Merry Jones - Elle Harrison 02 - Elective Procedures (10 page)

I drank more tequila-laced lemonade. Wondered if Dr. Du Bois thought I should fix my appearance. Did he think my nose was too crooked? My lips too thin?

“So you’ll do whatever a patient wants, no matter what?”

He chuckled. “Does that bother you?” He dipped a chip into the guacamole. Took a bite. Closed his eyes, savoring. “This is exceptional.”

“Anything at all? No limits?”

He chewed. Handed me a chip. “Have some.”

I scooped salsa onto it.

“Of course, there are limits—”

My cough interrupted him. The salsa was fresh. And bursting with hot peppers.

“Are you all right? Sorry. I should have warned you about the salsa.”

I said I was fine, asked him to go on. Dabbed tears from my eyes. Dipped a chip into guacamole, cooled my tongue with avocado. Drank tequila-lemonade. Tried to catch up with Alain’s conversation.

“—if a patient’s health rules out surgery because of, for example, a heart condition or other complications, such as advanced age. And sometimes, when patients have deeper issues.” He looked away. “But, that’s enough about my work. Let’s talk about you.”

“What kind of issues?”

He sighed. Leaned on his elbows. “You know, this isn’t really dinner table conversation.”

I leaned on my elbows, countering him. Watched the candle
flame reflected in his eyes. Why was I persisting? I wasn’t sure. After all, Alain Du Bois was no one to me. Just a dinner companion. I pressed him nonetheless. “Fine. But dinner’s not here yet.”

He paused. Assessed me. Must have realized I wouldn’t back down. “Okay. Here’s an example. Occasionally, a patient will exhibit a condition called body dysmorphic disorder. These patients see themselves differently than they actually are—the image they perceive is distorted.”

I thought of Jen who thought she’d needed a flatter stomach and bigger breasts. When she looked in the mirror, had she seen a bloated belly and flat chest? Was she suffering from this disorder? How would anyone find out if they had it? If you saw your nose as big, how would you know if you were wrong?

Alain was still talking. “—enough to maim themselves. One of my current patients, in fact, is so offended by her leg—finds it so hideous, that she has actually attempted to cut it off above the knee. She failed, of course. So now, she wants me to remove it.”

I must have missed something. Or heard him wrong. I squinted, concentrated on his words.

“—suffers from a condition called apotemnophilia. It’s an overwhelming inexplicable desire to remove a limb—sometimes more than one. Often, these patients are sexually stimulated by amputation. They might feel, for example, that only by being an amputee can they become sexually aroused.”

I shook my head. “Wait. Back up. Your patient wants her perfectly healthy leg cut off?” He had to be making it up. “For sex?”

“I told you it wasn’t for the dinner table. But you asked if I have limits.” He poured straight tequila into his empty glass. “For me, this amputation is a limit. I’ve refused to do it. She needs a psychiatrist. My partner thinks I’m wrong, though. He thinks apotemnophilia is as legitimate a cause for amputation as, say, crushed bones or gangrene. We’ve had several serious arguments over it.”

Emilio’s wife arrived with bowls of rice and black beans. Emilio brought platters of fish, which he proceeded to bone at our table. “
Pescado en verde
,” he announced, his knife penetrating the skin, severing the head. Fish eyes regarded me dully in the dim light, and I looked away, out at the mass of black that was the ocean, saw Madam Therese’s dark eyes with their promises of bloodstained auras and death.

“Elle?” Alain’s eyes glowed. “Would you like some wine?”

Wine? Emilio chatted as he finished filleting our dinner, recommending which would go best with his sauce of garlic, cilantro, chiles, other herbs I hadn’t heard of.

It wasn’t until he went for the wine and Alain offered me the bowl of rice that I became aware of my hands. They were under the table, clenched in a death grip on my leg just above the knee.

We didn’t mention anything related to medicine for the rest of the evening. Somehow my teaching career and my work with second graders seemed like wonderful topics for conversation. I rattled on with anecdotes.

“Trust me, I know whose dad had hair transplants, whose parents smoke marijuana, which dads sleep naked, which moms torture their kids by kissing them at the bus stop.”

Alain laughed. Seemed interested. Asked questions about the school, the kids. He moved on to me. Resumed the first-date Q and A. Where had I grown up? In Philadelphia. Did I have a big family? No, but Jen, Becky, and Susan were like family. How was it that a woman as attractive as I was still single?

Boom. There it was: the dreaded inevitable question. I took a breath, looked down at my ringless finger. Heard Charlie call me the love of his life. Blurted out an answer: I’d been married. But my husband had died. I stumbled on the last part. My throat was tight.

Alain reached across the table, wrapped his hand around mine. His fingers were firm and soft. And lacked a wedding ring.

“What about you?” I diverted attention onto him.

His gaze shifted, turned inward. “Well, in a way, my wife is also gone.”

