by James Hynes
“Must be my lucky day, then,” Kevin says, pausing to swig the last of his water, which is noticeably warmer already. “Getting nursing care for free.”
Immediately Kevin realizes he’s said something he shouldn’t have. She stiffens; there’s a slight catch in her breathing, not quite a gasp. For a moment Kevin thought he’d seen a brightness in her gaze, not necessarily flirtatious, but the gleam of a good-looking, fit, fortysomething woman appreciating a man’s regard, even if she wasn’t particularly interested in return. But now that’s gone, as if a curtain has fallen.
“Nursing care?” Her voice, too, has noticeably cooled.
“It’s just you seemed to know your way around a bandage.” Kevin knows he ought to shut up, but that’s never stopped him before. “The way you snapped on those gloves…”
The Amazon slugs the last of her Gatorade and twists the top back on the empty bottle like she’s twisting Kevin’s neck. He’s trying to put it all together—the military bearing, the sculpted physique, the pickup truck—of course! She’s a lesbian—a weight-lifting, Latina, ex-military lesbian—and she thinks he’s coming on to her.
“I didn’t… ,” Kevin starts to say, with no idea how he’s going to finish the sentence.
“Thoracic surgeon,” says the woman, tossing the empty bottle into the truck bed. “And I’m afraid I’m running a little late.”
“Ah,” says Kevin. “Of course.” Idiot, he thinks. Idiot, idiot, idiot.
“You’re going to need a department store to replace those trousers.” She holds her palm out for his empty water bottle. “Do you have a car?” She drills him with her gaze, daring him to apologize.
“No,” he says, his mouth suddenly dry again. “I’m just here for the day.” He gingerly hands her the bottle, and she practically flings it into the back. “I have a job interview.”
“Yes, you said.” She steps back and gestures to the side like a maitre d’, and it takes a moment for Kevin to realize she wants him to get out of the truck. Clutching his coat, he scrambles down to the pavement and turns awkwardly, his torn trouser leg flapping, his knee still smarting from the antiseptic. Meanwhile Dr. Amazon grips the side of the driver’s doorway and yanks herself in one go up into the seat.
“There’s a Nordstrom’s out at the mall.” She looks down at him from the truck. “Do you have a cell, to call a cab?”
“No, actually.” He deliberately left his cell in Ann Arbor, so that if Stella calls him from Chicago, he won’t have to lie.
The good doctor slams the door and starts her truck, and the well-tuned roar of the engine startles Kevin a few paces back. I guess a ride’s out of the question, he thinks. Then her darkly tinted window whirs down, and she drapes her elbow out the window. He moistens his lips and says, “I don’t suppose you have a cell I could borrow.” He has to raise his voice to be heard over the confident rumble of the truck.
“My cell’s for emergencies only.” She points past him toward the bridge. “You can catch a bus right over there, far side of Lamar.” She looks him up and down. “There’s a Target a couple miles south, at Ben White.”
Her truck jerks into gear, the engine roars. Did she just say Target?
“Hey, thank you!” Kevin cries over the rumble, minding his manners, hating the way his voice rises an octave. “You’ve been very kind, Miz…”
“Doctor Barrientos.” She guns her engine to drown out any further bleatings from Kevin. He steps back as her glossy truck reverses out of its space, screeches to a stop, then heaves forward, past the toes of Kevin’s shoes and out of the lot onto the street.
Kevin limps past the end of the pedestrian bridge, toward Lamar. He drapes his jacket over his arm, careful not to empty his inside pocket. His knee stings, his sock is sticky with blood, and his nerves are still jangling. He feels old and slow and a good deal more fragile than he felt just fifteen minutes ago, all because of his little accident, and it doesn’t help that he’s been insulted by his good Samaritan, through no fault of his own. His misunderstanding about her had been wholly inadvertent, and let’s face it, not all that much of an insult. What the hell’s wrong with being a nurse?
