You Again

by Peggy Nicholson

  A doctor leaned in from each side to study Jessica’s name tag. “Your father is Dr. Myles?” asked one after a pause. “Myles, the neurosurgeon?”

  Jess shook her head wearily. “That’s my brother.” Winston. Who had almost eclipsed their renowned father’s reputation, if that was possible, since he’d given his name to the Myles Procedure for Parkinson’s disease.

  “Your father’s Terence Myles? The cardiac surgeon?” Her other inquisitor answered her grim head jerk with a drawn-out, admiring whistle. She was heir to as prestigious a medical dynasty as could be found in the country, one that stretched back three generations before her father. They’d been wizards with scalpels, every last one of them.

  “So why aren’t you a surgeon?” wondered Ed, the brash one.

  Jessica shrugged and looked at her toes. I wasn’t good enough. Sure, she’d had the hands, but she lacked what doctors call “aggression,” that superb self-confidence that sets the surgeon apart from other doctors.

  Because surgeons had no room for doubt, not with life ebbing away beneath latex-clad fingertips. No time to second-guess themselves, when time was measured in heartbeats.

  Whereas Jessica had spent her whole life doubting. Her whole life second-guessing herself. All her life holding back.

  All but for six precious months when she’d doubted nothing. Dared all. Thrown herself into life with a vengeance.

  And look where that got me! She glanced up at the numbers above the door to find that they’d already passed her floor. Not that hiding in her room would’ve helped for long, with Sam on the rampage. No, she had to skip town. She carried her wallet and her keys in her briefcase, that was all she’d need. The concierge could send the rest on.

  The elevator stopped. Everyone groaned. The doors opened. Across the hall, the light signaled Sam’s approach, and Ed jabbed the door-close control. Before the doors met, Sam appeared, leaning out from his car. “Is that what happened? Your dad told you I cheated on you?”

  Jessica moaned and covered her face with her hands. Was it the hot Latin blood? Or the Texan, bred to shoot from the hip? Whichever—he thought it, he said it, and damn the torpedoes. And of course, he had it all wrong. Had her father known Sam was cheating on her, he’d have never said a word. Emotional messes were to be avoided at all costs.

  “He cheated on you?” demanded Ed, the thwarted Sir Galahad.

  “Mind your business,” warned his bald friend.

  Someone stirred at Jess’s back, then spoke in his basso profundo. “Look, Dr. Myles, if that’s all this is, it’s no big deal. All guys cheat. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Speak for yourself!” snapped another man. “I don’t cheat on my wife.”

  “How long have you been married?” retorted Basso Profundo.

  “Nine months,” muttered the faithful one. “But—”

  A chorus of knowing laughter drowned him out.

  I hate men! Jessica decided behind her hands. Give me cats any day.

  The car stopped again. The doors opened—to a mass of flowers. The blossoms advanced on two blue-clad legs, forcing everyone toward the back.

  Jessica found herself nose to stamen with a tiger lily. She refocused to find a freckled face peering at her through a cloud of baby’s breath. “Are you Jessica Myles?” asked the young man holding the arrangement.

  Resigned to it, Jessica nodded.

  “Guy in a red bathing suit said if I saw you, I was to give you these,” the kid explained. He thrust the “bouquet” at her, but she crossed her arms and shook her head.

  “How the hell did he do that?” wondered Baldie.

  “They’re for a wedding party on thirty-three,” the boy admitted guilelessly. “But this guy in the swimsuit promised me fifty if she dropped by and I gave them to her. Think he’s good for it?”

  “Oh, he’s good for it,” Jessica muttered.

  “See, what did I tell you?” Basso Profundo rumbled at her ear. “He cares. But you can’t have a marriage if you won’t forgive and forget.”

  “That’s what you’d do?” the faithful one sniped. “If your wife cheated on you—you’d forgive?”

  “Ummmmmmmm…” It was a long, considering drone, like a bumblebee choosing which flower to land on. “That’s not the same thing.”

  “Huh!” the faithful one snorted.

  “No, come on, you’re a scientist. You know it’s true,” insisted the bass. “Women are by nature monogamous. And men are instinctively—”

  Jessica had had enough—too much. The car stopped, and she crashed past the flower arrangement, batting lilies out of her way.

