“I don’t think that works with vets. But I won’t tell anybody, don’t worry. I just think you have to be careful.”
“Yeah, I know. I don’t want no Mexicans barging in in the middle of the night. The only annoying thing is that I can’t sell the goddamn house now. For all I know, there’s a couple of mil stashed away in the goddamn walls. I can’t risk it. I figure it’ll take me another year or so to bash through the places I think Mike mighta worked on. Then maybe it’ll be safe to sell.”
When I finished examining Strudel, Rosy gave me a kiss on the cheek.
“You’ve been a good friend, Doc,” she said. “If I find enough cash in the walls, I’ll give some to the clinic.”
“Thanks,” I said.
For the next eighteen months, Rosy brought Strudel in for regular checkups and to get various ailments taken care of. Then she let me know that they were moving down to Florida. During that year and a half, she never said another word about the money hidden in her house, and I never asked. But she did start wearing expensive jewelry, and one day she tipped Lucy a hundred dollars. Lucy came into my examining room, holding the bill and saying she didn’t want to take it but that Rosy had insisted. “‘Take it, darling, you deserve it’—that’s what she said. What should I do?”
“Keep it,” I said. “You do deserve it.”
Rosy died soon after her seventh-fifth birthday—of natural causes, happily. I hadn’t seen or heard from her in years, but I know she died because she left five thousand dollars to the clinic in her will. Her lawyer sent me a check, saying that Rosy wanted to cover the expenses of treating animals whose owners couldn’t afford our fees.
Lucy let several of our customers know about the endowment and told them to send any of their friends our way if their friends had animals but not much money. We got ten new clients through that grapevine. Lucy’s five grand ran out long ago. But we still treat those animals without charging the owners.
* * *
Communicating with Camilla made me feel as if I were a geeky fifteen-year-old in high school, instead of the geeky almost-forty-year-old professional I actually was. I called her twice the day after our dinner. The first time, I left a message on her voice mail that said, “Hi, this is Bob. You know, the … um … the vet. Uhhh … I just wanted to say that I had a really nice time and I hope you did, too, and I hope we can do it again soon. Have dinner, I mean. Not … well … I’d really like to take you out to dinner again. So give me a call.” I gave her the clinic number and my cell phone number. I started to give her the number for the landline in my apartment but stopped short. Suddenly I had a gut-wrenching picture of Camilla calling me at home while Elizabeth was there and I started to get all clammy just leaving the message. I handled my change of heart very coolly by going, “And the last number is two-one-two two-five-five … oh, never mind, you’ve got enough numbers for me. My cell is probably best. Bye.”
I thought about my goofy message for several hours and then couldn’t stand it any longer, so I called back. I got her voice mail again and this time said, “I realize I didn’t specify a date for dinner”—as the words came out of my mouth I thought, and may have actually muttered aloud to myself, “Specify a date?” Jesus!—“so I’m just calling back to see if maybe you can have dinner tomorrow night. The weekend is bad for me, but if tomorrow doesn’t work, maybe next week? Next week I’m totally free, so name your night. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, whatever. Jeez, I can’t believe I just listed the days of the week on your machine. Okay, I’m hanging up now. I think I’m talking gibberish.” But I didn’t hang up. I left my clinic and cell phone numbers a second time, just to make myself seem even more of a nerd, and then I hung up.
I saw patients practically every minute that day, but all I could think about was how idiotic my messages had been, and I was sure she wouldn’t call me back. I was like a cross between Charlie Brown with the Little Red-Haired Girl and a dog in heat. A really big, stupid, panting dog. Our original dinner was on a Tuesday night. I left my messages on Wednesday. Wednesday night I stayed home, tried to read a Peter Robinson Inspector Banks novel, and couldn’t concentrate enough to get past five pages. I did a lot of pacing, played with the animals even more than usual, and didn’t fall asleep until two A.M. Most of the sleepless part of the night was spent wondering why I was such a schmuck.
Camilla finally called me back on Thursday, in the late morning—okay, she called at exactly eleven-thirteen, according to my iPhone, not that I was obsessively keeping track or anything—and said we could have dinner the next night, Friday. Her tone was light and casual; she gave no indication that she’d either (a) noticed how moronic my messages were, or (b) remembered that we’d just spent an insanely passionate night together. She spoke to me as if I were already a friend, which made me happy. But she didn’t speak to me as if I were a new lover, which sent me into a semi-panic. Worse, I couldn’t have dinner with her the next evening, because Elizabeth would be in town.
My stomach clutched and churned when I said that I couldn’t see her this coming weekend (and I simultaneously felt even more schoolboyish than I had earlier, because now I was worrying about the fact that she obviously hadn’t bothered to pay close attention to the details in my idiotic voice messages). When I asked her about next week, she said she could do something Monday and I said that was fine. The conversation stopped there, though we lingered on the phone for a few extra seconds, as if each of us was trying to think of something more to say. But neither of us came up with anything, so it ended with an “Okay, see you Monday” and we hung up. As soon as I was off the phone, I thought of at least ten things I wanted to say to her, but there was no way I was calling her back. I knew that if I did, all ten things would go flying out of my mind. Or they’d sound a lot dumber out loud than they did inside my head.
