The Carlton Club (3 page)

Mark looked at his ring. He still wore it. His marriage wasn’t over, just in trouble. Mark had no idea if he and Janet could ever recover from the angry words and the bitterness. It was too soon to know, too soon to predict. They were in a holding pattern. Since that afternoon in early October, he and Janet had spoken to each other, over the phone, a few times. Those conversations were slow, difficult and punctuated by painful silences and even more painful words. They agreed they needed time apart, time to let the anger and emotions cool, time to think. Then, maybe, they could try to work it out.

In Mark’s mind the marriage wasn’t over. He didn’t even have a clear idea about what Janet thought was so wrong. Even though he had moved into a tiny apartment near the hospital, bought a new, albeit inexpensive, stereo and opened his own checking account, Mark had not removed his wedding ring. He hadn’t even thought about removing it.

As he looked from Kathleen’s sparkling violet eyes to the scuffed gold ring given to him five years before by a woman he could barely speak to anymore, Mark wondered why he still wore it.

“We—my wife and I—are separated.” Mark watched her eyes widen at the news. Kathleen was the first person he had told. Mark assumed Leslie knew because Leslie and Janet were friends. But Leslie didn’t mention it to him because Leslie wouldn’t. And no one else knew. Until now.

“Separated?” Kathleen echoed softly.

“For about a month.”

“A trial separation?” Kathleen asked.

“I wonder what that means,” Mark mused. Until he had spoken this word, separation, he hadn’t even put a label on what was happening to him and Janet. To his marriage. “ Trial separation. Meaning let’s try it and if we like it we’ll get separated often. Or . . .”

Kathleen laughed. It was a light, lovely appreciative laugh.

Mark shrugged and smiled. He hadn’t been appreciated for a while. Not for Mark the person. Mark the man. And recently from Janet not even appreciated for his one indisputable accomplishment: Mark the doctor.

“Does it mean,” Kathleen asked finally, after their smiling eyes had met for a moment, “that you could come to a party with me?”

“Oh!” Mark was surprised, pleased. Now that what he and Janet were doing had a label—separation—it needed a definition.

It only took him a moment, but in that moment Kathleen added quickly, “Or would that be unethical because of Mother?”

“No,” he said firmly, “and yes. Sure. I’d love to.”

Kathleen nodded, smiling.

“But I don’t have anything that’s very Henry the Eighth.”

“Louis Quatorze!”

“Oh, right. I knew that. I had you pegged as Marie Antoinette.”

“We were just generic Louis Quatorze. I don’t even like to pretend to be someone who got guillotined.”

“No.” Mark shuddered.

“Oh, dear,” Kathleen said suddenly.

“What?” Is she thinking of a gracious way to retract the invitation, Mark wondered uneasily.

“Well, there’s no special attire, but”—she wrinkled her nose—“it
is
an engagement party. For my best friend. Would that be hard for you?”

“No,” Mark said, relieved that she wasn’t withdrawing the invitation. But, he thought, it might be hard. I don’t know. I’ll find out. Then he remembered a real obstacle. “When is the party? I may be on call.”

“You’re not! At least not by my calculations. It’s this Thursday night. Day after tomorrow, You’re on tonight, so every third would put you on again Friday. Is that right? Can you come?”

“That’s right. Yes, I can come,” Mark said, flattered that she had bothered to learn even that little detail about his life.

Thursday night, Mark thought. A party on Thursday night. Thursday night was a school night, or it had been, for Mark, from kindergarten through medical school. For twenty years. Then, for the past two years, as an intern and resident, Thursday night was still a work night. Or the night before a long work day. Not a party night.

Who had parties—engagement parties—on Thursday night?

He would find out.

Kathleen gave him her parents’ telephone number in Atherton, and they agreed over the phone the next night that she would meet him at his apartment at seven-thirty. The engagement party was in a private home near the Presidio at eight.

Thursday evening Mark left the hospital at seven, rushed to his apartment, showered, shaved and was knotting his tie when Kathleen arrived promptly at seven-thirty.

“Hi,” he said, dazzled as always by her appearance. Tonight she wore her black hair piled in soft curls on top of her head. Small tendrils escaped down her long ivory neck. Mark took her camel’s hair coat and silently admired the violet silk cocktail dress.

“Hi. Am I early?”

