Some Nerve

by Jane Heller

  The moment of truth. Or, more accurately, another moment of untruth. “I was a dental hygienist,” I said. “I got downsized.”

  “That’s too bad,” he said with so much sympathy that you’d think I’d told him I’d been run over by a truck. “Do you want to keep working in that field? If you do, I’d be glad to talk to the dentist I go to in L.A. He’s got a big practice and he’s always looking for good people.”

  I was floored. He was offering to help me get a new job—the same man who’d helped me lose my old one. “That’s very kind of you,” I said, “but I’m sure something will open up soon.”

  He smiled. “I guess it was silly of me to suggest it. You’d never move to Tinseltown. You’d hate the traffic, hate the whole environment. Nobody washes their own car in L.A.”

  There was a car wash on every corner. Celebrities had their own personal car washers.

  “But maybe you’ll come out for a week and experience it for yourself,” he said. “I’ll show you around, take you to the hot spots.”

  My God, he was flirting with me, asking to spend time with me. How weird was that? What’s more, he was moving his eyes up and down my body as if I had no clothes on. I felt my face turn beet red and stared at my feet.

  “Ah, I’ve embarrassed you,” he said. “Sorry about that. It’s just that you’ve been such a friend to me that I wanted to return the favor.”

  A friend to him. Well, yes and no. “You needed a friend because you were all alone in a strange town, that’s all,” I said.

  He inched closer to the edge of the bed, and put his hand on mine. Right smack on top of mine. I sort of made this gulping sound and hoped he didn’t hear it. His hand was hot, and I told myself it was due to his fever. But the longer he left it there, the hotter my face was too. What was the matter with me? Why was this guy always getting to me?

  “I couldn’t have managed without you, Ann,” he said in a more serious tone. “You kept showing up even though I treated you badly. You didn’t hesitate to take me to task when I deserved it. You let me bend your ear with an entire episode of Biography. Oh, and let’s not forget that you also saved my life when you called everybody in here for that code blue. I’ve never met anyone quite like you.” He looked down at our clasped hands, then back up into my eyes. “I don’t know how this happened, but in a very short time you’ve become very important to me.”

  Just so you know, my face was flaming red by the end of that speech and my palms were sweat city. I was so uncomfortable, I wanted to bolt up from my chair and run like hell out of that room. Was he telling me he felt something for me? Something romantic? And if so, how was I supposed to handle it? He was just a story to me. A career move, nothing more. I had shown up again and again simply because I needed him to spill his guts. I didn’t feel anything for him except gratitude—he was responsible for getting me fired but now he’d be responsible for getting me rehired. Of course, I couldn’t deny that having Malcolm Goddard say such beautiful things to me, such loving things to me, was rather thrilling in a perverse way.

  I was about to express just how thrilling when he made it clear that he wasn’t finished.

  “Remember when you told me how I lived in an isolated world and didn’t let anyone in, not even those who were close to me?” he asked as he returned his hand to his lap, releasing mine, which was soaking wet.

  “I do,” I said shyly, modestly. So he’d really taken my words to heart. I had become important to him.

  “And remember how you said that by keeping my illness a secret, I was isolating myself even more?”

  I nodded, speechless.

  “Well, I’ve decided that you were right. I don’t want to be alone through this thing.”

  So he wanted me to be with him every minute of his hospitalization! Maybe even sleep in his room at night! The sixth-floor rooms had comfy sofas, and visitors slept on them all the time. He was into me, all right, and who could have predicted it? I couldn’t wait to tell Tuscany.

  “So I have a favor to ask,” he said. “You’ve done so much for me already, but there’s one more thing.”

  My head was spinning with possible responses to his request for me to stay with him overnight until he was discharged, absolutely spinning. I could explain that the sofas were strictly for family members, not hospital volunteers. I could explain that I wasn’t supposed to show one patient preferential treatment over another. I could—

  “The favor is, I’d like you to smuggle my girlfriend in here.”

  I blinked and said, “Excuse me?”