I spent Thursday night pacing, playing with the menagerie, and rereading the same five Peter Robinson pages. Friday morning I went to work earlier than usual—I was already there by the time Lucy showed up—and did my best to focus on the patients and their owners instead of thinking about cupping Camilla’s perfect breasts in my hands.
Elizabeth arrived in the midafternoon. As usual, she dropped her stuff in the apartment before popping into the clinic. She sat patiently in the waiting room, as she always did, until I came out of the examining room, a little white Pekingese named Lydia panting and bouncing along behind me. I made the transfer of dog to owner—a rail-thin, bearded man named Carl, who looked as if he were about to burst into tears—and told him I’d call him tomorrow with the results from the blood test. I was reasonably certain that Lydia was experiencing some kind of early and very treatable renal failure, and I was equally certain that Carl was already in despair and planning the dog’s funeral service.
Once Carl was out the door, Elizabeth kissed me on the cheek. She had a self-satisfied look in her eyes and held up two tickets. I peered closer, but she just blurted out, “Offenbach’s La Périchole.” Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to plaster the appropriate look of delight on my face. Part of me was thinking how nice it would be to go to Lincoln Center on the spur of the moment to see an opera with the woman I’d been with for nearly four years. A much bigger part of me was thinking that I wouldn’t see Camilla for three and a half days, and that thought was making my soul ache.
Elizabeth said, “You take these things too hard.”
I jerked my head toward her sharply, then realized she was talking about Carl and his Pekingese. I smiled at her—I had to smile; she was worried about me, and as always her concern softened my heart—and told her she was right. I said I’d be finished at the clinic around five P.M. When she asked what I wanted to do for dinner, I said, “Let’s just play it by ear. We’ll walk around after the opera until we find a place that looks right.”
Elizabeth frowned. Spontaneity and improvisation were not her strengths. “It’s Friday night. We’ll never get in anyplace.”
“Okay,” I said. “Why do
n’t you just make a reservation.”
“Italian?” she said.
“That’d be perfect.”
* * *
Over the years Elizabeth and I had developed something of a routine for our weekends together. We tried to schedule one interesting event each weekend—this time it was the opera; Elizabeth loved opera and reveled in every aspect of it, while I was happy to sit, absorb, and seem more sophisticated than I was—and have one nice meal at home. That Saturday night, I made a delicious pasta with cauliflower, pine nuts, currants, and anchovies. We each had a glass of Chianti. Elizabeth rarely drank more than that. I was in the mood to finish the bottle, but that seemed a tad excessive, so I just matched her sip for sip.
During our weekend visits we also left some time just to talk face to face; it was our way of making sure that we were fully a part of each other’s separate worlds. She knew the names of many of my clients, two- as well as four-legged, and I knew what all her co-workers looked like and thought. We made love Friday night but not Saturday night. The second night we read in bed after dinner, until we fell comfortably asleep. On Sunday we went out to brunch in the West Village. And, as I did every Sunday in the late afternoon, I put her in a taxi to LaGuardia, where she caught a small plane to the Ithaca airport.
That Sunday, we kissed before she got into the cab. A light kiss on the lips.
“That was a particularly nice weekend,” she said.
I nodded and smiled.
“You come to me next weekend, right?”
I nodded and smiled again.
“I’m already looking forward to it.”
I kept smiling and nodded twice.
Then she was gone.
The entire weekend, I thought I might explode. At the opera, I saw three women with similar hair color to Camilla’s, and my heart started racing. When Elizabeth and I had brunch, two women walked by who had Camilla’s strong, distinctive gait, and I could barely finish my meal. As I was kissing Elizabeth before putting her in the cab, I was positive I heard Camilla’s voice and pulled away as if being tugged by a capricious puppeteer. Basically, I felt as if I were losing my mind.
I didn’t relax until I saw the real Camilla on Monday night. We went to a different sushi place, this one in the East Village. We talked about all sorts of things—or, more accurately, she got me talking as I drank my sake. I told her about my childhood in upstate New York, and a lot about Teddy and Phil and my parents, and a little bit about Hilts. I told her about my wedding and the early days of my marriage, and she asked me questions about Anna, leading me gently through the details of her death. She pushed for insights into my relationship with Anna, the different levels it had had and whether I thought it was a completely honest relationship. I answered as best I could but was uncomfortable with some of the scrutiny, and I know I came off as a bit evasive. Camilla could be a cipher when talking about herself, but when she was listening to someone else’s story her face became an IMAX 3-D presentation. As I spoke, she registered high degrees of sympathy, disbelief, curiosity, understanding, and disdain, along with an occasional verbal response, most of which sounded either like “hmmm” or “agghh” or “tsk tsk,” and all of which was mixed in with various sighs and moans indicating her delight with the raw fish.
When we finished our encore half bottle of sake (polished off after Camilla once again told me she wouldn’t be drinking with dinner), I was drained from the grilling. I also realized that, as before, I’d learned almost nothing about her.
