“All right. I’m sure I can find the time,” he offered, knowing it was a lie.
“You just tell us what you need, Mike. We’re here to help you out. I know it’s a bitch and a half doing so much call. We’ve been talking about hiring another man, putting an ad in the Journal. But, hey, until then don’t let it beat you down. You need something, you just ask, capisce?”
Michael nodded and waited for a signal that the meeting was over, but nobody stood up. Then Finney said, “About that friend of yours.”
“Sorry?”
“Celina James?” Finney tossed him a newspaper. “She’s hit the big time, front-page news.”
Michael glanced at the paper. The photograph showed Celina standing in front of the clinic among a throng of protestors. Bianco and Finney were waiting for his reaction; they may as well have been holding a spotlight at an interrogation. “I hear she’s doing well,” Michael said plainly.
“Has she approached you?” Bianco asked.
“What?”
Finney cleared his throat and changed the tact. “She may approach you, Michael. I hear they need doctors. She usually gets the rejects.” Finney looked at him meaningfully. “Nobody with any class would do that.”
Michael understood that they suspected him, but Finney didn’t need to know for sure. The point of the meeting was to let Michael know they didn’t approve and that, if he was involved with Celina James, they expected him to end the arrangement immediately.
Michael shrugged in denial. “We never got along,” he said. “She hates my guts.”
“Really?” Bianco said, noticeably relieved.
“We used to give her a hard time when she was an intern. I remember this four-hundred-and-fifty-pound woman came into the ER. I made her do the rectal. Her first time. She never forgave me.”
Bianco chuckled. “We don’t support what she’s doing, Michael. I hope you understand that. We have our reputation to think of. I know I don’t have to remind you that this is a very small town.”
“Of course.”
“Good.” Finney flashed a smile. “It’s like my grandfather used to say: you lie down with dogs, you get fleas.”
The meeting broke up and Michael said good night and walked outside. He felt queasy suddenly, and couldn’t imagine getting into his car. A walk would do him good, he thought, and he started up the sidewalk in the direction of Washington Park. The meeting with his partners had troubled him. He knew, eventually, that they’d find out. It wouldn’t be long now.
He reached the park, where huge forsythia bushes scrawled their branches along the sidewalk. The sun had begun to set and the light glimmered like fire off the windows of the brownstones. They were lovely old buildings, all lined up next to one another. Regardless of gentrification, Washington Park was still a marginal area, but there was history here, and grace. It was easy to imagine women in long dresses, and horses with carriages, and lamplighters lighting the old gaslights.
Exhausted suddenly, he found his way to a bench. Obviously he was stressed, he thought. Christ, he could hardly breathe. He waited, taking deep breaths, squinting at the sun’s gold reflection in the windows of the buildings. A young woman appeared suddenly, unfolding out of the city landscape, and joined him on the bench. He recognized her immediately, the girl he’d seen outside the clinic that first night. He remembered her long black hair, which again was twisted into braids. She had on her track team jacket. “Hey, there,” he said, but she did not return the greeting, and it left him cold. She began to adjust the laces on her sneakers, tying and retying them, and mumbled quietly, without looking at him, “You should know you’re being watched. They know everything about you.” She glanced at him for a split second. “Be careful.”
With that, she got up and resumed her run, her braids swinging to and fro against her back. Again, he read her name on the back of the jacket: SAWYER. He looked around stealthily, but it was impossible to judge if he was being watched in such a large place. Skateboarders circled the monument in the center of the park. There were young couples with children near the playground. Another young couple was kissing on an adjacent bench. If the girl had gone to the trouble of warning him, he had to assume that there was someone out there watching him, someone he couldn’t see. He stood up and started walking down Willet Street. A bar on the corner caught his eye and he retreated into it and ordered a glass of beer, glad for the noisy distraction of the place. He felt weak, suddenly. They know everything about you: the girl’s words echoed in his head like a foreboding refrain. He thought of calling Annie but made no effort to do so. He drank the glass of beer and left the money on the bar and went back outside. He made his way along the street, walking quickly, brushing the shoulders of strangers. The clinic on South Pearl Street was five blocks away and he found himself walking toward it. He desperately wanted to see Celina.
The McDonald’s on the corner was crowded with teenagers hanging out under the yellow lights. Someone’s boom box was blasting a rap tune and Michael could feel its pulsing beat under his feet. He was the only white person around. The clinic looked dark, but when he pushed the buzzer Celina’s voice immediately responded. “Yes?”
