“Not even a turkey symptom.” Some patients came in complaining of vague pains, usually in the neck or back, simply in the hope of getting to a room and receiving a friendly meal—a sandwich, chips, juice, and a piece of fruit. At Chelsea General, it was a turkey sandwich. There was a well-known, almost mythical tale at Chelsea General, of two walk-ins who arrived a few minutes apart, each claiming ailments that were going to get them an X-ray and a sandwich. Through some mix-up, only one received the plastic meal tray. The man with the sandwich was about to take a bite when his fellow patient snatched it and stuffed it in his mouth. In response, Patient Number One threw a right cross that sent the sandwich and a tooth flying. He then picked up his sandwich off the ER floor and put it in his mouth.
Villanueva and Roxanne looked out over the library-still emergency room.
“You bored? We got a thripple in five,” she said. The nurse knew Villanueva loved the oddities of the human condition: extra fingers or toes, quadruplets, glass eyes depicting flags or, Villanueva’s favorite, the Marine Corps emblem. He also liked strange or ironic tattoos, like the man with the blue block letters on his calf spelling out the word
TATTOO
, and odd self-inflicted injuries like the man with his urethra painfully blocked with a peanut who confessed that he and a friend were playing “feed the elephant.”
The Big Cat slid off his stool.
“A triple nipple. Why didn’t you tell me?” Villanueva said. A thripple was officially known as an accessory nipple or supernumerary nipple and was surprisingly common. In medical school, Villanueva recalled, Professor Mort Rubenstein mentioned accessory nipples in passing and had asked the anatomy class, “Who here has an accessory nipple?” To Villanueva’s surprise, Frank Braun had shot out of his chair in the lecture hall and hoisted his shirt.
“Got two,” Braun said proudly. Below each of his regular nipples were very small supernumerary nipples.
Villanueva meandered over to Trauma Bay 5.
“How we doing over here, Dr. Wills?” Dr. Deanna Wills knew exactly what Villanueva was up to. She rolled her eyes but played along.
“Mr. Swanson, here, bruised a couple of ribs falling off his bike.”
“I see,” Villanueva said, as he conducted a seemingly authentic exam of the man’s chest.
“A car turned right in front of me. The jerk didn’t even stop.” Having seen what he wanted to see, Gato was already walking out.
“Keep up the good work, Dr. Wills.”
Villanueva wandered back to his stool, a small diversion in an otherwise dull night.
“This keeps up, I’m going to have to order pizza,” he told Roxanne, the nurse.
“Don’t jinx us, George.” She was one of the few people at the hospital who called Villanueva by his first name.
The shift ended, still strangely quiet, and Villanueva walked into the cool night feeling unfulfilled. He got in his roadster and drove over to O’Reilly’s. The bar didn’t serve
mojitos
or frozen drinks, and the only thing that ended in
-tini
was a martini. No appletini or other cute specialty drinks and nothing that involved ginger or pomegranate juice. The Big Cat found his usual spot at the bar, noticing an attractive woman in her late thirties sitting two stools down. She was well proportioned and slim but not in a gaunt, obsessive way like his ex. The bartender placed a rum and Coke in front of Villanueva.
“What’s the word, Soup?” Villanueva demanded, while still looking over at the woman. The bartender’s name was Tom Campbell, but he went by the nickname Soupy.
“Hi, Doc. How they treating you at the hospital.”
“You know me, Soup, just livin’ the dream,” he said a little louder while turning his bar stool in the woman’s direction.
The woman glanced over.
Soupy got the message.
“Dr. George Villanueva, I’d like you to meet this lovely creature of God, Megan.”
George reached an enormous hand over.
“Nice to meet you,” Villanueva said. He was picturing Megan naked.
“I couldn’t help but overhear. Are you a doctor? The reason I ask is because I just saw something on TV and I’ve been dying to ask if it’s true.”
“Shoot.”
“It’s a little awkward.”
“My middle name, little lady.”
“All right, is it really true that human beings can smell emotions like desire?” The question alone seemed to crank up Villanueva’s hormones.
Easy, Gato
, he said to himself. Villanueva tried to adopt a scholarly tone to mask the almost adolescent desire flooding his endocrine system.
