The Antidote for Everything

by Kimmery Martin

  “Sure,” they both said. Georgia shifted her balance. “Everything’s good.”

  McLean took a slight step backward, hands jammed into his pockets. “I’m meeting some people for lunch. Catch you guys later?”

  Georgia gave him a dude-punch on the shoulder. “If you hear anything else,” she said, careful to keep her voice light, “about any of that, will you tell me?”

  “Of course.” With a polite nod to Darby, he walked away.

  Darby regarded Georgia with a bright look. “Hear anything else about what?”

  Georgia watched the little cowlick at the back of McLean’s head recede through the crush of conference-goers until it vanished from view. “Nothing,” she said, shifting her attention to Darby. “Let’s go.”

  They walked through the large central corridor of the hotel to the lobby and out through the main doors to the street, where the clattering sounds of pedestrians and cyclists and even a few cars filled the air. Darby made polite, innocuous conversation as they walked, not requiring much in the way of response, so Georgia’s mind drifted to Jonah. She pictured his intense black eyes and crazy hair and his unending variety of facial expressions, and it struck her again: she’d been a crappy friend. She should have texted him back more often. She should have tried harder to reach him instead of wallowing around in a moony trance over a man.

  “Aren’t you friends with Jonah Tsukada?”

  Georgia almost stopped dead in her tracks. Was Darby a mind reader? “Why do you say that?”

  “Have you talked to him since you’ve been here?”

  “Not really,” Georgia admitted. “Do you know him? Why are you asking?”

  “I do know him. Sometimes we have mutual patients. And I’m asking because”—Darby brandished her cell phone—“there’s an article about him in the paper.”

  “There’s what?”

  She nodded, searching the phone, eventually landing on the website for the Post and Courier, Charleston’s newspaper. Georgia had to resist the urge to snatch the phone from her hand as she read the headline: Patients Involved in Dispute with Local Clinic. The gist of the story, while somewhat muddled, was this: several patients had written the health reporter for the paper, complaining that they’d received letters telling them they needed to find a new primary care doctor somewhere else.

  This would have been a nonissue—there were lots of legitimate reasons a healthcare provider might ask a patient to seek care elsewhere— except for one thing. The doctor in question, Dr. Jonah Tsukada, was not leaving his practice, was not overscheduled, and in fact, when contacted, claimed to have had no involvement in sending the letters.

  The patients weren’t leaving of their own volition.

  They were being told to leave.

  “I’ve been hearing some rumors about Jonah,” said Darby.

  Her tone held the hesitancy of someone congenitally unable to say anything that could be construed as negative. From what little Georgia knew of her life, it seemed conventional and comfortable. She had three little daughters and an adorable husband and a beautiful home situated at the end of a long tunnel of Southern oaks, their ancient old arms stretched across a roadway encrusted with heaping tendrils of Spanish moss. On their runs, she’d spoken enthusiastically of subjects of little familiarity to Georgia: potty training, the Junior League, her volunteer efforts at the same fundamentalist megachurch that had founded their medical clinic.

  Georgia stopped walking. “Tell me what you’ve heard.” A stray gust of wind rattled along the sidewalk, whipping their hair into their faces. Across the street, a swinging sign on a shop caught the wind too, flapping back and forth like a great black bird beating its wings.

  “I heard . . .” She hesitated, an uncomfortable grimace on her face. “I heard there’s some kind of investigation of him.”

  “You don’t know details?”

  She shook her head. “The guy I heard it from didn’t mention any specifics.”

  “Who?”

  “It was one of the doctors on the executive committee at the clinic. Donovan Wright; do you know him?”

  Everything around Georgia—the cobblestone street and the painted doorways and the gray, portentous sky—entered a state of suspended animation, dimming and blurring at the mention of Donovan Wright. She stood frozen for a second or a century or who knew how long until she roused herself with a mental slap.

