by Toby Devens
“Then do,” Fleur said. “Don’t let yourself be blackmailed.”
“I’m going to have a grandchild, Fleur.” Kat uttered this slowly as if she had to spell it out for Fleur, who’d never had a child. “Can you imagine if I can’t see it?”
Fleur looked hurt, but she said, “Summer will change her mind.”
“She might,” I agreed. “She’ll really need you through the pregnancy and when the baby is born. I’ve seen it happen even when there’s been a longtime estrangement. The new mamas need their own mamas and that wins out in the end.”
“You may be right. I hope you’re right. But what if you’re not? You know Summer,” Kat’s voice cracked. “Can I take the chance?”
Oh, yes, I knew Summer. She’d hold her mother’s heart to the fire. I had a feeling that Kat would, in the end, have to make a choice.
***
“I just hope she doesn’t buckle under the pressure,” Fleur said, as we walked together to our cars. “That brat of hers really knows how to apply the thumbscrews. Kat’s a smart woman. But she gets all caught up in the emotional crap.”
I’d been waiting for the right moment to bring up Jack Bloomberg. Experience taught me if you confronted Fleur at the wrong time, she pulled up the moat.
“Too much feeling, too little thinking. I guess it’s her artist’s mentality,” she concluded.
There was my opening. “So you logical business types don’t get sucked in by the emotional crap.”
Fleur was sharp enough to pick up the innuendo. She ground to a halt, her thumb on the car remote.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Ah, Fleur,” I sighed. “I saw Jack on the condo channel the night before I left for London. I was letting the pizza guy in and right behind him there was Jack waiting for you to buzz him up.”
“Jesus! A person’s life is an open book at Waterview, isn’t it? In my case, a very dull open book.”
“Look, I’m not trying to pry. It’s just that I’m worried you—”
She cut me off. “Oh, for godssakes. You want a play-by-play?” She sunk down onto a garden bench Ethan had placed under an oak tree shading the cars. “Fine. Maybe it will do me good to get it off my chest. Sit.” She inhaled a deep breath. “Okay. That was when? Monday? Nothing happened that night. It was all tea and sympathy. Or if you want to get picky, black coffee and sympathy. He just wanted to talk. Bambi is having problems nursing the baby. Maybe the kid doesn’t like the taste of silicone. So, that was the first night.”
“There was a second night?”
Fleur stared at her nails. “The second night we talked about Bambi’s postpartum depression. She gained forty pounds with the pregnancy and she’s still eating for two. And the baby’s reflux is better, but now he’s got some kind of scalp rash. Jack wanted my advice. I reminded him I had no experience with pregnancies or babies, thanks to him.”
“Let me get this straight: Jack’s having problems with his wife and he comes running back to his former girlfriend. My God,” I said, “that man has a lot of challah.”
“Chutzpah. Chutzpah means nerve. Challah is a kind of bread. I agree. Now. For some reason, while it was happening I was flattered. I also thought...”
“What, that he might leave her? Fleur, you wouldn’t have taken him back!”
“Nah. Not after I had some time to think about it.” There was a moment of silence in memory of Fleur’s finally buried dreams.
“You didn’t ask me if I slept with him.”
“I didn’t think it was any of my business.”
“Like that’s ever stopped you. As it turns out, I didn’t. Not that I didn’t try. Don’t say it, Gwyn. Whatever you can say about my character, I’ve already thought about myself. All I know is at that moment I was figuring here’s my chance to get back at Bambi for taking Jack from me. Tit for tat, you could say. And it seemed so natural with Jack pouring out his heart, resting his head on my shoulder, then against my bazooms. It seemed the most natural thing in the world. Don’t forget we’d been together fourteen years.”
“Oh, Fleurie.”
“There’s always going to be feeling there.”
Ari Ben-Jacob had whispered that when we said our good-byes. Once you love, does the germ of it remain dormant forever in your blood? Years later, it’s not the same virus, but a mutation. Harmless, unless your resistance is low.
