He Said, She Said

by John Decure

  The men were quietly excited and thanked me. Even Reevesy the roommate privately informed me that in his book, I “kicked ass.” But I felt tired and hollowed-out, as if the task I’d committed to had already taken a toll—in advance. My next thought scared the holy heck out of me.

  You’re already sick and depleted. The stress of all this will only speed your downfall.

  I wanted a drink so bad that if I didn’t have one, I would surely die. But due to all the extenuating circumstances, I stuck with coffee.

  27

  DONALD FALLON, MD

  For me, as a meeting place the House of Chai Tanya really fits the bill. Its upscale Thai menu offers pleasant intrigues, the bartender knows how to mix a whiskey sour that goes down smooth but with a kick, and the nighttime lighting is dramatically aglow, generating notions of intrigue and romance in the heads of the women I like to pair up with in such a setting. No—it’s not a meeting spot; Chai Tanya suggests more of an incognito rendezvous. And best of all, it’s just a hop and a skip down Larchmont from my office, so for my rendezvous partner, there’s a sense of familiarity with this neighborhood that helps offset the newness of seeing her therapist for drinks and a late dinner.

  Former therapist, that is.

  I usually start out at the bar downstairs, so I can make easy eye contact with my date the instant she walks into the restaurant, and wave her over—the last thing I want is for her to step inside, look around, and get hit over the head by the sense that getting together with me offsite just has to be wrong. On more than one occasion I’ve had to leap from my barstool to intercept a doubtful fretter when her conscience intervened and caused her to do an about-face and flee. But once I’ve got her inside the lovely, semi-dark lounge, and the flickering light and welcoming ambient restaurant noise begins to soothe her senses, my first order of business is to gently put her at ease, so I ask her what she’ll be drinking. This little cordiality serves a second purpose in that it commits my lady to the concept of meeting me here socially, which she acclimates to quickly as I call in her drink with the bartender. She’ll be sticking around now, at least long enough to be polite and sip her libation. Later, we’ll move upstairs to a table for dinner. Dining upstairs is another feature I love about this place, as it signifies a passage to a zone of greater elevation and enhanced privacy. I needn’t be so crass or condescending as to explain here the psychological advantages of such a run-up to sexual intimacy, so I will leave that to your imagination.

  Upstairs, the Asian kewpie-doll waitresses that work the handful of small, square tables know me as Doctor, and I’ve tipped them heavily in the past while giving the gentle instruction that they please consistently refer to me as such when I dine. This simple greeting is personal enough to convey that I am in full control here, while injecting more openness and normalcy into the setting. Yes, I take a chance by identifying myself as a doctor, but I always pay in cash and, hell—scads of MDs are running around Los Angeles at night anyway. The staff here is discreet in that wonderfully subservient manner that Orientals in the service industry so effortlessly convey, so I don’t fret much about exposure.

  Did I say “Orientals”? Jiminy, I mean Asians. Gotta be so damned careful not to offend anyone these days.

  Control and normalcy—I won’t deliver a lecture here on these elements either, but suffice it to say, control and normalcy are at the heart of virtually every male sexual conquest. Your every move and gesture and comment subtly lets her know that you are in command of your realm; and since she is within that realm, subservient to your power and authority, naturally you are going to take her, business as usual. Then you do.

  My date tonight was almost too easy, but after days and days and weeks and months of sweating every detail of this blasted medical board trial, I needed a made-to-order conquest, not a leery, co-dependent challenge. I was tired of being pursued and ready, again, to be the pursuer. A re-establishment of the realm was in the offing, twenty milligrams of Viagra were coursing through my veins, and I was primed for action.

  I’d spoken with Terrence Heidegger late this afternoon, walking back to our cars following court; he’d tucked me into my Mercedes with a wink and a devilish grin.

  “Go home,” he said. “Have a nice meal, a glass of wine. Get some rest.”

  “One question: is it over?”

  He squinted into a shaft of sun. “Well, Don, let me see. The dragon lady’s lying in a hospital bed—drooling, or so I am told. Her sorry excuse for a supervisor—”

  “The Mexican doughboy?”

