Rich Friends (17 page)

The door shuddered. The tiny booth filled with rapping blows. Dan. The folding door creaked as he pushed. Beverly's knee got in the way and the door stuck halfway, at the point the light turned off. “He told me you were here,” Dan said.

She got up. Dan put his arms around her, and half inside the dark booth, she wept into his shoulder. “Buzz, it's okay, okay.” “You're so warm,” she gasped. “Want my jacket?” “He was lying there, blood all over.” “Tell me,” he said. And with him still holding her, people moving around them, she managed to, almost coherently.

“And now?”

“He's in Surgery.”

“And?”

“Nobody knows.”

“Somebody knows.”

“The nurse, she told me the operation takes a long time.”

The wide planes of Dan's face were taut.

“The intern said the surgeon's good,” she added.

Dan moved back, staring at her. “And that's all either of you found out?” he asked. “Come on.”

In a corner of the waiting room two young doctors were leaning toward one another, talking through moving cobwebs of cigarette smoke. The nurse clicked on her typewriter. Dan stood at the counter. The typing continued. He rapped on the glass divider. She looked up.

“What's the word on Jamie Schorer?”

“Nothing as yet,” she said, and went back to her typing.

“When did you check?”

“They'll send word—”

“Don't give me that!”

“—as soon as they're finished.”

“My question was when you checked.”

The nurse raised her nonexistent chin. “I told Mr. Schorer and Mrs.”—she consulted her chart—“Grossblatt that when—”

“
I
'm asking.”

“I'm sorry,” she answered, her tone implying the opposite.

“Call Surgery.”

The interns had stopped talking and were watching.

“I can't do that,” the nurse said.

“It's easy. Pick up the phone.”

“That's impossible.”

“Look, I asked you not to give me crap.”

“Mr.—”

“Grossblatt. Be a good girl. Call.”

Now everyone was watching. Beverly felt a sick jab of embarrassment. But how could she suffer from the world now? Now? Why this sense of alien humiliation now? She heard herself say anxiously, “Dan, she can't.”

Neither Dan nor the nurse paid attention.

The nurse was saying, “It's against hospital regulations.”

“So call Dr. Abrams.”

The interns glanced at one another, and the taller stubbed out his cigarette reverently, as if Dan had invoked the presence of the Almighty into the waiting room.

The nurse said, “Dr. Abrams is unavailable.”

“To me he's always available.”

“It's after five. I doubt if he's here.”

“Try. If you can't get him, I'll give you his home phone.”

The nurse blinked, her first betrayal of weakness.

“Tell him it's Dan Grossblatt. I promise, he won't send you back to washing bedpans.”

For a cushioning moment there was silence. Then the nurse expelled a sigh, her mouth ajar, for all the world looking as if she were surrendering to the hook. She plugged in the switchboard, asking someone named Dolores to connect her with The Chief.

Beverly watched Philip's hand arching on green plastic. Long-fingered, smooth, apparently tendonless—Jamie had his hands.

“Dave, Dan Grossblatt here.… Yes … Not so good. I'm downstairs in Emergency.… My wife's boy, and we can't find out one damn thing.… James Schorer … I'd appreciate that, Dave.” And holding the receiver against his shoulder, Dan queried the nurse about her typewriter, a new IBM. The nurse, alert and smiling, said she really loved it.

Beverly's hand inched toward Philip's hand. He jerked away.

Dan was talking. “Thanks, Dave … Yes … At least that's good.… Yeah, for lunch.” He handed the nurse back the phone, turning to the couch where Beverly and Philip sat. “He's in Recovery. A neurosurgeon happened to be here when you brought him in. Sherman. He's tops. Be down any minute.”

The neurosurgeon, freckled features blurred with weariness, spoke in medical jargon much as a lapsed priest might use a dead language to cover lack of faith. “Now in English,” Dan said. The doctor explained the skull is a bowl. A heavy blunt instrument had crashed into this particular bowl, causing a break: splinters had to be removed from the mass. (That's not oatmeal you're talking about, Beverly thought.)

“Well?” Dan asked.

“He's on the critical list,” said the surgeon, looking even more weary.

