Private Practices (12 page)

“Nurse Naomi,” he joked, and reaching out put a hand between her legs. “The further adventures of.”

“You even have a sense of humor,” she laughed. “At least I think there's one hidden in there.” She touched his forehead, then took her fingers and moved his hand away. “But I don't like to come in the morning.”

“Well, you just might have to, if I'm no good at night.”

“You might get better.”

“But then again, I might not.” He began to fondle her again and this time she didn't resist him. Soon she was moaning under his fingers. But although his penis failed him once again, refusing to erect in response to her pleasure, he was far less worried than he had been the night before. Even though he had no choice but to play observer as she began to quiver into orgasm, he didn't feel detached. He was a spectator, but not a removed one. Flaccid, he could nevertheless feel in himself a tension and breathlessness that echoed her own.

They missed breakfast. They heard the knocking on the door, grasped the innkeeper's assertive, “It's now or never,” but Ben looked out the window and saw pelting rain and gathered the quilt around their heads again and they went back to sleep. That afternoon he took Naomi to an antique shop and when she admired a particular pair of dangling gold earrings, decided to buy them for her. While she dawdled at the back of the shop, he approached the cash register counter, set the earrings down on it and hurriedly counted out bills from his wallet, signaling to the shopkeeper to get up from his stool at the door and take his money. Just then Naomi ambled up to the counter and, seeing him with the bills in his fist, looked at him inquisitively. Then her eyes wandered to the thick wallet he still held in his other hand.

For a moment, he stood motionless.

“Yes?” the shopkeeper, an elderly, wizened man, said.

Ben stared over his head, remembering with a start what Sidney had said about Naomi's being interested in him only for his money. Certainly all weekend she had been making jokes or casual remarks about money. Certainly, too, she had very little of it, while he had a great deal. Between his savings and his investments, he was worth close to a quarter of a million dollars. It wasn't a remarkable amount. No more than any unmarried, child-untrammeled Park Avenue doctor might be worth after ten years of practice. But to Naomi, on her Newspaper Guild salary, he must seem rich indeed.

“You want those?” the shopkeeper was saying in a nasal drawl.

“I—I'm not sure the lady really likes them,” Ben said, turning suspiciously to Naomi.

“These?” Naomi had noticed the earrings on the counter now and her dark eyes were glistening. “They're wonderful!”

Suddenly he laid the money on the counter and handed the earrings to her. What difference did it make why she wanted him? What difference did it make how he got her, as long as he got her. She was his chance to change, to come awake and stay awake.

She had slipped one of the earrings onto an earlobe.

“You look beautiful,” he whispered, and put an arm around her shoulders, his finger teasing the gleaming pendant.

It rained on Sunday too and they ended up spending the afternoon antiquing again. In a dusty garage Naomi came across a worn carton filled with African wood sculpture and she began pensively to sort through the pieces. “Why not buy one of these for your office?” she said, holding up an ebony animal with long, curved horns. “These are very good, and very old, I think, and the prices are ridiculously low.”

“What's wrong with my office the way it is?” he asked.

“It's too bare,” she said bluntly. “Devoid of personality.”

Insulted, he took the wooden antelope from her hand and set it back in the box. And then he softened, admitting to himself that she was right. He had never thought he had the taste or imagination to decorate his office, and so he had left it barren of ornamentation. Besides, he wanted to please her. They had tried to make love twice again, and although he had been potent only one of the two times, that success, and the one of the morning before, had made him feel exquisitely encouraged about himself and enormously grateful to Naomi. Even her taste for exotica seemed to him charming and singular today. Reaching back into the box, he pulled out a different carving, the figure of a woman with elongated neck, great, rounded breasts and a large, smooth stomach.

Naomi nodded. “It's lovely. And it would even make some sort of a statement.”

