I headed home to my second-floor, two-bedroom, one-bath apartment in a condo cluster just north of the interstate. The cluster calls itself Holly Ridge, but if any holly ever grew there, it’s long gone. And there’s no ridge either. The buildings sit on land as flat as a mannequin’s cardiogram. I suspect the property was a cornfield before the developers dug it up. If they’d been honest they’d have called it “Corny Meadows,” but that lacks the marketing magic to lure the lemmings from Baltimore.
Holly Ridge consists of four three-story buildings arranged in an arc, with parking along the outer rim and a lawn in the convexity.
I bought my place six months after I started with LFPA and it’s plenty for me. I use the second bedroom as a little office where I keep my computer, my medical journals, my old Casio portable keyboard—I still put Marge’s lessons to use now and again. I don’t want the hassle of a house. I don’t know if I ever will.
The furniture is a hodgepodge of pieces from Mum’s and Uncle Timmy’s overstocks, some mahogany, some walnut, some oak. I’ve managed to arrange it all into a coherent configuration that’s comfortable and functional. I’ve hung half a dozen art prints on the walls, everything from van Gogh to Mondrian. My taste in art is almost as eclectic as my taste in food.
I grabbed a can of Diet Pepsi from the fridge and a can of tuna from the pantry. As I was saladizing the tuna with mayo and pepper—no carbs there—I spotted the blinking red message light on my answering machine. I pressed PLAY and cringed when I heard the voice.
“Hi, Norrie. It’s Ted. I really need to speak to you. We—”
I hit STOP. Three years since I broke it off with Ted Houchens and still he called. Nowhere near as frequently as he used to, but every so often I guess he gave in to the urge to find out how someone could manage to resist his charms. Could I be the only one in his life who wound up being the dropper instead of the droppee?
Ted was this fortyish hotshot orthopedist on the staff of Maryland U Hospital where I did my residency. During my first year he consulted on a number of patients I was following. I guess you could say he took a shine to me. The relationship went through the usual stages. We segued from coffee in the doctors’ lounge to lunches in the caf, which led to dinners out, which led to a weekend away at a CME course in Tampa.
I’m not proud of the fact that I knew he was married and didn’t care.
You’ve got to understand that although I wasn’t a virgin, I wasn’t exactly on anybody’s speed dialer. So I was a sitting duck for loving attention from this suave, good-looking, accomplished surgeon. It blindsided me—in the argot of my teenage patients—like totally. This was the first time in my life I’d felt attractive. I was wanted and needed, a heady brew that kept my conscience in suspended animation for about a year and a half.
Then I met Mrs. Houchens.
It happened at a reception to celebrate the opening of a new surgical suite at the hospital. While I was dipping some punch from the big crystal bowl, this attractive brunette in a black Donna Karen came up and stood beside me. I poured her a glass and we got to talking. Somewhere along the way she introduced herself as Anna Houchens.
I don’t remember much more about the reception. All the Catholic guilt I’d locked up burst free and settled around me like a fog. Mrs. Houchens was no longer a vague, shadowy figure in a faraway place. She was right here and she had a first name and a face and seemed like a nice person.
And I was sleeping with her husband.
All the good feelings I’d had about the affair—about me—shattered. I saw it for the tawdry thing it really was and I felt dirty. Some folks might see that as an overreaction. Maybe it is, but that was how I felt.
I broke it off the next day. He hounded me for a while—after all, I was the one that got away—but then found someone else. After I finished the residency and moved out to Lebanon, he tracked me down and started calling. I’ve yet to call back.
If you want to know what heads my list of Things I Wish I’d Never Done, it’s having an affair with Anna Houchens’s husband.
My least proud moment. But I’d learned from it, and I’d put it behind me. It doesn’t always stay there, though. Every time Ted calls it sneaks up and bites me on the butt.
The memory made me want to take a shower, so I did.
Afterward I checked myself in the mirror as I always do. I know I’m the trimmest I’ve been in fifteen years, but those love handles, those thighs…
Got to keep after them.
I headed for the kitchen.
The answering service called my cell phone as I was chopping up some celery. A medication question from a patient Sam had seen today. They put the caller through. It took less than a minute to resolve.
I added the celery plus mayo and a dash of Old Bay to the tuna, whipped it up, and had myself a tuna salad sandwich on imaginary bread. I imagined a nice thick Kaiser roll.
After that I went to my study and checked my email—pardon: my spam. For some reason the Internet equivalent of telemarketers has me profiled as a small-penised, impotent male in need of life insurance, a new mortgage, and Viagra.
After deleting these, I ventured out onto the wonderful world of search engines. I remembered reading something somewhere in a journal about a treatment for peanut allergy. I did a little surfing and discovered a program at Johns Hopkins where they were treating people like Marge with an anti-IgE antibody. It didn’t cure them of their allergy, but it did raise the reaction threshold—people who’d started out reacting to half a peanut got to the point where they could tolerate nine.
That sounded like just the thing for Marge.
After bookmarking the site, I quit the computer and settled myself on the living-room couch. A little surfing through the high-number channels yielded Better off Dead—yes, I know it was made before I was born, but John Cusack was cute back then and that paper boy always makes me laugh. Despite Bert Castanon’s recurrent car-hawking appearances in the breaks—he and his family are patients at the practice—I stuck with that. I love screwball comedies, old and new.
I warned myself that if I don’t pace myself, I could easily burn out from the mad tempo of this high-flying lifestyle.