He sees her truck idling angrily at the intersection. Target, he thinks. She said that just to piss me off. I’ll have you know, Doctor, these trousers were picked out by my very stylish and much younger girlfriend at the Abercrombie & Fitch in Briarwood Mall, thank you very much. Say what you want about Stella, she has an eye for quality; she’d never take him to fucking Target. Say what you want about Stella, but she knows what she wants, and goes for it without hesitation. Her single-mindedness, her ferocity, is what still thrills him about her after three years, even though he’s certain that he doesn’t love her. Well, pretty certain: he’s a little surprised at the moment at the depth of his anger at the doctor’s implied insult of his girlfriend’s sartorial judgment. It’s one thing for him to roll his eyes at his girlfriend’s joy at the gaudiest artifacts of pop culture—American Idol, anyone? Project Runway?—and her guilt-free uninterest in the books and movies and music Kevin loves, but it’s another for some humorless bitch in a pickup truck to do it. Don’t say nothin’ bad about my baby, Doctor.
He hobbles a little faster toward the corner, almost as if he means to come alongside the surgeon’s truck and catch her eye and give her a piece of his mind. But the intersection where the bridge meets the cross street is crowded with vehicles, radiating heat and impatience; the fender bender on the bridge has reduced traffic to a single lane each way, and cars are backed up along Lamar. As Kevin comes to the corner, a motorcycle cop in a tight, dark uniform—now that guy must be hot—is weaving his massive bike through the gridlock toward the center of the bridge, his flasher bright even in the midday glare. By the time Kevin turns back to the doctor’s truck, she’s rounded the corner and accelerated south down Lamar, shifting up with a stuttering, guttural roar.
The motorcycle cop glides to a stop at the corner, right in front of Kevin. His helmet dips toward Kevin’s leg and then his mouth speaks loudly from under his tinted visor.
“You hurt?” he shouts. His idling bike makes his whole body vibrate, as if he’s just a little out of focus. He points at Kevin’s leg, and Kevin, like an idiot, looks down at his own injury as if he’s surprised to see it.
“No,” Kevin shouts back. “I just fell down. It’s got nothing to do with that.” He lifts his chin up the bridge toward the accident, and the cop gives him a brisk cop nod and rumbles away. Actually, Kevin feels a little wobbly, a little lightheaded, as if his brain is floating free of his head. Perhaps that’s why he doesn’t wait for the walk sign and hobbles out into the clotted traffic across Lamar, his surgically incised trouser leg flapping. The heat reverberates off the backed-up vehicles, and the air stinks of exhaust. He turns left across the street and limps alongside an exhausted little park of underachieving trees and yellowed grass. Southbound cars rev up Lamar as they escape from the jam on the bridge, and over their rumble Kevin hears birds creaking and cawing from the drooping trees.
I should’ve rented a car, Kevin thinks. Even if all he’d done was drive it from the airport and back again, at the very least it would have kept him off the streets, where he has been lured by nostalgia and middle-aged lust into the labyrinth of a strange city, accosted by homeless men, tripped by a dog, condescended to by a surgeon. Right now, though, he’d settle for a place to sit down. The wide-open sky hammers the cartoon colors of the fast food franchises up ahead—Schlotzsky’s, Taco Bell, Jack in the Box—their bright colors simultaneously blanched by the sun and deepened by the tint of Kevin’s glasses. A low, stucco restaurant with a big pink sign that says TACO CABANA wafts a spicy, greasy aroma across all six lanes of Lamar, but Kevin’s still too hot, shaky, and pissed off to think about food. The racket of the birds taunts him. What he needs more than a meal right now is a bench, but along the sidewalk up ahead all he sees is a NO PARKING sign and the great big red and green Schlotzsky’s sign—but no bus stop, and
no bench.
“Goddammit,” he says out loud, slapping the soles of his shoes against the pavement, as flat-footed as Willie Loman. “Motherfucker,” he adds for good measure, aware that he’s trudging even further away from where he’s supposed to be in a few hours. There’s a hill up ahead covered with trees, which means that thanks to Dr. Barrientos’s bum directions, he’s heading into residential Austin and away from downtown. He’s off the map, into terra incognita. Here there be Schlotzsky’s.