“No, you’re on time. I’m almost ready. I didn’t get away from the hospital until seven.”

“Was it OK for you to leave when you did?”

“Yes. Of course.” Or I wouldn’t have left, Mark thought. Janet knew that. Maybe Kathleen didn’t. Except that Kathleen would, should, understand because her mother had been a patient. Kathleen would be outraged if a doctor left her mother, if her mother needed him, simply because the doctor had a date with her.

Kathleen caught the sharpness of Mark’s tone and turned her attention to his apartment in an attempt to divert the conversation. The apartment was terrible. It was so tiny. The living room, dining room and kitchen were all one area. The limited floor space was cluttered with unpacked cardboard boxes. The apartment was clean but sterile. The only sign of life or personality was a stereo balanced on cinder blocks, two speakers and a stack of record albums.

Kathleen couldn’t think of one positive thing to say about the apartment, and Mark had been edgy about her last question. Perhaps if she looked at the albums.

“It’s pretty bad, isn’t it?” he asked, his voice stopping her as she walked—it would only take a few steps—across the living room to the stereo.

Kathleen turned slowly and smiled at him. Her eyes met his.

“It really defines the concept of trial, doesn’t it?” she asked lightly, her eyes sparkling.

They both laughed.

Janet would have loved the engagement party, Mark thought. He was the only doctor there. The others, Mark deduced, were an intriguing mixture of attorneys, stockbrokers, market analysts, advertising and corporate executives. Beyond YUPPIE, Mark decided. These people, Kathleen’s friends, were not struggling to get to the top. Despite the fact that none was over thirty-five, it was clear that they were already there. They had power and wealth and confidence.

None of them cared that Mark was a doctor, but all of them cared that he was Kathleen’s date. That interested them. The men eyed Mark with curiosity, the women with frank admiration.

“Katie, where did you find
him
?” The beautiful women, Kathleen’s friends, asked her in front of him.

And behind his back, he heard them say, “When you’re through with him, please give him my number!” and, “Is he married?”

His wedding ring! He still wore it. He had planned to take it off, at least for the evening. Or, beginning with the evening. He wasn’t sure. But she had arrived and he had forgotten. Inertia? Ambivalence? Or something less significant like an overworked preoccupied resident who just forgot?

Mark listened with interest to the conversations of Kathleen’s friends. They chatted about books and politics and theater and the stock market and sports and restaurants and vacation spots and real estate. Mark had little to add. He hadn’t seen a movie since Star Wars. He knew vaguely that the Forty Niners were finally having a good season. Since he and Janet had separated, he started watching the late night and early morning newscasts, as much for companionship as for information. At least he was current on current events. Of course he read a lot, but in the past year the only nonmedical reading he had done was written before the twentieth century.

It didn’t matter that Mark said little. He fit in anyway. Because he smiled appropriately and he was a good listener. But mostly Mark fit in, was welcomed, because he was with Kathleen. Kathleen was the queen bee. This was her group. These were her friends. They loved her, deferred to her. They liked, maybe envied, her date.

Mark realized how little he knew about her.

How old was she? Meeting her as he had at the bedside of her ill but youthful mother, Mark assumed she was young. Maybe twenty. But now as she talked knowledgeably about
Joanna
, the new musical to be introduced by Union Square Theater, Kathleen seemed older. She could be twenty. Or thirty. Or older.

Kathleen’s appearance gave no clue. Her wrinkle-free, animated face changed age with the mood of the moment. She was older when the conversation was serious, and younger when she laughed or teased the bride-to-be.

What did Kathleen do? If she was twenty she was probably a student. But these were her friends. They weren’t twenty, and they weren’t students. They had influential, responsible, demanding jobs. Mark knew she had something to do with Union Square Theater, but he got the impression that it wasn’t a job.

Mark noticed that no one asked her, “How’s work?”

No one asked Kathleen many personal questions, except, “How is your mother?” and, gesturing toward Mark, “Who is he?” and, whispering, “What ever happened to Bill?”

Kathleen’s annoyance at being asked personal questions about Mark within his earshot was obvious. Her violet eyes scowled briefly at her inquisitive friends. They got the message. Mark was different. Kathleen cared about him. She brought him to the party because she wanted to be with him. It was a date, their date. He wasn’t simply someone to show off to her friends.

Yes, they realized, Mark was very different.