  “Hey!” Ed yelped. “You’re leaving us?”

  Jessica jabbed the call button on the opposite wall, then swung around to nod and wave goodbye. Sam might be as naturally and innocently polygamous as her advisers, but he was no fool. If his car was now several floors below… “When he asks, tell him I’m heading up to my room and once I get there I’m phoning security,” she called as her fellow travelers vanished.

  A moment later her new car arrived, rising to collect her. With no Sam aboard. Which meant he was somewhere below, just now boarding her car, she’d bet the farm.

  She went up to the twelfth, giving him time, then hit the button for the ground floor. He might be the rocket scientist, but this rabbit had a few slick moves of her own. By now he’d reached the lobby and was no doubt doubling back up to the convention’s hospitality desk on floor three to try to bully her room number out of some clerk.

  But if her calculations were logical, they’d omitted, as they so often did, the human factor.

  Jessica stepped out of her elevator and into a tableau. Across the way, Sam stood in profile, one arm hugging his flower arrangement, his other hand holding Ed up on tiptoes by his tie. To one side, the delivery boy shuffled from foot to foot, wanting his fee, no doubt. Baldie and two other doctors were talking loudly and earnestly while they tried to part the opponents. Others hurried from all sides to join the fray, among them a grim-faced security guard and several joyful bellhops.

  For just an instant Jessica stood frozen. He’d filled out, she could see now. Her lanky grad student had gone rock hard and muscular. Nearing forty, he was a male in his prime, with his father’s magnificent build. And only the most confident of Americans—or any Italian—would have worn that sneeze of a Speedo. A gift from his mother perhaps?

  “There she is!” boomed the shortest man in the circle around Sam.

  Jessica stood for a split second longer, astounded—that graying shrimp with the horn rims was Basso Profundo, cheat, romantic and—she glared at him—traitor? But as Sam swung her way, she took to her heels. A taxi, if she could just catch—

  “Jess! Dammit, will you just—”

  “Say, why can’t you leave her alone?” chimed in a voice that had to be Ed’s.

  Behind her she heard the sound of shattering glassflower vase hitting the floor? Then the unmistakable whap! of fist meeting flesh.

  Jess spun out through revolving doors and into the hotel’s portico, where a cab stood, its back door open, an elderly man just taking his seat. She landed beside him, slammed and locked the door, leaned forward to the startled cabbie. “Kennedy, and step on it!”

  “Yeah?” Unmoved, the cabbie looked her over. “You got a fire to put out maybe?”

  Jessica fixed the man with her best intern-wilting glare. “The fire is I’m a doctor and this is a matter of life and death!”

  “Long as you tip like it, honey, sure it is.” Wheels squealed. As they shot out onto the street, Jessica looked back. There was no sign of Sam. She’d slipped him at last.

  Beside her, her elderly companion found his voice. “Considering that this was my cab, would that matter of life and death include time for a detour by way of Grand Central?” His eyes twinkled.

  “Oh, please!” Jessica agreed, her face warming under his worldly gaze. “By all means. My treat?”

  While he leaned forward to amend the
route to the airport, she sank back against the seat and closed her eyes. She’d outwitted Sam…Inhaling deeply, she willed her heart to slow its rocking-horse pace and pushed back further into the cushions. She’d beaten him…so it ought to be triumph she was feeling…or maybe rage, since she would never—ever—live this day down. Instead…what it felt like was…desolation.

  THREE HOURS LATER she slouched back in a cab that carried her from the Providence airport north to the city.

  Why did you leave me?

  Because you cheated on me.

  But that wasn’t why—not really. Jessica sank lower, arms crossed over churning middle, eyes closed. She hadn’t left Sam because he cheated on her, though that had shredded her heart…

  She saw them again—eight years of trying, and she’d yet to erase the image: framed by the window to the right of the front door, the blonde stood in Jessica’s living room. A dreamy smile curved her lips as she unbuttoned her blouse. Against its black velvet, her breasts glowed pearl white. The widening gap in the velvet revealed crimson lace, more skin…

  Sam entered from the kitchen, a wineglass in each hand. He’d seen the blonde, stopped, then set the drinks down on a bookcase and advanced, a tiger stalking.

