by Toby Devens
After I showered and dressed, but skipped the makeup because Fortune’s stylists would do my face and hair, I had an hour to waste. With what Fleur called the shpilkes and my father used to call ants-in-the-pants. I wandered around the house, looked through Simon’s CDs, attempted the Times crossword, switched on CNN, peered at the photo wall in his study. I went through the books stacked behind his computer printer to see what he was reading these days. Pushkin. Nice and light. Ugh. Something called How Women Think. A Japanese poet I’d never heard of. A glossy picture book titled The Great Resorts of Europe. And, because God has a sense of humor, Men Are Coconuts, Women Are Pomegranates.
I did not, because of residual outrage over my mother’s childhood invasion of my privacy, look at or through any of the following: medicine chests, cupboards under the sink, drawers in any furniture, printouts on his desk, or even the piece of pink writing paper used to bookmark How Women Think, with “Dearest Simon” visible under a deckled edge. Though I have to admit, that one was tough to pass by.
Between each of these activities, I peed. Maybe six times in the space of an hour. All my television appearances so far had been on local stations. Fortune reached umpteen millions of viewers. Anxiety shriveled my bladder to the size of a garbanzo and sent it into spasms.
So when the phone rang as I was doing a final, I hoped, pee, I dashed to the closest phone in Simon’s study thinking—I swear this—that it was him calling to wish me good luck. By the time I skidded in, the answering machine had already clicked on. Its volume, turned all the way down, allowed only a shadow of neuter voice to emerge. Innocent as a babe, I turned it up. And heard a throaty woman’s voice say, “Simon, it’s Claire. Sorry, sorry, I’m calling on this phone, but I tried your cell and it’s not turned on. I left a message on your office voicemail, but who knows when you’ll pick that up. Anyway, I’m in the Denver Airport about to board, so—I will make it back in time for the dinner tonight. I thought to save time, I’d stop by your place around five to help you with your cummerbund and studs. Really looking forward to the night together at your place. Gotta go. Love you, darling.”
Love you, darling? Night together? I’d met this Claire. The scientist from his lab. Paralyzed, I stared at the phone. When my legs began to wobble, I collapsed in Simon’s desk chair, my heart beating a wild tattoo.
Forcing myself to breathe, in-out-in-out, I reached for the phone and checked the caller ID—small prayer here—to see if Claire’s message might have been recorded a year ago and by some electronic fluke resurrected. But no, there it was glowing with digital certainty: Claire McKenna, 12/10, 11:54 a.m., along with her cell phone number. That mobilized me. Flooded with adrenaline, I grabbed a pen from Simon’s desk and a sheet of paper from the heap in his wastebasket. In a palsied script, I managed to scratch on its flip side Claire’s full name and phone number.
Then, because all bets were off now and I was this close to a Jerry Springer moment, I reached over to Simon’s stack of books and extracted the Dearest Simon note expecting the worst. And finding it.
Dearest Simon,
I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed our long, luxurious weekend. Also, I’m returning those sunglasses you left on my porch. Notice I overnighted them. I thought you might need them for your California trip. I really do miss you my darling. The bed seems so awfully empty without you. Can’t wait for Christmas together!
Love and many kisses,
Jordan
Dated the week before, and along the very bottom, next to a tiny engraved turquoise palm tree, the name Jordan Conrad. No doubt the friend from Key West.
Sonofabitch. The brilliant, accomplished, handsome, charming Simon York, with whom I had fallen thunderstruck in love, was, deep down where his heart should have been, just another womanizer. No, not just another. Because Simon wasn’t your common garden variety womanizer. As he did everything, he did his philandering at top form. This was spectacular cheating. Nobel quality screwing around. Two, count ’em, two other women. While I had my proverbial head up my proverbial butt.
Steadier now, gritting my teeth, I scribbled next to Claire’s name and number, Jordan Conrad, Key West. What I was going to do with this information, I hadn’t the vaguest idea.
But something, I was sure, would occur to me.
