Girlfriends (Patrick Sanchez) (11 page)

“I’ll try. Thanks for picking me up and taking me home, sweetie. I can always count on you.”

I know, Gina thought. That’s part of the problem.

“By the way,” Shirley asked, looking at Gina. “What happened to your hair?”

Bedside Manners

I
t had been about a half hour since Peter finished filling out all the paperwork required of new patients when the nurse finally called him back to see the doctor. One time he actually typed up a generic form listing his name, address, health insurance, medical history, and all the other stuff doctors asked of new patients. He figured he could just copy and distribute it to each new doctor rather than spend twenty minutes filling out forms, but the first time he tried to use it, the receptionist looked at him like he was crazy. She had to data-enter all the information from their standard forms, which matched the screen on her computer and wasn’t about to hunt all over his generic form to find the information she needed.

When he was finally called back to an examining room, the nurse did all the usual things. She took his blood pressure, temperature, and pulse rate, and told him the doctor would be with him shortly. Peter sat on the examining table, looking around at all the supplies and instruments on the cabinets, wondering what the purpose of some of them was. He hated meeting new doctors. He never knew what was in store. Some were friendly with a good bedside manner, while others were abrupt and rude and managed their patient load like an assembly line.

“Hi, I’m Dr. McKonkey. How are you doing today, Kenneth?” the doctor asked Peter as he glanced over his chart.

“I’m fine, thanks. Actually, it’s Peter. Kenneth’s my first name, but I go by Peter.” Peter had yet to forgive his parents for naming him one thing and calling him another. Going by his middle name constantly wreaked havoc in his life.

“Well, Peter, what can I do for you today?”

“I’ve been working out a lot lately, and a few days ago I started getting this soreness in my chest while I was on the treadmill. I know it’s ridiculous to think I might have a heart problem at my age, but, nonetheless, I thought I should check it out.”

The balding doctor, who must have been well into his fifties, asked Peter a variety of questions about the pain and his family history. Then he listened to his heart with the stethoscope.

“You probably just strained a muscle or something even more benign, but I’ll have Celia run an EKG to rule out any other problems.” The doctor pressed a buzzer by the door, and within seconds an attractive nurse appeared at the doorway.

“Celia, we need to run an EKG on Mr. Virga,” Dr. McKonkey said to the nurse. “I’ll check back with you in a little while. Celia will take good care of you.”

“You’ll need to take off your shirt and lie down on the table.”

Peter followed her instructions while admiring her backside as she began flicking switches on the EKG machine.

“We usually need to shave our male patients before we do this, but it looks like you’ve taken care of that for us,” Celia said while she prepped his chest for the test.

This was one of the many times Peter felt his long hours at the gym were paying off. He knew his muscles must be turning her on. While she attached the wires to his body, he flexed his muscles as much as he could without it being obvious, hoping it would get her attention. Peter figured Celia was probably pushing forty. She had silky long, black hair and an olive complexion. She was of some sort of Asian decent. Maybe Korean or Chinese. Peter wasn’t sure.

While she continued to put little stickers on his chest, Peter started having mild fantasies about Celia becoming overwhelmed with passion and ripping the EKG pads from his body. It was like some sort of low-budget porno movie. Peter thought about what he’d call it—maybe “EKG-Spot” or something like that. Peter smirked a little at the thought, and before he knew it, the test was done.

“I’ll give the reading to Dr. McKonkey,” Celia said, leaving the room, closing the door, and, to Peter’s dismay, not seeming the slightest bit impressed with his muscles.

“Everything looks fine, Peter. If the pain comes back, make another appointment and we will run a few more tests,” the doctor said, barely stepping into the exam room.

“Are you sure there’s nothing else we should do?”

“Not at this point. It may have just been something you ate, or a pulled muscle, or a number of things, but your EKG was normal.”