Where, it occurs to him, at least I can sit and cool off and collect myself, have a glass of iced tea. Where maybe I can lock myself in the restroom and wash my face, maybe even take off my shirt and sponge-bathe myself in the sink with paper towels. He hobbles toward the Schlotzsky’s sign, the angry rush of traffic on his left, the inhuman rattle of the birds on his right. Then up ahead he sees a bus stop sign and a bench. Kevin stops at the edge of Schlotzsky’s parking lot, trying to decide whether to go into the restaurant or wait for the bus. The vast, heatstruck Texas sky throbbing overhead, birds screaming in his ear, Kevin feels like he’s slowly melting into a puddle on the concrete. But before he can make his move one way or the other—bus stop or Schlotzsky’s—a glossy red wall of vehicle heaves to a stop right in front of him. Kevin’s too tired and lightheaded to jump back, so he just sways on his feet and blinks in alarm at the long, thin, red reflection of himself in the vast passenger door of the truck. He sees his own round, Irish-Polish peasant face in the tinted window, with the dark lenses of his sunglasses where his eyes ought to be. He looks like a ghost from a Japanese horror film. Then his image is decapitated as the window whirs down.
Saints preserve us, thinks Kevin, it’s Dr. Barrientos!
“Hey.” She gestures at him out of the tinted dusk of the truck’s cab. “I think you dropped this.”
She’s holding something pale in his direction, pinched between her fingers. Kevin blinks, sways, then steps forward, lifting his glasses onto his forehead to peer into the gloom of the cab. She’s holding his invitation letter for the job interview. He reaches slowly into the cool air blowing out the window, hears the sibilant roar of the AC ducts, and takes the letter from her gingerly, as if she might snatch it back at any moment.
“Thanks.” He roughly folds the letter into quarters and wedges it with some difficulty into the breast pocket of his shirt, crumpling the bandage she gave him.
“Would you like a ride?” says the doctor, but Kevin has suddenly swung his jacket off his arm and thrust his fingers into the inside pocket. What else has he dropped along the way? His fingers find his notebook, his boarding pass, but where are his sunglasses?
“Would you like a ride?” she says again, raising her voice. Her truck idles, a big, purring cat. “I can drop you off on South Lamar somewhere.”
Kevin just gawps at her, so she enunciates more slowly. “There are a couple of department stores I can take you to.”
But he’s not listening, he’s digging fruitlessly in every pocket of his jacket. He looks up at her. “You didn’t happen to find my sunglasses?”
Out of the gloom of her truck she says, “They’re on your head.”
Kevin pats his hot forehead, fingers the lenses like a blind man.
“Get in,” says Dr. Barrientos. “Out of the heat.”
Kevin doesn’t remember climbing into the truck, but next thing he knows he’s sitting in a padded leather bucket seat while the truck idles in Schlotzsky’s parking lot. The AC blasts in his face. Beyond the little park with the limp trees he sees the glitter of cars backed up on the bridge. Even through the closed windows and the rush of the AC, he can still hear the birds chattering in the trees. The sun shines at a steep angle through the windshield, a sharp line of light falling across his wrists. His jacket is folded on his lap, he’s holding another cold bottle of water, and Dr. Barrientos’s warm palm is pressed against his sweating forehead.
“Drink it slowly,” she says. “Just a sip at a time.”
He drinks. The water freezes his sinuses.
“How’s your blood pressure?” She turns his left arm palm up and presses two fingers firmly against his wrist.
“My blood pressure? How would I know?” You’re the doctor, he almost says.
“I mean generally, not right this minute.”
He drinks again. The cold is blinding. “Good,” he gasps.
She presses her knuckles lightly against his temple again. “Were you dizzy or nauseous before you passed out on the bridge?”
“No.”
“Good.” She rests her hand on his upper arm.
“And I didn’t pass out,” Kevin says, slightly annoyed now. “That guy’s dog tripped me.”
“So you didn’t feel lightheaded or…”
“No.” He lifts the bottle. “I’m fine. Really.”
The doctor cocks her head as if she’s considering his truthfulness. He can smell sweat, though he can’t tell if it’s hers or his or some commingling of both.
“Aren’t I?”
She nods. “I think you’re probably okay.”
“Probably?”
Her hand shifts on his arm. “I was a little worried when I saw you just now, but your pulse isn’t racing, and you’re still sweating freely, so you’re not presenting with heatstroke.”
“Glad to hear it.” Some bedside manner she’s got, Dr. Barrientos. But then she’s a surgeon: most of her patients are probably unconscious when she sees them, so she doesn’t really need a bedside manner.
