The Touch

by F. Paul Wilson

  Stone walls and tall stands of trees shielded the waterfront estates from passersby. Alan wound along the road until his headlights swept the two tall brick gateposts that flanked the entrance, illuminating the brass plaque on the left.

  TOAD HALL

  He turned in, followed a short, laurel-lined drive, and came upon the Nash house—formerly the Borg mansion—standing dark among its surrounding willows under the clear, starlit spring sky.

  Only a single window was lit, the one in the upper left corner of the many-gabled structure, glowing a subdued yellow, making the place look like it belonged on the cover of a gothic novel. The front-porch light was on, almost as if he were expected.

  He’d driven by in the past, but had never been inside. Although, after seeing the spread The New York Times Magazine had run on it a week ago—one in a continuing series on old North Shore mansions—he felt as if he knew the place.

  Alan could smell the brine and hear the gentle lap of the Long Island Sound as, black bag in hand, he stepped up to the front door and reached for the bell.

  He hesitated. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, what with Sylvia’s reputation as the Merry Widow and all, and especially with the way she was always coming on to him. He knew it was mostly in fun because she liked to rattle him, yet he sensed there might be something real under the surface. That scared him most of all because he knew he responded to her. He couldn’t help it. Something beyond her good looks appealed to him, attracted him. Like now. Was he out here to see Jeffy or her?

  This was a mistake. But too late to turn back now. He reached again for the bell…

  “The Missus is expecting you?”

  At the sound of the voice directly behind him, Alan jumped and spun with a sharp bark of fright, clutching at his heart, which he was sure had just gone into a brief burst of ventricular tachycardia.

  “Ba!” he said, recognizing Sylvia’s Vietnamese driver and handyman. “You damn near scared me to death!”

  “Very sorry, Doctor. I did not recognize you from behind.”

  Ba stood well over six feet. His lank black hair was tinged with gray, but his features gave little hint to his age. He could have been forty or sixty. In the glare of the porch light, his Asian skin looked sallower than usual, his eyes and cheeks more sunken.

  The front door opened then and Alan turned to see the startled expression on Sylvia Nash’s pretty, finely chiseled face. She was dressed in a very comfortable looking plaid flannel robe with a high cowled neck that covered her from jaw to toes. But her breasts still managed to raise an attractive swell under the soft fabric.

  “Alan! I only wanted to talk to you. I didn’t expect you to—”

  “The house call is not entirely dead,” he said. “I make them all the time. It happened that I was nearby in the car when I got the beep so I thought I’d save time and stop by and see Jeffy. But don’t worry. I’ll be sure to call ahead next time. Maybe then Ba won’t…”

  His voice trailed off as he turned. Ba was gone. Didn’t that man make any sound when he moved? Then Sylvia was waving him inside.

  “Come in, come in!”

  He stepped into a broad, marble-floored foyer decorated in pastels, brightly lit by a huge crystal chandelier suspended from the high ceiling. Directly across from where he stood, a wide staircase wound up and away to the right.

  “What was that about Ba?”

  “He almost scared the life out of me. What’s he doing skulking around in the bushes like that?”

  Sylvia smiled. “Oh, I imagine he’s worried about that Times article attracting every cat burglar in the five boroughs.”

  “Maybe he’s got a point.” Alan remembered the published photos of the elegant living room, the ornate silver sets in the dining room, the bonsai green house. Everything in the article had spelled M-O-N-E-Y. “If the place is half as beautiful in real life as on paper, I imagine it would be pretty tempting.”

  “Thanks,” she said with a rueful smile. “I needed to hear that.”

  “Sorry. But you have an alarm system, don’t you?”

  She shook her head. “Only a one-eyed dog who barks but doesn’t bite. And Ba, of course.”

  “Is he enough?”

  “So far, yes.”

  Maybe Ba was enough. Alan shuddered at the thought of running into him in the dark. He looked like a walking cadaver.