“When will he be off?” Philip asked.

“We may not know for several weeks.”

Dan said not to stick Jamie in that noisy children's pavilion, put him on Three. The surgeon nodded. “Private nurses,” Philip said. The doctor's red-veined eye surveyed them (fat fee), then gazed through glass doors at darkening skies (an hour's nap before dinner), saying, “Why don't you good people rest?”

“Here,” Beverly said, sitting back down to prove she meant business.

“There's nothing you can do here.” The doctor.

“You'll come home and put on shoes.” Dan. “Later, we'll be back.” He took her arm.

As she and Dan moved across the parking lot, lights came on. He said, “Come in my car. Would he have sat all night, so polite and chicken, never finding out one damn thing?”

“No, but—”

“So I embarrassed him. I embarrassed you? Well, I've given a hell of a lot to this hospital. Time and money. Dave Abrams is hoping for more.” Rough pebbles hurt her bare soles and she lagged. Dan slowed, taking her hand. “Dave invested with me. He did better than with any of his other deals. So he thinks I did him a fat favor.” In the car, she gazed at the single shining star. “Buzz, they treat you differently if they know you. You get a better room, the supervisor visits, the nurses run their asses off for you—for Jamie.”

Home, he walked two houses north to the Cohns', arranging for Alix to spend the night, he phoned the Lindes, phoned Clara (his and DeeDee's old cook) to come in the next morning. Beverly, to her husband's occasional anger, refused full-time help. When Beverly got out of the shower, he was in the bedroom with two chocolate-covered grahams and a cup drooping a yellow Lipton label. The sloshing, milky tea brought tears to her eyes. Dan refused to have anything to do with the kitchen. Eating in the breakfast area was a major concession for him.

She sat on the bed, drinking and nibbling. “We were talking this morning, and he asked if I believed in God. Dan, do I?”

Dan sat next to her. “Yes,” he said.

“But He let those others die?” She had read Camus.

Dan had not. “Buzz, He's the only Game in town.”

She reached for the wide, warm hand, tugging till Dan lay next to her. She unknotted his tie and undid his shirt, kissing the warm, coarse-haired skin below his neck where the golfer's tan stopped.

He said, “You'll hate yourself if we do.”

She unzipped her robe. Dampness from her shower patched the white body. She rolled onto her side and her breasts touched.

“You'll hate me,” he said.

“I couldn't hate you. Never.”

“Never say never.” He rested his fingers between her breasts.

“You had pickles for lunch.”

“They're too small,” he whispered, his fingers rubbing gently. “I'm crazy about them.”

“Dan, help me.”

He helped her.

Chapter Six

1

The following morning in the hospital lobby she bumped into Philip. He was on his way to work, he said, and he'd seen Jamie, yes, the same, and he was glad they had met. He wanted to talk to her. A cup of coffee? They went downstairs to the cafeteria.

“Beverly,” Philip said, wiping the table with two paper napkins, “a man called Roehl was here ten minutes ago.”

“Roehl's the one who talked to me.”

“Did he ask about enemies?”

She shook her head, mystified.

“He did me. They assume it's a grudge.”

“Then they know what happened.”

“They're just fishing for motives.”

“They must know something!”

“Not yet.”

“But you said—”

“I said they're assuming, that's all.”

“
All
?”

“Beverly, let's stay rational.”

She took a calming sip of the bitter coffee. Staying rational was Philip's goal. He had much of the paraphernalia of a superior husband: he'd never been finical about food, never had made a fuss when she painted (Dan could get impatient), he had taught her to enjoy his beloved sailing, and if he had glanced at his reflection in store windows, this had been a minor vanity that she had found understandable, even endearing. Yet it was
Let's stay rational
that she remembered most of her marriage to Philip. She had realized that logic was the club Philip brandished like a Neanderthal weapon to ward away confusion. (Was he Jew? Gentile? Neither?) Knowing this, though, had not made Philip's voice of pure reason any easier to bear. She set down her cup.

“How's Alix taking it?” Philip asked.

“Fine, just fine. She came home to change. She's wearing that new skirt you got her.”