  Scanning the street, she grabbed Darby’s arm. “I’m hungry,” she said, nodding in the direction of a little pub or something that appeared to be a possible food source on the opposite corner. “Want to try over there?”

  If Darby was surprised by the abrupt change of subject, she didn’t show it. “Of course,” she said with good grace. “I’m hungry too.”

  7

  THE SEVEN STAGES OF GRIEF

  After lunch, Georgia made her way back to Mark’s flat, finding it clean and sunny and empty, the gauzy curtains standing sentinel at the windows like a set of tall gossamer angels. It was hushed in here; no mechanical humming or clocks ticking, no voices rippling across the still air. The thick walls of the old house blocked any sound from the street; not that there was much of that anyway. The Jordaan was a quiet part of town, less plagued than other areas by raucous red-lighting college boys or stoned tourists, but now the serenity of the place irritated her.

  Jonah’s last email, text, and phone call had all been more than twenty-four hours ago. He was not responding to messages. She thought again of the newspaper article and felt a dangerous pressure building up in her bloodstream, but she didn’t know what to do to release it. She kicked at one of the beautiful dining chairs and stubbed her toe. Here she was, primed for action, and stuck with nothing to attack except a herd of smug Danish modern sling-back chairs the color of a polished acorn.

  She drifted to the kitchen, where a bottle of bourbon rested on the counter, a red bow intact around its neck. Perhaps Mark had bought it for her. Rooting around in the cabinets, she extracted a crystal glass and added a few cubes of ice, enjoying the civilized little clink of the ice against the glass. The amber wash of the whiskey swirled against the curves of the cup, lit by a beam of sun from the tall windows opposite the kitchen.

  She wasn’t normally a daytime drinker, but what the hell. She’d just carried her glass over to a massive furry beanbag across the room when the door to the flat opened: Mark. He wore a perfectly fitted charcoal suit, paired with a sharp-edged white shirt and a ruby-red tie, his face shining with a kind of calm vitality she’d come to recognize as his default expression. He looked happy.

  “Georgia!” he said, and then, taking in her face, “What’s wrong?”

  “Come over here,” she said, downing her shot. He crossed to her and flopped onto the chair, redistributing the contents of the beanbag so she suddenly shot upward a few inches, prompting her to emit a startled squawk. “That was fun,” she said. “Do it again.”

  Obligingly, he started to stand, but she put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him into her. He smelled like safety: clean and somehow strong. “This looks so uncomfortable,” she said, unraveling the knot of his tie and pulling it free. She unbuttoned his suit jacket and the top few buttons of his shirt, and then, with escalating urgency, the rest of the buttons. She’d dressed today in a slippery one-piece halter pantsuit with a silk scarf tied at her neck, and she inhaled in a rush as Mark reached a hand toward her throat and untied the scarf. She had to clench her teeth to keep her mouth from falling open as a sudden surge of heat flooded her face. Mark traced her lips with his finger and then pulled the length of silk from her neck.

  “Let’s have some fun with this,” he said.

  * * *

  —

  After, she lay in bed with her head on Mark’s bare chest, her hair snaking down his abdomen in a mess of flaming streaks and whorls. He stroked her back with his free arm, staring up at the
ceiling, where a wide-bladed fan spun in lazy revolutions.

  “Have you ever noticed that in every Hollywood sex scene ever, there’s always a slow-moving fan in the postcoital wrap-up shot? All we need is a cigarette and some sultry music.”

  She smiled.

  He smiled back but then turned serious, raising a lock of her hair and wrapping it around his finger. He twirled it a few times and let it fall. “What happened to upset you today?” he asked quietly.

  She could see her phone from here: still nothing from Jonah. She didn’t know if she had the energy to answer Mark; the combination of the adrenaline-fueled conversations at the conference and her solitary whiskey-fueled rumination and the sex-fueled romp with Mark had left her in a state of dreamy, depleted lassitude. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “It’s okay; you don’t have to talk,” he said, stroking her back again. “But the offer stands: I’ll listen anytime you need it.”