“Look, I shouldn’t have left you so quickly back there,” she says. “I’m sorry if I was abrupt.” The way she’s composed her face tells Kevin that apologies don’t come easy to her, but that she has disciplined herself to make them when necessary. He is appropriately appeased that she’s taking the trouble for him.
“I’m sorry, too,” he says, ever the midwesterner.
“For what?”
“For assuming you were a nurse. I mean, this day and age, I should know better.”
She gestures dismissively and looks out the windshield. She has made up her mind to be nice, and nothing, evidently, will deter Dr. Barrientos after she’s made up her mind. She has that in common with Stella.
“That wasn’t about you,” she says. “That was about something else.” She gives him another surprising, sidelong smile, only instead of knowing, now she looks rueful.
“Well, I’m sorry anyway.”
She nods and puts the truck in gear. “You’re not heatstroked,” she says, checking her mirrors, “but I’d feel better if you’d just sit and drink your water and let me drop you off someplace where you can buy another pair of trousers. Okay?”
Kevin salutes her with his bottle. “How can I say no?”
“Buckle up,” she says.
* * *
Rehydrated, air-conditioned, buckled in, Kevin rides comfortably up South Lamar in the well-padded cab of Dr. Barrientos’s powerful red pickup.
“I’m Kevin.” He reaches across the cab to offer her his hand.
“Claudia.” Her handshake is not particularly firm, which surprises him, because you’d think a surgeon, not to mention someone with her obvious upper-body strength, would have a grip like a C-clamp. But he reminds himself that he’s through making assumptions, for now, anyway. Inside the cab the guttural roar of the engine is a vibrationless purr; it’s like riding in a recording booth. Beyond the tinted windows smaller cars and the fast food joints fall quickly behind. Up ahead some blocky brown condos rise out of the green mass of trees, atop a low cliff of crumbling yellow stone. Across a brownish lawn below the cliff is a line of stout palm trees, with squat pineapple trunks and spiky crowns. An hour or so ago the sight of palm trees startled him, but now Kevin’s too lightheaded to feel amazement.
“So you exercise in this heat?” he says.
“That surprises you?”
Dr. Barrientos is a confident driver, to say the least, accelerating through a big intersection, crowding a yellow light that turns red as
they pass under it. She guns the truck up the hill and under the lee of the bluff.
“Well, my experience in Texas so far pretty clearly shows that I can’t even walk around in it,” Kevin says. “And here you are, running.”
A glance from the doctor. “Where are you from exactly?”
“Michigan.”
“And you’re here for an interview, no?”
“Yeah,” drawls Kevin, like he’s not so sure any longer.
“Is the job a good one?”
“It had better be, if I have to get used to this heat.”
The doctor laughs, not much more than a snort. “This is nothing.”
Kevin watches her sidelong, past the edge of his sunglasses. She drives like a man, her legs spread casually, her right hand loose on the top of the steering wheel, the way his dad used to settle in on long drives. At the same time she’s reaching behind her with her left hand, elbow in the air, squeezing the headrest and flexing her biceps. The smell of her sweat is powerful, even in the arctic AC, but it’s not unpleasant. It even reminds Kevin of sex, and he lets his sidelong gaze linger on her sweat-glistening thigh. He wonders if what McNulty assumed about nurses goes for doctors as well.
“I grew up in the Valley,” she says, “where it gets even hotter than here.”
“The Valley?”
“Brownsville? McAllen?” She glances at him. “Down along the Rio Grande.”
She says “Rio Grande” like a Spanish speaker, with flowing R’s and the E on the end. Rrrio Grrran-day.
“Laredo,” she says. “You’ve heard of Laredo, right?” Saying “Laredo” her tongue does something with the R that Kevin could never imitate.
“Sure.”
“Well, we never lived in Laredo. But it’s in the Valley.”
They sail effortlessly past an Austin city bus grinding up the hill. Lamar is five lanes wide here, but the canopy of trees hanging over either side of the street makes it feel narrow. Even the regular trees here look strange to Kevin, not just the palms. It’s the leaves, he decides, they’re smaller and sharper than the broad deciduous leaves of Michigan trees. Shinier, too, like green leather.