Costars (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (42 page)

“You told me to let you know if I thought
of something to do that wasn’t in any way related to — well, you know, and I
think I’ve got it,” he says.

“I’ve got to tell you about this fucked up
dream I just had,” I tell him.

“Do you like jazz?” he asks, and I’m
wishing I was back in my dream, blind and crawling on the floor.

*
       
*
       
*

It took him a while, but Jace finally
convinced me to let him take me to John Coltrane night at a local jazz bar I
never knew existed.

I don’t hate jazz; I just hate nearly
every modern person associated with it. I think it has something to do with the
hats.

John Zorn’s pretty cool, though.

Anyway, we get to the club and Jace is
kind enough to pay the cover. Okay, it was one of my conditions for
accompanying him.

The place is pretty full, but we manage to
find a small, circular table on the second floor balcony, overlooking the
stage. There’s a group of six guys on stage, each one with a different
saxophones. I’d always thought there were only two or three, but there they
are.

It would be nice if there was some kind of
rhythmic accompaniment, but as it stands, the six guys are watching each other’s
feet to make sure they all come in on the downbeats at the same time.

Okay, so maybe it’s the hats and the
pretentiousness.

Still, the music isn’t bad.

What’s better, where Jace and I are
sitting, we’re far enough away from the wailing version of Cousin Mary.

“So,” he says, “what do you think of the
place?”

“Do you think they’re going to get anyone
on the drums sometime tonight?” I ask. “I’ve always been a fan of jazz
drummers.”

He smiles. “The way you were talking on
the way here, I got the impression you didn’t care that much for jazz.”

I can’t believe I have to explain this to
him.

“It’s not the music,” I tell him. “It’s
the self-important douchebags who profess to be experts on the genre like…” I
look around, “pretty much everyone here tonight.”

“How do you know what people are
‘professing’ if you can’t hear what they’re saying?” he asks.

“How are you doing?” I ask, changing the
subject.

“What do you mean?” he returns.

“Well,” I say, “we’ve kind of taken a step
in a new direction and I guess I’m just curious as to what you’re doing with
that.”

“What I’m doing with that?” he asks.

For an intelligent man, I’m really finding
myself explaining a lot of things to him.

“I mean, what you think about what’s
happening between us,” I tell him. “Fuck, that sounded like it came from an
after-school special, didn’t it?”

“I’m happy about it,” he says. “I thought
I’d be more conflicted, but I’m really very happy about.”

“Good,” I tell him and look back at the
stage.

Three of the six saxophonists are doing
their own variations on the same head swagger — I really don’t know what else
to call it — that the other three are doing as a unit.

“Do you think anybody in here has an
original bone in their body?” I ask.

“It’s Coltrane night,” he says. “People
aren’t going for original, they’re going for him.”

“I guess,” I answer and look back at the
stage.

“What do you think about what’s going on
with us?” he asks.

“I’m good with it.”

“Well that’s good,” he snorts.

I look up at him. “What?” I ask.

“I never know what to do with you,” he
says. “Sometimes you’re so detailed and intense on a topic, but other times
you’re just blasé about everything. The funny thing is I can never tell which
way you’re going to react.”

“You know what I think we need right now?”
I ask.

“What’s that?”

“A drink,” I tell him. “Any chance I could
convince you to make a quick trip to the bar?”

“If we wait a minute, I’m sure our waiter
will be around,” he says.

“You know what I think is funny?” I ask
him.

“What’s that?”

“You invited me to a jazz bar, but not
once since we sat down have you looked at the stage or seemed the slightest bit
interested in the music,” I answer.

“I don’t really care for jazz,” he says.

I glare at him. “Then what the fuck are we
doing here?” I ask.

“Well,” he says, “from what I’ve heard,
one of the coolest places you can take a date is a jazz club.”

“I guess it depends on the date,” I say
and look over at him. He looks disappointed. “It’s not as bad as I thought it
would be, though.”

That perks him right up. I wield quite the
power with this man, don’t I?

“You know what I think we need right now?”
I ask.

“Drinks,” he says. “Fine, I’ll head over
to the bar and-”

“No,” I interrupt. “I’m past that. What I
think we need right now is a nice secluded or semi-secluded place where I can
ride you like we’re back in the first year of the roaring twenties and I’ve
just won the right to vote.”

His face is red. It’s hilarious.

“I don’t know if there’s anywhere in here
that’s private enough for something like that,” he says.

“Lame,” I say and add a fake yawn for good
measure. “You know, it’s not every day a gorgeous woman like me offers to let a
person into her holy of holies. That goes double for women in jazz clubs.”

He smiles at me again and I slide my foot
up the inside of his leg, winking at him when I get close to his crotch.

“I bet we could find a spot,” he says.

“Great idea,” I tell him. “You go scout
locations. I’m going to sit here and watch the six faces of Coltrane and wait
for someone to come by and offer me a drink.”

“How about we go together,” he says.

I look over at him and roll my eyes.

“Fine,” I tell him, “but you just bought
yourself five minutes eating my pussy before I get anywhere near your dick —
oh, hi,” I say, looking up at the waitress who’s trying to pretend like she
didn’t hear anything I was just saying. “I’ll have a ginger ale, please.”

Jace is redder than before, but he
eventually manages to spit out an order for a martini, shaken not stirred.

The waitress smiles politely and walks
away.

“You know what you did there?” I ask him.

“What I did where?” he asks me.

“You just ordered a watery martini,” I
tell him. “When you shake a martini, the ice in the shaker chips apart and gets
into the drink, making it watery.”