“Maybe I still love him. Maybe it’s just affection we have for each other. Whatever. But when the actual moment of truth arrived, he couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. Who knows? I guess it hit me then that he really loves her. That’s what the power failure was all about. So I personally buttoned that ridiculous vest of his and sent him home to Bambi and the kid.”
“Good for you.”
“Yeah, well don’t hand out any prizes. If he could have, I would have gone through with it. What does that make me?”
“Human,” I said.
Fleur had come clean. It was only fair that I make my own confession. Oddly, I felt more reticent about my coup de foudre with Simon York than I did about hurtling into the sack with Ari for my first genuine one-night stand. So I skipped Simon. But Fleur got a kick out of the Ari story.
“Perfect. No strings. No regrets,” she commented when I was through telling it. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” I said, as if I were.
“I am impressed. You’ve got a young stud in London and good old Harry waiting in the wings this side of the pond. Everyone should have such an abundance of riches. However, all is not bleak on my horizon. I, too, have some prospects.”
“Good for you. Does this mean you’ve revived The Plan?”
“Yup, I figured why should Jack have all the fun trapped in a miserable marriage? I want my turn. And I made three contacts on Lovingmatch this week. One guy seems okay. We talked on the phone last night. He knows the difference between Larry King and B. B. King.” She twisted her mouth into a hopeful smile. “We’ll see.”
Chapter 18
Five great things about Harry Galligan:
1. He arrived for our date carrying a bouquet of flowers, multicolored with lots of tinted carnations, in a cone made of transparent film that told me he’d picked it up either at the Safeway or from a roadside vendor. I found this very sweet.
2. He looked polished. Not slick, but as if someone had taken a chamois to him and buffed him to a glow. His shoes gleamed. His cheeks were burnished with rosy Celtic color. Even the back of his neck, where his hair appeared freshly cut (unlike mine) and the curly auburn was faded, had been barber-shaved to a pewter finish.
3. He ordered a porterhouse the size of a football field and a baked potato the size of a football at Ruth’s Chris Steak House and finished everything on his plate as well as the creamed spinach and sautéed mushrooms on the side. All this he washed down with bourbon. Good all-American boy.
4. He didn’t drone on about his ex-wife at the dinner table, which was commendable first-date behavior, even though the idea of a woman running away midlife with another woman was fascinating. (Not a man with a man though. Of course.) For part of the dinner, I thought about whom I would choose to boff if I suddenly turned lesbian. Fleur and Kat were immediately excused. None of my friends qualified; they would all talk a blue streak in bed, which was an advantage of having sex with men.
5. When we ran into Fleur and her date in the lobby at the end of the evening, Harry gave her the once-over, the way a man would once-over a twenty-eight-year-old bombshell. In the elevator, he said to me, “Now that’s a good-looking woman.” The man had taste.
Five not-so-great things about Harry Galligan:
1. He shot his cuffs through the sleeves of his jacket and hiked his trousers when he sat down. Stan once told me that cuff-shooting and trouser-hitching were dead giveawa
ys of a lower-class background and, guttersnipe snob that I am, I’ve never forgotten it.
2. He smelled of Old Spice or Canoe. (Do they still make Canoe?) Whatever, it was a scent that transported me back to my horrendous high school days and that depressed me right though my second glass of wine.
3. His shirt was made of something unnatural and when his jacket flapped back you could see through its nylon translucence the outline of his undershirt, one of those scooped neck numbers only Andy Capp and my father still wore.
4. He rambled on about a “Science Friday” program on NPR that somehow segued into a moment-to-moment recapitulation of his recent visit to Ireland. When the waitress recited the daily specials, I made her list the ingredients in the Louisiana Seafood Gumbo just to get a break from the grand tour of Dublin. His table talk made me want to lay my head between my bread plate and my water glass and take a nap.
5. He surprised me with a good-night kiss that could have been the Mr. Nice Guy equivalent of the pity fuck.
Three nasty things about me:
1. I couldn’t quite manage to hide my disappointment that Harry wasn’t the person I’d signed on for. And how fair was that since the gap between fantasy and reality was one I’d dug myself?