“When people are sexually aroused, they produce specific hormones. Your own Love Potion Number Nine. All vertebrates have a vomeronasal organ to pick up signals like this. I suppose if your nose were good enough, you might be able to smell desire.” Here George abandoned his academic air. “Give me a heads-up if I need to start sniffing!”
Villanueva let loose with a enormous laugh that didn’t give Megan a chance to be offended. When the eruption of mirth died down, the Big Cat leaned forward.
“Tell me about you,” he said. Before she could answer, his cell phone buzzed. He did his best to ignore it but the buzz sounded again. Without taking his eyes off the woman next to him for more than a second, he pulled the phone from his pocket and checked the number. The caller ID said
NICK
.
“Do you need to get that?”
“It’s nothing.”
The phone buzzed again. After a fourth round, it fell silent.
“You sure you don’t need to get that?”
“No. It’s all right. I want to know more about Megan. For starters, how did such a beautiful woman wind up two stools down from me at O’Reilly’s on a Friday night.”
“What’s a nice woman like me doing at a place like this? Really? That’s your line?” Megan tipped her head back and laughed. George was smitten by the spontaneous outburst and her perfect teeth.
“Something like that.”
“Soupy and I go way back.”
“I met this lovely creature of God when I was tending bar at a place called the Oasis on St. Pete Beach.”
“I guess that makes me a groupie. A Soupy groupie.” Again, she tipped her head back and laughed.
“One of the pitfalls of the job,” Campbell said and winked.
“You’ve got great taste in bartenders,” Villanueva said to Megan and then turned to Campbell. “And you’ve got great taste in groupies.”
As Villanueva continued the verbal dance that he hoped in Megan’s mind would justify a trip back to his small home nearby for an alcohol-fueled romp, he had two thoughts. One: He needed to make a trip to the bathroom to pop a little blue pill he kept on hand for just such an occasion. Two: What did Nick want?
He was surprised to find himself giving his son’s call a second thought. He would have ignored it completely only a month or so earlier. Nick almost never called, and when he did it was either to ask for money or to get a sympathetic ear about some perceived injustice his mother had committed—banning him from computer games for a week because he had gotten a C in history, for example. He wouldn’t even bother calling back the next day. The next time he went out to see Nick, he’d say there was an emergency at the hospital, or he wouldn’t even mention it. Not that Nick would bring it up. He’d just study his father with his downcast, sullen gaze.
Now Villanueva was having trouble getting the call out of his mind. If he didn’t hurry up, he risked losing his mojo, not to mention the effects of the pill. Full-blooded lust pulsed through his arteries. The hormones made his vision more acute—offsetting the second rum and Coke now resting on the stained-wood bar in front of him—and his sense of touch more sensitive.
Still, what was up with Nick? He felt connected to his son in a way he hadn’t in a long, long time, and the call weighed on him. For years, his relationship with his son had been guided by doing the minimum necessary to keep his guilt at being a horrible father down to an acceptable level. He was like the diabetic who reined in his diet just enough to avoid slumping into some sort of hyperglycemic state. There was more to it than guilt right now, though. Villanueva was worried something might be wrong. He was worried in a way he hadn’t been since the boy had spiked a 104-degree fever when he was five. Nick might be with a girl himself and need a little fatherly advice. Maybe he was drunk at a party and needed a ride, too embarrassed to call his mom. He might have gotten his ass kicked or been in a car accident. Villanueva tried to put all these worries out of his mind. He had survived his teenage years. Nick would be fine.
Villanueva downed the second rum and Coke, and Soupy placed a third in front of him.
It had been a while since he’d taken a woman back to his house, and he did not want to miss this opportunity. What could he say? Villanueva loved women. His lust was equal opportunity: twenties, forties, blond hair, black hair, short, tall, Asian, Latin, African American, Anglo, he didn’t care. He enjoyed women in all their remarkable variety. And Villanueva was already picturing himself undressing Megan slowly with some sexy Brazilian music playing on his ceiling-mounted speakers. Nothing like some sultry samba queen singing in Portuguese to set the mood.
Tomorrow, his son would still be his son, but the opportunity to hook up with Megan might have evaporated. Villanueva knew he had charisma, which compensated for other negatives: He was forty-eight, overweight, and overworked. Even with the “it” factor working in his favor, he also knew his chances of luring this pretty woman back to his house were directly correlated to her blood alcohol level. His own blood alcohol level was rising fast.