Chapter 36
I slogged through the next few hours in a chilly, drizzly fog, New York’s foul weather matching my mood. I have only patchwork recollections: the Ghanaian cab driver handing me his Kleenex box through the partition pass-through, Fortune in the Green Room clattering bracelets, bending her turbaned head to give me a good luck kiss, the makeup man telling me, “Sugarpie, you must stop sniffling because it’s making that pretty nose all red, and if you let those tears go, you’ll really fuck up this fabulous eyeliner. And, believe me, he isn’t worth it.”
The makeup man knew. Fleur and Kat watching from Baltimore didn’t. Later, Fleur told me I looked cool as a cucumber and sounded perfectly coherent. Kat assured me I was wonderful though she did see my right eyelid twitching, but thought it was because Dr. Rao had a scene-stealing coughing fit whenever the camera switched to me.
Fortune introduced me as not only her favorite gynecologist, which probably didn’t make Sam Goldsmith, her own doc and one of my New York peers, jump for joy, but also as an example of how women at any age can look and act as if they’re in their prime. This concluded with her shouting, “Audience, does Dr. Gwyn look fifty-four?” And a resounding, “Nooo,” and Fortune shouting, “Yes, yes, this is what fifty-four looks like today.” Wild applause.
So if I was so gorgeous, so accomplished, and such a hit on national television, why did Simon need Claire and Jordan and a woman in every port to make him happy?
While the camera rolled, I couldn’t think about that. I did what I had to do. On autopilot, I covered my talking points and only kicked back into full consciousness before the last commercial break when I realized Dr. Rao was mentioning the title of his book in every other sentence and decided two could play that game. I plugged my defunct clinic and talked about how the only source of medical care for hundreds of women got shut down for lack of funding. Racking up the emotion quotient, I mentioned cancers grown deadly and small problems magnified to morbid ones by neglect. By the time I finished, Fortune was reaching for the tissues she kept on her side table and Dr. Rao was coughing up a storm.
Afterwards, at the backstage coffee klatch for her guests and crew, Fortune corralled me. “Amazing,” she said. “Great job on the holiday health list. And I loved how you championed your clinic. You struck just the right balance of righteous indignation and compassion. And so from the gut.”
“Well I’m pretty desperate,” I said, backing up so I could look her in the eye. “I sent a grant proposal to your foundation. I haven’t heard back yet.”
She wrinkled her forehead in what I took for sympathy. “Probably because this is our Third World year. The Fortune Foundation decided to dedicate the bulk of funding to projects in Africa, South America, and the Indian subcontinent. My board doesn’t like me meddling because I tend to work almost entirely from here.” She slammed a hand against her chest and gave a shrug that said “Outta luck, sorry.”
Not my day.
“Now,” she grasped my fingers in hers, “we have you scheduled again right after New Year’s. You’re doing resolutions for health. You know, mark the new calendar for Pap tests, do monthly breast checks, that kind of thing. And I’m going to have my producer call you about appearing regularly on the show, maybe four times a year. I think what you say is vital and I love how you say it, Dr. Gwyn. You have an experienced voice, a confident voice. That’s what my viewers need to hear, the voice of a woman they can trust because she trusts herself.”
The next laugh—really more of a sardonic snort—would have been mine.
It was still echoing inside my head when I d
ashed onto the street and flagged down a cab to take me not to Penn Station but uptown. If we didn’t hit rush hour traffic, I might just make it in time to land a front row seat for the Simon and Claire show.
Why did I make this humiliating journey?
Sure, any all-female jury in the land would convict that man on felony lying and at least two counts of cheating based upon Claire’s phone message and Jordan’s note. And I am not a masochist. But I am a scientist.
I was the kid who took third place in the science fair with a diorama of Marie Curie’s Paris laboratory, and grown up I spend a good part of my life checking and rechecking data. Ergo, I am not constitutionally capable of coming to ironclad conclusions based on hearsay. To pronounce him guilty, I actually had to see Simon York with another woman on East 79th Street in Manhattan at precisely the moment he was supposed to be cruising thirty-four thousand feet over Indianapolis. And guilty beyond a reasonable doubt so that years from now, on a winter night with snow falling and “Lara’s Theme” playing on the radio, I wouldn’t feel I’d made a ghastly mistake and get a nasty case of regret, which is much worse in your golden years than even osteoporosis.