  “I’ve been going out with an actress named Rebecca—maybe you’ve read about her in your magazines. She wanted to come and be with me, but I kept putting her off. I still don’t want the media getting wind of all this, and I was sure her being here would tip everybody off.” He beamed again. “But you told me how wrong it was to shut people out, so I called her and told her to come tomorrow.”

  Now my head was spinning with thoughts of what a total fool I was, a complete airhead. He wanted Rebecca, not me, for God’s sake.

  But when I calmed down and stopped feeling humiliated by my misinterpretation of the situation, I realized it was a relief. Yes. His revelation that Rebecca was, in fact, his girlfriend and that they hadn’t broken up after all was a big fat relief. Now I didn’t have to concern myself with anything other than The Story. I mean, really. What was I thinking?

  “But we need your help,” he continued. “Can you think of a way to get her in here without anybody noticing?”

  “If I remember her photograph correctly, she’s extremely thin,” I said, narrowing my eyes as if I were trying to conjure her up from memory. “It’s hard not to notice someone who weighs four pounds.”

  He laughed. “Most actresses are ‘extremely thin’ compared to the average woman.”

  The average woman was a hippopotamus compared with Rebecca. “I stand corrected.”

  “Look, it would be great if you could figure out a way to sneak her in here.”

  “Why ‘sneak’? Nobody will recognize her, just like they haven’t recognized you. I’m telling you, Malcolm, people in Middletown wouldn’t recognize a celebrity if they drove their lawn mower over one.”

  “I’d rather not take any chances. I’d be very indebted to you if you’d do this. Rebecca and I both would be.”

  How sweet. “Okay. Sure, I’ll help,” I said. “Far be it from me to stand in the way of true love.”

  “Great. I knew I could count on you.”

  “Call me old reliable,” I said.

  “She’s in the middle of a movie shoot and only has one day off, so she’s arranged to fly into the Kansas City airport by private plane for a ten A.M. arrival. I was hoping you could pick her up, drive her to Middletown, rig up some sort of disguise for her, and then bring her to me. She’ll be flying out later that night.”

  “Some sort of disguise,” I mused. “I take it she can’t just ditch her hairpiece and contacts like you did?”

  He laughed, not minding my little jab. “No, she’s the real thing.”

  “If you like the type.” Okay, I was being catty and it wasn’t like me and I was immediately sorry. I chalked it up to feeling put out by having to be Malcolm’s errand girl. Apparently, I was resenting him again. “I’d be happy to help. It’ll be good for you to have her here.”

  “They say love is the best medicine.”

  They also say misery loves company. “Give me her flight information and I’ll take care of the rest,” I said.

  REBECCA TRUIT WAS even skinnier in person. She was wearing a miniskirt that wasn’t much bigger than a napkin. She was a beauty, with a pert little nose and big round eyes and the requisite inflatable lips, but on the boyish side, as I’ve indicated, complete with a cleft in her chinny chin chin.

  “So nice of you to come ’round for me,” she said, her voice eerily similar to that of Princess Diana.

  “My pleasure,” I said as I escorted her to my waiting Honda in the
airport parking lot.

  As I drove, she asked about Malcolm, naturally, and I threw all sorts of medical terms at her. It seemed odd to me that she never said in response to my technical jargon, “What’s that?” Not even when I dropped “ventricular tachycardia” on her. She had a distinctive lack of curiosity. She seemed more interested in telling me about her film. “It’s sort of a feature-length sequel to Dynasty,” she said, pronouncing the word “Dinasty.”

  I considered adding a few paragraphs about her to my Malcolm story, since she continued to provide me with all sorts of tidbits, but I’d already tinkered with it enough. Maybe once I was back at work at the magazine, I would ask Harvey to assign me a profile of her, now that I could see what a talker she was.

  When we arrived at my house, I told her to stay in the car since I couldn’t let anybody in my family know what was going on.

  I raced inside, put on my uniform, and grabbed my spare pants and smock, the ones I wore whenever I forgot to wash the others. Rebecca had brought her own white shoes and white T-shirt, as per my instructions, so all she needed to do was change into my pants and smock once we got to the ladies’ room at the hospital.

