by Andrew Kane
Martin looked at her. “Merlot?” he asked.
She nodded.
Martin gave the order to Steve, who seemed unable to hide his amusement.
“Good of you to remember,” Cheryl said, while Steve shuffled off to prepare the drink.
Martin smiled.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing, really.”
“Oh, come now. That little smirk of yours surely means something.”
“It’s nothing, I assure you.”
“So we’re going to keep secrets?” she asked.
“I hope not.”
“Then what were you thinking?”
“Okay,” he said, seeming a bit embarrassed. “It’s the way you speak.”
Her eyes asked for clarification.
“The British thing.”
“What about the British thing?”
He sensed himself ambushed. Her breath smelled delicious, as did whatever fragrance she was wearing, and her smile was about as dangerous as they come. “When you say certain things, like, ‘Good of you to remember,’ it sounds sort of… nice.”
“Nice? You mean you like the British thing?”
“Yes, I like it.” Hesitation. “I like it a lot.”
“See now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” she asked.
“No.”
“It was a first.”
He looked at her, not quite getting her point.
“Your first compliment,” she explained.
“I suppose it was.”
“I hope there will be more.”
“I’m sure there will be.”
Steve brought her drink and the hostess came to show them to their table. Martin had requested the back room, the most private section of the restaurant. The hostess seated them, handed them menus and offered the usual salutations, though neither of them paid much attention. Their minds were fixated on each other.
“You really like this place,” Cheryl said, looking around.
“I’m used to it.”
“You like things that you’re used to?”
“Familiarity has its benefits.”
“And its disadvantages.”
“Those too.”
The busboy placed a basket of goodies on the table – flatbreads, mini corn, bran muffins, pumpernickel, onion rolls – and filled their glasses with ice water. Martin noticed that the fellow couldn’t stop looking at Cheryl, but it didn’t bother him. He figured that most of the men in the place were probably doing the same.
He opened his menu, feeling a bit anxious about the flow of things. “So, what will it be?”
“What do you suggest?” she asked, her menu still closed.
“The night we met, I had the veal Marsala, it was quite good.”
“Then veal Marsala it is,” she said.
“Are you usually this easy?” His better sense had already told him that she probably wasn’t.
“That depends on what it is we’re talking about.”
“I’ll bet it does.”
The waiter approached, rambled through a list of specials, and took their orders.
“He didn’t know you,” Cheryl said, regarding the waiter.
“Not everybody does.”
“But this is your place.”
“He must be new.”
“I’ll bet, aside from this place, that a lot of people know you.”
“What makes you think so?”
She pondered before answering. “I have a confession to make.”
His eyes suggested she continue.
“I checked up on you.”
He’d expected something like this. She knew what he did, where he worked and lived. “And what did you learn?”
“A lot, actually. It was easy. As I said, you’re pretty well known. I should have recognized your name right away. I do read the New York Times Book Review.”
“So, if you didn’t recognize my name, how exactly did you find all this out?”
“A phone call.”
“To whom?” He had to admit, he enjoyed the way she made him probe, and he knew she liked it too.
“Well, I used a little trickery, but I suppose it’s okay.”
“Trickery?”
“The state psychological society. I phoned them and told some very nice, chatty old lady that I was looking for a psychologist and had received your name from my doctor. I was calling to make sure you were legit. Without even looking you up, she just started laughing and said, ‘Oh, Dr. Rosen is quite renowned,’ and all that. I thanked her. She wished me well in therapy.”
Martin was impressed and somewhat uneasy.
“You’re upset?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t go as far to say that I’m upset, but you could have asked me.”
“You’re right, I should have. It was a violation of your privacy, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said, his tone softening. “It’s public information anyway, and I suppose a single woman in New York these days has to take every precaution.”
“It’s no excuse, but thanks for understanding.”
Silence.
“So, how does it feel to be a best-selling author?” she asked.
“That would take an entire night and then some to describe.”
“I’m not going anywhere, are you?”
I suppose not, he mused, sipping what remained of his Scotch.
She listened attentively as he complained about the grind, the speaking engagements, signings, et cetera. With the exception of his recent gig in Chicago, he had managed to keep it all local so he could be home with Elizabeth. And of course, there was his practice, his concern that the time and energy demanded by his celebrity was detracting from the quality of his work with patients.
“You’re very dedicated,” she observed.
“I try to do a decent job.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“Sometimes. Now, what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Do you like working in PR?”
“Sometimes.”
He smiled.
“It’s very competitive,” she said. “Stressful, and hard for a woman to get ahead. I guess it’s like everything else.”
“I’ll bet you do okay for yourself.”
“I work hard.”
“Any interesting accounts?”