I planted myself in the deli two doors down and across the street from Simon’s apartment building. Only a month or so before, the glow from Friedman’s Deli had lit our snow-speckled, boundary-leaping kiss. Now it bathed the street as dusk settled. From my table near the window I had a clear view of his building’s entrance, but he couldn’t see me unless he peered directly into the window.
Hunger wasn’t even a memory, but I ordered the price of admission. “Corned beef on rye. Mayo.” The waiter gave me the once-over with basset hound eyes.
“Iowa darling, you don’t want mayo. Mustard with corned beef. And, if you don’t mind my saying, maybe not corned beef for you. Nothing against our corned beef. I’d stack it up against anything in the city, but it’s a half a pound of meat and it would lay on your chest like a dead weight. You don’t look so hot. For you, matzo ball soup. Like mama used to make. Mine not yours. Listen to Uncle Nate.”
Good idea, Nate. I could take my time spooning it up. And when that ran out, a prune danish. If I hadn’t miscalculated, Simon and Claire would be hitting the street in less than a half hour. No wonder he wanted to check and recheck my return train ticket that morning. He needed to make sure I was on my way out of town when he stepped out with his other girlfriend.
Thirty-two minutes later, Simon emerged from the building alone. I’d never seen him in a dinner jacket and my idiot heart gave a lurch. Other men look like Dagwood in a bow tie; this man was born to it. I shoved the prune danish to one side, queasy. It was now established that the defendant was not airborne, not on his way to California, and that he had, at the very least, your honor, lied through his teeth to me.
Then, behind him, Claire sauntered into the frame, hung with enough jewelry to sink a ship. I couldn’t see details, just sparkles of many bracelets, big earrings, and a killer necklace above the drape of her black velvet cape. No PETA-prohibited fur for her, although the temperature hovered in the twenties and a light sugary snow had begun to fall. Simon reached back and drew her to his side, then raised her ungloved hand and pressed it to his lips. Guilty, guilty, guilty! If I keeled over right now, would they haul Uncle Nate in for questioning?
Two steps forward for Simon. He scanned for a cab. Nothing. He returned to Claire for what must have been a strategy conference. Just after I ducked out of sight, and as I peeped through a spy slit between the food flecked curtain and the window, he left her and bounded across the street to the deli side.
Now he paced the end of the deli’s front window, his back to me. Now he strode past, so close I saw he’d nicked himself during his evening touch-up shave. Finally, he flagged a cab and waved to Claire, who clipped across the street on what had to be four-inch heels. He trotted by me a second time as the cab slowed and this time, as he passed, he turned his head, maybe to inhale the aroma of pastrami. Or maybe, as Claire slipped her arm around his waist, he just glanced at the hooker sashaying by.
Whatever, his full face in blissful ignorance that he’d been caught mid-cheat was the last image I saw before I sunk back into green Naugahyde and closed my eyes. Enough. I’d had enough. I didn’t want to know what came next. Whether Simon helping Claire into the cab gave her arm a fond, familiar stroke. Whether he gathered her to him for a cuddle as the cab pulled away. When I opened my eyes and looked out again, all I saw was my own wretched reflection in the window.
Fleur had absolutely no scruples about saying, when I called her on my cell phone, “I knew something was fishy about that guy. Why do you think you hardly ever saw him? He was jamming that magic johnson of his into any woman within fucking distance.”
I gave out a wounded groan.
“Okay, I’m sorry it ended like this,” Fleur continued, “but I’m glad you’re out of it. You don’t need him. You looked like Catherine Deneuve on TV. Screw the bastard.”
I sobbed quietly and dribbled into the last of my tea. Nate, his basset eyes tender with compassion, dropped a wad of extra napkins with my change just as Fleur said, “He doesn’t deserve your tears. He deserves a swift, hard kick in the ass. Not just for you. He’s screwing around on Claire whatsis and the Key West woman, too. You really need to tell them.”
