“I have a mother,” Nina said, not wanting to discuss it. “She’s not interested in children. She gave birth, and then we took it from there.”
Alex nodded sympathetically. “Career woman.”
“No.” Nina took an Oreo from the package, rattling the plastic and alerting Fred, who came to sit beside her. She blinked down at him, surprised by his enthusiasm, and fed him a cookie, and then watched him trot to the couch before she looked back over at Alex. “Not a career woman. Society woman. We had money, we just didn’t have parents.”
“So you went to college and became an editor?” Alex shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. You’re either supposed to become your mother or her opposite.”
“I thought that was marry your father or his opposite.”
“Same difference. So you became your mother’s opposite?”
“No.” Nina put down her cookie as the realization dawned. “No, I became my mother. I married a lawyer and did the society thing and became a law-firm wife. My God, I did become my mother.” She blinked at Alex. “No wonder the divorce felt so good. That life was hers. Now I’m living mine.” She leaned back in her chair. “Boy, does this explain a lot of things.” She picked up her Oreo and bit into it, feeling even more liberated than she had before.
“What kind of things?” Alex asked.
Nina stopped in midcookie. “Why do you want to know?”
“Well, I just spilled my family secrets to you,” Alex said reasonably. “It’s payback time.”
“I didn’t hear any secrets.”
“Okay.” Alex nodded at her, the picture of reason. “My father is an alcoholic. He doesn’t drink before seeing patients but we’re keeping an eye on him, anyway. My stepmother kicked an amphetamine addiction a couple of years ago and now is grossly overweight. We worry about her heart. My mother is manic-depressive, and I thank God every day for lithium. My sister has been married three times, all to cardiac surgeons, but refuses to see anything significant in the fact. She is now engaged, at forty-two, to her fourth cardiac man. My brother is chronically single because he lives for the thrill of the chase and finds stability boring, which I have told him is only an overreaction to our tense childhood.” Alex shrugged. “Other than that, we don’t have secrets. We’re just your standard family of obsessive-compulsive yuppie doctors.”
Nina tilted her head at him. “And what’s your secret?”
Alex stirred in his chair. “I don’t have any secrets. My life is an open book.”
“Bull.” Nina got up to rinse out her cup. “You’re so defensive you won’t talk about yourself. You tell all about your family but you won’t say what you want.” She turned back to him. “So what do you want, Alex Moore? If you could have anything you wanted, right now, what would it be?”
He sat very still on the chair, his eyes on hers, and she stopped breathing for a moment, sure she saw heat in his eyes, but that was so ridiculous she shook her head to clear the thought. Then he relaxed. “I want Oreos,” he said very seriously. “And I want to be able to come back here and talk when I’m not drunk.”
“Sure,” Nina said and pushed the package toward him. “Help yourself. Anytime.” His eyes met hers again, and she blushed and added, “To the Oreos.”
“Right,” Alex said. “That’s what I thought you meant.”
Chapter Three
“Then what happened?” Charity said the next day when Nina had spilled her guts on the phone.
“Then Fred threw up everything, and the mood sort of died.” Nina scratched Fred behind the ears as he wallowed himself a place beside her on the couch. “I got a book out of the library today on how to take care of dogs, and it said never to feed them people food. We could have killed the poor baby feeding him all those Oreos. From now on, Fred eats only dog food.”
Fred lifted his head to give her a dirty look, and she scratched him behind the ears again until he relaxed.
Charity, as usual, had a one-track mind. “Does Alex still get Oreos?”
“No.” Nina felt the warm little tingle she’d been getting every time she thought about Alex. That was one tingle she was going to get rid of. “Alex gets nothing. I’m staying away from that man.”
“Oh, come on, live a little,” Charity said. “I admit the doctor bit is a letdown, but he’s still ten years younger. That qualifies as toy boy. Go for it.”
“You’re telling me this based on your years of experience,” Nina said.
“No, if I was basing it on my experience, I’d tell you to run like hell. Kenneth was a doctor, remember?”