“Not really. A few household appliance companies, charitable organizations and things like that.”
“I’ve read that your firm does a lot of work for the Israeli government.”
“Yes,” she responded. “Jacob Lipton, as you know, is a Holocaust survivor, and quite committed to helping Israel. They do seem to need good PR these days, but I’m not involved in any of that.”
He detected a slight tension in her voice. “Everything okay?”
“Yes,” she said. “I just get a little uptight when I think about work. It really is a pressure cooker, you know?”
“Household appliances and charitable organizations?”
“You would be surprised. In PR, everything is high stress.”
Martin left it alone. The last thing he wanted was to make her uncomfortable.
The waiter brought their entrees.
Dan Gifford sipped his decaf, marveling at how the world was changing. Sitting in Starbucks on Austin Street in the heart of Queens, adjacent to the new Barnes & Noble superstore, watching the people, he appreciated the recent innovation of cafes in bookstores and wondered what was coming next. He also wondered where Bobby Marcus was. The cop was already twenty minutes late for their meeting.
A young woman smiled at him from another table. She was definitely cute, and in his previous life, he would have managed all the right moves. But these were sobe
r days, demanding what Dr. Rosen had coined “sober behavior.” This girl would be easy, like a drink. Getting his wife and kid back was another story. He smiled politely and turned toward the door as Bobby Marcus entered.
Marcus approached him. “Sorry I’m late. Got caught in an argument with the captain about spending too much time chasing ghosts for what he thinks is your paranoia.”
Gifford ignored the gibe. Tension between the cops and the DA was an old story. “Got anything yet?”
“Still nothing.”
“Yeah, well, you can stop chasing down the car, make the captain happy. I have another idea, a little dangerous, but a shortcut to what we need.”
“I’m listening.”
“Know anyone in the Nassau County PD?”
“Maybe.”
Cheryl took Martin’s arm as they left the restaurant and began strolling down Middle Neck Road. It was another balmy September night.
As they approached her building, she turned to him and touched his cheek. “Thank you for a wonderful evening.”
“Thank you,” he responded.
He wasn’t disappointed about not being invited up to her place; he was quite content leaving the evening exactly where it was. He was pretty sure that his desire for her was mutual, but he guessed that she too would just as soon save it for another time. “I hope we do this again,” he said.
“So do I,” she replied.
Realizing how badly he wanted to kiss her, he inched his head closer, his movements ordained by a force beyond his control. He softly touched his lips to hers and felt her bring her arms around him. And as his mouth opened, allowing their tongues to meet, he found himself being drawn to a place from which he knew there was no turning back.
It lasted less than a minute, though it seemed much longer, and in the end, he had to force himself to call it a night. Again, he watched her walk away into the building before he turned and went on his way. But this time, he left with neither wonderment nor confusion. He was at last certain in one thing: he could live again.
chapter 14
Martin Rosen held his hands comfortably around the grip, bringing the golf club back with a slow, smooth motion, then swung forward, releasing his strength as he struck through the ball, twisted around, and carried the club up toward the heavens. He lifted his head at just the right moment to observe the trajectory of his shot, and smiled at what he saw.
“She’s coming back,” Ashok Reddy said, standing behind him.
“Sure is,” Martin said, seeing how the ball, which initially appeared to be going too far to the right, was turning back in toward the middle of the fairway before landing. It was what golfers called a “draw,” a very delicate shot requiring a precise amount of spin applied at the moment of impact by a slight shift in one’s wrist motion. Too much spin and the ball would have drifted further left into a “hook.” Too little spin and the ball would have continued on a straight path to the right, probably into the rough, the woods or another fairway. Many a golfer could spend a lifetime developing a consistent draw, but Martin was a natural. From the first time he had stood on the tee box, about four years back, he had been hitting his drives this way. And still, no matter how often he succeeded, it never ceased to amaze him.
“Feels good?” Reddy asked.
“Always.”
“Looks about 260,” Reddy said, referring to the distance in yards.
“I’ll take it.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
They were on the first hole, playing with two other golfers in their regular Wednesday morning game. The four of them were all friends, and they always played for money to make things more challenging. One of the men, Thomas Ahn, a Korean who lived next door to Martin, was an orthopedic surgeon at the hospital. The other, Vic Stern, was a stogie-smoking lawyer who specialized in suing doctors for malpractice. Stern always took a bit of a verbal beating from his buddies, but he was able to handle himself. His golf game, he thanked God, in no way reflected his performance in court; in court, he usually won.
Stern took a draw on his Dominican, placed it on the ground and stepped up to the tee.
“You know, it’s dangerous to do that,” Thomas Ahn said.
“To do what?” Stern snapped. He was always a bit on edge before his first shot of the day.