  “They certainly made enough of a fuss over you in the article—famous sculptress and all that. How come no mention of Jeffy? I’m surprised they didn’t play up the human interest angle there.”

  “They didn’t mention Jeffy because they don’t know about him. Jeffy is not for display.”

  At that moment, Sylvia Nash rose another notch in Alan’s estimation. He watched her, waiting for her to start with the provocative comments. None came. She was too concerned about Jeffy.

  “Come take a look at him,” she continued. “He’s upstairs. He quieted down after I called. I hated to disturb you, but he was in so much pain, and then he vomited. And, you know…I get worried.”

  Alan knew, and understood. He followed her across the foyer and up the curved staircase, watching her hips swaying gracefully before his eyes. Down a hall, a left turn, and then they were stepping over a knee-high safety gate into a child’s room, gently illuminated by a Donald Duck night-light in a wall outlet.

  Alan knew Jeffy well, and felt a special kinship that he shared with none of his other pediatric patients. A beautiful child with a cherubic face, blond hair, deep blue eyes, and a terrible problem. He’d examined Jeffy so many times that his little eight-year-old body was nearly as familiar as his own. But Jeffy’s mind…his mind remained locked away from everybody.

  He looked at the bed and saw Jeffy sleeping peacefully.

  “Doesn’t look very sick to me.”

  Sylvia stepped quickly to the bedside and stared down at the boy.

  “He was in agony before—doubled over, grabbing his stomach. You know I’d never call you on a lark. Is something wrong with him? Is he okay?”

  Alan glanced at her concerned face and felt her love for this child like a warm wave through the air.

  “Let’s take a look at him and find out.”

  “Off, Mess,” Sylvia said.

  The black and orange cat that had been coiled in the crook of Jeffy’s knees threw Alan an annoyed look as she hopped off the bed. Alan sat beside Jeffy’s sprawled form and rolled him over onto his back. He lifted his pajama shirt and pushed down his diaper to expose his lower abdomen. Placing his left hand on the belly, he pressed the fingertips of his right down onto those of his left. The abdomen was soft. He tapped around the quadrants, eliciting a hollow sound—gas. He paid particular attention to the lower right quadrant over the appendix. He detected slight guarding of the abdominal wall there and maybe some tenderness—he thought he saw Jeffy wince in his sleep when he pressed there. He drew his stethoscope from his black bag and listened to the abdomen. The bowel sounds were slightly hyper-active, indicating intestinal irritability. He checked the lungs, heart, the glands in the neck as a matter of routine.

  “How’d he eat tonight?”

  “As usual—like a little horse.”

  Sylvia was standing close beside him. Alan put away his stethoscope and looked up at her.

  “And what?”

  “His favorites: a hamburger, macaroni and cheese, celery stalks, milk, ice cream.”

  Relieved that he now had eliminated anything serious, Alan began rearranging Jeffy’s pajamas. “Nothing to worry about that I can see. Either he’s in the early stages of a virus or it’s something he ate. Or how he ate. If he’s swallowing air with his food, he’ll develop some wicked bellyaches.”

  “It’s not his appendix?”

  “Not so far as I can tell. It’s always a possibility, but I seriously doubt it. Usually, the first thing to go in appendicitis is the appetite.”

  “Well, his appetite’s alive and kickin’, I assure you.” She put her hand on his shoul
der. “Thanks, Alan.”

  Alan felt a warmth begin to spread from her long fingers through the fabric layers of his windbreaker and shirt. God, that felt good…

  But sitting here in the almost dark with her touching him could lead nowhere he felt he should go, so he stood up and her hand fell away. “If there’s any change during the night, yell, otherwise bring him by the office in the morning. I want another look at him.”

  “On Wednesday?”

  “Right. I’ll be out of town on Thursday so I’m having hours tomorrow. But bring him in early. I’m scheduled to be on a southbound plane by late afternoon.”

  “Vacation?”

  “Heading for DC. I’m supposed to testify before Senator McCready’s subcommittee on the Medical Guidelines bill.”

