The Scenic Route (24 page)

“Y
ou're a hard man to find,” Tad said to Austin.

Austin still wasn't entirely sure why this hipster musician had wanted to find him. He had shown up at the clinic without an appointment. But the receptionist had snuck him in at the end of the day because she thought he was cute.

When Austin entered the examination room, he found him rolling in circles on Austin's stool. He had a musical instrument case strapped to his back over a vintage peacoat, and Austin noticed a couple of piercings in his ear and the hint of a tattoo over the collar of the coat. Austin tried not to judge. There were parts of the city where everyone seemed to be pierced or tattooed or both. Austin couldn't understand why so many people would purposely disfigure their bodies. Maybe it was a doctor thing. Or maybe it was a Jewish thing. (The former Hebrew school student in him remembered his rabbi preaching that Jews with tattoos couldn't be buried in a Jewish cemetery.)

“Do I know you?” Austin asked. Tad looked to be in his early thirties, pale skin, receding hairline. Austin didn't recognize Tad's name, and he couldn't think of where their paths could have crossed.

“I knew your sister, Mandy,” Tad said.

Austin felt his heart clench. He had gotten a lot better in the last eight months. He had to admit that therapy had helped, though he had been thinking he was ready to graduate. Still, one mention of Mandy's name, and he needed to hold on to the door handle to steady himself.

“We went out for a while,” Tad said.

Austin crossed to the examining chair and sat down. “I don't remember her mentioning you.” He vaguely remembered there was a guy that his mother said was supposed to come for Thanksgiving several years back. Or was it Passover?

“We kind of had a rocky relationship,” Tad said, looking embarrassed. “Very on and off. Mostly off.”

“I see,” Austin said. Though he wasn't sure that he did.

“But when it was on, it was
very
on.”

Austin said a silent prayer that Tad wasn't about to share intimate details about Mandy. Austin didn't think he could take it.

“Mandy's an amazing person,” Tad said. “Was. She was an amazing person.” It was possible that Tad was tearing up, or there was something in his eye. He blinked a few times, and then he seemed fine. “I just found out about . . . about what happened to her. I've been traveling a lot.” He banged on the music case for emphasis. Austin noticed there was an Occupy Wall Street bumper sticker down one side. “I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I'm very, very sorry.”

“Thank you,” Austin said, feeling his heart beating a little steadier. Tad didn't seem to have anything more to say, so Austin stood up. “I really appreciate you making the effort to find me. It means a lot.” Part of Austin wanted to grill Tad on everything he knew about Mandy. To fill in holes in Austin's knowledge. To make her seem present in his life again. But that was precisely what he shouldn't be trying to do. And if Tad had been a significant person in Mandy's life, she would have told Austin about him.

“I have something of hers,” Tad said, placing his case on the floor and opening it. There was a trumpet inside and sheet music. And a large manila envelope. Tad handed the envelope to Austin. It contained some kind of manuscript.

“It's her dissertation,” Tad said. “The one she wasn't allowed to do. She kind of did most of it anyway.”

“She told me she threw out the dissertation. Destroyed the file.”

“She did,” Tad said. “But we also kind of lived together for a while.”

Austin tried not to look as surprised as he felt. “For how long?” he asked.

“Well, that was also pretty messy,” Tad said. “But maybe a year or two. Like I said, it was on and off, and I was on the road a lot.”

Austin sat down in the examining chair again. What he liked about an ophthalmic examining chair was that it felt a bit like a throne. You were a foot or so above the ground. And the high back and arms surrounded and supported you. Sometimes after a long day, Austin would sit in the examining chair and turn on the visual acuity chart. He would sit in the dark and stare at the letters, trying to make sense of them.

“I know one or two years probably doesn't seem like a huge amount of time,” Tad said, “but I haven't actually been with anyone else that long. Which probably doesn't say much for me. But the point is, Mandy was using my computer part of the time. So she
did
destroy her files, but she didn't destroy the files on my computer. It means what I have wouldn't have been her last draft. But it's really amazing all the same.”

Austin looked up at him.

“She used her studies of the chimpanzees as a departure point to riff on the entire nature of human social and sexual interaction. It's kind of brilliant. She gets into all kinds of sexual role play. Kinky stuff too.” Austin shifted uncomfortably on his throne. “Anyway, the point is she comes up with this whole theory of sexual aggression, and
I think her problem was she was in the wrong department. Instead of doing this as an anthropology dissertation, it should have been a psychology dissertation.”

