Losing Clementine (13 page)

We were seated on the sofa, which was upholstered in pale green chenille. Chuckles was newly freed from his portable jail cell and sniffing all the furniture for signs of poodle. I had finished chewing my dark chocolate Milano and was eyeing another. I hadn't eaten breakfast.

“He's very quiet most of the time,” I said. “He just doesn't like the carrier.”

That's when he'd heaved and convulsed and yacked all over the floor.

“Oh,” the woman had said, putting a hand to her chest and fiddling with her diamond solitaire pendant. “Oh.”

Once the ball of fur was out, Chuckles shook himself off and rubbed his face on the man's bare ankle. He'd stopped yowling, but it was too late.

“We're sorry about your illness,” the man had said as he ushered me toward the door, past a Taiwanese-made urn full of tall fake grass. “Maybe you'll get better.”

“It's terminal,” I assured him.

“Well, you never know,” he chirped and shut the door.

Shit
.

I started the car and pulled away from the curb.

“I have another appointment,” I told Chuckles. “Behave yourself.”

Forty minutes later, I parked at a meter on Lincoln Boulevard. Palm trees lined the east/west streets that veered toward the beach a mile away, but the doctor's office was crammed between a liquor emporium and a gas station advertising two-for-one candy bars and a sale on cigarettes.

I took Chuckles inside with me because
20/20
had warned me about leaving pets in the car. His fur could catch on fire even if the temperature was a good ten degrees cooler this close to the ocean. A bell tinkled over the door, and the receptionist looked up. A small fan was pointed at her and another whirred and oscillated in the waiting room.

“I have an appointment,” I said.

She pointed to a sign-in sheet on the other side of the bulletproof glass. She didn't mention the cat, and I didn't, either. The rest of the room was lined with green plastic lawn chairs. Maybe they'd been two-for-one next door along with the candy bars. I signed my name.

“A consultation is a hundred dollars. That's not refundable whether the doctor makes a recommendation or not.”

I slid a credit card through the slot in the glass, signed the receipt, and took the new patient sheet she shoved through. It was short, and once it was filled in, there wasn't much to do. There were no magazines and no television, but someone had left the classified section of the
Times
. I checked the date. It was a week old. An elderly woman with a footed metal cane sat four chairs down and didn't look at me. I figured that was proper etiquette and didn't look at her, either.

A middle-aged man in a button-down shirt tucked into his jeans stepped out of a door at the end of the room. “Mrs. Shipley?”

The woman rose up, leaning heavily on her cane, and shuffled toward the open door. I spent my time using the toe of my work boot to clean scuff marks off the floor. No one else came in. The receptionist read a magazine she didn't offer to share. I leaned down to look in Chuckles's carrier. He was lying flat with his squished-up face on his front paws. His eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow. He was either asleep or moving toward the light.

Five minutes later, Mrs. Shipley came shuffling out of the room and headed for the door. She left a trail of skid marks on the floor with her footed cane. Old people. You can't take them anywhere.

The same middle-aged head came out. “Ms. Pritchard?”

I picked up Chuckles, who woke up and started pacing around, throwing off the balance of the carrier and making it rock like ocean waves. It was hard to hold and made me walk funny. I was trying to look sober and responsible, and this wasn't helping. The doctor didn't mention the cat, and I didn't, either. I gave him my new patient sheet, and he scanned it.

“Have a seat.”

He was made of various shades of beige. His skin was oatmeal and his hair khaki. His eyes were a light brown, and he used them to avoid looking at mine. He had a metal desk shoved all the way to one side and a guest chair next to that. There wasn't room for anything else. Someone had sent him flowers, and they sat next to his laptop, which was open and playing a fractal screensaver.

“What brings you here today?” he asked my collarbone.

“I'm anxious,” I said. “I have anxiety.”

“I see.”

I waited a beat and nothing happened.

“I'd like to be able to control that without prescription pharmaceuticals.”

He nodded and used his toes to push himself forward and back a little in his rolling chair. “Do you have any allergies?”

“No.”

“Are you taking any other medications?”

“No.”

He was reading the questions off the form I'd filled out and handed to him.

“Any other medical conditions?”

“Healthy as a horse,” I said. “Except for the anxiety.”

“Right.”

He sniffed. I imagined this was not how he'd pictured himself in medical school. He probably hadn't been very good at it, just good enough to get by but not enough for a good specialty. It was the worst kind of smart, just barely smart enough. No oncology or surgery or even gynecology for him.

“Okay, I'm going to write your recommendation. You can present it to any dispensary. It is not a prescription, and they may choose not to fill it at any time.”

“Got it,” I said.

He pulled out a piece of cream-colored paper the size of a paperback book and embellished with more scrollwork than my high school diploma. He filled in the blanks, slipped it into a black envelope made of equally nice stock, and handed it over. I didn't know whether to use it or frame it.

“Thank you.”

“Use it responsibly.”

Chuckles and I walked out into the offensively bright sunshine and down half a block. I could smell french fries bubbling in grease somewhere nearby. A Hispanic woman my age and wearing a Bebe T-shirt pushed a shopping cart loaded with recyclable bottles past me, and Chuckles let out a hiss.

“Can it,” I told him and opened the door.

The dispensary was air-conditioned and quiet with a mild herbal smell. A long wooden counter stained a dark walnut stretched from one end of the small space to the other. On the other side of the shop, tables and shelves displayed natural soaps and shampoos alongside bottles of vitamins and supplements for which you did not need a doctor's recommendation.