  “Thank you.” She closed her eyes, then raised her head, confused: the light in the room had changed. It took a moment to realize she must have fallen asleep. The warm air, the soft whir of the fan, the soporific effects of the bourbon and the sex; all of them had combined to lull her into unconsciousness.

  She was alone in the bed. Mark stood, his back to her, reaching for his clothes. “Where—” she croaked. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Where are you going?”

  He turned and smiled; a beam of light falling across the bed caught him flush in the face. “Hey, Sleeping Beauty.”

  “Sorry about that. It’s been a thousand years since I had an afternoon nap.”

  “I wish I could stay with you. I have meetings for the rest of the afternoon, and then a dinner with an investor. I could meet you after, for a drink or dessert, if you want.” He eyed her. “Although maybe you don’t need any more to drink.”

  She laughed. “Thank you for the bourbon.” She could see the bottle from here, a bottle of Colonel E.H. Taylor, still wearing its jaunty ribbon. “I love this brand. How did you know?”

  “The day we met, you asked the server in that bar in Frankfurt if they had it.”

  “It was my dad’s favorite.” She squinted at the label. “It’s not easy to find, even in the States; it’s kind of obscure unless you’re a hard-core aficionado.”

  Mark stopped dressing and sat down on the bed. “You mention your dad a lot,” he said.

  “My dad was the best,” she said. “He raised me in this literature-soaked nirvana where all I did was drift around the campus where he taught. I read a book a day and I had hidey-holes all over the university where I stored my treasures, and my dad and I ate the same meal for dinner every night for ten years because neither of us liked cooking, and no one made us cook, so we didn’t. But then—my dad died, and in college, I had to get a job to support myself.”

  Mark’s voice was quiet. “What happened to him?”

  She looked past him. “He died of bladder cancer,” she said.

  Mark picked up her hand and she remembered she’d told him her selection of urology had been a process of exclusion, as if she’d randomly stumbled upon it instead of pursuing it as part of a deliberate plan to attack an enemy. He gripped her fingers tighter, enclosing her entire hand inside his large one.

  “And your mother?”

  Georgia didn’t know what had happened to her mother—she’d disappeared when Georgia was little—but she wasn’t in the mood to out herself as an orphan. The only person who knew the story of her mother was Jonah.

  “She’s not in the picture,” she said, “and so I lived with my dad until he died.”

  She waited, afraid Mark would start hammering her with questions about her mother, but instead he traced a line from her fingertips up her arm to her shoulder and down to her chest, alighting just at the apex of her heart. “Take off another week and stay with me. Come with me to Munich.”

  Returning to reality sounded about as appealing as bathing in a tub of raw sewage. For a fleeting moment Georgia considered it: blowing off her responsibilities and extending her vacation. But she had to return, and even more than that, she didn’t want to get too happy.

  “Look—” She stretched out an arm, inadvertently striking him in the chest. “I’d love to. But I can’t.”

  “So,” said Mark, standing and reaching once again for his pants. “That’s a no for Munich?”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  Spurred by a sense of atonement, she made her way around the bed to where he stood, wordlessly working her way up his shirt buttons in a reverse striptease until they were all closed. Meeting his eyes, she tucked his shirt into his pants and slid his belt around his hips, buckling it without once looking down.

  “Georgia,” he groaned. “I know you think you’re helping, but having a beautiful naked woman put my clothes on is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  “You don’t have to go,” she whispered.

  “I’m trying to decide if it’s potentially worth the loss of zillions of investor dollars to throw you back on the bed.”

  She waited.

  “I lose,” he said, and he picked her up.

  * * *

  —

  With renewed energy, she roused herself from Mark’s apartment, rode a rented bicycle to the park, and went for a run, only to discover afterward that her bicycle had been stolen. She’d left it—a gearless, rust-encrusted beast with fat tires—at the edge of a path in the Vondelpark, and either she’d forgotten to lock it or it had been attacked by a thief enterprising enough to carry wire cutters, because it had vanished. She sighed and resigned herself to walking the three kilometers back to the apartment in the Jordaan.