  “Hah! Good one. Yes, the Mexican doughboy still wants to settle with us, even though we’re kicking their asses, and their burden of proof’s a mile high.”

  Heidegger clapped me on the shoulder through my open window. The Northwestern class ring on his big, spotted paw of a hand stung my clavicle, but I stifled the wince. Terrence plays his own complicated game with me. Yes, he’s a type-A personality all the way, and despite the fact that I’m the one paying him and concomitantly, it is he who serves me, he cannot resist the impulse to wield his physical superiority over me. As if to say: I’m the lawyer and you, as the client, are the man of the hour, but if we were to meet in a dark alley under different circumstances, you’d be saying your Goddamn prayers.

  “Go home,” he’d said again. “And stay out of trouble.”

  As part of my own equally complicated response to being squeezed by a type-A ball-buster like Terrence, I’d done neither.

  Getting back to my date, her name is Sheila Mullany, and she’s best described as a homesick Bostonian professional student, thirty-six and still trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. Comes from a family of overachieving freaks, including a mathematician patriarch on the faculty at MIT, a book-editor mom who makes more money than the old man, a Harvard MBA brother currently designing a new monetary system for a struggling African country, and a kid sister with a new techno-pop CD that entered the Billboard Top 100 at number 15 last month. Understandably, Sheila feels she can’t measure up.

  No shit, I wish I could simply say. But then, we’d have forty-five minutes left in a fifty-minute session and that wouldn’t do.

  I knew Sheila’s family had money, but she was too proud to take it anymore, what with her having pursued a higher education on the family dime pushing two decades, now. She had no medical insurance and little ability to pay when she came to me on a trusted referral. She also had a huge pair of creamy white jugs and a pile of curly auburn hair, both of which I wanted to bury my face in the moment I first saw Sheila. By that point in time my civil lawsuit with the Lobergs was taking a turn for the worse, so I decided to be cautious. Then I thought: why not let her pay a small sum in cash, and not create a billing record? Or a medical chart? She was broke, so she’d take the low-cost cash part of the deal—which she did—and it was unlikely she’d ever ask for a copy of her chart anyway. That way if I got caught fooling around with her, I could just deny, deny, deny, and it would be near-impossible for anyone to establish a doctor-patient relationship—except, perhaps, that pillar of arrogance, Duke Winston. (To think that royal jackass picked up eight grand for that absolute blather!)

  That’s right: Dr. Don is evolving, polishing his act.

  Sheila was fifteen minutes late, but that merely gave the bourbon time to lubricate my brain. A light dining crowd tonight at a quarter past eight: three stout, not very athletic-looking men in striped tennis outfits at the bar, half falling off their stools as they strained too hard to yuk it up; an older married couple living out their mutual death sentences at a table near the window facing Larchmont, absently nursing their white wines; a handsome older brunette in a shiny black dress farther down the bar, leaning over a martini glass as if a fly were in it. Say, not bad, the brunette loner—lovely hair and nice body-tone. If I didn’t have a date I’d inquire immediately.

  Should’ve ordered an appetizer while I waited, I thought. I’d passed on lunch today, as I was not inclined to sit thro
ugh another hour of lawyer-talk with Heidegger and the Brooks Brothers boys, so I was famished. When Sheila popped in, her tits barely arrested by a low-cut white blouse that had me instantly conjuring a nifty landowner/peasant-girl fantasy, I was ready to eat a bear. But first she wanted a drink and since we were in the lounge, I had to buy her one.

  A “cool breeze”? Well, it was what she wanted. Jesus, wasn’t this the favorite drink of barely legal sorority girls in Westwood? Oh, Sheila, I thought, when will you ever grow up? But, since at present I was picturing my rigid member nestled in her spectacular cleavage like a hot dog in a bun, I thought it best not to pass judgment on her relative maturity and made no comment.

  I strolled up to the bar, pleased with my expanding fair-mindedness. It seemed I was on the verge of a new era of higher enlightenment. Or maybe that was just a damned good first whiskey sour.