As the evening wore on, fortified by champagne or Mark’s smiles or both, Kathleen found the courage to touch him. Tentatively, she rested her slender, soft white hand with its delicate, purple veins on his arm, her perfectly manicured, tapered fingers wrapping lightly around his forearm.

Mark responded by putting his hand on top of hers. After a few moments he entwined his fingers with hers. Mark’s large hand with its closely clipped fingernails—for percussion of chests and painless palpation of abdomens—dwarfed her delicate, exquisite one. Kathleen’s hand was jewel-free, pure and white. Mark’s hand, the hand that held hers and returned her squeeze, the hand that wanted to touch more of her, was not so pure. That hand was adorned with a band of gold.

“Let’s go out to the terrace. It’s cool but the view is so spectacular,” Kathleen whispered to him after a while, after they had mingled with her curious friends long enough.

But there was no view. While they had been inside the fog had come. Dense, heavy, opaque fog. They couldn’t even see across the terrace.

“Evening fog!” Kathleen exclaimed, “How unusual for November.”

“Oh, well,” Mark murmured, putting his arm around her. “Are you cold?”

“Not with your arm around me,” she answered quietly, moving closer against him. “Do you want to leave? It’s almost ten.”

“Well, it is a . . .” Mark paused.

“School night?” Kathleen asked quickly.

“A school night. I hate to pull you away from your friends.”

“This is the first of a million prenuptial ‘do’s for Betsey and Jeff. I needed to be here, of course, but we can leave now.”

Mark wanted to leave, but it was not because he had to get some sleep. He just wanted to be alone with Kathleen. He was alone with her now on the terrace, and the moment, holding her against him, talking to her, was perfect. Too perfect to disrupt.

“Whose house is this?” Mark asked.

“Jeff’s parents. We told them this party was for the kids only. They’re spending the night at the Stanford Court. This party will go on until dawn.”

Mark wondered if Kathleen would return here after she left him.

“These are your good friends, aren’t they?” Mark asked, stating the obvious. He was working up to the tougher questions. How old are you? What do you do? Who are you?

“My best friends. My childhood girlfriends and boy . . . my very oldest, dearest friends. We’ve known each other since—”

“The Katie days?” Mark asked, wondering about the boyfriends. How many of these men had been Kathleen’s boyfriends? How many had she slept with? Were any current boyfriends? Who was Bill?

Kathleen could have told him if he had asked. Six. Six had been boyfriends. Real boyfriends. Man friends. She could have told him. But she might not have.

Kathleen laughed, nodding.

“Since the Katie days, yes. The Katie days were good days. I had long, black braids and made a pretty good little Katie. Then came the preppie days. We all disbanded and regrouped for the holidays and vacations. Then I was Kit and Kit-Kat,” Kathleen hesitated, then said, “and Kitzy! Awful.”

“You prefer Kathleen.”

“I do.”

“So do I,” Mark said. Then he asked, “Disbanded from where?”

“What? Oh. From Atherton, mostly. Some, like Jeff, from San Francisco proper. We were, are, the Carlton Club Kids. The Carlton Club is a country club in Atherton. Terribly upper crust, you know,” she said with a British accent. “Anyway, we met there as kids, spent our summers there, riding our horses, swimming, playing tennis, going to parties and dances. Some of us went to school together, but mostly we were scattered among private schools in the United States and Switzerland.”

“Rich kids.”

“Oh yes,” Kathleen said gaily. “You’d recognize the last names of about half the people in the house. Most of them work for, in other words manage, companies of the same name. Some have broken away completely of course and established themselves from scratch. Some aren’t doing anything.”

Mark got the distinct impression that Kathleen fell into that group. But he asked, “Do you work for the company of the same name?”

“Do you know a company with Jordaine in its name?” she asked lightly, turning in his arms so that she faced him. She looked into his eyes, her own flashing, smiling. Teasing.

“No,” he answered, wanting to kiss her.

“Would you like to know what my father does?” she asked, her face close to his.

“Sure,” he sighed as he felt her body pressing closer to his.

“He’s the CEO of an international computer and business machine company that I bet you’ve heard of.”

“Oh?” Mark didn’t care. He would kiss her. The fog made it all right. And Janet had left him.

Kathleen told him the name of the company as their lips met. Mark heard the name. The full effect would register later.