  We were about to take off for Heartland General when out popped my mother, who, flush with the triumph of her trip to the mailbox with me, was now walking to the mailbox by herself.

  “Ann?” she said, knocking on the car window. “Who’s in there with you?”

  I whispered to Rebecca to pretend that she was playing an American in a movie. Then I rolled down the window and said, “Just a friend who works at the hospital, Mom. Her uniform got bloodstains all over it—occupational hazard—so I’m lending her mine.”

  Rebecca waved to my mother and said, “Yo, mama. What’s shakin’?”

  I suppose I should have told her I meant a Caucasian American. Obviously, Malcolm hadn’t chosen her for her brains.

  My mother looked startled—no one in Middletown used the greeting “Yo”—but then she smiled and said, “It’s wonderful that you’re volunteering on your off day, sweetie. Maybe you’ll run into Richie and the two of you can have dinner together again.”

  “Who’s Richie?” asked Rebecca.

  “A friend,” I said, loud enough for my mother to hear it and, hopefully, get it.

  I drove off to the hospital, parked in the lot, whisked Rebecca past the people milling about the lobby, and pulled her into the first ladies’ room I saw. “Here,” I said, handing her the clothes and checking under the doors to make sure there was no one in any of the stalls. “I’ll be waiting outside.”

  When she emerged, I had to force myself not to feel like a hippo again. My pants were swimming on her and much too short, and my smock would only have fit her if she were seven months pregnant. But we were improvising. The important thing was that she was wearing a volunteer’s uniform, which was as close to a disguise as I could come up with.

  After a quick conference during which I advised her to tell anyone who asked that she was in a special program informing patients of the importance of living wills, we took the elevator up to six. I made sure the coast was clear and slipped her into Malcolm’s room. He extended his arms, laden though they were with IV needles, to embrace her, his face having lit up at the sight of her.

  “Oh, Mal!” she said, rushing to his bedside. “My poor, poor Mal.”

  Mal.

  I took one last look at the adoring couple—watched them hug and kiss and act as if they were the long-lost, love-starved children of rival clans finally reunited. And then I put my tongue back in my mouth, retreated from the room, and closed the door to allow them their privacy.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  At eight-thirty that night, I drove Rebecca back to the airport. During the trip, she went on and on about how Malcolm had changed; how he seemed less distant, less angry, less inclined to keep his guard up. “As we were kissing good-bye, he told me he had had an epiphany,” she said. “Whatever that is.”

  “It’s sort of a moment of self-discovery,” I said. “A revelation.”

  “Right. Right,” she said and continued talking. “He told me he understands now, on a deeper level, that life is short and that he shouldn’t waste an instant of it.” She giggled. “I thought he was about to spring a proposal on me, but I guess he’s waiting to buy me the ring.”

  I made noises about how wonderful it all was, but mostly I played the part of the silent chauffeur, nodding and listening and eagerly anticipating the time I’d have to myself once I unloaded my cargo.

  “You know, Ann, Malcolm was spot on about you,” she said as we shook hands at the terminal. “You’re a treasure.”

  “Glad to be of service,” I said, even more glad to be done with the Cupid routine. “Take care.”

  “You too,” she said. “If you ever come ’round to L.A., you must ring me.”

  And off she flew, without bothering to give me her phone number.

  On the ride back, I felt oddly depleted, low on fuel, listless. Not depressed in the manner of those awful days when I’d first shown up on my mother’s doorstep. Just sort of wrung out.

  As a pick-me-up, I pulled out my cell phone and called Tuscany at the magazine.

  “I’m on my way home from the airport,” I reported, having told her about Malcolm’s rendezvous with Rebecca and my role in it. “She thinks he’s gonna pop the question as soon as he’s discharged.”