  “Hit me again, maestro. And a… cool breeze for my guest.”

  I’d leaned over a barstool to half mutter my date’s ridiculous request. The bartender, a muscular guy whose ancestors probably paddled a canoe between continents, must’ve thought I’d lost my mind with the latter request, but he played it straight and said, “Yessir. But I’m out of tangerine juice. Will OJ do?”

  “Sure, damn right—and make it a double,” I said quietly.

  “A double, sir? That kind of drink, it sort of defeats the purpose.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Precisely.”

  The bartender got my meaning. I had some serious realm-building to do if I was going to reach the Promised Land with Sheila tonight. Her froufrou drinks would require a serious boost.

  But before I could even commence construction, the realm’s tenuous foundation crumbled and collapsed.

  “Excuse me, little boy,” came a gravelly female voice from a few barstools away. “Are you lost and looking for your mommy?”

  The handsome brunette in the shiny black dress. My wife, to be precise.

  My mind blanked, just before my tongue tried to nose-dive down the back of my throat.

  “Hilary.” I stumbled toward her, if only to lessen the chance that she might raise her voice and embarrass me further. “Why, uh, aren’t you—”

  “What?—At home? Darning your socks?”

  I did my best to seem sincerely mystified. “You’re not… following me.”

  “Oh, you are a hoot, Donnie.”

  “Is, uh, something the matter?”

  She snickered, crossing her legs. In the forgiving light, she looked ten years younger, and dressed in black from head to toe, ten pounds lighter.

  “Donnie, you are a prize.”

  I chanced a backward glance at Sheila, who, fortunately for me, was playing with her cell phone, oblivious to my current plight.

  “Hil, I know how this may look, but this is actually a therapeutic exercise.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “And I shouldn’t, because patient care is confidential, of course.”

  She seemed bemused by my fast-talking—and not to be buying a word of it. “Oh, of course. Now you’re a medical ethicist.”

  I leaned in closer to add a tone of secrecy. “You see, I’m meeting that young woman here, in this place, to guide her through a social situation safely in a controlled manner, so that her fear of social situations will diminish.”

  “Aah. Always the clinical innovator.”

  “She’s got a first date tomorrow night with a crackerjack guy she really likes, but her… her debilitating anxiety threatens to—”

  Splat! That was the sound Hilary’s drink, a martini, made as it hit me in the face, the gin burning my eyes as I rubbed them ineffectually.

  “Those breasts she’s showcasing don’t look too debilitated, Donald, they look pretty revved up and ready to go.”

  “Please, Hilary—”

  “Don’t Hilary me, you prick, just look at her. Debilitating anxiety, indeed—she doesn’t need a bra for those pointers, she needs a missile silo.”

  “Darling, I swear—”

  “Oh, I wish you wouldn’t. I’m so… you don’t know how tired I am of your nonsense.”

  Reverting to old habits, I reached across and grabbed her wrist so hard I could have snapped it. “That’s enough, naughty girl.”

  Her speed and strength surprised me. First off, she bent forward and sunk her teeth into my gripping fingers until I released in agony. Then she grabbed my earlobe so hard that I couldn’t breathe. Or think.

  “You cannot touch me, intimidate me, threaten or control me, ever again, you sadomasochist fuck,” she hissed. “Three years of therapy and four belts in Aikido have freed me from your uniquely loving husbandly touch.”

  Years? I’d not even noticed her absences. She always seemed to be out shopping, which was well enough with me as long as I could pay her credit card balances.

  “Leggo,” I quietly begged, until she released my ear.

  She ordered herself another martini from the bartender, who silently offered me a small white towel to dry my face, a flicker of respectful disappointment in his eyes. I declined.

  “But you wouldn’t… you can’t even know that,” she went on. “You’re too oblivious. You love the sound of your own voice too much to even notice.”

  “Um—Doctor Don?”

  Sheila stood behind us, those hooters jutting spectacularly, and at exactly the wrong moment.

  “Hello, dear,” Hilary said with an evil calm. “I’m Hilary Fallon, the esteemed doctor’s wife, though not for long. I’ve come to save you from his clutches tonight.”

