Past Tense

by William G. Tapply

  I nodded to him. “Yes. Is he in?”

  “He’s with a patient,” he said. “I’m next.”

  “Are you a patient?”

  “Me?” He smiled. He was about thirty, a big, tanned guy with curly black hair and dark eyes. “No, I’m a doctor. I’m here on business.”

  “Me too,” I said. “I’m a lawyer.”

  His eyebrows arched, but I didn’t answer his questioning look. If he didn’t know all about me, he was apparently the only person in the entire town of Cortland, and I saw no harm in leaving it that way.

  I took a chair next to the sofa where he was sitting.

  “You from Cortland?” he said.

  “Boston.”

  “Interested in buying the doctor’s practice?”

  I shrugged. Soderstrom had mentioned that Dr. St. Croix was retiring. This guy could think whatever he wanted about me.

  “I haven’t gotten far enough to bring a lawyer into it yet,” said the dark-haired guy. “But I’m very interested.” He reached over to me. “I’m Paul Romano. Up from New Jersey to check it out.”

  I shook his hand. “Brady Coyne.”

  He nodded and smiled. Apparently he hadn’t been in town long enough to recognize my name, which was refreshing. “This is exactly what I’m looking for,” he said. “Nice small town, established practice, modern medical center right down the road, the best hospitals in the world an hour away. I can’t think of a better—”

  He stopped and looked up when an inside door opened and a visibly pregnant woman in her thirties stepped into the room. She was holding the hand of a boy who looked about ten. His eyes were red, as if he’d been crying. Behind her was a tall fortyish woman wearing a white jacket over a pale blue skirt and flowered blouse. A pair of glasses was perched on top of her head, and a stethoscope dangled from her jacket pocket.

  The woman led her boy to the outside door, then turned and smiled at the nurse. “Thank you,” she said.

  The nurse smiled. She wore her blond hair in a ponytail, and she had clear, pale skin and sharp blue eyes. “Give him an ice cream,” she said. “He deserves it for being so brave.”

  The boy smiled and waved at her. “’Bye, Claudia.”

  The nurse lifted her hand. “’Bye, Bobby. No more rusty nails, okay?”

  The woman and the boy left, and the nurse turned to Paul Romano. “He can see you now, Doctor.” Then her eyes fell on me. She smiled. “I know you’re not a patient.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m a lawyer.”

  Sometimes telling strangers that I’m a lawyer makes them nervous. I’ve often found that to be useful. But this nurse didn’t even blink. She knew how to handle children needing booster shots. For her, lawyers were no challenge.

  “You’re here to see the doctor?” she said.

  “I’d like to talk to him, yes,” I said.

  “You don’t have an appointment.”

  “No. I was hoping …”

  “I’ll see what he says,” she said. “What did you want to talk to him about?”

  “A mutual friend. Evelyn Banyon.”

  If Evie’s name meant anything to her, she didn’t give it away. “I’ll tell him you’re here, Mr … . ?”

  “Coyne. Brady Coyne.” I found a business card and handed it to her. “Please tell him I just want five minutes of his time.”

  She nodded and went back into the office.

  She was out a minute later. “You can go in now, Doctor,” she said to Romano. To me she said, “He’ll be happy to talk with you if you don’t mind waiting.”

  “I’ll wait,” I said.

  The nurse held the door for Paul Romano. He took his briefcase into the office, and before she shut the door behind them, I heard a deep voice from inside rumble, “I’m Dr. St. Croix. Call me Win.”

  I read two books about a monkey named Curious George, a Winnie-the-Pooh picture book in which Eeyore, the cynical old donkey, celebrated his birthday, and I’d just picked up Wind in the Willows, which my father used to read to me, when Claudia, the nurse, came back into the room with Paul Romano.

  They shook hands by the outside door, then Romano lifted his hand to me. “Good to meet you,” he said.

  “You too,” I said. “Good luck.”

  He smiled. “Thanks.” To the nurse he said, “I’ll be back tomorrow, then.”

  After he left, the nurse turned to me. “Please try to keep it brief,” she said. “The doctor is tired.”

