The beginnings of a frown plucked at Helen’s forehead. She looked at him for a moment as if she were considering her answer. Then she reached out and touched his face.
“Are they really going to suspend you, Marcus?”
Ford’s shoulders sagged.
“Do you think we could…?”
He squinted up at the powerful lights. It was like standing in a photon storm.
Helen set off across the room for the switch.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s a habit with me. I always have the lights up full in every room. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I was abused as a child.”
She shot him a look over her shoulder.
“Just kidding.”
She dialed the dimmer switch to a romantic twilight.
Then went over to the stereo and brought up a little soft jazz.
“Sit down,” she said. She didn’t have to ask twice.
This was much better. The half-light and smoochy saxophone made him want to push his shoes off, maybe wiggle his toes a little. He leaned back in the couch, took a good long pull on his wine, and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, Helen was wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of faded chinos. Chopin had replaced Stan Getz, and there was a good smell of cooking in the air.
“Jesus!”
Ford jerked forward on the sofa, staring at his watch. It was a quarter to ten.
“Jesus, Helen, I must have—”
“It’s okay,” said Helen, looking up from the book she was reading.
“You looked so exhausted I couldn’t bring myself to wake you.”
Ford struggled to get up, but Helen pushed him gently back into the couch.
“But what about that drink?” he pleaded. “I was going to take you out. Jesus. I just can’t…”
Helen laughed, openmouthed, throwing her head back. Ford could see she had been at the Vouvray while he was asleep.
“For goodness’ sake,” she said. “Relax, can’t you? There’s really no need to get upset. And you weren’t taking me out,” she added, raising a finger. “We were going out together.”
“Right.”
“And to be honest, I’m just as happy to stay in.”
She leaned across and kissed him—flush on the mouth this time. The peculiar grape smell was on her breath, and her T-shirt smelled of something between beeswax and vanilla. Ford kissed her back, liking her mouth and this lovely rich smell she had. Then she was looking at him again, definitely a little tipsy.
“Christ, Helen,” he said. “I’m so embarrassed. I make you wait for me, and then I crash on your couch like some old fart. You must think I—”
Helen kissed him again and then leaned away, pushing the hair back from his forehead.
“Marcus, no more talk. Talk is finished. You’re working too hard. With all that’s going on at the hospital, it’s not surprising. God, if I were you, I’d have burned out a long time ago.”
Ford looked at his left hand, pale against the black leather.
“You’re right,” he said. “It’s all getting a little crazy down there. This afternoon when Haynes called me into his office—it was surreal.”
Helen shook her head.
“I can’t believe they’re thinking of suspending you,” she said softly.
“I think they’re serious,” said Ford.
He stood up now and started pacing back and forth on the bare floor.
“Haynes thinks I was out of line talking to the press. And he’s virtually handed control of the hospital over to Lucy Patou.”
Helen nodded sympathetically.
“Look, if they do suspend you, it’s only going to be a temporary thing. I know how much they value you down there. That nurse, what’s her name, Gloria?”
“Oh, Gloria wouldn’t suspend me even if she caught me suffocating a patient with a pillow.”
“And she’d be right,” said Helen.
Ford stopped in his tracks.
“What?”
“Well, she would know that if you were murdering someone, you probably had a good reason and would be doing it according to sound ethical principles.”
“You’re probably right. Maybe I should strangle Patou. Sneak up behind her. Get an arm round her throat.” Ford narrowed his eyes. “She’s not a big woman. It wouldn’t be too hard.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Helen, laughing. “But we can plan all that later. First, I think we should eat. While you were sleeping, I made a little salad and tempura. I hope you like fish.”
Ford considered her for a moment. With her long legs doubled up, there was something of the foal about her. That’s what she was, a thoroughbred, with her glossy black hair and dark eyes. Impulsively he squatted down to kiss her on the mouth, but his knees made such a loud crack, he couldn’t go through with it. Helen stared at him, struggling to stifle a laugh, her wine-moistened lips trembling.
“Look at me,” said Ford, still squatting. “The old fart on a hot date.”
Helen’s expression became quizzical. She put her head over to one side.
“Marcus?”
He loved the way she looked at him—there was something so intelligent about her face, a cleverness that was almost unsettling.
“Yes?”
“Did you know you drool when you sleep?”
And before he could cry out or catch hold of her, she was up and gone, laughing at him from the kitchen.
It was then that he remembered Sunny.
He called home, listening to four rings before she picked up.
“Hello?”
“Sweetheart, it’s me. Are you okay?”
“Oh. Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
She sounded pissed.
“It was just … I’d hoped to be home when you got back …. How did the play go?”
“Rehearsal. It wasn’t the whole play.”
“Right—so how did it go?”
“It went.”
“Did you find the meat loaf in the refrigerator?”
“The small gray thing with sort of perspiration on it?”
“Honey.”
“I went out.”
“You went out?”
