The Pursuit of Alice Thrift (10 page)

“It must be a
little
flattering when a guy won't take no for an answer.”

“He likes the doctor part. When I mentioned I was thinking of quitting, he said, ‘Don't you dare.' ”

Leo smiled, an ironic twist of his mouth. “Don't tell me that Ray and I are on the same side of an issue?”

I said, “If I ever told him how Hastings insulted me in front of everyone in the OR? I think he'd find out where he lives and wait for him on the sidewalk after dark. With a tire iron.”

Leo straightened up. “Has he ever shown any signs of violence with you?”

I said no, of course not.

“Then why would you say that?”

I checked my bathrobe and regripped the gaps. “Just a sense I get of how he solves problems . . . his notion of how the world works.”

“Do you ever get a sense of his good qualities?”

I could enumerate several impulses Ray possessed—love of travel, loyalty, availability—that were not criminal proclivities, but otherwise I was stumped. “Isn't this meeting about my professional life?” I asked.

“Meeting?”
He smiled. “Is this a meeting? Or is this supper with your roommate?”

I said, “I know you want to help, and I am taking your various recommendations under advisement, and this definitely qualifies as supper . . .”

“But?”

“I'm not you. Maybe Leo Frawley can confront people and sue them, but I can't.”

He patted my arm, looked stumped, looked up at the microwave clock. He coughed, then raised a finger as if asking for one more indulgence. “Did you hand your letter of resignation to your chairman, or did you leave it with his secretary?”

“Neither. I left it on his desk.”

“What time?”

I said I thought it was around six.

He rapped the table with his knuckles. “Excellent. Let's go get it.”

I said, “But I just told you—”

“No, different plan. This doesn't stop you from quitting again tomorrow. This just gives you an extension.”

I shook my head. “Bad plan. His office will be locked. Alarms will go off. Security will arrest us.”

“Wrong. We'll find someone with a passkey. We'll enlist the cleaning staff. We'll say . . .” He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them, wide and inspired. “How about this: We'll tell the truth! We say, ‘Alice had a horrible day, the worst, and she wrote a letter of resignation which she left on Dr. Kennick's desk, but now she's changed her mind. Can you let her in? She'll show you the letter, and if we're misrepresenting anything, you can detain us, or frisk us, or call our mothers.' ”

I looked at Leo. It was so simple. He had such faith in himself and the truth and the goodwill of every custodian, hospital-wide. “Do I have to accompany you on this caper?” I asked.

“Absolutely. No one is going to rescue your letter on my say-so alone. C'mon.”

I said, “We'll have beer on our breaths. Won't that undermine our mission?”

Leo smiled. “Mission,” he repeated. “That's my girl.”

12.
Clarification

LEO WAVED AT SEVERAL PASSING JANITORS BEFORE HAILING
Ruben, whose premature twins, he told me, had been born with respiratory distress syndrome at thirty-one weeks.

“How're my boys?” Leo asked, grinning broadly.

Ruben wrapped an arm around Leo's shoulders and squeezed. “Beautiful! Healthy. Eat good. Sleep good. No problem.”

Leo introduced me as his roommate, which caused Ruben to peer first at my ID and then at my bustline.

“We need your help,” said Leo.

“Anything for Dr. Leo,” Ruben said.

Leo elbowed me, which I understood to mean, Correct him at a more propitious time.

“It's no small favor,” Leo continued, “so promise me you'll refuse if you feel the slightest bit compromised.”

Ruben wouldn't hear of it. Big, small, upstairs, downstairs, today, tomorrow—no problem.

Leo lowered his voice. “Dr. Thrift needs to get into Dr. Kennick's office to pick up a letter she left there by mistake—”

“Which, originally, I meant for him to read, but I've changed my mind.”

Ruben winked at Leo.

“What?” I asked.

“Nada,”
said Leo.

“I distinctly saw him wink.”

Leo shielded one corner of his mouth as if relaying a secret. “He thinks you're talking about a love letter.”

Ruben winked again with greater conviction.