“It’s Michael.”
She unlocked the door and let him in. They stood there for a moment in the dark foyer. She still had on her white coat, but her hair was down and full on her shoulders. He handed her the pamphlet he’d gotten in the mail.
“I got a whole stack of those in the back. Terribly sophisticated stuff, isn’t it? Here, I’ll put it in the paper shredder, where it belongs.”
They walked back toward the offices. They stood there watching the paper glide through the shredder. He told her about the girl in the park. “She’s got wings on her jacket.”
“Albany Track. I was on that team, too, once.”
“Her name’s Sawyer.”
“Seems to me,” she said, frowning, scanning the wall of charts, “seems to me I had a patient by that name. Ah, yes, here she is.” She pulled out a file and flipped through it, then handed it to him. “Here’s your guardian angel. Theresa Sawyer. I did a D & C on her last year. She was thirteen.”
He opened the file and read it.
“What were you doing in the park?”
“I needed some air,” he said, and told her about the meeting with his partners. “They warned me about you.”
“Oh, they did, did they?” She seemed almost pleased.
“I hear you only hire the rejects.”
“Yeah, right. Remind me now—you were what, fourth in your class at Harvard?”
“Third, actually.”
“Some reject. I guess I know how to pick ’em.” She smiled at him. “Your partners aren’t too fond of me.”
“It won’t be long before they find out.”
“Do you even care? They’re assholes.”
“They’re my partners, Celina.” The comment pissed him off. “I have to care what they think. It’s not like I can afford to lose my job right now. I’ve got kids, you know. I’ve got expenses. We’re different people, you and me.”
“You got that right.” Now she was offended.
“I just meant we have different priorities.”
She spun around. “What do you know about my priorities?”
“I know this place is one of them.”
“Don’t do me any favors, Michael.” She opened a closet and pulled out her coat.
“I didn’t come here to fight,” he said. But she was a bundle of tension, buttoning the coat, pulling a crumpled tissue out of the pocket and blowing her nose. “Hey.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere. You don’t have to worry about that.”
She glanced up at him apologetically. “What if they ask you to stop working here?”
“I tell them to go fuck themselves.”
She shook her head. “Now I feel stupid.”
“Don’t.”
“You know me, hot under the collar.”
“Oh, yes,”
he said. “I remember that. That temper of yours has gotten you far.”
“Sometimes I wonder how far,” she said. “The truth is, I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
At that moment, those were the words he needed to hear. “Are you worried, Celina? Are you frightened?”
She looked at him. “All the time.”
In the spirit of solidarity, they went out for a few beers together, reminiscing about their residency days, carefully avoiding the subject of their past intimacy. Still, it seemed to haunt their conversation, and he was grateful that she didn’t bring it up.
It was after eleven when he finally made it home. The house was quiet. He hoped Annie was asleep because it was late and he hadn’t called her and he knew she’d be angry. He didn’t know why he hadn’t called. It wasn’t something he’d ever done before. He went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of Coke and realized that he hadn’t eaten dinner. For a moment the house was silent, forgiving, but then he heard her on the stairs.
“Where’ve you been?” she said, entering the kitchen in her robe, her expression disorganized, ambivalent. Her eyes looked red and glassy. “I’ve been worried sick.”
“I should have called. I apologize.” He finished his drink and put the glass in the sink.
“What were you doing?”
Without looking at her, he moved into the hallway. Laboriously, he began to climb the stairs. He hadn’t realized how tired he was. Annie followed him up and into the bedroom, where he began to undress.
“Michael?” she asked.
“I was at the office,” he lied. “I was at the office, dictating charts.”
“Why didn’t you call me? I’ve been paging you for hours.”
He took his pager out to show her. “I turned it off.” A sinking feeling of dread came over him. What was happening to them? “The work has to get done, Annie,” he said reproachfully. “I lost track of the time.”
She said nothing, just sat there on the bed scrutinizing him.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said.
“I just don’t understand.”
“For God’s sake, Annie! I fucked up, all right?”
Annoyed, he left her alone and went into the bathroom to shower. Standing under the steaming rain, he closed his eyes, letting the water onto his face. A growing tension had curled around their lives like the restricting tendrils of a vine. Neither of them seemed able to control it. And then it came to him: maybe he didn’t want to.
