses satin sheets. Still, I’m thinking cinematic here.
I was in love.
During one Christmas break, we visited Rachel’s grandmother, a card-carrying yenta from the old school, in a nursing home. The old woman took both our hands in hers and declared usbeshert which is a Yiddish word that means predestined or fated.
So what happened?
Our ending was not an uncommon one. We were young, I guess. During my senior year, Rachel decided that she wanted to spend a semester in Florence. I was twenty-two. I got pissed off and while she was away, I slept with another woman—a one-night stand with a featureless coed from Babson. It meant absolutely nothing. I understand that makes it no better, but maybe it should. I don’t know.
Anyway, someone at the party told someone else and eventually it got back to Rachel. She called me from Italy and broke it off, just like that, which I saw as something of an overreaction. Like I said, we were young. At first, I was too proud (read: too stupid) to beg and then, when I started soaking in the repercussions, I called and wrote letters and sent flowers. Rachel never responded. It was over. We were done.
I stood and stumbled to my desk. I fished out the key I had taped under the credenza and unlocked the bottom drawer. I lifted off the files and found my secret stash underneath. No, not drugs. The past. Rachel things. I found the familiar photo and pulled it into view. Lenny and Cheryl still have this picture in their den, which had, understandably enough, angered Monica to no end. It was a photograph of the four of us—Lenny, Cheryl, Rachel, and I—at a formal during my senior year. Rachel is wearing a spaghetti-strap black dress and the thought of the way it clung to her shoulders still takes my breath away.
A long time ago.
I’ve moved on, of course. Per my life plan, I went to medical school. I always knew that I wanted to be a doctor. Most doctors I know will tell you the same. It is rarely a decision you come to late.