I’d been so excited when we set up this date, certain he was the man of my dreams. Why do women invest prospective lovers with attributes that would make Harrison Ford duck his head and say “Shucks, ma’am”? Now that the date was here, he was just Harry. Pleasant. Attentive. But no tingle a la Simon York or Ari Ben-Jacob. And life, I’d recently decided, was too short to waste on no tingle.
2. I was incredibly boring. Incredibly.
3. When we ran into Fleur and her date in the Waterview lobby, I dissolved in giggles as the date kissed my hand. Who was this guy and why hadn’t we discussed him at length? All I knew was Fleur looked like she was ready to strangle me. As I cracked myself up over the continental guy with an honest-to-God pompadour, a major pinky ring, and very wet lips, she sent me her haughty to-the-manor-born look. No one did haughty better than Fleur. I was abashed but couldn’t stop giggling even when Harry flashed me a warning signal. My mother was right, my baptism didn’t take. I am a sinful person.
Two things I liked about me, in spite of my mother:
1. I apologized to Harry for my rudeness.
When he said fairly casually during the good-night ritual at my door, “Let’s do this again,” I got all ruffled and told him I was going to be out of town the following weekend giving a speech to an audience of menopausal women. That stopped him in his tracks.
“That’s okay,” he said finally, “I didn’t have a specific date in mind.”
Take that, you self-important MD-type. Then maybe he regretted backhanding me, for that’s when he planted the surprise kiss.
After we disconnected, I said, “It was fun, Harry. I’m sorry if I was such a pain tonight. It’s been a tough week and a lousy day. Earlier I mean.” Thinking about Kat and Summer.
“I’ll call you,” he said.
“Drive carefully.”
My feet were killing me. For the hundredth time, I swore I was going to give up anything higher than one-inch heels. Once I could sail along on three-inchers, but lately even namby-pamby two-inchers were hell on my feet and lower back. I needed to unhook my bra. I wanted to peel my panty hose down from their control top to their sandal toes and toss them over the balcony and far, far away into the water, which shimmered the reflection of a full moon. Lunacy. Dating at this age is sheer lunacy. But I vowed to do it again sometime. Dumb persistence. That was the second thing I liked about me.
Chapter 19
On Monday morning, before I could execute my planned ambush on Seymour Bernstein, Bethany materialized at my side, clutching a balled-up tissue in one hand. She looked awful. She was either suffering from the cold I thought was fake or she’d been crying.
“You shouldn’t be working sick. It’s not fair to your patients. Or to the staff.” I resumed scanning a radiology report on my next patient.
“If you have a moment, I’d like to talk to you,” she sniffed. “Please.”
“In my office.”
Sitting across from me, she said, “I want to apologize.” She pulled her skirt down over primly crossed knees. The skirt was longer than those she’d been wearing during the last month and the feet that tapped to a nervous internal beat were clad in what looked to be Red Cross shoes. Sturdy and not at all sexy. I imagined she’d given some thought over the weekend to redeeming her image and dug her pre-affair wardrobe out of the closet.
Her voiced cracked when she said, “I feel horrible about what happened the other day.”
“You should.”
“I don’t know where my head was.”
“You need to keep better track of all your body parts, Bethany.”
“Agreed. I know what you’re thinking.”
“Do you?”
“But believe me, I am sincerely sorry.”
Sorry for her behavior or sorry for getting caught, I wondered. “Look, if you want to...” I searched for a word to use with prissy bluestocking Bethany, then remembered I was addressing someone who foot-groped a colleague in the boardroom, “...screw around with Seymour, that’s your choice.”
Her eyebrows took off. Surely she wasn’t shocked by my use of “screw.” Maybe back on the estate in Easton, they didn’t talk about it; they just did it wherever and with whomever they wished. As members of the congenitally elite, they were entitled. Maybe that’s what I detested about Bethany. That inherent sense of entitlement I’d never felt and could never feel, the one, along with Gerber’s strained peas, your wellborn mama fed you with a silver spoon.