When he opened his eyes he saw that Annie had entered the bathroom. Her shape, beyond the shaded glass, looked opaque and distorted. She leaned over the sink in her baggy boxers and T-shirt, washing her face. The image was so familiar to him that it made him want to get out and hold her. More than anything, he wanted to make her understand how much he loved her, but the words would not come and she was in no mood to listen.
“Kids okay?” He asked from the doorway, drying himself off.
“They miss their father.”
She climbed into bed wearily and grappled in her nightstand drawer for a sleeping pill. “I can’t sleep, you’ve gotten me so upset.” She swallowed the pill and dropped down into her pillow. “I thought something happened to you tonight.”
“Nothing happened.”
“I was about to call the police.”
Michael sat down heavily on the bed and rubbed his face and he kept his face there in his hands, without looking at her.
“Who comes first for you, Michael?” she asked. “Who comes first in your life?”
“You do,” he said softly, sheepishly. “Of course you do. And the kids. You know that, Annie.”
“I don’t know it. Not anymore.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I’m too upset now to sleep next to you.” She grabbed her pillow and walked out of the room and went downstairs to the study. He heard the door shut. He didn’t know why he had lied to her. He suspected it had something to do with his guilt, but of what he was guilty he could not say for certain. He felt vulnerable, frightened; yet he could not discuss these feelings with his wife. Overcome, he curled up on the bed and shook. He shook and shuddered and the whole world went dim.
Confusion had burrowed in Michael’s brain like a small, helpless animal, and his only escape from it was on his bike. When he rode he could think things through. He woke early the next morning and dressed, avoiding the cold reproach of the study door. Outside it was cool and windy and the air carried the heady scent of fallen apples. He pulled on his helmet and opened the barn and wheeled out the bike. It was an agile piece of equipment and he loved having it. He looked up at the white clapboards of the old house, imagining his sleeping family inside it, and was struck with a momentary sense of calm.
If they are going to kill me, so be it, he thought. He would not live in fear. He would not hide from the world.
His route was twenty-two miles long, through the town of High Meadow and then due north on 66, around Crooked Lake and back, passing the sheep farm down Shaker Road. The roads were winding, with little traffic, and he concentrated on working his body, pushing himself slightly harder than he had before. The black road spilled away beneath him as he tunneled the wind. There was the yellow line luring him, the wind in his ears like a song.
After his fifth mile he allowed himself to relax and retreated into his riding head, an intense, abeyant place without sound. On the stretch of road outside the village, it began to drizzle. He thought of turning back, but a mile later the sun was out again. Miraculously, he saw a rainbow. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he heard someone approaching on another bike. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw a man dressed in high-tech biking attire, wearing a black helmet. The man had a surgical mask over his nose and mouth and dark sunglasses. What surprised Michael most was the man’s speed; he had caught up in a matter of seconds. They were shoulder to shoulder when the biker withdrew a pump like a sword from his backpack and thrust it out toward Michael’s rear tire. Michael pedaled harder, but the man was determined and shoved the pump through Michael’s spokes. Michael went down. He rolled off the bike into a ravine. The bike had crumpled, the rear wheel bent beyond repair. He could feel a sprain swell up in his ankle, as he climbed back up to the road. Son of a bitch. He searched the distance, but the road was vacant, just an eerie mist rising off of it.
Michael didn’t want to leave the bike, but he knew he could not carry it all the way. The isolated road presented few options. No telephones. Cars passed infrequently. There wasn’t much else to do but walk, and he put his thumb out when a car went past. Before too long a green pickup truck pulled up. TUTTLE’S MOBIL was printed on the door. The driver leaned across the seat to open the door. He had on orange coveralls, a safety match in his mouth. Mirrored sunglasses reflected Michael’s own face back to him in duplicate.
“What happened to you?” the man wanted to know.
“Someone knocked me off my bike,” he exclaimed. “Look what they did to my bike!”
“Now, why would a person do that?” the man asked, uninterested in hearing an answer.
“Are you going to town?”
“You’re in luck. Throw the bike in the back.”
Michael loaded the bike and got in the truck.
“I guess somebody up there’s looking out for you,” the man smirked.
The truck smelled sweet, like pipe tobacco. They drove without saying much of anything and Michael was glad when they got into town. The man pulled into the Mobil station and they both got out. “Appreciate it,” Michael said. The man grunted, then pulled the truck around to the side of the garage and went into the little office. Michael noticed a bumper sticker on the rear fender. BELIEVE IN YOURSELF: CHOOSE LIFE.