  “I will,” I said. I stood up. “Claudia, is it? You’re the doctor’s nurse?”

  “Claudia Wells,” she said. She held out her hand, and I took it. She had a firm, manly grip. “I’ve been with him ever since he came to Cortland. Twenty-one years, it’s been.”

  “You started when you were in grammar school, huh?”

  Her eyes crinkled when she smiled. “Lawyers,” she said. “Silver-tongued rogues, every one of you.” She touched my arm. “Well, come on in, meet the doctor.”

  She opened the door and held it for me. The man sitting behind the desk was probably in his early sixties, although at first glance, he looked twenty years older than that. He had thinning white hair and a little white brush of a mustache and pale, papery skin. He was wearing a tan-colored suit, a white shirt, and a jaunty blue bowtie with white polka dots. He was slouched down in his chair, and his eyes were closed.

  It took me a moment to realize that he was sitting in a wheelchair.

  “Doctor?” said Claudia gently.

  He blinked his eyes open. “Oh,” he said. He smiled quickly. “Mr. Coyne, is it?” His strong bass voice seemed incongruous, rumbling from such a frail-looking chest. “I’m Winston St. Croix. Call me Win.”

  He reached a hand across his desk. I leaned forward to shake it. It felt bony and fragile.

  He looked up at Claudia. “Thank you, my dear.”

  She touched my arm. “Five minutes,” she said, then turned and left, shutting the door behind her.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Coyne,” said the doctor.

  I sat across from him.

  “You wanted to talk about Evie Banyon?”

  “I understand you dated her,” I said.

  He glanced out the window, then turned to me with a smile. “Alas, that would be an imprecise word for it. She did honor me by allowing me to treat her to dinner a few times. A beautiful woman, Mr. Coyne, and most charming. Very intelligent. Excellent company.”

  “You weren’t, um, romantically involved with her, then?”

  He closed his eyes for so long I thought he’d gone to sleep. Then without opening them, he said, “I had my silly, old man’s notions, but I’m afraid she didn’t share them.” He blinked and looked at me. He had watery blue eyes. They were almost colorless. “The Cortland rumor mill is churning, Mr. Coyne. This is about the unfortunate death of Larry Scott, am I right?”

  “It’s about the fact that Evie seems to have disappeared,” I said. “I’m trying to find her. I was hoping you might—”

  At that moment, Dr. St. Croix’s eyes widened and he began to breathe rapidly. “Get Claudia,” he gasped. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead, and his gnarled hands clawed at his shirt collar.

  “Claudia!” I yelled. I got up, opened the door to the waiting room, and called again.

  She came bursting through a door into the waiting room and brushed past me. “Wait out there,” she said to me.

  I sat on the sofa, and about five minutes later Claudia wheeled St. Croix out of his office. He seemed to be breathing normally now.

  “We can talk tomorrow,” he said to me.

  “I don’t want to-”

  “Please,” he said. “Can you come by around eleven?”

  “Sure.”

  Claudia patted his shoulder. “Come on, you old goat,” she said. “Let’s get you tucked in.” She looked at me. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Please wait.”

  I nodded. “I’ll be outside.”

  I went out into the front yard and lit a
cigarette. A breeze had begun to ruffle the leaves high in the oak trees, and black clouds had hidden the sun. I listened, but no thunder grumbled in the distance yet. Soon, though. It felt like the temperature had dropped about ten degrees since I’d entered the doctor’s office.

  I was sitting on the steps smoking my second cigarette when Claudia came out. She sat beside me.

  “Is he all right?” I said.

  “He overdid it today,” she said. “I try to tell him he doesn’t need to see patients on Saturdays, but he says he always has, and they depend on him. Some people, it’s the only time they can bring their children, be with them in the doctor’s office. He’s retiring, you know. I just hope it gets settled before he kills himself.”

  “I thought maybe I upset him.”

  “No. He’s sick.”

  “It was scary in there,” I said.