  “Sounds exciting. But a long way to go to talk to some politicians. Is it that important?”

  “I’m tempted to say something about the last in public confidence wanting to regulate the first in public confidence, but I don’t see a soapbox nearby so I’ll refrain.”

  “Go ahead. Orate away.”

  “No…it’s just that my professional life—my whole style of medicine—is on the line down there.”

  “I haven’t heard about the bill.”

  “Most people haven’t, but it’s an idiotic piece of legislation that will affect every single person in the country by forcing doctors to practice cookbook medicine. And if that happens, I’ll quit. I’d rather paint boat bottoms than practice that way.”

  “Going to take your ball and go home?”

  Alan stared at her, stung. “You don’t mince words, do you?”

  “Not usually. But that’s not an answer.”

  “It’s not so much running off and sulking. It’s…” He hesitated, unsure of what to say, but anxious to clarify himself to her. “It’s more like shrugging and walking away from an impossible situation. My style of practice can’t coexist with the paper shufflers. It won’t codify, and if they can’t stick me into their computers, they’ll want to either change me or get me out of the picture.”

  “Because you tend to fly by the seat of your pants?”

  Alan couldn’t help but smile. “I like to think of it as using intuition based on experience, but I guess you could call it that. I’m flying by that pants seat tonight with Jeffy.”

  Concern lit in her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, according to the rules laid out in the Medical Guidelines bill, I’d be required to send you and Jeffy along to the ER tonight for a stat blood count and abdominal X-rays to rule out appendicitis because the history and the physical exam suggest that as a possible differential diagnosis.”

  “Then why aren’t you?”

  “Because my gut tells me he doesn’t have appendicitis.”

  “And you trust your gut?”

  “My malpractice carriers would have a heart attack if they knew, but, yeah—I’ve learned to trust it.”

  “Okay. Then I’ll trust it, too.”

  She was staring at him appraisingly, a half smile playing about her lips. Her stare had a way of stripping away all artificiality and pretense.

  Alan stared back. He’d never seen her like this. She was always dressed to kill, even when she brought Jeffy to the office. It was part of her image as the rich and wild Widow Nash. Yet here she was with no makeup, her dark, almost black hair simply tied back, her slim figure swathed in a shapeless robe, and he found her as attractive as ever. What did she have that drew him so? She was a woman he could not help being aware of—as if she were emanating something like a pheromone. He wanted to reach out and—

  This was what he’d been afraid of.

  Her voice suddenly changed to an exaggerated seductive simper that broke the spell. “Besides, I kind of like the seat of your pants.”

  Here we go, he thought: her Mae West routine. Now that he’d told her Jeffy was safe, she was back to the old, taunting Sylvia.

  “As a matter of fact, if I’d known it was this easy to get you out to the house, I’d have made a night call years ago.”

  “Time to go,” Alan said.

  He led the way downstairs to the foyer. Something classical was playing softly through the speakers.

  “What’s that music?”

  “The Four Seasons. Vivaldi.”

  “Not Vivaldi,” Alan said, repressing a smile. “Valli. Frankie Valli sang with the Four Seasons. And that ain’t them.”

  She laughed, and he liked the sound.

  Then she spoke in a little voice. “Gee, Doc, I can’t pay you tonight. I’m a little short. Will you take something else in place of money?”

  Alan had been expecting this. “Sure. Gold will do. Jewelry.”

  She snapped her fingers in disappointment. “How about a drink then?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Coffee? Tea?”

  “No, really I—”

  “Me?”

  “Coffee! Coffee’ll do fine.”

  Her blue eyes flashed as she laughed. “Five points for you!”

  “You asked for it, lady.”

  He wondered if she’d always been like this, or if it was a trait she’d developed after the death of her husband. And he wondered too what she would do if he ever took her up on one of her offers. How much of her was for real and how much for show? He wasn’t sure. Most of the time he was convinced she was putting him on, but then there was her wild reputation, and a sense that she really did want him.

