Square in the Face

  Charlie looked at Claire with faded blue eyes that had seen everything. “And draw suspicions to themselves? Better to wait until she got home.”

  TYMZUP

  Chapter Ten

  “Name, please,” said the guy in the yellow-and-black striped booth that sat at the top of the long, twisty private road that led from Highway 26 to the Bradford Clinic’s parking lot.

  Claire’s brain was still in shock, but her mouth took over. “Lucy Bertrand.” Damn! Damn! Damn! Why hadn’t Lori or Ginny mentioned that there was a guard at the entrance to the parking lot? Maybe there hadn’t been an attendant when Lori was pregnant years ago. Maybe Ginny hadn’t thought he was important enough to mention, although surely she would have brought him up if Claire had managed to see her again.

  While her thoughts chased themselves, Claire gathered herself together enough to offer a smile. This guy seemed really more of a parking lot attendant than a security guard. He certainly didn’t look like a wannabe cop. Instead of a shiny white shirt and black polyester uniform, he wore a blue parka zipped to his neck. A dark wool cap pushed his long brown hair into his eyes, and his untrimmed beard and mustache covered most of what was left. Claire guessed the guy was about her own age - or at least the age she really was, not what it said on her new I.D. His little booth must get very cold, Claire thought, noticing he kept his free hand in his coat pocket.

  “Bertrand’s a real pretty name,” he said and checked it off on a list. “Is it French?”

  Claire thought it probably was, although she had picked the name out of the air when she had gotten her fake I.D. “Yeah, I guess. We’re Heinz 57.” She broadened her smile and hoped it didn’t look forced. “How about you? Are you anything?”

  He looked away. “Don’t really know what I am, either. Guess I should let you get into your appointment.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m early. I was afraid I might get lost.” Maybe she was looking at the guy all wrong. It must get lonely, sitting out in the booth day after day. Maybe there was some way he could prove useful. Sticking to the story she had memorized, Claire continued on with the lie she had begun when she gave him a name other than her own. “I just moved up here from California last term and I still don’t know my way around.” Inspiration struck. “I’ve been hoping maybe I’d met someone who could show me around, give me a little tour. Have you lived in Portland long?” She gave him a frankly inviting look, figuring that a woman who was daring or foolish enough to get herself knocked up in the age of AIDS might also try to hit on a parking lot attendant.

  He stared at her for a long moment before understanding broke. “I was born here, so I guess I know my way around town pretty good.” He left the words lying there, and she could tell he wasn’t brave enough for the follow through.

  Claire cocked her head flirtatiously and acted as though he had asked her what he only wished he had. “So you could show me around some time?”

  His dark eyes widened, and Claire felt mean for the hope she was raising in him. He ducked his head and mumbled, “If you want.”

  “Sure. Give me your phone number.”

  Something shifted in his face, and Claire could see that with a haircut and the application of a razor, he might be good-looking. Then his mouth drew down again. “Except for I should tell you, I don’t have a car.” The tops of his cheeks, about the only part of his face that wasn’t obscured by hair, reddened.

  “That’s okay. You could ride shotgun and tell me which way to turn.”

  He nodded eagerly. “Okay. Let me give you my number.” He hunted for a scrap of paper, then scribbled his number down. When he leaned out of his booth again, his breath washed across Claire’s face, a mix of spearmint and garlic. She looked down at what he had written. Doug Renfro. “Nice to meet you, Doug Renfro.”

  “You, too, Lucy Bertrand.” Retreating into shyness, he was already pressing the button to raise the yellow-and-black striped arm.

  Claire kept her foot on the brake. “Say, what time do you get off?” She had asked for the last appointment of the day, and gotten a 4:30. It was 4:25 now. If Doug left at five, Jimmy’s plan might still work.

  “I live here on the property, so I’m here until the last scheduled patient leaves.” Doug’s flush deepened. “Which I guess in this case would be you.”