“Yeah, you know. You go out the door into the street. Lots of people do it.”
“Don’t be funny. You mean you went out to eat? Where did you go?”
“Just a place in the neighborhood.”
“Who with?”
“Some kids from school. After the rehearsal we just went across Robinson to this taco place. So you see, it didn’t matter that you weren’t here. There’s no need to feel guilty.”
There was a long pause during which Ford gripped the phone with both hands. He did feel guilty. Very. And he didn’t know what else to say.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Where are you? Are you at the hospital?”
“No, I’m at a friend’s house.”
“Oh.”
Another pause.
“I read about the Willowbrook. What’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you about it tomorrow morning.”
“Aren’t you coming home?”
The plaintive note in Sunny’s voice squeezed Ford’s heart.
“Of course I am, honey. But I don’t want you waiting up, okay. I’ll come in and kiss you good night.”
“Not if I’m asleep. I’ve got to get some sleep, Dad.”
“Okay, honey. Love you, sweetheart.”
“Sure you do. Good-bye, Mr. Bear.”
And she hung up.
Ford stood with the phone in his hand, deep in thought. “I’ve got to get some sleep”—she could sound so adult and then call him Mr. Bear, something she had stopped doing years ago. This flickering between being a child and the beginnings of a woman threw him completely. He didn’t know whether he was supposed to be her friend or her dad.
When Helen came back into the room, he was standing at the window looking out.
“Wha
t’s up?”
“I was going to get back to see Sunny after school.”
“Is she okay?” asked Helen.
“Sure. She’s fine.”
Helen came up to him and held him from behind.
“After all, she is thirteen, isn’t she? And she’s not the only woman who has a claim on your time.”
Ford turned and looked Helen in the face. He didn’t like what she had said. It was callous. Then, looking at her, he saw that this hardness was part of her appeal. She looked at you, and you could see she was engaged, genuinely turned on, but there was something else too, something calculating, almost predatory. Out of the blue an image of Carolyn, just before her death, flashed into his mind. He remembered the way she had looked at him in moments like this. The look in her eyes had always been so trusting, so loving. It was always he who had initiated their love-making. He sensed that with Helen it wouldn’t be like that. When she looked at you, you could see her thinking what she would like to do to you, what she would like to take. With a rush of hot feeling in his loins, he felt as if he wanted her to take him.
“Why don’t you go and take a shower?” she asked softly.
She pressed herself against the bulge in his groin and kissed his mouth. Ford smiled. She was so clever. Instinctively. She seemed always to know what he was thinking and knew exactly how to be herself at all times, through a bewildering number of registers. He had an agreeable feeling of being in her power.
They ate in the living room, balancing plates on their knees. The tempura was good, and the chilled Vouvray started to take the edge off his feelings of guilt about Sunny. Pretty soon all he could think about was the great time he was having. They talked softly, laughing from time to time, as if it hadn’t been such a bad day, as if South Central were on another planet, as if they were in a bubble that protected them both from the city and their daily lives.
“Raw masculine power aside,” said Helen, putting her head on one side and smiling at him. “Do you know what it is that really turns me on about you? I mean really turns me on?”
Ford shook his head.
“I always assumed it was the raw power. That’s what usually drives women—”
“It’s your goodness.” She grinned, looking a little drunk and daffy. “You’re a good man”—she leaned forward and kissed his mouth—“and you’re a real man.”
Then she sat back and took a sip of wine.
“I think, working at the Willowbrook, you don’t realize how rare those qualities are in this city.”
Ford looked down at his hands.
“It’s funny,” he said. “Just now I was thinking that what I liked about you was something predatory. Something sharp, almost bad.”
Helen sat up straight.
“Bad. Gee, thanks.”
“Not bad bad. I mean … bad like the claws in a friendly cat’s paws. They’re there, but they won’t hurt you. Unless…” He smiled and showed her his hands curved like a pair of claws.
Helen stared, a serious look on her face, until Ford had to look at his own hands, wondering what was wrong.
“That’s another thing I like about you,” she said.
“What?”
“This is going to sound too weird.”
“No, go on.”
Helen looked away, laughing.
“I can’t.”
“Go on!”
She looked at him now with a dark emphasis that he felt like a soft push.
“Your hands,” she said. “The idea of what you do with them. The idea of you cutting and reaching in and saving people. I think that is … in-cred-ib-le.”
They both laughed, Helen laughing until there were tears in her eyes, but shaking her head, wanting to make her point.
“No, I’m serious. There’s a line in T. S. Eliot about that. How does it go?” She looked away, recalling. ” ‘The wounded surgeon plies the steel that questions the distempered part. Beneath the bleeding hands we feel the sharp compassion of the healer’s art.’ I mean is that sublime or what? ‘The sharp compassion of the healer’s art.’ “
Ford was speechless, watching her lovely face, completely in her power.
“You know that was the first thing I thought about you,” she went on, “when I saw you at the conference. When you looked at me.”