It was drizzling when we left the restaurant, so there was no leisurely stroll home. We grabbed a cab, and when she offered to drop me off I’m sure she heard my sharp intake of breath and saw the look of disappointment that turned my face into something Buster Keatonish. I insisted on dropping her off first, hoping silently that when we got to her place she’d again invite me in for a drink. The cab stopped and she stared into my eyes before opening the door. Whatever she saw there she must have liked, because she shrugged and said, “Come on.” I followed, puppy dog–like.
I greeted Rags, the cat, who ignored her and ran to me. Camilla opened a bottle of Chilean white wine I’d never heard of and, sitting next to each other on the couch, we drank the entire bottle and talked until three in the morning. As we talked, she kicked off her boots and tucked her bare legs and feet under her. I found the position intimate and strangely touching: Her bare feet somehow made her look ten years younger. At one point she saw me looking at her legs and said, “I hate my calves. My mother used to tell me that I got them from her Uncle Sean, who was a rugby player.”
She noticed the thin smile on my face and went, “What?”
I shook my head. When I’d seen her walking down the street toward me the other night, I’d thought, Rugby player but decided that was best left unsaid.
She didn’t mind that I didn’t answer. I could tell she understood that it was something that didn’t need answering. I liked her even more for not minding and for not pressing me. And something must have clicked—maybe it was my own silence—because she then began to tell me a bit about herself and her family.
Her father was a British character actor and radio and TV announcer. He had a wonderful voice, she said, and he could talk with an actor’s stage whisper. She remembered him whispering to her all the time when she was a little girl, and she could hear his whisper all the way across the room. She would whisper back and he would keep saying, “What?” until she’d wind up screaming at him in a hoarse voice while he laughed. She smiled recounting the story. I knew she was hearing her father’s whisper inside her head.
Her mother was a fashion designer. Not high fashion: T-shirts and crazy, colorful socks and fun accessories. She said her father was always whispering to her: Look how beautiful your mother is. Look how she can turn a little ribbon into something magical. And she could, Camilla said. That was her memory of her parents: lovely whispers and magical ribbons.
The way she talked about them, I couldn’t tell if either or both of her parents were alive or dead. I’d had enough alcohol and was drowsy enough that at some point I asked the question. Cammy looked up at the ceiling and waved my question away.
“Come on,” I said. My words were a little slurred. My brain was a lot slurred. “You have to tell me something sometime.”
So she looked at me and said, “Dead.”
Without another word, she got up and walked toward the bedroom. As she did, she began stripping off her clothes, leaving them casually strewn behind her. It didn’t take me long to follow. But when I got to her bed, she wouldn’t let me undress. She insisted on holding me while she was naked and I was fully clothed.
“You’re seeing someone,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” I said. As quietly as I could.
“Do you love her?”
“No.”
“Have you ever loved her?”
“I don’t think so. No.”
“How long have you been with her?”
“Oh, Jesus. Do we have to—”
“How long?”
“Three years. Almost four, I guess.”
“Does she know? That you don’t love her?”
“I don’t know. But she’s very smart.”
“Why has she stayed with you for so long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why do you think?”
“Because we get along really well. We like each other a lot. It’s all very…”
“Easy?”
I shook my head. “Nice.” Then I shrugged. “And easy.”
“That’s not enough. And it’s depressing as hell. There has to be more.”
“There is.”
She waited. Then waved her hand, asking me to continue.
“Because she’s in love with me,” I said. “And because she thinks I’m too afraid to ever leave her.”
“Afraid of what?”
I took longer to answer this one. “Of being alone.”
She took a moment
to consider this. “And you don’t mind cheating on her?”
“Yes. I mind.”
“But you’ll do it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Camilla—”
She pulled the hair at the back of my neck. It made me melt.
“Why?”
“Because all I can think about is making love to you.”
“We’re—”
“Don’t tell me we’re just fucking! We’re not!”
“Oh, now you have a temper, now that we’re talking about you cheating on your girlfriend.”
I didn’t respond.
Camilla went: “Is that all you think about, making love to me?”
“No. I think … everything about you. I think about talking to you and eating with you and listening to your voice and … Mostly I think about how all I want to do is be with you.”
She nodded. And kissed my neck. I shuddered with pleasure.
“Are you?” she asked.
“Am I what?”
“Afraid of being alone?”
“No.”
“Then why does she think that?”
“Who, Eliza—”
“No!” She almost jumped up. Waved her hand at me as if she were a deranged traffic cop. “Don’t tell me her name!” She calmed down. Her body relaxed, and her voice returned to normal. “I don’t want to know anything about her. Just tell me why she thinks that.”
“Because she’s afraid of being alone. It makes it easier if she believes I am, too.”
“But you’re not.”
“I’ve never been afraid of being alone. What I’m afraid of is not being in love.”
“Don’t you mean not having someone love you?”
“No.” Then I said, “Well, I kind of think they’re the same thing.”
“Oh my god are you wrong,” Cam said. “Are you that much of a romantic?”
“I guess I am.”
She took some time to absorb this. I had surprised her.
“I have a boyfriend,” she said.
Ask Bob: A Novel Page 22