“I want her with me for a few days.”

“This weekend?”

“Today.”

“But she'll miss school.”

“Her grades are fine. It won't matter.”

“Why? Philip, why?”

“Until we know what happened,” he said.

“Do you think I have enemies? Dan has enemies?”

“Beverly, please.” He creamed his coffee. “Mother will stay at my place with her.”

A membrane filled her throat. She swallowed with difficulty.

“It doesn't have to be with me. Would you feel better if she goes to Mother L's?”

“Oh God. I'll be so careful.”

“Do you honestly think she should stay in that house?”

“Yes. Yes!”

“You wanted the divorce.” The vein at Philip's temple pulsed. “Beverly, I didn't make it difficult for you. I could have. But let's not forget the children are mine. Alix is mine.”

Beverly's eyes squeezed shut. An old pickup had smashed her in the rear, throwing her against the windshield, bruising her face, giving her a black eye, and Philip had come home early from Schorer Furniture. Oh God, Bev, are you all right? Yes, she'd said, yes, her arms tight around his waist, and they, so very young, certainly not knowing of the covenant between parent and child, had fallen to the couch, and Philip, who normally inquired about that hateful thing, had been feeling her body as if it were precious to him, at the ultimate moment calling, Bev, oh Bev.

She opened her eyes and said, “I'll call Mother.”

The next nine days Beverly spent in the third-floor waiting room. Dan would phone often, and a nurse would run to get her. He ordered full-course meals sent up from the coffee shop, meals that she dutifully picked at. He would pop in a couple of times a day.

Each evening Philip came with Vilma Schorer. The Lindes drove in from Glendale. Through long hours the six of them kept awkward vigil, each in his own manner worrying about Jamie.

Jamie, in his wonderful trellis of bottles, machines, and jars. Jamie, unconscious. Alive.

2

On the tenth morning Roehl came to Dan's office.

After Roehl finished with him, Dan drove to the hospital, telling the gap-tooth floor nurse he needed to talk undisturbed to his wife. She let him use 310, which was empty and pervaded with the odor of Lysol.

“It's Jamie,” Beverly whispered. “Dr. Sherman's told you something.”

He shook his head, wishing he never had to begin. Dan. A stocky man with driving ability to push people. Yet he never used this power on Beverly. She was too gentle, unique, and there was the matter of the eyes, enormous eyes (now fixed on him) equipped with lasers that cut beyond external, social truths to the heart of truth.

“Dan?”

“First sit.”

She perched on bare mattress ticking. He dragged the chair, straddling it, facing her, leaning on his crossed arms. His head was taut as strings of rubber inside a golf ball.

“He'll be a vegetable,” she whispered. Until now an unvoiced, unvoiceable fear.

Dan shook his head. A nerve twanged, and he rubbed his neck. She rose, massaging with cold fingers.

“They know who did it,” he said quickly.

The massage faltered. Her fingers trembled, and he reached up, holding her left hand to his shoulder. Now. Get it over with. Now. You can't see her eyes.

“It was Raymond Earle. They had no evidence, nothing, but he's on the LA Police Department's blotter, something about cruelty to animals.”

And a memory brushes Dan. Avocado trees, a warm afternoon in the San Fernando Valley, and an odd, cozy compliment.
You … certainly are persuasive
. Dan lets himself supply the word to fill the hesitation. Jews. You Jews certainly are persuasive.

Go on. Tell her.

“So they questioned him. He didn't deny anything. He said he thought Jamie was my boy.” Dan rose, facing her. “He read the thing in the paper and imagined I'd cheated him out of millions. Three million, the paper said, remember? He said he was justified.” Dan spoke rapidly. “The lousy little anti-Semitic turd, I could strangle him and enjoy it.”

“What?”

“He figured I'd cheated him.”

“Not that.”

“He thought Jamie was mine. He knew I had two boys, and—”

“You called him anti-Semitic.” The eyes were that dark, agonized color.

“Oh God, Buzz! You know me.”

“There must have been a reason.”

“He's an all-around sweetheart.”

“That's not it.”

Dan sighed. “Just the way he said something. The first day I met him.”