All he cared about now were her soft, warm hungry lips. And his. And the lovely body that pressed, molding perfectly against his. And the soft, silky hair that fell down her back as they kissed. Mark held her and kissed her, intoxicated by the smoothness of her skin, the gentle touch of her hands on his neck, the warmth of her mouth.

Until she began to shiver.

Mark pulled back.

“Cold?” he asked. Of course she was cold, he thought, in her sheer silk dress in the midsummer’s November fog. Despite his warm kisses and his arms around her, she was cold.

“I don’t know,” she said. Cold or nervous, she thought. Nervous? Anxious?

“You’re shivering.”

“I must be cold.”

“Let’s go in.”

“Let’s go in and leave.”

“OK.”

They drove in silence to Mark’s apartment. He held her hand, releasing it only to shift gears in his vintage Volkswagen Beetle. The protected foggy mood had been disrupted by the harsh brightness inside the house and by the knowing glances of Kathleen’s best friends. Knowing, slightly envious glances at their beautiful friend with her hair flowing sensuously down her back and her cheeks flushed. They knew why Kathleen and her tall, dark, handsome date were leaving so early. And they were a little jealous.

Kathleen’s friends knew because they knew Kathleen. They knew Kathleen always got her way. Effortlessly. And they knew how much men wanted Kathleen. Always.

But as Mark and Kathleen drove in silence, holding hands, Kathleen didn’t know. And Mark didn’t know.

He knew he wanted her. He knew he wanted to hold her naked body against his, to kiss her, to make love to her.

Janet’s words roared in his ears. “You don’t even want to make love anymore. Maybe you can’t.”

Mark wanted to make love with Kathleen. More than he had wanted anything for a long time.

And Kathleen wanted to make love with Mark, but it scared her. He scared her because he wasn’t a Carlton Club Kid. He took everything so seriously. He spent his days and nights saving people’s lives or watching them die. He wasn’t ready to give up on his marriage, and she could get hurt.

She had never felt this way, not quite
this
way, about anyone ever before.

“Would you like to come in?” he asked as he parked his VW behind her BMW. She could easily get into her car and return to the party or home or wherever Carlton Club Kids go at ten-thirty at night when the workers are sleeping.

“Sure,” she said, shivering inside her camel’s hair coat.

Mark’s apartment was on the second floor of an old Victorian house which had been converted into apartments. Its occupants were mostly interns and residents because it was only a five-minute, albeit uphill, walk to University Hospital.

Mark held her hand as he led her up the stairs. He hadn’t made a decision except that he didn’t want her to leave. He heard his phone ringing as they approached the apartment. It would be Janet. He hadn’t heard from her for a week. Not once, he realized, since he had met Kathleen. It could only be Janet. Leslie was on call, but she wouldn’t call him on his night off. There were senior residents in the hospital to help her. It could only be Janet. He could let it ring.

Mark slowed his pace and opened the door only after the ringing had stopped. Once inside Mark unplugged the phone and turned to look at Kathleen.

“Probably Janet,” she said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Because Janet was the issue, phone call or not.

“Probably. She knows I often disconnect the phone when I’m not on call,” he said. “Would you like something to drink?”

“No, thank you.”

Mark lifted the stack of four records that lay on the stereo turntable up the stem until they rested, poised, ready to drop one by one. Then turned on the stereo.

Neither spoke or moved until the needle met the record and the music began. In those moments Kathleen tried to guess, What will it be? Jazz? Blues? Rock and Roll? Waylon Jennings or Neil Diamond? Barbra Streisand or Beverly Sills? Mozart or the Bee Gees?

Those four records, obvious favorites, played and replayed, would tell her something new, something else about him.

Mark listened to the first few bars, adjusting the volume, then looked at her quizzically.

“
Scheherazade,”
Kathleen said, smiling, gazing into his eyes.

“Very good,” he said, walking toward her. “Do you want to take off your coat?”

Kathleen looked up at him and said softly, bravely, “I want you to take off my coat.”

And my dress, she thought, shivering again.

Mark smiled. He kissed her as he unbuttoned the buttons of her coat. When he had it off he held her against him, kissing her, reaching carefully for the tiny silk-covered buttons of her dress. Patiently, he began to unbutton them with one hand, the other hand buried in her soft, tangled black hair, holding her head, pulling her mouth against his.