A young woman with blond hair pulled into a loose knot stood behind the counter reading a book. She had a hoop inserted into her earlobe that stretched the skin around it. She looked up.

“Is that a cat?”

“Yep.”

“Cool.”

“I have a recommendation from my doctor,” I said.

By “my doctor,” of course, I meant “a guy I looked up in the Yellow Pages whom I'd never see again.” She didn't care. I wondered if anyone ever tried shooting spitballs through her stretched earlobe hole.

“Cool. What do you want?”

She looked behind her, and I followed her gaze. Large glass apothecary jars were displayed on the shelves behind her. Dozens and dozens of jars, each with a carefully hand-lettered label on the front. Some were more full than others. Inside, each batch was a slightly different shade of green. Together the jars formed a subtle, mossy rainbow of forest colors. All pharmacies should be that beautiful.

“What do you recommend?”

She slid off her stool and pulled down three jars, lining them up on the polished counter in front of me. She opened each in turn, announced its name, and held up some for me to smell and inspect. It was like a tasting at a good wine bar. I started to really like this girl, even if the book she'd flipped over and laid spread out to hold her place was by Ayn Rand.

I chose weed number two, and she filled a small glass jar with a screw-on lid for me, the way department stores package custom-blended cosmetics. I showed her my recommendation, and she rang up the purchase. The whole thing was very civilized, much better than anything I did to score in high school. For one thing, I didn't have to drive to the Valley and end up in some kid's basement bedroom with a fistful of small bills and a cold sweat.

“Do you take your cat everywhere now?”

“Yes. Didn't I fire you?”

“Disturbingly, that's so, but I felt a duty to my fellow man to make sure you didn't starve to death.”

Miles, who was sitting in front of my door with his unnaturally long legs stretched out in front of him, held up a paper grocery sack by the top loop handles. Something green and leafy was sticking out the top. I couldn't remember the last time I'd eaten something with leaves, and Miles was the sort of cook who knew what a béarnaise sauce was.

“Bribery, Dr. Gothenburg?”

“You didn't return my call. I raised the stakes.”

I set Chuckles down and rubbed the ball of my shoulder. It was going to be diet kibble for him.

“You know, this is the second time this week I've found someone I've fired leaning against my door. The pattern is starting to concern me. I think it's a sign I'm not being forceful enough.”

“Would you like to talk about that?”

He'd come from his office. You could tell because he was wearing his work uniform. Dark slacks, pastel shirt, and tie. He had a weekend uniform, too. Gray T-shirt and dark jeans in the summer, fine-gauge sweater in the winter, or what passed for winter in Los Angeles.

“If I wanted to talk about it, I wouldn't have fired you.”

“Okay. Who else did you fire?”

“Jenny.”

“I liked Jenny.”

“A little too much.”

“That's not fair. Why did you fire her?”

I ignored the question. Chuckles reached a fuzzy white paw through the carrier's gate and batted at Miles's shoe. Traitor, I thought.

“I'm going inside now.”

Miles was bent forward playing swat-the-paw with my cat. When I put my key in the lock, he folded up his twelve miles of arms and legs and got to his feet.

“Am I coming in?”

“Depends.”

“State your terms.”

“You can come in as friend and chef. You may bring the green leafy things. Leave the psychology crap out here.”

He pretended to consider my offer. It was a bad bluff.

“Deal.”

“Carry the cat. The bastard weighs a ton.”

Inside, I pulled off my boots and rolled up the frayed edges of my jeans to my calves. Miles freed Chuckles, who ran under the bed to collect his dignity, while I slipped my dark gray work apron over my head. When it settled around my neck, Miles's lips were on mine. They were dry but soft, and he tasted like peppermint. He ran his tongue between my lips, and I let him in. He slid his hands under the back of my T-shirt and then down into the low-slung waistband of my jeans. I didn't wear them tight, and he got his hands in up to his wrists, his fingers cupping the bottom of my ass.

I backed out of the kiss. I wasn't sure if I'd also broken up with him when I'd fired him.

“Are you helping with dinner?” he asked, opening his eyes slowly like a sun-drunk lizard.

“No, I'm smoking.”

I took a step back and pulled the small jar of green buds from my jeans pocket along with a sheaf of rolling papers the girl behind the counter had thrown in for free. Once I'd owned a very pretty blue glass pipe, but that was a couple of cities, many domiciles, and a marriage ago. I might still have it. I might have donated it to the Goodwill. It was impossible to know.

“That's new,” Miles said.

“No, it's old. The habit, I mean, not the pot. The pot is fresh.” I held it up for his inspection. The sappy crystals sparkled under the kitchen light. “I can't remember why I stopped.”

He took the sack of groceries into the kitchen. “Because it makes you paranoid?”

“Nope.”

I laid a paper out on the counter and crumbled the stinkweed into it. It smelled sweet and herbal like the shop. Miles watched.

“I haven't rolled a joint since high school,” he said.

I twisted the ends closed.

“Hand me a lighter out of that drawer there.” I pointed, and he obeyed.

I flicked the flame to life and brought it to the joint, inhaling. The smoke was smoother than I remembered it being. No burning, no coughing. I held it for a count of three and then blew it out through my mouth, using my lips and tongue to make rings that floated up and disappeared in the late afternoon light streaming through the window.

“Show-off.”

Miles had pulled a brown onion from the bag and sliced off its hairy end. I held the joint out to him, and he took it. A large pot of water had materialized on the stove, and a fire was on high underneath it.