  Claire realized he thought she was asking him to go out that night. She faked a sigh. “Since it’s mid-terms, I guess tonight I really need to concentrate on studying. But I’ll definitely keep your number handy.” Claire waved the paper as she drove forward, then tucked it into the backpack that sat on the Firebird’s passenger seat. She figured college-student Lucy would also carry a backpack, although this morning Claire had stripped it of anything that might identify her as Claire Montrose.

  Scanning the grounds, Claire pulled forward into the tiny kingdom Doug oversaw, a parking lot with spaces for ten cars. Four of them were already taken. The new silver Mercedes she tagged as the doctor’s car, especially since it was parked closest to the door. Next to it stood a late model purple Toyota and a few spaces over sat an aqua Geo. Claire parked next to the only other car, a blue Subaru station wagon.

  For a minute, she sat lost in thought. Doug posed a real problem. Jimmy’s idea for gaining access to the clinic had been simple. All she had to do, he had said, was find a place to hide during business hours, then just wait until after the building emptied out. “In other words, break out instead of break in. All you need to find is a restroom or utility closet. Maybe just the kneehole of an empty desk. And then you wait until everyone goes home. Even if you do set off an alarm, you’ll have a good start because you’re already inside,” he had said before adding, “Hypothetically speaking, of course.”

  The only problem with Jimmy’s plan was that it hadn’t counted on there being someone paid to watch over the building’s comings and goings. The only way in, Claire realized, was going to have to be with her pick kit in the dead of night. Good thing picking a lock relied on touch rather than sight.

  Sighing, she shouldered her backpack and got out of the car. For a moment, she rested her hand on her abdomen, just in case Doug was watching. Dr. Gregory had told her that pregnant women touched their bellies a lot. But when she half-turned, Doug’s head was bent over a magazine.

  Claire looked over the clinic and grounds. Aside from forgetting to mention the parking guy, Lori’s and Ginny’s descriptions had been good enough that everything looked somewhat familiar. The clinic must have built sometime in the early seventies, with odd angles and tall, narrow windows that reminded Claire of arrow slits on a castle. To the left, a stand of huge cedar trees with reddish bark and gray-green branches completely cut off any glimpse of the highway below. On the right, the drive skirted a rising sweep of green lawn as long as a football field. It ended at an oversized three-car garage next to a remodeled farmhouse. A white sailboat sat between the garage and the farmhouse. The house was painted a traditional white with green trim, but over time skylights, solar panels and a glassed-in sun porch had been added. Next to the garage sat a tiny, doll-sized outbuilding that looked as if might have begun life as the original garage. She guessed it might be where Doug lived.

  Claire walked toward the clinic’s front door. There were no little signs stuck into the grounds advertising Brinks or another security firm. No keypad in the alcove to disable or arm a security device. Finally, she looked for foil-covered wires leading from the door or window frames, but didn’t see any. Maybe there wasn’t an alarm. After all, why would the clinic need one, what with Doug in his booth? And it wasn’t like an Ob/Gyn was a good place to go looking for drugs.

  When she opened the door, the young woman behind the counter tucked away the magazine she was reading. Underneath an old-fashioned white nurse’s cap, she had a heart-shaped face with a mole by her mouth. It had been so long since Claire had seen a nurse’s cap that she wondered if the clinic had had to order it from a costume shop rather than a uniform supplier. Claire’s gaze swep
t over the empty waiting area. It was furnished with blue armchairs arranged in two groups: one circled a coffee table bearing a perfect fan of magazines and the other faced a fireplace that was clearly never used.

  The nurse arched one of her perfectly shaped black brows. “Your name?”

  For a second, Claire drew a blank. “Oh, um. Lucy. Lucy Bertrand. My appointment’s for four-thirty, but I’m a little early.”

  The nurse handed over a clipboard with an attached pen. “I’ll need you to fill out these forms.” Leaning down, she pressed a button on an intercom that sat on the counter. “Lucy Bertrand is here.”