“Maybe I wanted a watery martini.”

“Well, in that case, it looks like you did
just the thing,” I tell him. “So, are we fucking or what?”

“I think we should talk about what
happened today,” he says.

“Nah, that’s all right,” I tell him. “I
think I could do without that particular conversation right now.”

“Death isn’t an easy thing to deal with.
It’s not easy for me, and I’m an oncologist, for Christ’s sake,” he says.

“Well, I think that was a good talk,” I
tell him. “We covered all the bases and I don’t know about you, but I feel
better now.”

“Grace,” he says, “are you backing out of
the trial?”

“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Can you just
leave me alone about it so I can figure out what I want here?”

“Sure,” he says, “but if you don’t make a
decision by tomorrow morning, you’re going to get kicked out of the trial
anyway. I just wanted to make you aware of that.”

I can’t really explain why, but the idea
of being kicked out of the trial sends a jolt of adrenaline through me. I have
to put my hands in my lap to make sure Jace doesn’t see them shaking.

“Why would they kick me out so quickly?”

“People drop out,” he says. “This early,
there are others on the waiting list who can still get in, but after tomorrow,
the thing’s going to be closed to everyone but those who are already in it.”

“What do you think I should do?”

“I would have thought that was pretty
clear,” he says. “I jumped through a lot of hoops to get you in there in the
first place.”

“No pressure, then?” I snicker.

“I’m not trying to pressure you,” he says.
“I’m really not. I was just trying to answer your question. Personally, I think
it’s worth a shot, but if it’s not something you’re ready for, I’m sure
there’ll be more trials down the road.”

“You wouldn’t be mad at me if I told you
that I didn’t want to go through with it?” I ask him.

“No,” he says with a shrug. “I want you to
have every opportunity to get better, but I’m not going to be pissed at you for
backing out of a drug trial. If it was a known cure, I’d probably be pretty
irate, but as it is, I don’t see anything to be gained by browbeating you over
it.”

It’s strange that that’s what it’s taken
to get me to make a solid decision since what happened in his office earlier
today.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “I’ll be there
tomorrow. Same time?”

“You’ll want to show up about an hour
earlier,” he says. “They did intake with almost all of the trial participants
today, but since you missed that, they’re going to have to squeeze you in
before everyone else starts showing up.”

“Okay,” I tell him.

“Grace,” he says, “I really do think we
need to talk about-”

“Here are your drinks,” the waitress says,
placing my ginger ale and
Jace’s
pathetic martini
onto the table. “Is there anything else I can get for you?”

“I’m good,” Jace answers.

“Nope,” I tell the waitress.

She walks away and, before Jace can start
in again, I preempt him. “What happened today is that a woman who had cancer
died in your office,” I tell him. “Yeah, it was difficult, even though I didn’t
actually see it happen, but that’s just something I’m going to have to deal
with. She had something different than what I have, didn’t she?”

“I can’t really talk to you about other
patients,” he says, “even deceased patients.”

“Okay,” I respond. “How about this: Am I
going to need a wheelchair and an oxygen mask sometime down the road?”

“It’s hard to say,” he answers. “It
depends on the progression of your-”

“Okay, I was trying to get you to tell me
without actually telling me, but I don’t think it really matters. I’m going to
assume that the woman either had a different diagnosis than what I do, or she
was a lot farther advanced than I am.”

“Okay,” Jace says, taking a sip of his
martini. He pulls a face and looks up at me. “I used to love shaken not stirred
martinis, but now it just tastes like slightly alcoholic water,” he says.

“It’s always nice to know I can still ruin
things for people,” I smile. “Anyway, what freaked me out wasn’t that I was
seeing the ghost of brain tumor future. What freaked me out was the knowledge
that there’s really nothing any of us can do about the day we die — once it’s
there, I mean. I didn’t hear any of the conversation between the three of you
before that guy started screaming, but I’m guessing — and no, I’m not asking
for you to confirm or deny this — that when she woke up this morning, she
didn’t say to herself, ‘huh, I think I’ll head to the doctor’s office and die
today.’ Hell, maybe she did. I don’t know. What I do know is a slight but
profound variation on something I’ve known most of my life.”

“Which is?”

“That we’re all going to die someday.
Maybe it’s going to be the
oligodendroglioma
— I’m
seriously getting good at saying that now, by the way — maybe it’s going to be
a car accident, maybe it’s going to be something else entirely, but when you’re
going to die, you’re going to die. I think people who think they ‘cheat death’
are just kidding themselves. I don’t believe in fate, but I also don’t believe
that a person is going to see each and every thing coming. There’s no way.”

“What’s the variation?” he asks, “Or was
that it?”

“The variation,” I tell him, “is that even
if I go through this treatment, who’s to say I don’t go into your office one
day for a checkup or an update or just to bother you while you’re working and
something happens, maybe a reaction from the medication, maybe something else,
and I end up falling to the ground dead?”

“Who’s to say you don’t?”

“Nobody,” I answer. “I was freaked out,
and I can still hear that guy screaming at you, but I just knew that I didn’t
want to be like her, still making every appointment even though I’m half a
breath away from my last. I want to do something more. I’m not saying I want to
start a charity or do the fun run thing — I’m not a masochist. I just don’t
want to spend all my life in a hospital while the rest of the world just passes
me by. Who knows, maybe when I’m supposed to be walking into oncoming traffic
because I’m not paying attention, I’m in the hospital getting a needle stuck in
my arm.”