The Art of Forgetting (18 page)

              “You sure?”

              Lloyd gave the bags a slight tug so the man would let go of them.

              Sleepy Che took a couple of backward steps, thumped a fist on his chest, before punching it in the air – an apparent gesture of solidarity in the food delivery struggle. “Truth to power, man.”

              Lloyd nodded and kicked the door shut.

              He hadn’t checked the contents of the bag but it was too late to make anything of it now. He climbed the stairs, set the bags on the kitchen counter, took a couple of deep breaths and checked his watch. Eight forty-seven. She could be here any minute.

              Should he plate the dishes? The food would stay warmer in their containers. But at least he could set out the salad and spring rolls, if he could find them. He started sorting through the food packages, opening the lids just enough to identify their contents.

              His cell-phone rang. Lloyd froze. He set the packages down and picked up the phone on the third ring. “Hello?”

              “Hey Lloyd, it’s me… Erin.”

              Lloyd smiled. “I know your voice.”

              “Just wanted to make sure. I don’t know how many girls might be calling you.”

              “You’re the only one.”
The only one? Christ, Lloyd!

              “Well that sounds like a lie.”

              “Where are you?”

              “Still stuck in my meeting. Joint Commission is coming for an inspection in a couple of weeks. Everyone’s just going batty.

              “Yeah, I heard.”

              “So, I hate to do this to you Lloyd… I can’t come tonight after all.”

              Lloyd looked down at his feet and said nothing.

              Erin said, “You didn’t order any food yet, did you?”

              “Oh, no. Not at all.” Lloyd glanced at the packages on the kitchen counter.

              She sighed. “Good. I feel guilty enough already.”

              Lloyd snatched the empty plastic bags, balled them up and pitched them in the trash can.

              “For what?”

              “For standing you up.”

              “Erin, I’ve been so busy… the whole thing kind of slipped my mind.”

              “You forgot?”

              “I got hungry so I kinda ate already.” His lie came out flat. There was silence on the other end of the line.

              “That’s too bad,” Erin said. “I was really looking forward to it.”

              Lloyd’s face felt hot.

              “Do you give rain-checks?” Erin asked. Lloyd opened his mouth to say something but Erin broke in. “Sorry Lloyd, they’re calling me back in. I gotta run.”

              Lloyd looked at his phone as if it had a terrible glitch in its software. He placed it on the counter and turned slightly as if he had been in the middle of doing something and suddenly forgot what it was. He replayed the conversation in his mind but was already uncertain of the precise words exchanged. But it wasn’t the wording; it was the meaning he was trying to distill.

              He sunk his hands in his pockets and sighed.
This is what dejection feels like
, he thought. Lloyd examined the emotion as if it were a strange fruit whose ripeness he was asked to judge for the first time; a cantaloupe he needed to roll around in his mind, palpating its rind before holding it at nose length like those ladies do at the grocery store. The more he savored the feeling, the more ill at ease he felt.

              He stacked the food containers in piles and shoved them in the fridge, pulled out a beer, flipped off its cap and trudged to the sofa before taking a long draw from the bottle. The flicker of a familiar emotion showed its spark – an emotion he knew how to handle, an emotion he would welcome. He allowed the embers of anger to kindle into a bonfire and reveled in its soothing warmth.

              Chapter 14

             
T
he best fare the hospital cafeteria had to offer was the fried chicken prepared
Southern Style
, which simply meant it was crisped to greasy perfection in some form of animal-derived saturated fat which was kept secret more to protect the diner from the burden of its knowledge than to guard against the misappropriation of the recipe. The only reason the entrée hadn’t been scrapped from the menu years ago when the Cafeteria underwent the obligatory
Healthy Choices
reform was that the item was undeniably delicious. It was rumored that Dr. Harlan Fisk himself (the maverick Chief of Surgery) petitioned to save the bird, which, if true, would have been the only purely altruistic act which could be directly attributed to him since his transfer from Texas.

              Lloyd ordered a plate of the Southern Style with all the fixings, which included a side of soggy collard greens and fresh-out-of-the-can corn. At twelve-thirty, the cafeteria bustled with its peak crowd and Lloyd found himself ambling around the dining area, tray in hand, unable to find a vacant table. Sharing a table with a relative stranger presented a high likelihood of having to engage in a dull, inane and all-around annoying conversation where he would be expected to be polite.

              Half-way down the dining hall he spied Erin, her side to him, sitting across from Nick De Luca, who was all smiles. He pretended not to notice them and kept walking towards the back of the room when De Luca started waving at him, first with one hand, then with both arms over his head. Lloyd ignored him until De Luca rose to his feet and called out, “Dr. Copeland!  Right here!”

              Lloyd turned to face him and tried to act surprised. He shuffled to the table where De Luca had pulled out a chair and was wiping crumbs off it with a paper napkin.

              “Well hello, Doctor,” De Luca said. “I saw you standing in the cash register line and I thought, ‘now surely he’ll see us’. I mean, we were straight in your line of sight. But I guess you were thinking those big thoughts of yours.”

              “How’s that?”

              “You know. Your big thoughts. Dr. Kennedy tells me you’re doing some pretty high brow research.” De Luca waited for Lloyd to sit before taking his own seat.

              “Hi, Lloyd,” Erin said.

              “Hey,” Lloyd said, keeping his eyes on his plate. He could feel her gaze probing him but forced himself not to look at her.