  Claire chose a seat by the empty fireplace. The questionnaire wanted to know everything about her as well as the father of the child she was supposed to be carrying. Where did she go to school, and what were her GPA and majors? What about high school GPAs and SAT scores? Had she ever had an IQ test? What were her natural hair and eye colors, as well as her weight? Then there were pages and pages asking about what diseases might run in the family: Was there autism? epilepsy? near-sightedness? migraine headaches? heart disease? breast cancer?

  Following the principle that a good lie always contained as much truth as possible, Claire’s only complete falsehood was her age. It helped that there weren’t many relatives to think about. She’d never known her father, so that left only Jean and Susie for near relatives, plus a couple of uncles and aunts and a half-dozen or so cousins. Under the column labeled “child’s father” she marked NA and penned a series of ditto marks under it.

  Claire handed in her completed questionnaire, again interrupting the nurse’s pursuit of People magazine. In the bored tones of someone who uttered the same sentences day after day, the nurse said, “Next we’ll need a urine sample. The bathroom’s right over there and the instructions are on the wall. When you’re done, go into the exam room next door, get completely undressed, and put on the gown that’s on top of the table. Put the opening in the front. I’ll let the doctor know you’re nearly ready.”

  In the bathroom, Claire carefully pulled off her loose sweater and raised her left arm. With the edge of her fingernail, she loosened the edge of the white first-aid tape that held a sealed plastic bag under her arm. At the bottom of the bag was a half-inch of yellow liquid, an unknowing donation from one of Dr. Gregory’s other patients. She had been worried that the bag might leak, but it had proved as good as its own commercials that endlessly touted its superiority to other bags with fasteners that clicked, zipped, locked, or changed color when properly sealed. Opening the bag, she carefully poured the contents into a plastic cup that sat waiting on the edge of the sink. She rinsed the bag, wrapped it in a paper towel, and tucked it and the discarded tape in her backpack. The page of framed instructions told her to leave her sample on the stainless steel shelf above the toilet, so she did. Claire was careful to flush the toilet and wash her hands before she left.

  As she opened the door, she heard a low moan from the end of the hall, then the soft murmur of a woman’s reassuring voice. Claire realized that behind one of the closed doors a woman was in labor, ready to trade a child for fifteen-thousand dollars. She wondered if Ginny had made it this far. She hoped she had.

  After Claire got undressed, she sat on the edge of the exam table and tried to hold the edges of the gown closed over her breasts. There were two soft raps on the door, then the doctor pushed it open without waiting for an answer. He wore an open white lab coat over a blue oxford shirt, red striped tie and dark blue wool pants, and in his hand he carried the clipboard that held Claire’s - or rather, Lucy’s - questionnaire. A little above average height and thin, the doctor appeared to be in his mid-fifties. Frost-colored hair swept back over his ears to curl just above his collar. His narrow, ruddy-skinned face was dominated by a long nose, hooked at the end. His eyes were his most striking feature, a pale ice blue. Wolf’s eyes, Claire thought when she saw them.

  “Lucy? I’m Dr. Bradford.” He set the clipboard down on the counter, then reached out his hand, shaking hers with the lightest of grips. “Let’s get your exam out of the way with and then I’ll asked you a few questions. Have you ever had a pelvic exam?” She nodded. “Good. I’ll go ask my nurse to step in. While I’m doing that, I need you to put this drape over your lap, put your feet in the stirrups, and then slide your bottom down to the end of the table.”

  The doctor returned a few seconds later with another nurse, a scrawny woman in her late forties. Her dyed red hair contrasted with her oddly sallow skin. She had the same cap and uniform as the younger nurse, but completed her outfit with white high heels rather than sensible flats.

  This, Claire realized, must be the Vi Lori remembered, although Lori had said she had a brunette. The nurse confirmed Claire’s guess by introducing herself. Then she stood a half-step behind Dr. Bradford and began to study the ceiling while the doctor quickly kneaded Claire’s breasts. She remembered Dr. Gregory’s advice to flinch away from his touch.

  “Ouch!”