  “At least somebody’s happy,” she said. Earlier in the week, she and Don, the soap star, had broken up. It turned out that the reason he’d been giving her so much space was because he was sleeping with another woman—an actress on the show who was married to the executive producer, who was having an affair with a man. Things like that didn’t happen in Middletown. Well, they did, but there were usually guns involved before anybody found out what was what. “Although you don’t sound very happy, Ann. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’m just tired.”

  “Tired, my ass. You’re upset. I can hear it in your voice.”

  “I’m not upset.”

  “And I know why,” she said, ignoring my denial. “You’ve had Goddard’s full attention since he’s been in the hospital, but today you saw him with Rebecca and you couldn’t handle it.”

  “Tuscany.”

  “It’s true. You want him for yourself.”

  I laughed. “I don’t want him. I hate him.”

  She didn’t laugh back. “Used to hate him. Lately, whenever you talk about him, you go all dreamy. Admit it. You’re so into him.”

  “That makes no sense,” I insisted. “He’s getting better and he’ll be heading home in a few days. To marry her.”

  “Since when does love make sense?” she said. “Goddard gets you firing on all cylinders. I saw it that night at Spago. There was something going on between you two even then.”

  “Yeah, mutual rage.”

  “No, chemistry. Look, Ann, if you hadn’t fallen hard, you would have e-mailed the story to Harvey by now. Instead, you’ve been dragging your heels on it. Why? You’re afraid of losing Goddard.”

  “I’ve never had Goddard.”

  “Doesn’t mean you don’t wish you did. Come on. Be honest.”

  Okay, I had been dragging my heels, because every time I imagined Malcolm finding out that I had exploited his words for my own self-interest, I was convinced that he would despise me the way I’d once despised him. And I couldn’t handle that. She was right again.

  “Oh, crap,” I said as the tears started dribbling down my cheeks. Too dazed to determine where the moisture was coming from, I flipped on the windshield wipers instead of grabbing a tissue.

  “Annie,” she said soothingly. “It’s okay. Really it is.”

  “It’s not okay!” I shouted, scaring myself. “For one thing, he’s practically engaged to Rebecca. For another, he thinks I’m a sweet, trustworthy hospital volunteer, not a media parasite. And for still another, I have a No Actors rule! Your breakup with Don is proof that the ru
le should remain in effect!”

  “Whoa, girl. Slow down. He’s not engaged to Rebecca yet. He doesn’t know you wrote a story about him and if you don’t send it to Harvey, he never will. And your No Actors rule is bullshit. You can’t decide the profession of the person you fall in love with or you would have snapped up that dorky doctor who’s been slobbering all over you.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was too busy trying to cry and drive.

  “My advice is, get a good night’s sleep,” she said. “It’ll all be clearer in the morning.”

  “What’s already clear is that without the story, I have no leverage with Harvey,” I said.

  “Then you’ll find another way to make a living. In the meantime, go home and go to sleep.”

  “I will,” I said resignedly. “Are you gonna be okay with all this Don stuff?”

  “Yeah. I’m thinking it was a blessing that I met him. Kind of the way people with cancer are always saying it’s a blessing that they got an incurable illness. Bad experiences make you appreciate the less bad ones. So I went back over the guys I’ve dated and dumped, and decided that some of them were less bad. I’m going out with one of them tonight.”

  I rolled my eyes but wished her luck.

  WHEN I SIGNED in at the volunteers office on Friday afternoon, Shelley said I looked beat. Being the sweetheart that she was, she added that even when I looked beat, I looked better than most of the female population.

  “Flatterer,” I said. “You just want me to work harder.”

  “You work hard enough,” she said. “Which reminds me.” She peeled off a couple of Post-itss from the edge of her desk and handed them to me. “Your public awaits.”

  Before I read the messages, I said a silent prayer that one of them was from Malcolm, begging me to come to his room because he realized he loved me, not Rebecca. Pathetic, right?

  As it turned out, neither was from Malcolm. One was from Bree Wiley, asking me to bring her some movie magazines. The other was from Isabelle, the disgruntled patient I’d advised to seek a second opinion. With a heavy heart but an obligation to push forward, I went about my day.