  She nodded. “Multiple sclerosis. He’s had it for a couple years, but recently it kicked into a new stage. He tires easily. When he’s tired, he loses his balance, gets double vision, shortness of breath, nausea. All the usual symptoms. I try to arrange his schedule so he won’t have one of his spells, but today, with Dr. Romano showing up, and then him insisting he see you …”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

  “He’s delivered just about every young person in Cortland for the past twenty-one years,” she said. “And he’s taken care of them all, too. He’s an institution here, Mr. Coyne. You don’t find doctors like him anymore. The town won’t be the same after he’s gone.”

  “Dr. Romano seems eager to take over,” I said.

  She nodded. “I hope it works out. There aren’t a lot of young doctors who want to buy into an old-fashioned small-town pediatric practice.”

  “And what about you?” I said. “Will you stay and work for Dr. Romano?”

  “It’s a possibility, if he wants me,” she said. “Though, truthfully, I can’t imagine working for anybody but Dr. St. Croix. This has been the only job I’ve ever had.”

  I glanced at her left hand and saw no wedding ring. “Do you have children?” I asked.

  “Me?” She smiled. “Every kid in Cortland is my child, Mr. Coyne.”

  I stood up. “You sure it’ll be okay if I come back tomorrow morning?”

  “He’s expecting you. He seems to be looking forward to it, in fact. Told me to tell you that. He’ll be fine. He does all right in the mornings. Tomorrow’s Sunday. He has no patients—unless some kind of emergency comes up.”

  “I want to ask him about Evie Banyon. Did you know Evie?”

  She nodded. “Win took her out a few times. That was before he got sick.” She smiled. “I think he was a bit infatuated with her.”

  “You’ve heard about—”

  “Larry Scott?” She waved her hand. “Of course. There are no secrets in Cortland. People want to believe that Evie Banyon killed him. It’s a neat, simple answer. People in this town like simple answers to complicated questions.”

  “Do you have an opinion?”

  “Me?” She laughed. “What do I know? Evie’s a nice person. That’s all I know.”

  “Did you know Scott?”

  “Certainly. He was our patient for several years. Which,” she said quickly, “means I can’t talk about him.”

  “I understand.” I stood up. “Well, my plans seem to keep shifting on me. I’ve got more places to go, people to see, and now an appointment with the doctor tomorrow morning. Guess I’ll try to find a place and spend the night around here. Any suggestions?”

  “There’s a decent motel a couple miles south of the medical center,” she said. “That’s the closest place without a leaky roof.”

  “I’ll check it out.” I held out my hand to her, and she took it. “I’ll be back tomorrow at eleven, then.”

  “Come to the front door,” she said, tilting her head in that direction. “He’ll want to meet with you in his living room, not his office.”

  I waved at Claudia Wells, then went over to my car. Just as I opened the door, I heard the first, distant rumble of thunder.

  NINE

  I wanted to be sure I could get a room, so I turned back onto Route 1 and headed south to the motel. Just about the time I drove past the medical center, the first fat raindrop splatted against my windshield, and within minutes it was raining so hard that even on high speed, my wipers couldn’t keep up. I switched on my headlights, slowed to a crawl, and followed the white line on the side of the road. The wind blew leaves and small branches off the trees, and periodically lightning flashes lit up the world.

  When I saw the red neon sign for the Cortland Motor Inn blinking through the rain, I pulled in and parked under the overhang in front of the office where a VACANCY sign was lit in the window.

  It was a one-story rectangular brick building with rooms front and back. Twenty units in all. They gave me number 10, a single down at the end on the front.

  A pair of plastic chairs sat on the walkway under the overhang in front of each unit, so after I checked out my room—it was your basic motel room, with a double bed, a bedside table with one of those digital alarm clocks I can never figure out how to operate, a couple of chairs, a bureau, a bathroom, and a color TV—I sat outside in a plastic chair under the overhang and smoked and watched the storm. Now and then a gust of wind blew a mist of rainwater on my face. It was refreshing, and I liked the smell of the air and the grumble of the thunder and the way the sky lighted up in the distance as the storm rolled away.

  In about an hour the sun came back out, so I got into my car and followed Charlotte Matley’s directions to the Victorian apartment house north of town where Evie had lived.