  Outside on the front walk, Jessica had put her key ring slowly, with exquisite care, back in her pocket. Squinching her eyes, she wrapped her arms around her middle, then stood there, swaying in the midnight darkness, whispering, “No…no…no…oh, no…”

  Knowing all the while it was yes.

  She’d meant to surprise Sam, coming home a day early. But it was she who was surprised, stupid little fool, though she shouldn’t have been. They had been coming to this for months—ever since she’d changed her mind and decided she’d attend med school, after all. Because that decision had marked the beginning of their end.

  When she forced her eyes open, Sam held the two halves of the blonde’s shirt. His face gaunt with passion, he looked down at her breasts.

  The woman’s arms had dropped to her sides. Her head was tipped back, her long blond hair brushing slender hips. She swayed limply in against him and—

  Jessica had turned and gone. It was over.

  But she hadn’t left him because he’d cheated, not really. She’d left because his cheating proved what she’d fought so hard against knowing, those last bitter months of their marriage. That, happy as they’d been for a little while, Sam had never really loved her.

  That he’d married her for all the wrong reasons, on a champagne-inspired lark. Just one of his whims.

  No, whatever Jessica felt for him, it wasn’t love Sam felt for her. Not love, but two parts lust, one part friendship, perhaps three parts pity. Sam Kirby had always had a soft spot for waifs.

  And for blondes.

  “The East Side, you said?” asked her cabbie, turning to look at her just as they swept into the Thurber’s Avenue curve, that reverse-graded bend in the highway where half the wrecks in the state occurred.

  “Yes, Prospect Street.”

  To their left, the medical complex loomed handily above the road—RI Hospital, cheek by jowl with RI General and the Hasbro Children’s Hospital. Jessica didn’t spare the buildings a glance. She wasn’t expected back till tomorrow.

  Ahead, Narragansett Bay narrowed to a river, which wound between the compact clump of skyscrapers that was downtown Providence. The cabbie—a native Rhode Islander by his driving—sliced across three lanes of hornblaring traffic to take the fork of the elevated freeway that split the city.

  Beyond the river, the steeples and rooftops of College Hill carved a serrated and leafy curve against the night sky. Jessica sought the shape of her town house, still more than a mile distant, clinging to the steepest shoulder of the ridge. She’d chosen it for its view of the city. Cattoo, I’m almost home. Can you feel me coming?

  Sam might not love her, but someone did, thank God. The Ice Maiden had found someone who loved her for who and what she was at last.

  While the taxi drove off, Jessica unlocked her door and entered. Stepping over the pile of letters below the mail slot, she closed the door, stood listening. “Kiiiii?” she called at last on a high-pitched, piping note.

  A trilling sound from upstairs—eager, plaintive—hurrying closer, along with that soft, weighty sound of a cat thumping down stairs. “Mm-mm-mm-mm-rrrr?” Cattoo flowed into view round the landing, a black stream of continuous cat, her song of woe wavering at each step. She leapt the last four, landing on her black catcher’s mitt paws with her usual clumsy grace, sat up on her haunches as Jessica leaned to lift her. “Mmmrr?”

  “Caught you napping, did I?” Jessica laughed, her laugh shaky.

  Nose touch—then the silky-soft head burrowing beneath her chin. Black klutzy paws spanned her neck in a desperate embrace.

  “Yike, watch the claws!” She hugged the cat back. “I missed you, too, fuzzbucket.”

  Another nose touch, then a rubbing of cheeks and noses back and forth—Eskimo kiss—then Cattoo nudged beneath her chin again and started to purr. “Thought I was never coming back, huh?” Jessica headed for the kitchen. “Thought you’d have to go back to being the Cat Who Walked Alone, Cat-Who, huh?”

  Cattoo lifted her head to voice her agreement, a woeful, full-throated yowl this time.

  “Ahhhhh—no one loves me?” Jessica rubbed Cattoo’s furry back, scratched her ears, stopped to flick on the kitchen light. “I’m all alone in the world? Ain’t true, kid, but I know just how you feel.”