“Okay, thanks, Doctor,” Peter said, relieved. He rushed to put his shirt back on and left the examining room. He had to hurry to an appointment with Dr. Ready, whom he was going to see about some vague pain he’d been having in his fingers. He thought it might be arthritis starting or something. He didn’t want to tell Dr. McKonkey about the arthritis symptoms. Peter figured the doctor would think he was just paranoid or something if he came for both chest pain
and
discomfort in his hands. When he went to see Dr. Powers last week because of headaches and a tiny numb spot in his toe, he wasn’t taken seriously at all.

The Life of the Party

“W
here are we supposed to park?” Gina asked as they turned into the housing development on a rainy Wednesday evening. Gina had convinced Peter to go to Penelope’s party, and Linda had tagged along as well. Gina figured she wouldn’t look too pathetic if Peter came to the party with her. Hopefully, everyone would assume they were together and, thank God, Dennis was finally able to fix her hair.

It had been a few weeks since Penelope’s wedding and she and Donny had just bought a town house in a new development in the Maryland suburbs of D.C. When they finally found her house, they couldn’t find any parking that didn’t threaten to take their firstborn if they didn’t have a parking permit for the development. Finally, they stumbled onto a visitors’ lot with an open space, and Linda started to park the car.

“You can’t park there, Linda,” Peter called from the backseat while pointing out an old Cadillac next to the open parking space. “Next to that big clunker? You’ll get your car nicked.”

“Oh, please,” Linda said, pulling the car into the spot. “I refuse to spend my life worrying about a scratch on my car. I’m not going to be like those freaks who take up two spaces or park in the boonies so they don’t scratch their precious car. It’s pathetic.”

“You mean like Peter does?” Gina joked as the three of them climbed out of the car and tried to huddle under one umbrella. The trio meandered toward the house with all the lights on and human shadows bobbing around behind the shades.

As they approached the party, they could hear the music coming from Penelope’s house.

“Hi, guys, it’s so good to see you,” Donny said as he opened the door for them. He was short and skinny with red hair and freckles. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy. He just sort of looked like a computer geek—one of those guys you might see in the parking garage of your office building and you just know they work in IS, even though you’ve never even seen them before.

“It’s good to see you too. We had to park in Peru and walk quite a ways to get here,” Gina replied with a smile, stepping through the doorway and closing the umbrella.

“The parking situation here kinda sucks,” Donny said before calling to Penelope.

“Gina!” Penelope screamed, running up to Gina and hugging her. She was obviously drunk. “I never see you anymore. God. I haven’t seen you since the wedding.” She briefly acknowledged Peter and Linda and pulled Gina aside. She began chatting incessantly about her wedding, their new house, and her job as a manager at Bloomingdale’s. Gina smiled and nodded as Penelope continued to babble. Gina wasn’t really paying attention. She was amazed at the number of people in Penelope’s house. She wondered when Penelope had met all these people—or were they all Donny’s friends? When had Penelope become outgoing, and when had she become a manager at Bloomingdale’s? The last time Gina saw her, she was still assaulting women with perfume as they walked through the cosmetics aisle. It had been a few weeks since Gina met David at Rio Grande, and he still hadn’t called her. So listening to Penelope banter on and on about Donny and her job wasn’t exactly making her feel better.

“Gosh. Things are really going well for you,” Gina said with a phony smile.

“I’m a lucky girl.”

Gina couldn’t stand it anymore. “Where can a girl get a drink around here?”

“Upstairs in the bathtub,” Penelope replied.

“Great. Well, excuse me for a moment,” Gina said, bound for the stairway. She passed Peter and Linda on their way down the stairs.

“I’m going to grab a beer, and I’ll meet you guys downstairs,” Gina said, feeling a little down about her life. Penelope was such an introvert when they met in college. Back then, Gina felt sorry for her and even made a point of including Penelope when she made social plans. All of a sudden it seemed like the tables had turned. Penelope was the one with the husband, great job, and cutesy little house in the ’burbs.

Gina stared at the selection of beers covered with ice in the bathtub and decided on some foreign-looking beer she had never heard of. As she reached for her beer, she noticed the quaintness of the room. Penelope had decorated the bathroom in lavender and, of course, the rug, towels, and shower curtain were all perfectly coordinated. She even had matching accessories—the soap dish, toothbrush holder, and even the trash can exquisitely complemented the lavender decor.