“Just vaguely,” Nina said. “You weren’t married that long.”
“A year,” Charity said. “Long enough to know marrying a doctor was a bad idea. Don’t get serious about him. Just toy with him for your memory book.”
The thought was attractive, but Nina shoved it aside. “Speaking of memory books, how is yours coming along?”
“It’s wonderful,” Charity said. “I wrote all night. It was so exciting. I just love this!”
“That’s great!” Nina tried to make her voice sound enthusiastic while she prayed that Charity’s book would be publishable. “Tell me about it.”
“Well, first of all, I guess I should tell you that I’m going to use ‘she’ instead of ‘I.’ I just can’t write it with ‘I.’ It’s too embarrassing.”
“You’re using third person,” Nina said. “Sure. That’s not a problem.”
“And instead of using my name, I’m going to use my middle name,” Charity went on. “Charity seems sort of…not very serious, you know?”
“What’s your middle name?”
“Jane,” Charity said. “That’s serious, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Nina said, beginning to worry that Charity was going to plan forever without ever writing anything. “Did you write any of the book yet?”
“Of course I wrote part of the book.” Charity sounded indignant. “I finished the first chapter. It’s about Howard.” Her voice grew thoughtful. “You know, I’d forgotten a lot of this stuff before I sat down to write it. This is like therapy only much cheaper.”
“Howard.” Nina frowned, trying to remember. “Was he the hockey player who wanted you to wear the mask and pads?”
“Oh, please.” The disdain in Charity’s voice was clear over the phone. “That was Helmut. I could barely do a paragraph on him. He wasn’t that interesting.”
“I found him interesting,” Nina said, but Charity plowed on through her.
“Howard was my date to the Riverbend Spring Fling.”
Nina sat up, displacing an annoyed Fred. “In high school? You’re going that far back?”
“I’m thinking about regressing to past lives. The faraway stuff isn’t as painful to write about.”
“All right, all right.” Nina backed down before Charity could. “The Spring Fling is fine.”
“The chapter’s called ‘Gone With Her Virginity,’” Charity said.
Nina thought of Jessica. “Great title,” she lied. “What’s next?”
“Mitchell. The Eagle Scout I hooked up with my senior year. We spent a lot of time working on his woodsman’s badge.”
“Sounds…natural.”
“I’m calling that chapter ‘Forest Grope.’”
Nina winced. “Catchy.”
“And then I’ll do that senior fraternity guy I dated as a college freshman,” Charity said. “Roger. You knew me by then. Remember Roger, the creep?”
“Vaguely,” Nina said.
“I’m going to call that one ‘Animal Louse,’” Charity said. “You know, I’m really getting into this.”
Nina thought of Jessica and what Jessica would think of Charity’s memoir. “Go for it,” she told Charity. “But I want to see the first chapter as soon as it’s done. Do not come to the office and show it to Jessica without me seeing it first.”
“No problem,” Charity said. “Now it’s Saturday afternoon, and you deserve a break. Go downstairs and seduce that n
ice boy. It’ll round off your weekend.”
“I’m not going near that nice boy,” Nina said. “I don’t care what you say. I’m staying in my apartment and watching movies with my dog.”
ON MONDAY, Nina came home to find her dog glaring at her.
She put her briefcase on the couch and dropped to her knees beside him. “I know, I know, I haven’t been here all day. But Fred, there’s more to life than weekends. I have to work all day. That’s how I get the money to keep you in dog biscuits.” She scratched him behind his ears and rolled him over on his back to rub his tummy until he stopped being hostile and went back to morose. “You know what you need, Fred?” she said brightly, and he pricked up his ears, probably hoping to hear the word Oreo.
“You need to get out,” Nina finished getting to her feet. “Let me change, and we’ll go for a walk. A walk!”
Since “walk” in no way sounded like “Oreo,” Fred remained morose.
“You’re going to love it, Fred,” Nina said, but fifteen minutes later, when she’d changed into jeans and her old pink T-shirt and hooked his new leash to his new collar, it was clear that Fred was not going to love it.