“What?”
She smiled, her mouth slightly open, so that he could see the tip of her tongue against her crooked lower teeth.
“That when you looked at me … You were talking to Novak and then you saw me and you gave me a real close look. And I had this thrill thinking that you weren’t just seeing me, I mean the skin, the surface, but that you also knew exactly how I looked inside, I mean my heart and lungs and everything.”
Ford was taken aback. He didn’t know what to say for a moment.
“Is that the way it is?” asked Helen. “I mean, looking at me now, looking at my breasts, say. Do you think about what’s inside?”
Ford looked at Helen’s breasts.
“Not really,” he said. “I mean, I can.”
He watched his hand reaching out, hardly able to believe he was doing what he was doing. He watched his hand gently cup her breast. The nipple was hard under the starchy cotton of her T-shirt. He looked directly into her dark eyes, feeling the contour of the nipple and the round fullness of flesh.
“I can,” he repeated, “but only if I want to. But I can see what you’re saying. And I guess that, yes, behind what I see is knowledge of how the body is inside. I guess it makes my appreciation of the whole…”
Helen leaned across the plates again and kissed him, holding his hand against her breast. After a moment she leaned back and sat quietly. Then, with one simple movement, she pulled the T-shirt up over her head, making her hair crackle with electricity, revealing her sleek courtesan’s torso and perfect, pale breasts. She smiled.
“Sometimes bad means bad,” she said.
Just after two in the morning Ford got out of bed and went across to the window. The Buick sat in a pool of light next to two trash cans that had been wheeled out next to it. The car looked different somehow, and it wasn’t just the big dent in the front. Then he realized that it wasn’t the car but he himself that had changed. He was no longer the man that had climbed out of the driver’s seat only a few hours before. And what had happened was that for the first time since Carolyn’s death he had given himself to someone else. Despite himself, he couldn’t help feeling that he had been unfaithful. But he knew too that what had happened was good. It seemed to him that the only way to see it, to evaluate events, was to say that he was now fully alive again, his wounds healed. The car looked like the heap of junk it was. He would sell it and buy another.
“What are you doing?”
Helen’s sleepy voice drew him from the window. He turned and looked at her.
“I’d better get back,” he said.
“Oh. Okay.”
He went and sat on the bed beside her. He pushed his hand into her dark hair. It felt wonderful to be able to do this natural thing without any restraint. It frightened him—how nice it felt. It scared him how much he would miss it when he was home in his own bed.
“That was really nice, Helen. I mean that was really a lovely thing.”
Helen smiled. Then her face was serious.
“Marcus?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you sit in the car so long?”
“When?”
“When you arrived. I heard you pull up and looked out the window. But you just stayed where you were.”
Ford frowned, trying to think how he could answer.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I had used the last of my energy driving across town. When I turned off the engine, I sort of turned myself off.”
Helen watched him, unblinking.
“I thought maybe you were having second thoughts.”
“About what?”
“About me.”
It was uncanny, the way she could
guess what he was thinking all the time. He wondered if, in this poor light, she could see how uncomfortable she was making him.
“No,” was all he could say.
“Good,” she said.
“It’s been hell the last few days, Helen. This is me at my worst in a long while.”
She smiled.
“Well, if this is the worst…”
“It’s not just all those people dying, all those people I haven’t been able to help; it’s the way the whole thing has become … I don’t know what the word is. The way it’s all become politicized. It reminded me of what you said about my speech being political. I realize now what you meant. Everything is a position. I’m not sure I like that. When I was talking to Haynes and he was going on about the budget and the health department and the media, I felt completely … completely powerless. Like a fish out of water, you know?”
“Sure.”
“And then with the press … Suddenly the whole thing’s blown up, twisted, distorted.”
“The media always sensationalizes. I think most people understand that. They know this isn’t the end of the world.”
Ford withdrew his hand from Helen’s hair and stood up. He walked slowly over to the window and looked out at the street again, resting his head against the cool glass.
“Do they? How can they know?”
Helen lay silent for a moment, then pushed herself up on her elbows.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, people are focusing on the staph outbreak. And that is terrible. I mean if you had seen that guy, the patrolman, Denny. He was … You would never have expected that outcome. The guy was young, healthy. A little overweight maybe, and that can sometimes affect the immune response, but the wound he had in his leg … you’d never have expected that outcome. But what people are forgetting is that we’ve had enterococci that have behaved the same way, and more recently Staphylococcus pneumoniae.”
He turned and faced the room.
“And yesterday I had a call from a doctor in Beverly Hills who thought he had a case of resistant Clostridium perfringens.”
“The botulism bug? Wow.”
“Now, I don’t know what the chances are of all this happening at once, but I bet they’re pretty small. So, what I’m saying is, there may be something happening here. Maybe, somehow, multidrug-resistance is spreading between species even faster than normal. I mean, it does happen: through conjugation of one kind or another.”
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