  As she made her way along the path in the Vondelpark, a light late-afternoon rain pattered at her face. She trudged along, getting wetter by the second. It had rained often this week, with low banks of clouds sweeping in from the sea, unleashing on the arched bridges and the canals and the long, elegant rows of houses. Everyone here seemed used to it, even though no one used a car in the Jordaan. In Amsterdam, bicycles ruled. No matter where you wanted to go—both in the city and in the countryside—a dedicated bicycle path could get you there.

  The rain let up just as she reached Mark’s building. A low-slung ceiling of clouds remained, but the reinvigorated sun emerged, backlighting the five-story stone structure and casting a sheet of rosy rays onto the water in the canal. The apartment building rose up in an infinite line of conjoined houses with pointy triangular roofs, fronted by a little strip of sidewalk; beyond that stood one of the ubiquitous lines of parked bicycles, and then the wide green canal. Just along the canal edge floated a line of anchored boats.

  As she drew closer to the door, she saw someone waiting on the stoop; her hands flew to her mouth. It looked like . . . but it couldn’t be. She still hadn’t told Jonah where she was.

  “George!” said Jonah grandly, opening his arms wide. Dressed in a slim-fitting two-piece twill suit, he could have passed for a high-powered young executive. “Fancy meeting you here!”

  “Jonah?”

  “Oh my God, George, have you forgotten me already? Yes! C’est moi! In the flesh!”

  “How did you get here?”

  “Sweet pea, it might have escaped your notice but it is misting out here, and I’m wearing my Brioni. Can we have this conversation indoors?”

  Jonah stepped in front of her, but she could tell he wasn’t actually angry. An eruption of joy bubbled up from . . . wherever it was feelings bubbled up from. Resistance was useless. “Jones!” She tackled him from behind in a bear hug. “Oh! I have so much to tell you.”

  “Off the Brioni, you deviant,” said Jonah in a muffled voice. “Let me at least get up the stairs before you attack me. Which floor are we on?”

  “The fifth.”

  “Naturally,” Jonah huffed as th
ey climbed, but his eyes were welling. He swatted at his face clumsily, like a bear. “I was destroyed when I couldn’t reach you,” he said in a small voice. “I thought maybe you died.”

  “Oh my God, I am so sorry, Jonah. I—I tried calling you after I was off the grid for a few days, but I thought—here, let’s get you inside. How are you? How about a drink? I have plenty of—Jones? What is it?”

  “Shut the front door,” shouted Jonah, standing stock-still in the middle of the large open room comprising the bulk of the flat. She obliged, slamming the door behind them before realizing Jonah meant it euphemistically. “What. Is. This?”

  “This,” she said, gesturing proudly, “is my friend’s bedsit.”

  “My ass,” said Jonah. “This is no bedsit.” His head swiveled, followed in slow motion by the rest of his body, till he’d done a full three-sixty. “One hundred K,” he pronounced. “Easy.”

  “What?”

  “Somebody spent at least a hundred Gs on the decor in here, probably just on the art alone. Oh my sainted aunt. Is that macaroon thing a Will Cotton? George, what is going on? Are you a kept woman?”

  “No.”

  “I googled the Jordaan, sweet pea.” He removed his shoes and set them by the door. “You can’t get into this part of town anymore unless you’re a hedgie or a Saudi or something. You call me from the airport or somewhere and then you disappear without a word—”

  “Technically, I did share words—”

  “—an email with thirty-three words to be exact, I counted them, and—”

  “—and I texted—”

  “Twice.” Jonah advanced on her, wagging a finger. “You texted two, maybe three, times. I texted you seventy-seven times before I realized you’d been abducted and killed.”

  “That’s not ri—”

  “And”—he stabbed her in the center of her chest with his still-extended finger—“now after I’ve been through all seven stages of grief—”