“To put your cigar on the ground that way,” Ahn answered. “You can get E. coli.”
“E. coli?” Stern responded.
Reddy joined in. “Yeah, from the goose shit in the grass.”
Stern: “What goose shit?”
Ahn: “The goose shit from the geese.”
Stern: “I don’t see any goose shit! All I see is grass.”
Reddy: “And how do you think the grass grows?”
Stern: “What about you, Marty? You think I’m gonna get E. coli?”
Martin smiled, enjoying the banter. “Anything’s possible,” he said. “But look on the bright side, it’s a quicker death than cancer.”
Stern: “Now it’s cancer?”
The others laughed. It had been Stern’s contention that cigars didn’t cause cancer, and he was able to make his arguments sound halfway credible. Right now, however, that was the last thing on his mind. “Okay guys,” he said, “if you can keep your traps shut for a few seconds, I’m gonna show Marty how to hit a ball.”
He bent down, teed up his ball and looked out at the fairway. Then he took his stance, swung, and let loose with a terrible slice, sending the ball so far to the right, he’d be lucky to find it.
The other two took their shots, both decent and playable, but nothing within thirty yards of Martin. He was still beaming as he got in the cart with Reddy. The psychiatrist patted him on the back and said, “This might be your day if you keep it up.”
“That’s a big if,” Martin responded.
He ended up taking the hole with a par, one better than Reddy and Ahn, both of whom bogeyed with a five. Stern double-bogeyed after a penalty for his lost drive.
“Not a bad start, $6 richer,” Reddy said as they rode to the second tee.
“Profitable game,” Martin replied.
“You seem different today,” Reddy said.
“How so?”
“I’m not sure, and I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but you seem… happy.”
Martin appreciated the observation. Reddy was an insightful man, not just because he was a psychiatrist, but because he was a sensitive human being, something Martin had appreciated from the first time they’d met four years earlier. Their bond was strengthened by the fact that Katherine and Reddy’s wife, Savitri, had become best friends during the brief two years they had known each other.
“Do I?” Martin asked, trying to give his friend a hard time.
“Yes, you do.”
Martin smiled.
“Is there something I should know about?” Reddy asked.
“Possibly.”
“And what might that be?”
“A lady.”
Reddy was stunned, it was the last thing he’d expected to hear. “How long have you been keeping this?”
“Haven’t been keeping it. Just met her a week ago. I’ve seen her twice, the night we met, and last night for dinner.”
“Twice in one week,” Reddy said. “That sounds like a record for you.”
Martin hit his friend in the arm.
“I’m just saying that you have been…”
“I know, Ashok, I know how I’ve been.”
Reddy reflected a moment. “Do you like her?”
“I think so.”
“What is her name?”
“Cheryl, Cheryl Manning. And before you ask your next question, she’s English, lives in town, and works in public relations for Jacob Lipton.”
“The Jacob Lipton?”
“Yep.�
�
“So when do Savitri and I get to meet her?”
“You know, you sound like you’re my father.”
“Well, I’ve been meaning to tell you, Marty, I think of you like a son.”
Martin responded with another hit in the arm.
“If you keep doing that, it will ruin my golf game,” Reddy said.
“Trust me, Ashok, it’s already ruined.”
They shared a laugh. There was a short wait at the second tee, as the foursome in front of them was moving slowly. They stayed in the cart. Martin put his head back and closed his eyes, trying to catch a moment of sun. It was a resplendent day, blue sky, mid-70s, but it was September, and how many more such days were in store before the winter was anyone’s guess.
“You will bring her by though?” Reddy asked.
“When the time is right.”
“Good then, I will tell Savitri to expect you next…”
“I’ll let you know!”
Reddy took the hint and changed the subject. “By the way, how is our patient, Benoît, doing?”
The question posed a conflict for Martin. True, Reddy was the referring psychiatrist, but that did not necessarily entitle him to information. The ethical and legal requirements for exchange of information about patients to anyone required consent, preferably written. In this case, however, there wasn’t anything to tell beyond what Reddy had known when he’d made the referral. “The same,” Martin said.
“I would have guessed as much,” Reddy responded. “He is going to be a tough one to figure out.”
Martin nodded.
“That’s why I sent him your way, Marty. You are the miracle worker, and if you cannot untangle this, nobody can.”
Martin chuckled, though Reddy’s flattery left him uneasy. He hadn’t been feeling great about his therapeutic skills these past few days. On the contrary, he believed his patients were being shortchanged, neglected for his own preoccupations. He had committed himself to change that, and was planning to discuss the issue with Reddy. This wasn’t the best time but, considering their schedules, it was as good as any. “You know, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the ‘miracle worker’ thing,” he said.
Reddy appeared curious.