  Cattoo yowled again—there was Siamese somewhere in her ancestry for sure—then pushed off from Jessica’s chest, twisting in her grasp.

  “Okay, okay—I’m sorry— but I had to go to New York.” Jessica set her down, ran a finger down her spine, straightened. “I explained all that. So how can I make it up to you?”

  Wading through a river of plaintive and scolding cat, she made it to the cat feeder on the floor by the windows. “You ate it all, you little pig?” Cattoo had been a half-grown street cat when Jessica spotted her just a year ago, scrounging in a hospital Dumpster. It had taken a week to catch the scrawny, wild-eyed waif with the laughable paws, another month of cuddling and cosseting to convince her that she was safe—safe and home at last.

  But there was a trauma all the loving in the world apparently couldn’t erase—Cattoo was never sure there’d be a next meal when Jessica went away. In that case, by feline logic, apparently the best bet was to eat what there was now—be it one day’s ration or three. This time, Jessica had left enough food in the demand feeder to last any other cat a week.

  “No wonder you were sleeping, you piglet. You were sleeping it off! See if I ever feed you again.”

  Cattoo tipped back her head and emitted a hollow, lost-kitten moan.

  “All right, all right, more food, but you won’t eat it.”

  She didn’t. The plate of her favorite canned tuna wasn’t the point. It wouldn’t cure Cattoo’s fear of abandonment any more than it would have mended Jessica’s aching heart. Cattoo stood by the dish, staring up accusingly, treading her weight from one ridiculous paw to the other.

  “I told you, paddlefoot.” Cattoo was a “double-pawed” cat, with an extra two toes on each foot, a genetic oddity. The effect was comical, that of a child in fuzzy, outsize bedroom slippers, rather than the ballerina on-point grace of the usual cat. And Jess loved her all the more for the flaw. Like her owner, Cattoo was a freak, a misfit, a klutz among swans. They belonged together, two against an unkind world.

  “How about a hug, then?” She picked up the cat and wandered into the living room, one cheek nestled in fur, one hand patting the cat’s back with that slow, jiggling rhythm that comes instinctively to women.

  Sam, coming from his large family, had wanted babies—had blithely assumed babies followed marriage as flowers follow rain. He’d assumed she felt the same.

  But there was no way Jessica could have borne a child and passed med school. No way she could have managed a family for years after
that if she trained as a surgeon, as she’d assumed she would back then. And if she survived the brutal term of surgical residency and then a fellowship, well, then the first few years of establishing a private practice were even more exhausting, as her father had pointed out. It was no accident that most women physicians were childless, at least till their late thirties.

  “Wait ten to twelve years?” she remembered Sam shouting in disbelief. “In twelve years, Jess, I’ll be fortyone, if I’m not dead and buried or gone senile. By the time they’d be needing braces, I’d be ready for dentures!”

  And after six months together with never a cross word, she couldn’t believe he was yelling at her! Couldn’t believe he was yelling at her in public, on a city street, since they’d been walking back from his lab hand in hand when she told him. She’d left him without a backward glance—had hopped on a passing bus. Hadn’t returned home till midnight.

  And their reconciliation had made the fight almost worthwhile. They’d made passionate, remorseful love till dawn and hadn’t argued again—for a week.

  Stop. She stood very still, eyes shut, breath uneven. It’s over, done with, gone. So just stop it. But he’d ripped the wounds open. How long would they take to heal this time?

  A soft tap on her cheek—cat’s paw. Jessica opened her eyes to find Cattoo staring at her. Cattoo reached up tentatively … oh, so delicately…to touch her face again.

  “You’re right, I have you.” Jessica bent to touch noses, paused nose to nose. Neither of them blinked. Their eyes were precisely the same color, not quite green, not quite topaz. But the effect was more striking contrasted with Cattoo’s midnight fur.

  Jessica’s chin-length hair was a light honey brown. With tawny skin and bronzy eyes, the effect was…monotone. Good bones were all that saved her from total obscurity. “But I have you, if I don’t have looks. Who could ask for more?”

  Besides, asking had never meant getting in Jessica’s world. Not the one thing she really wanted.