He had a wife? I slid my hand out of his. Cursed myself. Stupid Elle—of course he had a wife. Why had I thought otherwise? Alain was in his forties, painfully handsome, accomplished, successful. Men like Alain had wives. They had families. But wait—none of that should matter to me. I wasn’t out with him because he wanted to date me; we were having dinner because he appreciated my attempt to save his patient. Once again, I’d lost touch with reality, letting tequila, wine, ocean air, and candlelight carry me off, letting myself imagine that his interest in me was more than mere kindness. I was too needy. Had been alone too long. Felt my face burn.

“—so even though I’m married, it’s as if I’m single.”

What?

“Inez will never recover. Her condition is permanent. I’ve finally come to accept that. Unlike your husband, Inez is alive, but as far as having a life? She’s gone. It’s limbo.”

Clearly, I’d missed a key piece of information.

I tried to reconstruct what I’d missed. But I’d been drifting. Hadn’t heard. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” He straightened up, inhaled. “It’s life. Accidents happen.”

So his wife had been in an accident? What? In the car? A fall? A fire?

“Anyway, it seems that both of us have lost our spouses.” His eyes were steady and somber. “I suppose that makes us simpatico.”

I remembered Charlie in his casket, his cheeks too pink from the rouge.

“But you’re at least free to move on. In my case, I’m still tied to Inez. People tell me to get a divorce. I suppose I should. It’s not easy here, but we were married back home in Canada. I can
get one there. The trouble is—the accident was my fault. I am responsible for her condition, so I can’t walk away from her.”

This time, my hand went out to his. He looked up, nodded. We sat like that for a moment.

Emilio collected our plates, accepted lavish praise for his cooking. He brought espresso and bananas flambé. We sat without talking, oddly comfortable with silence.

As we walked to his car, Alain asked if he could see me again. An image flashed to mind—I’d come home early, found Charlie in the shower lathering suds onto a woman’s back. Why was I thinking of that? Alain was asking to see me again, not to have an affair. And even if he were, what was the problem? Charlie was dead. Alain’s wife was an invalid. We still needed companionship. Needed to survive.

Of course, I told him. I would love to see him again.

After all, I was only going to be there for five more days. Not time enough for anything serious to develop. What would be the harm?

Susan was sprawled out on the sofa, snoring, her neck bent at a sharp angle to her body, her computer on her lap. Probably, she was exhausted from spending the day with Jen. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to sleep. The hotel was having a fiesta with Mariachi bands playing on the pool deck. I debated waking her. If I didn’t, she’d get a crook in her neck—or was it a crick? Neither name made any sense. But sleeping with her neck at that angle would definitely give her one of those.

On the other hand, if I woke her, she’d ask me about my dinner with Alain. Which I didn’t want to talk about—not that there was anything about it to hide. Except maybe that he was married. And that, even so, I’d agreed to see him again. And that, as we’d said good night, he’d leaned over with a kiss so tender that I’d actually stopped breathing, so light that minutes later my lips still tingled. So arousing that, when I tried to thank him for dinner, I couldn’t find my voice for a moment,
and when I finally did, it came out a few octaves lower than normal.

Anyway, I didn’t want to talk about it. I hadn’t been attracted to a man in a year. I wanted to think about it, savor it. Privately.

So, finally, instead of waking her, I lifted Susan’s head and put a pillow underneath, moved her computer to the table, covered her with a blanket. She didn’t stir.

I went onto the balcony, looked down at the party, found Becky and Chichi near the bar, Chichi’s arm around Becky’s waist. I looked for Luis, didn’t see him. But Melanie was there, sitting with a table of middle-aged women—maybe her grandmother’s friends. Good, I thought. As long as she was with them, Luis wouldn’t be bothering her.

I stretched out on a lounge chair, listening to the band, the chatter. Replaying the evening. Feeling mellow. And then I heard the argument.

At first, I thought I was hearing a television show. Or that the voices were coming from someplace below. They were soft, and the fiesta music almost drowned them out. But when the band stopped, the voices didn’t. There was no mistake: people were arguing on the other side of the brick wall. On Claudia Madison’s balcony.

But they couldn’t be. That suite was empty, wasn’t it? Claudia Madison had died there just two days ago, and her death hadn’t been an accident. Wasn’t the hotel keeping the suite empty pending investigation? Wasn’t it a crime scene? And if it was, who could be out on her balcony?

I moved closer to the wall, straining to listen. A man was talking, his voice low and rumbling.

“—to resist you? I am only human.” He had a Mexican accent. “Please,
bonita
. I have missed you. Let me be with you. I want to kiss you—”

“No. Leave me alone.” Her voice broke. Was she crying?

“Why do you push me away,
mi amada
?”

“Stop pawing me.”

I leaned forward, trying to see around the wall, but I couldn’t lean too far without being seen. Or falling. When I peeked, I saw only a table with a phone and a wineglass, not people. But I heard the woman sniffling.

“Why do you cry?
Bonita,
you are the most beautiful, most desirable woman—”

“Stop the crap. Stop lying to me. Just stop. Take your hands off—”

“
Cara
, why do you push me away? Why hurt me this way? I need you—”

“I’m not one of your horny, desperate, lonely, old tourists. Understand? Your bullshit doesn’t work on me. I know the truth about my looks. I know why you’re here. Stop lying. Stop trying to seduce me. It won’t get you anywhere.”