The Department of Lost & Found (13 page)

But I knew that Lila was off to Delaware, and I knew that it killed her that she was.

“I can’t make it,” she said, waving her hand in the air and putting on a stoic face. “But you two. Must go. No doubt about it.”

She said it with such gusto that we didn’t even have to formally accept. Zach just said, “Great, I’ll see you at 7:30. I’ll take care of everything. Seventy-eighth and Columbus.”

All three of us turned and watched him saunter north, a grocery bag on each arm, and I’m fairly certain that if a bubble were to inflate over each of our heads, you know, in the way that they 114

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do in cartoons, the only thing that each of us would have shown was a big fat question mark.

i ’ d n e v e r a c t ua l ly been inside of Zach’s apartment. When he and Lila were dating, we always met out—that is, when I could actually get out.

“Do you think this is weird?” Sally asked, when we met up outside of his building.

“Uh-hum,” I said, nodding in agreement.

“Oh man, though, you look fab,” she said and made me turn around for her. Sally had forced me into a shopping excursion the weekend before for a few wardrobe pick-me-ups. My old jeans had grown so baggy that when I held out the waist, I looked like I belonged in one of those cheap weight-loss ads. (You know the ones: These are my old jeans, and thanks to this super-duper little pill, I’m now thirty-seven sizes smaller!) We headed to Bergdorfs, and when Sally saw me in the pair of deep-hued low-riders she had nabbed for me, she deemed me reborn.

“You look like a freaking model with that body,” she said. I reminded her that my noncurves were hardly something I desired.

“True,” she agreed. “But since you have it right now, why not make the most of it?” I looked in the mirror (I was dressed, it was acceptable) and agreed in spite of myself that skinny did look pretty okay. Tonight, I paired those low-riders with a black cashmere crewneck, and as I was pulling on my Via Spiga boots, I realized that I might have been nervous.

“I hope he realizes that I’m engaged,” Sally said, as his doorman waved us in.

“Stop being such a twit,” I said. “I’m sure that he does.”

I didn’t mention that somewhere in the back of my heart, I might
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have had a teensy-tiny-eeny-weeny crush on him, but that I stomped out that minuscule feeling I heard in the distance because (a) he’d dated my second-best friend, (b) my second-best friend may or may not still pine for him, and (c) (and this was the one that really mattered) I had cancer. Certainly, no one could be attracted to the bald, spindly version of me, and even further, I don’t even think that you can have sex when you have cancer, even though Janice had assured me that I could. I made a mental note to ask Dr. Chin.

Not that I had a sex drive. The chemo sapped that one, too.

“Fear not,” I told her after I pressed the elevator button. “I’m fairly certain that he won’t put the moves on you.”

“Then why the invite?” I saw a flicker of realization in her eyes.

“Oh my God, he totally likes you!”

“Okay, first of all, we’re not ten. Second of all, no, he doesn’t.

He’s just been a good friend. Walking Manny, bringing me ice cream. I’m hardly going to turn away the help these days.”

“Fine,” she said. “I just can’t wait to say ‘I told you so.’ ”

Zach’s apartment was perfect. And by that I mean that most New York apartments feel like a thousand square feet of leased space that the renter never truly inhabits. The living room might be half done, or the closet in the bedroom overflowing into the sleeping area, or the bathroom so minuscule that your knees touch the sink when you pee. There’s a tangible sense of movement in New York: People are always moving up, moving on, moving toward something bigger, richer, better. So we never stop to fully embrace where we live because we know that circumstances might arise that call us onward. A two-year lease feels like handcuffs; actual ownership is a prison sentence.

I ran my fingers over the cool granite countertops in his kitchen, which wasn’t one of those miniature kitchens designed for the Keebler elves, but a quintessential gourmet kitchen, complete with 116

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stainless-steel appliances and a small wine refrigerator. I stared out at the view of the Hudson, lost in thought, so I didn’t hear him come up behind me.

“This is why I bought the place,” he said. “For this room. And for this view.” We both looked out over the lights for a minute before he broke our silence.

“So, I got the pot.”