Nina opened the door and tugged him forward, and he tugged back. “Come on, Fred.” Nina tugged harder and Fred lurched a couple of steps closer to the door, still pulling backward. “You’re going to like this. Trust me.” She tugged still harder, and Fred’s feet slid out from under him as his body bumped over the door frame and into the hall.
“Troubles?” somebody said from behind her and she turned to see a tall, gray-haired woman dressed in olive green cashmere running clothes. She was beautiful in the structure of her bones and the brightness of her eyes, but she was also intimidating. Nina was suddenly conscious of how baggy her own jeans were and how faded her T-shirt was.
And Fred was no help. Nina looked at him, still splayed on his stomach. “I was just taking my dog for a drag,” she told the woman. “I’m hoping he’ll get the hang of this before we hit the stairs.”
The woman laughed and held out her hand, and Nina wasn’t intimidated anymore. “I’m Norma Lynn from upstairs.”
Nina took her hand. “I’m Nina Askew. And this—” she dropped her hand and gazed down at Fred with disgust “—this is Fred.”
“Hello, Fred,” Norma said, and Fred got to his feet and walked the four steps he needed to be within smelling reach of Norma’s Nikes.
“I’ve been neglecting him,” Nina told Norma. “This is a guilt walk.”
“It’s not good to neglect males,” Norma agreed. “They’re such babies about it, and they sulk. It’s why I’m never living with another one of them. No offense, Fred.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Nina said. “Except for Fred. All he needs is his ears scratched and some Oreos and he’s happy.” She looked at the morose-as-usual Fred. “Well, he’s content.”
“You could keep a lot of men content with that,” Norma said. “Although it may take you more than that to keep Alex cheerful. Very physical young man, Alex.”
Nina blushed and then kicked herself for blushing. “Alex and I are just friends.”
Norma shook her head. “Too bad. He seemed very taken with you when he told me about you yesterday.” She looked at Nina sharply. “An excellent young man, Alex. No bluster and a very good sense of humor. You could do a lot worse.”
“He’s ten years younger than I am,” Nina blurted before she remembered that Norma had thirteen years on her Rich.
“Yes,” Norma said. “Isn’t that nice? He won’t die and leave you a widow or run out of steam in bed while you’re hitting your stride.” She smiled at Nina, serene and lovely. “Don’t let foolish assumptions about what’s appropriate keep you from a good man. There are too few good men around to ignore one just because he’s the perfect age for you.” She patted Nina’s arm. “But of course, it’s your choice. I’m so glad we’ve met. You must come out running with me someday. Bring Fred.”
At the sound of his name, Fred stood up again and whined a little.
“There, see?” Norma smiled down at Fred. “He wants to run.”
“I’ve never seen Fred run,” Nina said.
“Then that will be something else new for you.” Norma turned to the stairs. “Broaden your horizons. They’re the only ones you’ll ever have, so make the suckers as wide as possible.” And then, while Nina watched, Norma ran up the stairs, her quadriceps straining against her cashmere sweats. They were damn good quadriceps.
“Maybe if I had quadriceps like that,” Nina told Fred. “And maybe if he was ten years older, maybe then I’d jump Alex. But with this body, no.”
Fred sat down again.
“Come on, Fred,” Nina said and dragged him toward the stairs. “We’ll both run a couple of blocks. Then we’ll have an Oreo. One Oreo.”
At the magic word, Fred rose to his feet and clambered down the stairs under the delusion that he was heading toward cookies. Nina didn’t care; at least they were moving toward a new experience.
After meeting Norma, she was pretty sure she was going to feel guilty if she didn’t turn up with a new experience on a regular basis from now on.
LATER THAT EVENING, Alex had an old experience.
“It’s time you made a decision, son,” his father blustered at him over the phone, and Alex tried to listen while he put on his socks with one hand and checked his watch. He was due to pick up Tricia for dinner in fifteen minutes, and he still didn’t have a tie on, not to mention a jacket or shoes. He hated ties and jackets. He wasn’t crazy about shoes, either.
“Alex?”