  “Oh, by the way,” she said as he put his hand on the doorknob. “I’m having a get-together here Saturday night. Why don’t you and your wife—Virginia, isn’t it?”

  “Ginny.”

  “Why don’t the two of you come over? It’s nothing fancy. Just some friends—some of them are mutual, I’m sure—and a few politicos. Nobody really important.”

  “Politicos?”

  She smiled that mischievous smile. “I’ve been known to make a contribution or two to the right candidate. So what do you say?”

  Alan racked his brain for a quick excuse but came up empty. So he hedged. “I don’t know, Sylvia. It’s short notice and I don’t know what Ginny’s got planned for the weekend. But I’ll let you know tomorrow.”

  He pulled the door open.

  “You really have to go?” she said, suddenly serious.

  “Yeah. I do.” And fast.

  She shrugged. “Okay. See you in the morning, I guess.”

  “Right.”

  And then he was out the door and into the cool air and on his way to the car. He didn’t look back, didn’t even breathe until he was rolling down the driveway and passing through the gate. Not a moment too soon, he thought, exhaling as he made his body relax into the seat. What that woman did to him…

  As the drum opening from Little Richard’s “Keep A-Knockin’” blasted from the speakers, he gunned his car and headed for home.

  “You’ll never guess where I’ve been tonight,” Alan said as he came into the bedroom.

  On the way home he’d figured out a solution to the Party Problem: He’d simply tell Ginny they were invited, Ginny would say no, and that would be it. She wouldn’t go to a party at Sylvia’s. After all, Sylvia had an unsavory reputation, and none of Ginny’s crowd would be there so she’d have no one to talk to. Alan could then leave it up to Ginny to get them out of it. Easy.

  His wife was propped up in bed, eyes closed, a book on her lap. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. She’d been wearing her aquatinted contacts for six weeks now and Alan still wasn’t used to them. She was a pretty, blue-eyed blonde without the contacts; a tall, attractive woman with curly hair close to her head. Definitely worth a second look. But with those contacts in place she was absolutely striking. Her eyes became a startling green that grabbed attention and held it.

  She turned those eyes on him now. Would he ever get used to that color? Her long legs, lean and muscular from tennis year round and golf whenever the weather permitted, slipped free of her robe as
she stretched and yawned. She looked vaguely interested.

  “The ER, you said.”

  “Yeah, there. But I made a house call on the way home.”

  “You should have been a dermatologist…no ER or house calls.”

  Alan made no comment. They’d been over this ground too many times before.

  “Okay,” she said after a while. “On whom did you make this house call?” Ginny had become very precise in her grammar over the years.

  “Sylvia Nash.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “What’s she got? Herpes?”

  “Pull in the claws, dear. I was there to see her little boy who—”

  Ginny bolted upright. “Wait a second! You were in that house? The one in the article? What was it like? Was it like the pictures? Did she give you a tour?”

  “No. I was about to tell you that her little boy had abdominal pain and—”

  “But didn’t you get to see the house?”

  “Just the foyer and the boy’s bedroom. After all—”

  Ginny grimaced with annoyance. “Ohhh, I’d give anything to see that place!”

  “Really?” Alan felt a sinking sensation. This wasn’t going the way he’d expected. In fact, it was going the worst possible way. He decided to cover all exits. “That’s too bad. If I’d known you felt that way I’d have accepted her invitation to the party at her place on Saturday night. But I told her we couldn’t make it.”

  She rose to her knees on the bed, hands on hips. “You what?”

  “I told her we were busy.”

  “How could you without asking me?”

  “I just figured that since you called her—what was it? A tramp?—the last time her name came up, that you wouldn’t want to have anything to do with her.”

  “I don’t! I just want to see that house! You call her back first thing tomorrow and tell her we’re coming. With bells on!”

  “I don’t know if I can, Ginny.” But she had that gleam in her eye and he knew there would be no turning her around.