“Zach, you’re a doctor.” I turned to face him and tried not to gasp. He was in perfectly rinsed jeans and a green checkered button-down that brought out the hazel specks in his eyes. I looked at him and wondered if a speculum could be considered a sex toy. I shook my head as if to snap out of it. “Really, should you be giving your patients drugs? I mean, can’t you get your license sus-pended?”

“Nah, I’ve actually recommended this to patients myself.” He reached for the bottle of wine on the counter. “So I know a guy . . .

I mean, I haven’t done it since, God, like before med school, but if it gets you eating, light me a fat one.”

I laughed. “Well, I’ve never done it, period. You and Sally will have to show me the way.”

He pointed toward the Ziploc bag on the coffee table and ushered me to the faded chocolate leather couch in the living room.

“Your tutorial awaits, my dear.”

Sally sat cross-legged on the Persian rug, and Zach and I plopped down on the couch.

“Okay, so you’ve smoked a cigarette before, right?” he asked.

I shook my head no, and he dropped his jaw in mock horror.

“I know, I’d be, like, the very picture of health if it weren’t for this fucking cancer.” I laughed dryly at the irony.

“Well, then, this is probably going to burn a bit. Go slowly.

Don’t overshoot what you can handle.” He and Sally had me practice
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first. I took deep, deep breaths, then held the air in for ten seconds.

When I’d mastered that, Zach grabbed a joint from the baggie, flicked a lighter until the flame caught hold, and inhaled languidly, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth so it didn’t float my direction. I watched him and wondered why he’d do this, why he’d sit around getting high with a friend of a former girlfriend, a patient who conceivably could be just another chart. He saw me looking and gave me a grin. I was pretty sure that he wasn’t stoned yet, so I smiled back.

After Sally took a hit, she passed it to me. I held the joint awkwardly between my thumb and pointer finger and brought it up to my lips, peering down on it the way that a dog examines a new toy.

“Just inhale slowly, not too much,” Zach reminded me, and before I could think otherwise, I did. I felt a burning in the back of my throat, and I fought the urge to cough as Sally counted in the background, telling me when to push the smoke out.

“You’re a pro!” Zach declared. “Are you sure you aren’t a closet pothead? Because with that lung capacity, you should be.”

We passed around the joint until it was finished. At one point, Zach got up to put Duke Ellington on the stereo and pour me a glass of water. I hadn’t even asked, he just did it because he suspected I needed it. He was right.

When the stub grew too small to salvage, Zach declared that dinner would be served in fifteen minutes and to make ourselves comfortable in the meantime. My head was lighter than it had ever been, and my eyelids felt as if they’d been weighted down, but I followed him into the kitchen, offering to help.

“So what’s on the menu?” I opened and closed the refrigerator door, just because it seemed like a fun thing to do.

“Roasted chicken, salad, a side of risotto, and some homemade rolls,” he said, as he took plates down from the glass-door cabinets.

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“God, that all sounds fantastic. Wait, you make your own bread?

Seriously? Are you from, like, the 1800s?” I shut the Sub-Zero door and let it stick.

“Nope, I just love to cook. I know, go figure. A heterosexual man in Manhattan who doesn’t have Empire Szechwan on speed dial.” It was true. Ned was on a first-name basis with the delivery guy.

“Where’d you learn?”

“My girlfriend in med school,” he said, as he lifted the lid on the pot to check on the risotto. “Come taste this. Will you be able to stomach it?”

I slid between him and the stove and dipped in the spoon.

“Perfect,” I declared, rolling the pesto-flavored granules over my tongue. “I swear, I’ve never been so famished in my life.” From behind me, he put his hands on my shoulders, and quietly said,

“I’m glad,” as he let his palms slide down my arms until they dropped away. I felt as if I’d stuck my fingers in a light socket, but I tried to suppress the tingle. Sally yelled in from the living room, looking for the remote control, so Zach excused himself and returned a minute later.

“So. This girlfriend. What happened to her?” I leaned back against the kitchen island.

“She wasn’t the one,” he said simply, moving toward the oven.

“Although she could whip up a mean batch of pasta Bolognese.”