He and Soupy had a tacit arrangement. No matter how much Villanueva drank, his tab was twenty dollars, and he would toss Soupy another twenty as a tip.
“Last call, my friends,” Campbell said.
Villanueva tossed forty bucks on the counter and turned to Megan.
“I live right around the corner if you want keep this party going. I’ve got this amazing tequila.”
“Sure, why not?” Megan said. She laughed.
As they left the bar, Villanueva slipped a hand around her waist to steady her. And then it happened. His phone sounded again. Villanueva wasn’t angry at the electronic buzz kill. He was worried. He took his right hand off the small of Megan’s back and pulled his phone out of his pocket.
“Nick, what is it?” Villanueva asked.
“Dad, sorry to bother you.” Nick sounded strange. There was a quiet desperation in his voice.
“No problem, kiddo, what’s going on?”
“Dad, I am not doing well. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately.” He paused. “And it keeps coming back to this feeling that nothing matters. Nothing I do or say.
I
don’t seem to matter.”
Megan took a step back and crossed her arms. Villanueva put a finger up to signal that he’d just be a minute.
“Listen to me, Nick, I’m not sure what got into you, but of course you matter. You mean everything to me.” Villanueva didn’t think about the words before he said them. What really surprised him was that they were true. This strange, scrawny boy did mean everything to him.
“What’s the point, Dad? I mean, like, what’s the point?” Nick’s voice caught. He was trying not to cry.
“What the hell’s gotten into you, Nick?”
“I don’t know,” Nick answered, and he began to cry.
Villanueva looked Megan up and down. A cool breeze had come up, and Megan’s flimsy skirt blew across her legs. She had closed her eyes and tipped her head back. Villanueva sighed. What could he do? He’d probably think about this opportunity lost on his deathbed.
“Nick, I’m not sure where all this came from, but here’s what I want you to do. Call a cab right now and take it to my house.” At this Megan opened her eyes and made an exaggerating pouting expression. “This doesn’t sound like something we can solve on the phone. You got that. A cab.”
“Okay.”
“Do you know the number of a cab company?”
“No.” Villanueva gave Nick the number he always used when he was too shitfaced to drive home.
“Are you at your mother’s house?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s your mother? Never mind. You know what, I’ll call you a cab. Hang in there, all right?”
“Thanks, Dad,” Nick said. He sounded miserable.
“Yeah.”
Villanueva called for a cab for his son. Then he found Megan a cab and said good-bye. She kissed him on the cheek. They’d traded phone numbers, and she promised to call, but Villanueva wasn’t going to hold his breath. The Big Cat knew he probably wouldn’t bother calling her for a date, either. If things didn’t happen in the moment, they lost their appeal.
S
ung and Pat Park sat across from each other at a dark Italian restaurant. Pat had chosen Palio’s on the recommendation of their next-door neighbor, the mother of their babysitter. It had taken a little while to find a sitter who was available. Pat had no idea how busy they were. She simply assumed other parents took their children with them when they went out.
Now the Parks sat across a red-checked tablecloth from each other. A small candle rested between them. Opera music played from mounted speakers. The dining area was tiny, more like a modest-size living room, which in fact it had once been. The neighborhood had been residential before hotels and businesses began crowding in.
The Parks had not been out alone since their younger daughter was born. That was four years earlier. The sensation was strange. Park felt almost untethered, giddy. When he was courting his wife, they had gone out to dinner in Seoul. Those dates were formal affairs, almost grave. Park had wanted to show Pat he was a man of learning, a man of substance, a man who could provide for his family. He spent much of their time together talking about himself as he might at a job interview. Pat had listened dutifully, perhaps showing that despite her degree in chemistry she was able to put herself second and support him wholeheartedly.
The waiter arrived. He was a man about Park’s age. “
Buona sera
. Welcome to Palio’s.” He held a small pencil and a pad, and spoke with a thick Italian accent.
“
Buona sera
,” Park said. It sounded more like
bone sare
. Park had never spoken a word of Italian in his life. To attempt it now was so out of character he surprised even himself. He had never before engaged in such whimsy.