To my relief, my note on the door worked and none of Diane’s patients camped out in the waiting room.
Until four o’clock.
At four o’clock, I walked out to retrieve my scheduled patient but was greeted not by one person eager to see me, but by two.
The unexpected person was the woman with the cheddar-colored hair who had been so insistent on seeing her therapist on the day that Hannah Grant died. I recalled that Diane had told me that she had begun seeing the woman for psychotherapy. Was she there for her appointment?
I told the young man whom I was scheduled to see at that hour that I would be back with him in just a moment, and invited the Cheetos lady to come down the hall. We walked halfway to my office, far enough to be out of earshot of the waiting room, before I asked, “Did you see my note on the door about Dr. Estevez? She can’t be here today.”
“I saw your stupid note. I have a right to know what’s going on.”
In the weeks since Hannah’s death this woman had not shed any of her petulance. “She’s unfortunately away unexpectedly,” I said, stumbling over the adverbs I was stringing together.
“What does that mean?”
“She’ll call you when she’s back in the office.”
“That’s what you said about Hannah.”
She was right. That is what I’d said about Hannah.
“I’m sorry.” I was sorry. “I don’t know what else to say. I’m sure, given what tragically happened with Ms. Grant, that this is especially difficult for you.”
I didn’t know what else to say. I was also running out of big adverbs.
“How long has she been gone?”
“I’m afraid I’m not in a position to answer that question.”
“Then change your damn position.”
The top of her frizzy head reached just about to the level of my chin. Her hair had a scent that I associated with bad Indian restaurants. “I’m available for-”
“I don’t care what you’re available for. Have you checked Diane’s office?”
Diane, not Dr. Estevez. “There’s no need to check her office.”
“Then you know where she is. Tell me what the hell is going on.”
“I’m sorry that Dr. Estevez isn’t here for your appointment. She’ll call you as soon as she is free to do so. I have someone I have to see now. Please excuse me.”
I led her back toward the waiting room.
“This isn’t going to stop here,” the woman said before she left.
Before I retrieved my patient, I rushed back down the hall, grabbed my keys, and opened Diane’s office door. I was so relieved that it was empty.
“Jay?” I said to my four o’clock after I’d recovered my composure and returned to the waiting room. “Why don’t you come on back? I’m sorry for the late start.”
My last appointment of the day was scheduled to begin at five o’clock. I took a deep breath, reassured myself that the finish line of my day’s therapy marathon was only forty-five minutes away, and made the stroll down the hallway. Once again, though, I found two people, not one, waiting for me.
One was my five o’clock. She was a thirty-eight-year-old woman whom I’d successfully helped with depression a year before, but who was back in my care to try to stave off a recurrence of her profound melancholy after a recent diagnosis of breast cancer. She had a PIC line in her upper arm and was in the interlude between her first and second rounds of chemo. She was sitting in the waiting room with her hands folded in her lap, her eyes closed, meditating, I supposed, on some aspect of life’s caprice.
At that moment my empathy for her was even more acute than usual.
The other person in my waiting room was my friend, Sam Purdy. He was dressed in his work clothes-in winter that meant a pair of aging wool trousers, a long-sleeved shirt, a tie that was loose at the collar, and a sport coat that Goodwill would have tossed into a rag pile had he tried to donate it. The jackets he wore were usually ill-fitting, but with his recent weight loss this coat was to his body what a bad slipcover was to a couch. That day, Sam’s trousers were of recent vintage, as was his tie. For years Sam had owned so few neckties that I actually recognized them by their stains, but this one was new, and tasteful, and most surprising, appeared to be made of silk.
I suspected that Sam’s new girlfriend had taken him shopping over New Year’s. I also bet that he had a pair of silk boxers at home he didn’t quite know what to do with.
Sam was reading the New Yorker, chuckling at a cartoon. When he looked up at me I made a querulous face at him. He shook his head just a little, flattened his mouth so that his lips disappeared under the umbrella of his mustache, and made a little “everything’s cool” gesture with his hand. The gesture closely resembled an insincere “safe” call by a baseball umpire.
I made another querulous face.
He tapped his wristwatch.
I shrugged my shoulders and led the woman back to my office.
Forty-five minutes later my patient departed and I retraced my steps to the waiting room. Sam was asleep on his chair. A half-dozen magazines were in a heap at his feet.
“Hey, Sam,” I said.
He didn’t reply.
“Sam,” I tried, a little louder.
He still didn’t say anything.
An image of Hannah Grant’s dead body splayed over the leather cube flashed into my mind with Technicolor brilliance. I said, “Oh shit,” and rushed across the room.
“Got you,” he said with a sudden smile. The stubble of his beard told me it had been many hours since he’d scraped his face with a razor. He was probably as tired as I was.
“You ass,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“I come by sometimes just to catch up on my magazine reading. You guys have good stuff. Not like my dentist’s office. You should see the crap he keeps around.”
I made a skeptical face.
He stood up. “I’m buying you dinner,” he said. “Come on.”
“Sam, Lauren’s expecting me to-”
“No, she’s not. I already cleared it with her. You have a free go-out-with-the-boys pass for the evening.”
“Yeah?” I was suspicious.
“Yeah.”
“We walking or driving?”
“We be walking.”
Although it was a cold night for a stroll, we hiked to the far side of the Pearl Street Mall toward the Sunflower Restaurant. Before Sam’s heart attack I doubted that he’d ever set foot inside the organic oasis that was the Sunflower, and I was more than a little suspicious that he’d chosen it for a meal for the two of us, but I kept my apprehension to myself. Things definitely weren’t what they seemed, so an out-of-the-ordinary restaurant fit right in. We spent the few-block hike catching up on kid talk. Sam was moaning that Simon was making both his parents nuts trying to juggle his hockey and snowboarding schedules, but I could tell that Sam was actually pretty happy about the logistical craziness his son’s activities were precipitating.
He declined the hostess’s first offer of a table, which was prime territory smack in the middle of the dining room, and instead asked for a booth in the distant corner. Once we were led to his preferred suburban outpost, he took the bench that was facing the big room; I was left with a view of a brick wall that was adorned with a large, quasi-erotic photograph of young eggplants and ripe figs. For some reason I found myself thinking of D. H. Lawrence and Alan Bates.
Then I got it: My association was to the cinematic version of Women in Love. I smiled at the memory, and stole another gratuitous glance at the figs. “What is this, really?” I asked.
“Sherry has Simon. I wanted to spend some quality time with you.”
“Yeah? At the Sunflower? You really expect me to believe that?”
“I’m hurt,” he said, investing all of his energy in the menu. “Can’t even do a nice gesture for a friend. What are you hungry for? Look”-he pointed at the entrée list-“everything here’s free range and wild and shit. Has to make you happy.”
“How’s Carmen?” I asked, temporarily giving up on my quest to discover the purpose of the meeting. I wasn’t in a hurry; I knew we’d get there eventually. “She buy you that tie?”
Sam looked up and flicked a quick glance at the dining room. I thought I saw him nod his head just the smallest amount.
I had to resist turning and taking a look for myself. Suddenly, Darrell Olson was at my side. Two seconds later, Jaris Slocum was standing right behind him.