God, even her bathroom says I’m a happy-assed bitch, Gina thought to herself. As she popped the cap off with a bottle opener, the toilet paper roller caught her eye. After she stood in the bathroom for a few seconds contemplating such a silly idea, she peeked out the door and saw that no one was on the steps. Then she took a breath and frantically began pulling toilet paper off the roll and throwing it in the toilet. She looked again to make sure no one was coming and shoved even more paper in the toilet, all the while laughing hysterically. She peeked out the door one more time, calmed herself down a little, and flushed the toilet. She then nonchalantly walked down the steps with her beer and joined Linda and Peter in the kitchen. They were leaning against the counter, chatting with an older black woman dressed in some sort of traditional African attire.

Gina was amused with herself as well as worried. God, she really had lost her mind. First she’s sleeping with guys like Griffin, then she’s overflowing toilets at parties. A few minutes later she saw some fat girl whisper something to Penelope, who immediately got a disturbed look on her face and ran upstairs. Slowly, more and more of the party guests wanted to see what the ruckus was about.

“What’s going on?” Gina asked some stranger on the steps as if she had no idea what had happened.

“I think someone made the toilet overflow.”

“You’re kidding? God, that sucks,” Gina said with a perfectly straight face, and headed back to the kitchen. Eventually the commotion on the stairs ended, and Penelope appeared in the kitchen.

“The toilet overflowed?” Peter asked Penelope.

“Yeah. Some fuckhead must have had an ass the size of Milwaukee. He threw a slew of paper in the can.”

“That’s awful, Penelope. You never know what drunk people will do,” Gina said, relieved that Penelope had spoken of the culprit as a
he
. “I had a party a few years ago, and someone stole my shoes. Another time someone left a trail of chicken wings from my apartment to the elevator. You never know what will happen when you throw a party. People just have no respect.”

Responses

C
heryl shook out her umbrella before she walked into her apartment. It had been a long day, and the rain wasn’t helping matters. She hated the rain. The moment it so much as drizzled, people in D.C. somehow lost their ability to drive. Like Gina, she commuted from the city to her job in a neighboring suburb in Virginia. Driving
into
the city during evening rush hour certainly wasn’t as bad as driving
out
of it, but it was still heavy. More and more corporations were moving their headquarters to the suburbs of Virginia and Maryland, so, during rush hour, people were snarling traffic in every direction. To avoid the whole mess, Cheryl stopped at the Starbucks in Seven Corners, had a few cups of overpriced coffee, and read the paper before heading home.

She closed the door behind her, flicked on the floor lamp in the living room, and walked into the bedroom. She unbuttoned her suit jacket and laid it on the bed. She was probably one of the last people on earth whose company made her wear business suits to work. Every day, when she went to lunch and saw everyone else in casual slacks and knit tops, she contemplated finding a new job simply so she wouldn’t have to wear a suit every day. She had been with the same managed health care company for five years and recently got a nice promotion. She was now in charge of overseeing the implementation of new client accounts. It was her responsibility to make sure the appropriate phone lines were set up, brochures went out on time, staff were hired and trained to field calls from new members, etc.

The only advantage of a formal dress code at work was that changing into more comfortable clothes when she got home helped her let go of her work stress and feel more relaxed at home. She slipped off the rest of her suit, got rid of the heels and hose, and put on a T-shirt and shorts.

Much better, she thought as she pulled out the chair at her desk. She sat down and reached over to turn on the computer.

“God, this takes forever,” she mumbled to herself as her computer logged on to the Internet. She’d bought the PC from her company a couple of years earlier, when they upgraded to new machines. In the fast-changing computer industry, her unit was probably considered an antique. It was slow and crashed now and then, but, for the most part, it met her needs.

Cheryl logged in to her e-mail account. She was hoping she might have several responses to her ad, but after she sorted through all the junk mail, it looked like she had gotten only three.