  “Tenderness is common in early pregnancy,” Dr. Bradford said, a little above it all, and Vi looked down long enough to tip Claire a wink behind his back. As the doctor conducted his equally efficient pelvic exam, Claire became aware the harsh sound of Vi’s breathing cutting through the silence. She remembered the nurse’s nicotine-stained fingers, so like Susie’s, and hoped Susie wouldn’t end up sounding like Vi fifteen years from now.

  In less than two minutes Dr. Bradford said, “You may sit up now.” He turned to the nurse. “Okay, Vi, why don’t you go check on our other patient?” With a nod, she slipped out the door.

  Dr. Bradford slipped on a pair of half-glasses that hung from a chain around his neck and then picked up the paperwork. “Now I see from the questionnaire you filled out that your last period began about six weeks ago, is that correct?” Claire nodded. From the pocket of his lab coat, he pulled a flat cardboard wheel and began to turn it. “So your estimated date of confinement would be about thirty-four weeks from now, or around the first part of December.”

  “Date of confinement? That makes it sound like I’m going to be locked up in a mental institution.” As she heard her own words, Claire realized the comment was hers more than Lucy’s. Earlier she had decided that Lucy would be more meek and deferential than Claire really was.

  “It’s an old term, probably left over the days when women spent weeks lying in. Over the edge of his glasses, Dr. Bradford gave her a professionally fatherly look that was belied by his pale, calculating eyes. “And why were you interested in carrying this baby to term and then giving it up for adoption?”

  “I believe in a woman’s right to choose, but for me, I just can’t do it.”

  “And what about the father of this child? I see that you’ve left the spaces for his information blank. What does he want?”

  Claire looked down at her lap and twisted her hands. “He’s just someone I met at a party right before I came up here from California. To be honest” - she paused for what she hoped was the right amount of time - “I don’t even know his last name.”

  “Well, Lucy, let me tell you something about the way we work around here. We specialize in matching babies to the right families. We’ll want to know everything about you in order to give your child a home that will best suit him or her.” He lifted a page of the questionnaire. Now I see that under medications you’ve marked, ‘None.’ Does that also include what we call street drugs?”

  Claire remembered to answer as the shyer Lucy. “No, sir. I mean, doctor. I mean, I haven’t used anything at all.”

  “Not even marijuana? I’m not so old that I don’t remember my own youth on campus.”

  She shook her head and dropped her eyes.

  “Now I need to ask, Lucy, if you have ever been tested for the virus that causes AIDS.”

  The thought of Dante suddenly threw Claire off balance. In reality, she and Dante had been tested right after they met. The thought flashed through her mind that maybe she had been unwise to agree to thei
r giving up condoms. “I gave blood about three months ago and nobody said anything. Don’t they test it then?”

  “Yes, they do, although that probably shouldn’t be a reason to give blood, since there is a window in which a blood test for AIDS could be negative. I need to ask how many sexual partners you’ve had in the past six months, including the father of this child?”

  In response to Dr. Bradford’s sterile question, her mind offered up another image of Dante, with his full mouth and smoothly muscled shoulders. Claire didn’t need to fake a blush as she dropped her eyes to her lap and gave him Lucy’s story. “Just the one guy I met at the party. I, I broke up with someone a little over a year ago and I haven’t really dated since then.”

  While she had been speaking, Dr. Bradford had been snapping on rubber gloves. Now he began to probe the crook of her arm for a vein. “We need to test a sample of your blood for syphilis, as well as the presence of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. It’s just a precaution, as any sexual activity that can cause pregnancy can also cause disease.” He plunged the needle in swiftly while Claire averted her eyes. He continued talking as he capped the tube of blood and then discarded the needle in a small red plastic box mounted on the wall. “Assuming your tests are negative, which they most likely are, then there is a good possibility we would be interested in your assistance in providing a family with a child. Now, as you were told on the phone, the Bradford Clinic offers complete confidentiality. If you give your child up for adoption through us, it will be as if this pregnancy never happened.”