“I was planning on it,” I said, blowing my nose, pulling myself together. I felt in my handbag for the folded paper with Claire’s and Jordan’s information. “I may need some help from you and Kat.”
“Count on us, Gwynnie.” Fleur sounded positively gleeful. “Our pleasure, believe me.”
Chapter 37
Back home, I crashed for nine hours of exhausted dreamless sleep. I might have made it to twelve, but on Saturday morning, Fleur pounded on my door, stuffed me into jeans, and dragged me off to Kat’s house in the suburbs because “you need to be surrounded by friends who’ll restore your self-esteem by thoroughly trashing the man you were stupid enough to fall in love with. By the way, you look like shit. All that negativity screws around with your collagen. Turn it off.”
I wished I could, but the pain was so deep I couldn’t get to the switch. It had something to do with loss and something to do with being lost after those months in the illusionary Land of Simon. Which a part of me knew was really an emotional desert the size of the Sahara. But Lord, I was going to miss the oases.
The other pain, maybe worse, was that I felt like the damnedest fool. “Smart, smart, smart,” my mother used to mock my A+ report card, “but she doesn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain.” Sometimes even a crazy mama knows best.
Kat disputed my self-diagnosis. When I called myself a chump for love, she wagged a finger. “Better naive than cynical. Never regret an open heart. He’s the fool and a bastard to boot,” she added with an uncharacteristic lack of charity.
Actually, going to Kat’s was a good move. In spite of her being well into her radiation, she’d found the energy to decorate the house for Christmas. For the holidays, Kat always departed from her standard post-hippie modernist style and reversed full throttle into the kitsch of her childhood. This year, especially, the traditional stuff had to bring her comfort. I know it reassured me that the world hadn’t spun off its axis.
“It’s like a Macy’s window in here,” Fleur grouched. “I didn’t know there was this much Hummel in the universe. And the whole house smells like the lady’s room in Penn Station. The pine is giving me a headache.” She gingerly lifted a snowman soap dispenser. “I can’t believe in the shape Kat’s in she hauled out all this stuff to decorate.”
But it was said with fondness. Fleur loved Kat. She added a sprinkle of chives to the eggs she scrambled for her friend. She cut the crusts off the whole wheat toast just like grandmère used to do for Fleurie when she was a little girl. She even clipped a blossom from the coffee table’s poinsettia to brighten the
tray she brought up to Kat resting in her bedroom.
Back downstairs, she swung by the kitchen to hook her arm in mine. I was next on her list. “Forget the dishes,” she said. “Come on. We have work to do.”
***
“Let’s see. Jordan C-o-n-r-a-d,” Fleur typed into Kat’s computer, pulling up the Key West white pages. “How many Jordan Conrads can there be in Key West?”
As it turned out, two. Jordan H. Conrad and a Dr. Jordan R. Conrad. The one with the R. was a plastic surgeon.
“Jordan could be either gender. You don’t think Simon is a second Stan, do you?” Fleur asked.
“That would be the icing on the cake. No, the stationery was pink. It’s got to be the MD,” I said. “Simon would want to boff the doctor.” I wrote down the phone number.
“Wait, wait. Plastic surgeons always put their photos on their websites to reassure prospective patients they’re not getting the aesthetic standards of Quasimodo,” Fleur said. “Let’s see if Jordan R. Conrad, MD, is a Jewish guy with hair transplants or...bingo!...a strikingly attractive redhead of the XX persuasion educated at the University of Dublin.”
“Figures.” I bit my lip over the well-defined cleavage in the V of Dr. Jordan Conrad’s suit and no glint of gold on the fingers that steepled under her perfectly sculpted chin. Unmarried and—pulled up her CV in a PDF file and calculated—thirty-one.
“Thirty-one! She’s a baby. Well, that tears it. Did I even have a chance in this crapshoot called love?” I asked wistfully.
“You mean because she’s young and beautiful? Listen, Simon’s hitting on everything with a snatch is as much about love as rape is about sex. This is a power thing. An ego thing. Want more proof?” She did a bit of fancy finger work. “Dr. Date is a match-up website for single medical professionals. I decided to play a hunch after you called yesterday. And…voilà.”