Austin was impressed. He flipped through the hundreds of pages in his hands. He didn't know what he was going to do with it, but he was glad to have it. “Thanks, Tad. I really appreciate you making the effort to get this to me.”

“Well, she talked about you a lot, and I just kind of thought it was something you would want to have,” Tad said. Then he looked down at the ground. “And I also have a bit of an ulterior motive for bringing it to you.”

Austin was curious what it was. Maybe Tad needed an eye exam. He looked like he could easily be lacking health insurance.

“This music thing isn't going quite where I thought it would,” he said.

Austin had guessed right. The guy needed health care. Or a job. Austin was happy to offer him either. They could always use an extra pair of hands in the clinic. Pay wasn't good, but it was exciting to be working at the forefront of what was being called a “revolution” in health care, with an emphasis on treating people rather than treating disease. And the truth was Austin wouldn't mind getting to know Tad a little better.

“I've been on the road a long time. I've been all kinds of places. Played in Europe. Played in Kazakhstan. That was pretty wild. But after so many years, I started to feel like I'm always moving, but I'm not getting anywhere. So I applied to grad school, and I'm going to be starting winter term at CUNY.” Austin was a little confused where this was heading. “I'll be getting my PhD in psychology, and I'd like permission to use Mandy's dissertation as a basis for my own.”

The conversation kept getting odder and odder. Austin wasn't sure what he thought about this new twist. He also wasn't sure what
Mandy would think. And he wasn't nearly familiar enough with the academic world to know how to protect her interests.

“I would give her full credit,” Tad said. “It would sort of be like we were coauthors. I've already talked to an adviser at CUNY. I explained what happened to Mandy, and I showed him some of her work. I hope you don't mind.” Austin shook his head. “And he's totally on board with me doing this. But I first wanted to get your blessing.”

It was the word “blessing” that made Austin feel like he was going to lose it. It was like Tad was asking for Mandy's hand in marriage, and Austin was once again thrust into playing his father's role. Part of him resisted being pulled back in that direction. It was a role he had never wanted and never should have had. Yet he missed it. He missed taking care of her, and he was grateful to have one last opportunity.

“You have my blessing,” he told Tad.

“Awesome!” Tad pumped his fist.

“On one condition,” Austin added.

“I can't afford to pay for rights.”

“That's not the condition,” Austin said with growing fondness. “The condition is that we meet for coffee once a month, and you tell me how the work is going.”

“Oh, cool,” Tad said. “I was afraid you wanted sex or something.” Austin had a moment of seller's remorse, but he chose to let it pass. “By the way,” Tad said, “I have a working title I've been playing with. I'm thinking of calling it ‘The Evolution of Love.' Do you think Mandy would like that?”

Austin tried to keep his voice from cracking. “I think she'd like it very much.”

S
teffi didn't like what she was hearing.

“It's not as if it's a surprise,” Naomi said. “We've been talking about this for months.”

“No,” Steffi said. “We've never talked about you selling your shares of Splurge.”

Naomi was throwing this at her out of the blue, and though she claimed she wanted a mutually beneficial solution, it felt more like she was asking Steffi to sign her own death warrant.

“We've been talking about selling the entire company,” Naomi said as she stuffed Jacques Torres chocolate bars in glossy black swag bags for Noah's wedding. Steffi had already eaten three of the bars, which were definitely not on her diet.

“But we decided not to,” Steffi reminded her.

“You and Dov decided. My vote didn't count, and the more I think about it, the more I'd like to be doing something with food.”

“You're doing something with food. You're in charge of all the gourmet food vendors.”

“I want to get back to doing something hands-on. Splurge was always more your dream than mine.”

“And you're taking it away from me!” Steffi was trying not to sound as desperate as she felt. She wasn't succeeding.

“I'm not taking anything from you. If anything, I'm giving it back to you.”

“You're not
giving
me anything,” Steffi seethed. Like Naomi was offering her charity or something. “You're asking me to buy you out. Just where am I going to get that kind of money?”

Naomi didn't have a response to that. Obviously, she hadn't thought that part through. Typical.

“I bet you could get a loan,” Naomi finally said.

“With what collateral? Am I going to give away my company in order to save it?”

“I'm sure Dov would be willing to—”

“Then it becomes
his
company. He already owns sixty percent. I worked too hard to let him take what I created.”

“What we
both
created.”