“I most certainly am not,” I said. “I'm referring to a letter of resignation provoked by a very unfortunate slip-up in the OR, which, in the heat of the moment—”

“Made her quit,” said Leo.

“No good,” Ruben said.

“No kidding,” said Leo. “And our thinking is that Kennick hasn't seen this I-quit letter yet, so no one will be the wiser if she can deep-six it.”

“What's it look like?” asked Ruben, his right hand now fishing deep into a trouser pocket, from which appeared several dozen keys.

“A rectangle,” I said. “Cream-colored. I think the manufacturer is Crane, so it should have a watermark. There's no address or stamp, just
Dr. Kennick
handwritten on the front, in script. I should have brought a sample envelope with me from the box.”

Again Leo signaled:
Relax.

Ruben unplugged his vacuum cleaner. “No big deal,” he said. And we were off.

IT WAS NOT
in plain sight on any horizontal surface in Kennick's office. “
You
look,” Ruben said, beckoning from the doorway. “I'm not touching nothing.”

We changed places: Ruben as lookout and me holding his feather duster for the appearance of housekeeping. I groped along the wall, found the light switches, experimented; dimmed the crime scene back to near-darkness. Kennick must have had the day off because his credenza held an avalanche of mail. I approached the stack gingerly, upsetting nothing, lifting only corners of the fat shrink-wrapped journals and flyers hawking surgical symposia on tropical isles. And finally at the bottom—ignored, insulted, entombed—was my handwritten surrender. With my nimble surgeon's fingers in a pincer grip, I liberated my letter and ran.

LEO TURNED ON
the front burner of our narrow gas stove, and beckoned to me for the sacrificial offering.

“Don't burn yourself,” I said.

“Fat chance,” he said. “
You're
burning this sucker, and then we'll think of something symbolic to do with the ashes.”

He turned a knob and produced a circle of blue flame. “
Low
is fine,” I advised.

One corner caught immediately. I dropped the envelope and stomped on it. What remained was singed but highly readable. “Do I have to finish the job?” I asked.

“No,” said Leo. “It was plenty symbolic—your attacking the letter as if it were a poisonous copperhead.”

“And this was an exercise in what?”

“Too early to tell,” said Leo, “but something along the lines of a new day dawning.”

“I think it burned the floor.”

“Just a smudge,” said Leo. I followed him to the sink, where he tore a paper towel from our freestanding roll and wet it.

“Let me,” I said.

He waved me away and set to work, sprinkling Bon Ami on the smudge, frowning as he moved to old, unrelated stains.

I silently tested an unfamiliar phrase, then said aloud, “I have a sudden craving for pizza.”

Leo looked up. “Pizza?”

I said, “Sure.”

“I was thinking
pizza
myself, not thirty seconds ago.” He pointed to our junk drawer. “Look in there. Mimo's take-out menu. Order whatever you like.”

The drawer yielded graduation programs, expired coupons, wax-paper lunch bags, unopened bank statements, a flurry of Chinese menus, and, finally, Mimo's.

“What do you like?” he asked.

Prompted by the alphabetical list of toppings, I threw out, “Anchovy?”

Leo leaned back on his haunches and said reverently, “Wow. I had no idea.”

I said that plain would be fine if he preferred. Was that the same as a cheese pizza? The menu said a small pie was six slices, which should be plenty.

Leo's expression changed to something mildly self-conscious. He said we'd probably need a large. Okay if he called in a large? His treat.

“Leftover pizza's good,” I said. “I had a roommate once who ate cold pizza for breakfast.”

“Actually, someone's coming over later. When her shift ends.”

“Who?”

“Meredith,” said Leo. “From labor and delivery? She gets off at eleven.”

I said I hadn't rotated through labor and delivery. Was she a nurse?

“Nurse-midwife, actually.”

“Is she a new friend?”

He shrugged.

“A girlfriend?”

His reply sounded unnaturally hearty: “Whoa. When does that designation kick in—
girlfriend
? Yikes. Hard to say.”

“Is this her first visit?”

He shook his head, but barely.