He bought both carvings and, on the way back to New York, kept the newspaper-wrapped packages on the seat beside him, brushing against them from time to time. All the while he drove south, he kept wishing they were going north again and kept dreaming of what it would be like never to have to return to New York, never to have, again, to work, to see patients, to see Sidney. In his mind's eye he imagined driving with Naomi up into Canada, of reaching snows that would never melt and mountains that would take their breath away, and it was with the greatest of reluctance that he approached the bridge that led to the looming city beyond. “We got here so fast,” he said sadly to Naomi.

“And a lucky thing too,” she commented. “I've still got to go and pick up Petey at his friend's.”

Still, he drove more slowly as he crossed the bridge, afraid that his tenuous attachment to Naomi would not survive the strains of the city.

But it did. Although, sexually, their relationship continued to be stressful, he and Naomi saw a great deal of each other in the next few weeks. They went to the theater, dined grandly at Lutèce and informally at La Petite Ferme, and sometimes just ate hamburgers and watched television in Ben's apartment.

He liked that best, liked walking into the kitchen to fix drinks and returning to see her cross-legged on his couch or sprawled on the floor, her chin in her hands. It was as if each time he left her side, he expected to find her gone when he returned, and it was with a jolt of absurd delight that he would realize that indeed she was there, really there, just where he had left her.

CHAPTER FOUR

APRIL

“Listen, old buddy,” Sidney said, barging into Ben's office one evening late in April. “Can you come over for dinner tonight? I need to talk with you.” He was meticulously dressed in a blue knit blazer and white shirt and on his cuffs gleamed gold links in the shape of Asclepius's staff. But his face looked drawn, as if he had been losing weight.

“What's up?” Ben hedged, rising from his chair and busying himself by searching for his raincoat in the closet. He was meeting Naomi for dinner in half an hour, but was reluctant to say so. Knowing that Sidney had a way of making him doubt himself and waver from whatever goals he set, he had for several weeks now been maintaining a new emotional distance from him, avoiding confidences and limiting their conversations to discussions of patients and peers.

He had thought at first that such a distance would be difficult for him to accomplish, if only because Sidney might consider it a kind of defection and insist on an accounting. But to his surprise, Sidney had hardly seemed to notice any change in their relationship. Always self-absorbed, he had been unusually preoccupied all month and even now, looming in the doorway, he seemed unaware that Ben hadn't accepted his invitation to dinner. Walking to the desk, he reached for the telephone, and announced, “I'll tell Claudia to set an extra place.”

“I can't make it tonight,” Ben said softly.

Sidney let the phone receiver careen noisily into its cradle and stared at him. Above his eyes, deep creases appeared, so precise they seemed carved with a knife.

“I've got an appointment,” Ben went on cautiously and, finding his raincoat, draped it over his arm.

“Can't you break it? There's something very important I've got to discuss with you.”

“What is it?”

“I need you to do something for me. To go down to the Caribbean and check something out for me.” Preempting Ben's empty chair, Sidney swung his legs up on the desk. “I've got a guy heading up one of my clinics down there who keeps insisting that before we start testing the pill in the States this summer, we ought to do another major study down in the islands. He claims there's been an increase in birth defects in his area and that the defects could be related to the Zauber pill.”

Puzzled, Ben sat down opposite Sidney, taking the patients' chair. “Birth defects? But the pill is one hundred percent effective in preventing conception.”

Sidney nodded, his fingertips massaging the lines above his eyes. “Yes. We haven't had a single case of pregnancy in any of the women who've stayed on the pill. It's the ones who've gone off it this guy wants to study. Apparently some of their babies have shown defects and he claims my pill is involved.”

“Do you believe it?” Ben frowned.

“Not really. There are plenty of other more likely factors. But this guy's been making noise for some time now and I'd like him checked out. How legitimate is he? How good are his records?”

“Don't you think you should go down yourself?”

Sidney shook his head slowly. “No. My going down would suggest I was taking the guy more seriously than I'm prepared to do just yet. Besides, I've got to be at the hormone meeting in Chicago on Saturday.”

“Really? I didn't think you were going. I'd thought I might—”

“Yes?”