  Sheila said she didn’t understand—until Hilary made her.

  “You’re not, um, mad at me for leaving?” Sheila asked me, twenty minutes later, her cool breeze double untouched and utterly windless.

  “No, no,” I said.

  Hilary cackled. “Darling, his madness is of another stripe.”

  That silly little dope Sheila actually thanked Hilary. Then she gathered her purse and sweater and fled without looking back. I downed her drink without thinking, then my own.

  “You’re the one who should be thanking me,” Hilary said when Sheila had gone.

  “Is that so?”

  “Because I’m saving you. From yourself.”

  She said it with enough declarative force that two of the three drinking pals just down the bar from us pulled back and took a gander our way.

  “Always drink responsibly,” one of them declared before throwing back a shot—as if to suggest I was an alkie and this business with the wife was an intervention. I was seething, but when I looked down at my icy palm I saw that I’d been gripping my glass like my life depended on it.

  “Y-you don’t know what you’re doing,” I said, my whole body shaking uncontrollably.

  “Easy, tiger.”

  “You think you can j-just walk in here—”

  “Put down that glass before you smash it and cut yourself.”

  “—and… instantly assess what’s happening at a mere glance, drawing your f-false, outlandish conclusions—”

  “Save it, Donnie. I’ve got your number.” Her newest martini was delivered on a fresh napkin. “Honestly,” she said. “I didn’t come here to torpedo your latest conquest. Then again, that did turn out better than I expected.”

  “Oh, sure.” I could’ve grabbed up a handful of those pearls hanging from her neck and strangled her with them. No, I’m here because—”

  “You really should go.”

  “Not until I announce the inception of your professional demise.”

  My fist came down on the bar. “What—do—you—want, dammit?”

  Hilary smirked at me the way the rest of those smug Coughlins did the day I married into the family.

  “Such poor impulse control.”

  “I’m warning you, don’t push me, Hil.”

  “You should enroll in the same kind of anger management courses you so sanctimoniously recommend for your patients. And by the way, I’ve got a gun and I know how to
shoot it, so don’t get any ideas. You will never brutalize me again.”

  My head felt like it would explode, which is probably why the bartender walked over and camped himself across from us.

  “Everything’s okay,” he said, more as a statement than a question.

  Hilary smiled like she had all night, just to turn the screw deeper between my ribs.

  “The gentleman here is irritatingly obtuse. Then again, he is my husband, so I suppose I’ve signed on for this.”

  The bartender nodded and walked away. Damn—now Hilary was messing with my Chai Tanya mojo. I sat there, letting time pass if only to show I was in control.

  “My brother called,” she said at last.

  “Bet he was drunk.”

  “He has his demons. Now, don’t get bitchy, Don. In what’s left of our marriage, that remains my department.”

  She sipped her martini as if it were the libation of the gods, and as she did, I remembered why I’d married her. A smart, fine-looking graduate student with a bubbly, upbeat outlook that put me at ease whenever I was at her side. A family name known here and in Sacramento, a prominent surgeon father heading up a well-respected cardio-vascular department at Huntington Memorial, two uncles in the state senate. Good connections among the USC and UCLA families of alumni. She’d raised my game for twenty years, until we’d tried every fertility clinic and method and placement of furniture and given up the quest for proliferation. Slowly she’d gone sour from loneliness and the bitter singular failure of an empty crib in the soft yellow room at the end of the upstairs hallway. My weak sperm, my weak chin, my weak jokes at cocktail parties. The more I did to advance my career, the less impressed she seemed. Nothing was good enough.

  It didn’t help that the more I personally asserted my dominance, the more she apparently recoiled.

  Bad girl. Very bad girl!

  “Major called to tell me he’d resigned from his position with the medical board,” Hilary said.

  “No major loss,” I quipped. “One less hack in Sacramento.”

  “He asked me to tell you one thing.”

  She was grinning like the alley cat she can be when she wants to scratch my eyes out. I finished my drink, belched inelegantly on purpose, and waited.