Thirty-Four

One of the receptionists coughed when I pushed the double doors open, but she didn’t say anything or do anything to stop me. I never saw Dr. Sanderley. I strolled the halls, looking for a familiar face, a face I might have seen at Dee’s hotel or at the Berklee Performance Center rehearsal. I didn’t see one.

I climbed a staircase, found a pleasant enough solarium on the second floor. A few of the stronger-looking patients—some with crutches, some in wheelchairs—were hanging out, laughing at a TV talk show. Two men in bathrobes were playing gin rummy across a card table.

I kibitzed a hand or two. My mother taught me two card games, pinochle and rummy. My father said she cheated at both.

“You a do-good lady?” one of the cardplayers asked. He had splotches the size of nickels on both his hands and wrists, up to where they disappeared into the bathrobe sleeves. The other player regarded me quizzically.

“Nope,” I said. “Definitely not a do-good lady.”

“They come around,” one of the TV-watchers said.

“You a relative?” another TV-viewer asked.

“Friend. Davey Dunrobie. Old friend.”

“Lucky him,” muttered a man as bald as an egg.

I said, “A young girl work here, come by to visit? I don’t know, she could be a nurse’s aide or a volunteer. Sixteen, seventeen years old. Pretty sensational-looking. Curly blonde hair?”

The men exchanged glances.

One guy replied in an exaggeratedly fey voice. “I only notice the boys, sweetheart,” he said. Another man laughed. I got the feeling it was an ongoing joke.

A cardplayer said, “None of the do-good ladies looks like that. And none of the nurse’s aides. Trust me, I’d notice.”

I tried another tack. “Davey told me there was this one, I don’t know, maybe nurse or orderly, he really liked.” I did my best to give a verbal picture of the guy I’d last heard described as Brenda’s “boy-toy.” Slender, young, maybe foreign. I remembered his dark, smudgy eyes.

“Ray?” the other cardplayer said sharply. “That jerk? He was actually nice to somebody?”

“Ray,” I said. “Yeah, that’s the guy. Where could I find him?”

“He quit,” one of the TV-watchers said. “He was an orderly. He gets to quit. Walk out the door.”

“You know Ray’s last name?” I ventured.

“Nope. And I don’t care either.”

The heavyset receptionist, the one who talked too much, was handling the front desk alone. She hadn’t gotten her lecture on confidentiality from Doctor Sanderley yet. I gave her a song and dance about how Davey had asked me to send Ray a remembrance when he died. She gave me Ray’s last name along with his home address.