“Oh, nothing.” He had been hoping to have a long, work-free weekend with Naomi, but he could see that, one way or another, he was going to have to serve Sidney this weekend. “Okay,” he acquiesced. “I'll check this guy out for you. What exactly is it you want me to do?”

“Just talk with him. And look over his research. His name's Keith Neville. Is he sound? Or is he just one of those black ideologues who thinks all birth control is racial genocide?” Rising, Sidney began walking to the door and added, “Come on. I'll tell you the rest over dinner.”

Ben looked up, startled. “I can't go to dinner. I just told you that.”

Turning, Sidney shook his head and brushed his hand across his eyes. “Right. You did. I forgot.” Then, angered, he shot out, “What's with you anyway? We hardly see you anymore.”

Ben shrugged, still trying to keep his own counsel.

“Well, say hello to your girlfriend,” Sidney snapped. “Or whoever it is who's been keeping you busy.” Reaching for the doorknob, he added mockingly, “Maybe it's a boyfriend.”

Annoyed at the taunt, Ben blurted out, “It's Naomi Golden,” and a moment later was furious with himself.

“Naomi Golden.” Sidney's frown deepened. “Of course.”

“Well, what difference does it make? What do you have against her?” Ben asked, troubled despite himself by Sidney's negativism toward Naomi.

“I told you once. I think she's after you for your money.”

He found the courage to reply, “You're wrong. In fact, Naomi's not even sure she wants me. In any sort of permanent way, that is. Lots of women feel there's something wrong with men who get to be forty without ever having married or even lived with someone.”

“The rules are different when it comes to doctors,” Sidney intoned. “You have a lucrative practice. A safe future. If Naomi isn't after your money, I don't know my own name. But that's not all I have against her. I think she's not good enough for you.” Coming back from the door, he moved close to Ben and put a paternal arm around his shoulders. “She's not classy enough.”

“She's okay,” Ben defended his choice, Sidney's arm heavy on his shoulders. “She's witty. Easy to be with.”

“What's that got to do with class?”

Ben shrugged. He didn't like discussing Naomi with Sidney, or Sidney with Naomi for that matter. Their antipathy to each other was boundless. He extricated himself from Sidney's embrace and pulled on his raincoat. “I'm late. I'd better go.”

“Sure,” Sidney said and preceded him out the door. “But let's have dinner tomorrow night, so I can fill you in.”

Later that evening, waiting for Naomi at the bar of a crowded French restaurant, he kept reviewing what Sidney had said about her. He wasn't especially troubled by Sidney's view of her as a gold digger. He had already resolved his feelings about being wealthier than she, and made up his mind that he wanted her, whatever her reasons for wanting him were. But he couldn't help beginning to ask himself why he wanted her and whether it was sensible to want her and whether, after all, he might do better than Naomi. By the time she arrived, late and flustered, he had worked himself into a state of deep disappointment in her.

Her curls were too disheveled, he thought; windblown and in need of a cut, they seemed less attractive to him than they had only the evening before. And her voice, when she greeted him, was too loud. Worse, when the maître d' showed them to their table, he noticed with dismay how she gazed with barely concealed curiosity at the food on other diners' tables, and when the waiter offered to hang up the raincoat she was sliding from her shoulders onto the back of her chair, he saw that she was wearing underneath it an outfit he particularly detested, a violet silk shirt tucked into a flimsy, multicolored peasant skirt.

At last, when she began to tell him an office scandal, embroidering her story with gestures and comic faces, he ceased listening to her words but concentrated with extreme annoyance on her facial and bodily movements. Yesterday he had thought them expressive; tonight he condemned them as excessive.

He continued to sit in judgment on her throughout the appetizers they were served. Then, just after they were brought their main course, he was called to the hospital to deliver a baby. He spoke brusquely into the telephone the waiter placed at his elbow, took three hasty bites of peppery duck and rose to say goodbye to Naomi. He had decided not to suggest to her, as he usually did when he was called away in the middle of dinner or a show, that she go back to his place and wait for him.