“You’re both single and above the age of consent. Seymour is so far above the age of consent he probably signed his ID with a quill pen. But that’s your business. It’s only mine when you make it mine. And the staff’s. You and Seymour are the hot topic in the coffee room. They’re not blind, you know. This is indefensible, unprofessional conduct.”
“You’re right.”
“You’re damn right, I’m right. And why do you have to bring it into the office, anyway? You both have apartments. With bedrooms.”
She wrung her tissue and mumbled, “Seymour gets turned on by—”
“Enough.” I held up a halting hand. I really didn’t want to hear any more. “Just know this, I’m not going to allow you to climb the ladder on your back. Not in this practice.”
“What!”
“Oh, please. Spare me the outrage. Let me tell you something, my generation worked too damned hard to bury that load for you to come along and dredge it up again.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Bethany said, leaning forward to dig her nails into my desk. “You can’t possibly think that I’m sleeping my way into a partnership.”
“That’s exactly what I think.”
“My God. My God.” She sunk back in her chair, shaking her head incredulously. “I don’t expect you to believe this, but I love Sy. I do. I know he’s thirty years older than I am and sometimes he’s a little rough around the edges, but that doesn’t matter to me. I’m in love with him. And he’s in love with me.”
We both observed a moment of silence while Bethany recovered from and I tried to process this revelation. Sy and Beth in love. You might figure them for some recreational slap-and-tickle, but love? That was like a romance between Godzilla and Mothra. I said finally, “Well, I’m thrilled for you. But it’s no excuse.”
“You’re right. We got carried away and we’ve been stupid and thoughtless.” Lids were lowered. “I assume I should start sending out my CV? I mean, you’ve got your ammunition now so you can do what you’ve been wanting to do for a long time. Fire away.”
“No one’s firing anyone,” I said. “You’re a good doct
or, an asset to the practice. I consider the matter closed. For the time being anyway. We have discussed this…ummm...situation and,” I decided to give her a break, “it remains between us, and of course, your boyfriend. Who, by the way, has been avoiding me. Eventually, I’ll tag him in the hall and we’ll talk this through.”
“I’d rather speak to him myself first, if you don’t mind,” she said.
I bet. Then again, I didn’t relish a duel between partners. Bad for the practice. “Fine. But make sure he knows how ticked off I am. And that one day we’ll have our own little chat, Sy and I.”
She nodded. “Are you going to tell Neil?” Who would have been appalled. Neil was a stickler for observing the code of ethics.
“I’d rather we resolve this among the three of us.”
“Thank you.” No tears. No sniffles. Her cold was apparently miraculously cured.
“You’re welcome,” I said, turning to my computer. Dismissing her. But I watched her from the corner of my eye. And she knew I’d be watching her very closely from now on. One misstep, one shot across the bow and she was done for. She and Seymour Bernstein both. One word to Neil and heads would roll. Hers anyway. Seymour would keep his, but lose major face. So there would be no more talk about my age, my retirement, my mentoring young up-and-comings, my taking a backseat to the young’uns because the exit sign was lit. I had a garlic necklace to protect me from the vampires. I was safe now.
For the moment, anyway.
***
Two days later, I was on the receiving end of a scolding. “You really are becoming a one-dimensional person. Working nonstop. And don’t tell me you don’t have time for anything else. There’s always time for romance. Like there’s always room for chocolate,” Fleur grumbled as she scowled at my reflection in the long mirror of the Istanbul Salon and Day Spa on Wednesday evening.
While Attila cut her hair and Melik highlighted mine, we sat in adjoining chairs, nibbling sandwiches from carryout containers in our laps.
“You don’t understand. I’ve done fifteen surgeries so far this week. As far as I’m concerned there’s only one gender on this planet.” I wiped mayo from my lip. “Your point is moot anyway. It’s not like the men are lining up for me.”