Steffi didn't respond. She wasn't going to say Naomi didn't contribute to Splurge. But it was Steffi's concept that had gotten it started and Steffi's drive that had made it happen. Though it might have been Naomi's tits that had helped reel in Dov. Steffi sometimes wondered if their roles would be reversed if she'd been the one rocking the low-cut DVF wrap dress at their pitch meeting.

“This is what you always do,” Steffi said, unable to disguise her resentment.

“What are you talking about?” Naomi asked. “I've never started or sold a company before.”

“You get bored,” Steffi said. “You get frustrated.”

“That's not what I'm doing.”

Of course it was what she was doing. She'd been doing it since they were children. “We used to make beaded bracelets when we were kids. And if the beads in your pattern got out of order, rather than go
back and fix it, you'd toss the beads back in the box and start over with something else.”

“I don't remember doing that.”

“Ask my mom if you don't believe me. Everyone always carries on about what a free spirit you are, flying off on a moment's notice to live in Rome or Paris. But usually it's the moment someone asks you to make a commitment.” Naomi's jaw dropped open. “You have walked away from every job and every boyfriend since I've known you. And now you're doing it to me.”

“I'm not ‘walking away' from you.”

“No, you're running away. But this time you're keeping the tycoon boyfriend. And your castle in Sherwood Forest.”

“I don't live in a castle,” Naomi bristled.

“No, you live in fucking Fantasyland!”

Steffi raced out of Naomi's apartment, fearing she was about to burst into tears. But the tears didn't come. Just waves of anger. She was angry at Naomi. She was angry at herself for trusting Naomi. And she was angry about becoming an angry person. She gulped water from the bottle of Evian she had gotten in the habit of carrying everywhere. But even after finishing it off, she was still thirsty. She was always thirsty lately. Overcome, really, with an intense parched sensation. It was like she was dehydrated on a spiritual level. No wonder she couldn't cry. She was becoming a brittle person. Who would ever want to be with a brittle person with a dehydrated soul?

She must have looked particularly forlorn, because a taxi pulled over right away. Or maybe that's the way karma worked. When something major is going wrong in your life, something small and inconsequential goes right. She knew she should be grateful for even small amounts of good karma, but she would have preferred ruining her heels walking all the way across town to worrying about Naomi going AWOL.

When the taxi pulled up at her apartment, there was someone sitting on the stoop of her Upper East Side brownstone. As soon as she saw who it was, she knew she had been premature in thinking there was any good karma coming her way.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked Stu as she pushed past him to the front door of the building.

“Nice to see you too,” Stu said.

She was thirsty again. Maybe she had some kind of kidney disease. Her father had his first kidney stone at thirty-five. He said it was like giving birth to a stone pea. When Steffi said that didn't sound all that bad, he had laughed and said, “Wait until you try it.” She wanted to call her parents. They would know what she should do about Naomi, but it was still too early on the West Coast.

“I'm not in the mood for games, Stu,” she said, shoving the key into the hole.

“Neither am I. I need a job.”

“Do I look like Monster.com?”

She tried to close the door behind her, but he had already jimmied his way into the open doorway. She headed upstairs. She wasn't going to fight with him. She just wanted to get home and get some fluid into her system. She would have killed for a bottle of Gatorade. Fuck the diet.

“I'm good at what I do,” Stu said, “and no one knows that better than you.”

It seemed that everyone drinking from her gravy trough had unfettered belief in their own abilities and little in hers. “If you're so good at what you do, why am I the one with a potential job to offer?”

“Because I was the one who invested in you when your only talent was spending money.”

They had reached the door to her apartment and the end of her patience. “If this is your idea of flirting, it's not working.”

“Why would I be flirting?” he asked.

“Because you obviously want to get back together.”

“Are you smoking crack?”

She was so close to socking him. “You want me to believe that you came and sat outside my building, waiting for me like a twelve-year-old, solely to get me to hire you.”

“Yes,” he said. “That tells you how desperate I am.”

“
No one
is that desperate.”

He banged his fist against the door. “You know what? You're right. This was stupid. Stupidest thing I ever did.” He was leaning over her, his face flushed with anger. “No, the stupidest thing I ever did was propose to you.”

“The stupidest thing I ever did was say yes.”

“Then there's something we agree on.”

“The one and only thing.”

“Do you want to fuck?”

“God yes.”

She couldn't get the door open fast enough. Their clothes were half off before they made it to the kitchen, where she guzzled half a bottle of cranberry juice, but it didn't even begin to quench her thirst.