“I’m listening,” Alex said, “but it’s pretty much too late now.” He stood up and rifled through his drawer looking for a tie. “All the slots are filled. I couldn’t—”
“That’s what I called about,” his father broke in. “We have an opening in cardiology. Young Lutin dropped out of the program. Went to Tahiti to paint. Tahiti! What kind of fool would give up an important career to paint in Tahiti?”
“Gauguin.” Alex stared sightlessly into his top drawer, envying Lutin who would never have to discuss cardiology with his father again.
“What?” his father said, and Alex said, “Nothing.”
“It’s yours, son,” his father went on. “All you have to do is take it.”
Oh, hell. “Dad, it’s not a good idea to give your son the only opening in the unit. People will notice that you’re playing favorites.”
“Nonsense. The whole damn hospital knows about the work you do in the ER. You can go anywhere. They know that.”
I don’t want to go anywhere, Alex thought. I like the ER, but his father rumbled on.
“It’s time you built a life, Alex. Got married. Settled down. And a wife isn’t going to put up with the ER as a career.”
Alex repressed the urge to point out that being a cardiologist hadn’t done much for his father’s three attempts at marital stability. “I’ll think about it, Dad. I’ve got to go now. I have a date.”
“Debbie? Fine, fine girl. She’ll make you a good wife, Alex. And a good mother for your children. Don’t screw up this time.”
Alex picked up a tie and sank back onto the bed. “I already did,” he said as he threaded it one-handed around his neck. “Debbie and I decided we’d be happier if we weren’t dating. I’m taking Tricia Webster to dinner.”
“The little blonde in the business office? Seems very responsible. And sweet. Make you a good wife. And a good mother for your children.”
Alex shook his head. His father wasn’t going to rest until Alex was a married cardiologist with offspring. At this point, he could introduce him to Fred and his father would say, “Seems very loyal. Make you a good wife. You can adopt.”
Thoughts of Fred led to thoughts of Nina. Now, she would make a good wife. She was pretty and warm and kind and she kept Oreos and milk on hand and she had a great dog.
And a great body. The thought sprang to mind unbidden, and Alex stopped figh
ting with his tie and closed his eyes and thought of her, round and warm in her kitchen, laughing up at him with that soft pink mouth, and the memory fogged his mind and made his breath come quicker. He wanted to be taking Nina to dinner, not Tricia, but he knew better than to ask. She was used to older men, successful men like her ex-husband, the rich lawyer. She was used to big bucks and caviar, and he was med-school loans and Oreos.
Of course, if he became a cardiologist, he’d have big bucks and caviar.
His father’s voice broke the thought. “Alex, are you listening to me?”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “Believe it or not, I am.” He must be losing his mind. He needed a better reason for becoming a cardiologist than trying to get a date. Then thoughts of Nina clouded his mind again, Nina sitting across her big oak table from him, her chin in her hand, shaking her head at him, arguing with him, leaning back and smiling lazily at him. He remembered how graceful her neck had been as it curved into the loose pajama top, and how he’d wanted to draw his finger down that curve and pop her pajama buttons, one by one…
There were worse reasons to become a cardiologist.
“Alex?”
“Yeah, Dad. Let me think about this some more.”
“Well, don’t take too long. I can’t hold on to this appointment forever.”
“Right,” Alex said, bemused with visions of holding on to a naked Nina. “I’m thinking about it.”
NINA’S PHONE RANG at ten that night while she was struggling with the final chapters of the upper-class twit’s memoir.
“Uh, Nina?” Alex’s voice sounded harried. “Could you come down here? I need some help.”
“Help?” Nina swallowed. Alex’s voice made her first grow tense and then grow warm, which wasn’t good. She shouldn’t see him. She thought about telling him she was busy, but there was panic in his voice, and if she could help, she should be neighborly…
Five minutes later, Nina was in Alex’s apartment, sitting on the couch and patting his weeping date, a tiny blonde with an enormous capacity for loud sobbing, who made Nina feel fat and sloppy in her jeans and pink T-shirt.
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