“Come on, it’s never that simple. Really, what happened?”

He stopped stirring the risotto and looked out the window. “Well, I guess the people who we were when we met—which was just out of college—and who we ended up being by the time we split—we just weren’t the same. She wanted me to be something I wasn’t, and I wanted the same of her.” He shrugged. “Sometimes the math just doesn’t work out, even if you think it will.”

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It must have been the pot talking because I pressed him for more. “So how’d you know? I mean, you loved her, right?”

“Oh, I really loved her. Natasha. That was her name. She’s a pediatrician in Ann Arbor now. How did I know that we weren’t going to live happily ever after? I don’t know. She knew before me.

I had a position lined up in Michigan; I was going to follow her there. But right as I was making my final decision, she asked me not to come. Over a bowl of pasta on a Thursday night. She just said, ‘I think you should take the residency in New York,’ and kept eating.” He started stirring again.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it was years ago, and besides, she was right. I would have stuck around, I would have moved for her, but it was more because of inertia.” He stopped to take a sip of his wine. “I was touch and go for a while, but when I got to New York, everything was much clearer. And that’s when I realized that she wasn’t the one. I managed to recover, and I don’t think about her much. And those two things reassure me that there’s someone else who is.” I thought about Jake, how I thought I’d never get over him. How, even when I was with Ned, I still dreamt of him, I still tasted his presence like he never left.

“Did you fight? I mean, why did she end it?”

“Well, yeah, we fought like anyone fights. But it wasn’t anything big. I mean, it wasn’t like we had different views of the world or that she wanted kids and I didn’t or anything like that. But our last year together, we just sort of drifted. And when we did, I think we both saw that we could build lives, happy lives, outside of each other. And that was all Natasha needed to know. She figured if she didn’t miss me when I’d be pulling a double shift at the hospital, then maybe she wouldn’t miss me if I weren’t around at all.”

I flashed back to Jake, to his seemingly unending road trips, to 120

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his nights out with the band. And how, though I ached for him during his time away, he reveled in his freedom. I could see it in his eyes right before he took off for a tour: the lust for indepen-dence that he lost whenever he was attached to me.

“God.” I sighed. “You have, like, the most insightful perspective on relationships, like, ever.”

He laughed. “You, my dear, should sit down before you fall over. What can I say? Both of my parents are psychiatrists.”

“Maybe I can get their number if I survive all of this.”

He froze and looked over at me. “Don’t talk like that. Telling yourself all of the things that you can’t do. Don’t you think of giving up. You don’t know what you’re capable of surviving until you’re forced to survive it.”

I felt tears rise out of nowhere; I waved them off and blamed the pot. So Zach tugged off his oven mitts and set down the wooden spoon and came over and pulled me tight. And true, I was stoned, and more true, I wanted comfort, but I wasn’t too intoxicated to hear him say, “Lean on me.” And when I did, the most beautiful part of it all was that he held me up.

a f t e r d i n n e r a n d when we had burned through another joint, I wobbled up, stood on top of the couch, and made my announce-ment.

“I would like to officially . . .” I stopped and stuck my hands out like a surfer might to keep my balance. “Whoa. Okay. Let me start over. I would like to officially, here in the safety of my friends, and perhaps with the help of a slight touch of pot, declare that Bob Barker has been added to my list.” I nodded authoritatively and jumped off the couch.

“Your list?” Zach asked with a puzzled look on his face.

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“Yeah, my list.” I looked over at Sally to explain, but she was curled up in a fetal position, shoulders shaking with laughter, tears streaming down her face. “You know: the five people you could sleep with, even if you’re married, and face no consequences.” I paused and cocked my head. “Although I guess now, since I’m single, I could sleep with Bob and no one would give a shit. Huh.

All right. I guess the list is moot.”

Sally sat up and fought back her giggles. “Bob Barker? Nat. I mean, isn’t he, like, 947 years old?”

“Mmmm, yes,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself. “But there’s a reason that they call them ‘Barker’s Beauties.’ I think he’s done them all. And a man of his age? Well, let’s just say that he probably knows his way around a woman’s anatomy.” I nodded.