              “Well, won’t you look at the time?” De Luca said pulling up the sleeve of his jacket to expose his wrist watch. “I better get going.” He stood, pushed in his chair and lifted his tray with a half-eaten sandwich still on the plate. “Doctors, it’s been a real pleasure.”

              “Good-bye, Nick,” Erin said.

              Lloyd glanced up at him and nodded. He quickly returned his attention to his food and sliced into the chicken breast with knife and fork. He took a large bite as De Luca left the table and kept his eyes on his plate as he chewed. He cut off another piece and put it in his mouth.

              “Is something the matter, Lloyd?”

              Lloyd continued chewing. After swallowing the mouthful he looked up and said, “Goodbye Nick? I didn’t realize the two of you were so close.”

              Erin pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Are you serious?”

              “I’m just saying. You guys sure looked like you were having a good time.”

              “Lloyd Copeland, are you jealous?”

              “Jealous? Of what?” Lloyd said with a forced chuckle.

              “Precisely,” Erin said. “Besides, he’s married.”

              “How did
that
subject come up? Did you ask him?”

              “That was one of the first things he told me the first time I met him. He couldn’t wait to show me pictures of his wife and kids,” she said in an exasperated voice.

              “It doesn’t really matter to me. You don’t have to explain anything,” Lloyd said.

              “I know I don’t. It’s just that you… you’re simply unbelievable. You’re just a petulant little boy.” She laughed.

              “I’m not that boy on North Mason anymore. Don’t you get it?”

              “Why do you –”

              “Cause if you’re trying to track him down, if you’re trying to find him inside me, you won’t. He’s gone.” Lloyd scooped a forkful of collard greens in his mouth.

              “Does this have anything to do with last night?” she asked. She wrapped her fingers around a polystyrene cup of soda.

              Lloyd cut off another strip of chicken and stuffed it in his mouth.

              “It does, doesn’t it?” Erin said. “You’re upset I stood you up.”

              “Now you’re going to quote your psychology professor boyfriend again.”

              Erin smiled. “Boy, you really
are
jealous. I’m kind of flattered.”

              A medical student with a boy-band haircut, looking awkward in his short lab coat, approached the table, lunch tray in hand.  Lloyd saw how he was ogling Erin, pretending to look around the dining room for an empty seat. Perhaps emboldened by the fact that Lloyd and Erin were sitting diagonally from each other, he gathered the nerve to stop at their table.

              “Is this seat taken?” he asked Erin.

              Erin, who was sipping from a straw, looked up and shook her head.

              The medical student smiled, placed his tray on the table and started pulling the chair out when Lloyd kicked it back in.

              “It’s taken,” Lloyd said.

              “But she said –”

              “It’s
taken
”

              The student nodded at the other empty seat and asked, “How about that one?”

              Lloyd looked up at the student. “What’s your name, buddy?”

              “Piazza. Steve Piazza,” the student said.

              “Are you a medical student, Steve Piazza?”

              “Yeah.”

              “Well this table is reserved for attendings,” Lloyd said. The student stood there impishly. “So get lost.” Steve Piazza blushed and walked away.

              “Now was that really necessary?” Erin said. “I mean, the poor guy.”

              “Poor guy! He was checking you out from across the dining hall.”

              “I thought you weren’t jealous.” Lloyd shoveled a forkful of collard greens in his mouth. Erin twirled the straw between her fingers and said, “He was kind of cute. Steve Piazza. I wonder if he’s going to be in one of the seminars I’m teaching.”

              Lloyd set his fork down, took a pen from the breast pocket of his white coat and began writing on a napkin with flowing calligraphy. “Steeeve Piaaazzaa.” He dotted the “i” and underlined the name twice.

              “What are you doing?”

              “I have a feeling Mr. Piazza is going to fail Neurology.” By now Lloyd could no longer suppress a smile.

              “You’re so terrible!” Erin reached across the table and gave Lloyd a gentle smack on the hand. “So you admit you’re jealous.”

              “Mmm.” Why was it that every time he tried to create some distance between them she managed to disarm him and make him want her even more? This was not good. Not good at all. He took another big bite of chicken, skin and all.

              “You know what that stuff does to your coronaries?” Erin asked.

              “Yeah. I’m a doctor, remember?”

              “Doesn’t that bother you?”

              Lloyd shrugged. “I’ll probably bash my brains in riding my bike before I have my first M.I.”

              “Great answer. Very mature. You’re doing everything you can to die young. Another rebel without a brain.”

              Lloyd wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and looked at Erin. “Let me say this just once. Maybe… I don’t want to grow old. Maybe I have my reasons for living my life the way I do. So don’t take it personally if…”

              “If what?”

              “Never mind.” Lloyd crumpled his napkin and tossed it on his plate.

              “If what?”

             
If I hurt you. If I punish you just to keep you away
, he thought. “I have to get back to my office and try to salvage what’s left of my research.”

              Erin rolled her eyes. “The drama!” She laughed but stopped when she saw Lloyd’s stern expression.

              “This research isn’t just my livelihood. It’s my life. It matters much more to me than the state of my coronaries or whether I wear a helmet when I ride my bike,” Lloyd said. “But I don’t expect you to understand that.”

              “Look, I’m sorry about last night. I really am, and I want to make it up to you. What if I swing by your house this evening for dinner?”