  I found it halfway down a long slope toward the end of a meandering country road. In the distance, the afternoon sun glittered off the surface of a fair-sized lake that nestled in a bowl among the low round hills.

  Of the four apartments in the house, only one tenant was home on this summer weekend. He was a garrulous old guy who’d lived there forever with his wife until she “passed on,” as he put it, two years ago. The other tenants came and went, he said, and all the others had moved in within the past year or so, long after Evie had moved out. He remembered Evie—“that pretty redhead,” he called her—but he said he didn’t really know her, and he hadn’t seen her since she moved.

  He invited me in for a beer, but I declined. I felt petty and selfish, but I wasn’t in the mood for a rambling conversation with a lonely old man.

  When I got back into my car, I glanced at my watch and was surprised to see that it was after six o’clock. That got me thinking about food. So I drove back to the motel, snagged the overnight bag I always keep in the trunk of my car, and went into my room to clean up.

  After my shower, I called my home phone and accessed my answering machine. No calls all day from anybody, never mind from Evie. It occurred to me that I could spend a week in this nowhere motel on Route 1 in Cortland, Massachusetts, and if I didn’t have a law practice and a slave-driving secretary, nobody would notice or care.

  Without Evie, I felt aimless and useless.

  Where the hell was she?

  I walked into the diner around seven. Families with small children and groups of teenagers occupied most of the booths. A few truckers straddled stools at the counter. I spotted an empty booth down at the end and grabbed it.

  Someone had left a copy of the Boston Globe on the seat. Thank you. I opened it to the sports page.

  Ruth, who’d waited on me at lunch, was still there, and she was still wearing the same green uniform and the same sarcastic half-smile. She slid a mug of coffee beside my elbow. “Glutton for punishment, eh?” she said.

  “Best food in town is what I hear,” I said.

  “Only food in town is more like it.” She got out her pad and pulled a pencil from her hair. “Know what you want?”

  “What’s good?” I said.

  “You’re asking the wrong person, mister,” she said. “I work here. I
don’t eat here.” She pointed to the blackboard behind the counter. “Think it over. The dinners come with soup and salad and coffee and dessert. All out of the meatloaf and the fish-’n’-chips. I’ll be back.”

  The blackboard listed fried chicken, turkey dinner, chickenfried steak, pork chops, shepherd’s pie, hot roast-beef sandwich, sirloin tips, spaghetti and meatballs. The meatloaf and the fish-’n’-chips had lines drawn through them. The sirloin tips, at $9.95, was the most expensive.

  When Ruth came back, I ordered the shepherd’s pie, and I was sipping my coffee and studying the box scores when a voice beside me said, “Mind if I join you?”

  I looked up. Paul Romano, the young curly-headed doctor I’d met at Dr. St. Croix’s office, was standing there grinning at me.

  I waved my hand and said, “Sure.”

  He was wearing the same glen plaid suit he’d had on at Dr. St. Croix’s office. His only concession to informal dining was his necktie, which he’d pulled loose from his throat.

  He slid in across from me. “Some storm, huh?”

  “I like thunderstorms,” I said.

  “Me too. They remind you of who’s the boss.” He took off his suit jacket, folded it, and laid it on the seat beside him. “So you making a weekend of it?”

  I nodded. “Got some business here tomorrow.”

  “Me too,” he said. “Great place to spend a Saturday night, huh? Watch the fireflies, listen to the frogs. It’s a real happening place.”

  Ruth came over and gave Romano a mug of coffee. He pushed it away. “No coffee.”

  “Sorry,” she said. She didn’t sound sorry. “Something else to drink?”

  “I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea.”

  “Tea?”

  “You can figure it out,” he said. “You boil some water, find a teabag, put the bag in a cup, pour some of the water on it, let it sit there for a minute …”

  “Sounds complicated,” she said. “I’ll have to ask the chef. I’m just a lowly waitress.”

  “Lowly, maybe,” he said. “But sexy.”

  She rolled her eyes, then walked away.

  “So what do you think?” he said to me as he watched her go.