I said it was good to get an extracurricular report, belated or not. Might I ask how long they'd been a twosome?

He offered some unintelligible body language, mostly shoulders.

“You don't know?”

More ducking and shrugging. “Guys aren't good at those kinds of questions,” he finally replied.

I said I didn't mean to make him uncomfortable. But I was asking no more than what he had asked about Ray.

He thought that over, pulled out a kitchen chair, sat down, and folded his hands. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

“Is she intelligent?”

“Yes, definitely. Always at the top of any guy's list of desired attributes.”

“Does she have a college degree?”

Leo smiled and said, “Yes. Would you like me to have her SAT scores sent?”

I said no, of course not.

“She delivered my latest niece,” he said. “My brother Christopher's first baby, if you were wondering how we met.”

I hated the next question but I asked it anyway. “Is she attractive?”

“Most people would consider her attractive.”

I offered a compliment of my own—that Meredith was obviously quiet and considerate.

Leo asked how I'd come up with that.

“I meant that she must be quiet and considerate because I've never heard her arrive and have no idea what time she leaves.”

Leo turned a little red in the face. He mumbled something about her being just the opposite. Quite lively. And personable. Patients adored her.

The opposite of me, he meant.

He took the menu from me and walked to the phone. I heard him order; I noted how he sounded and looked engaged, no doubt charming even the pizza maître d'.

“Thirty minutes,” he reported. “You'll eat yours as soon as it gets here. No need to wait up for Meredith.”

I said, “Three's a crowd. Even I know that.”

He walked back to the table and sat down again. “I feel as if I've sprung something on you and you're upset. I can hear it in your voice.”

I said, “Not at all. I understand. Didn't you choose me as a roommate over the nurse candidates in order to protect your privacy? Don't worry about me. If I seem surprised, it's my own fault for not paying attention and for wearing earplugs to bed.”

“Literally?”

“Literally.”

The next minute he was standing behind me, kneading my shoulders in a professional manner and staring off into space. “Maybe I've been playing it close to the vest . . .” he began. “No one at work has caught on. I'm not one to make any big announcement, especially before I know if it's going to last more than a few dates.”

“Has it? Is it serious?”

Leo said, “I'll have to go look up
serious
in the dictionary before I answer that.”

When I glanced over at our bookshelf, Leo gave my shoulders a reproving squeeze. “That was a joke, Alice. Guys don't like to label things. It's . . . nice. So far, no problems. Neither one of us talks about the future.” His tone changed from philosophical to charitable. “Although I know she's definitely looking forward to meeting you.”

“Is she?” I asked, my voice chillier than I'd intended.

“You
are
pissed,” said Leo.

I bumped my chair a few inches to slip out of his grip. “I've been meetable for a long time, haven't I? Sleeping one room away, probably using the same bathroom glass and bar of soap. And we've no doubt passed each other in the hospital corridors a dozen times.” I lifted my ID and jabbed my own picture for emphasis. “Alice Thrift, MD. Friend and roommate of Leo.”

“Don't blame Meredith,” he said. “She almost introduced herself to you a couple of times at the hospital, but then chickened out.”

“Hard to introduce yourself to someone who's invisible,” I muttered.

“Don't say that! You're not invisible. I hate when you talk like that.”

When I didn't answer, when I sat there with my arms folded and my cognitive functions trying to grasp what had been revealed and why I'd been perturbed by it, Leo actually smiled. “Can I boil you a therapeutic egg?” he teased. “Four and a half minutes, no waiting?”

I said no, thank you. The pizza would be here soon.

“How about some black coffee so you can stay up past eleven?”

“To meet her?”

“
Yes,
to meet Meredith! No excuses; no more slipping in and slipping out like people with a secret. Whaddya say?”

I answered with an aplomb I credit to my socially appropriate parents but rarely invoke. I said that I was looking forward to meeting Meredith, too. Not tonight—I was dead—but soon. Maybe we could all go to a bar together or to the planetarium some night, the four of us. Isn't that how two roommates and their respective friends of the opposite sex fraternized? By consulting their schedules and organizing a double date?