Fast-forward three years to the graduation party. The same tiny apartment crammed with Philip’s fellow medical students, drinking wine and beer. Smoking a little grass. Celebrating the end of four grueling years of study, the awarding of their MDs. Lucas was there. Late in the party, when they were all high, Lucas pushed her into a corner and kissed her, his tongue probing her mouth. She pulled away. She was married. It didn’t matter to Lucas. He always thought he was entitled to whatever he wanted. Even his friend’s wives. Even his best friend’s wife. Handsome, talented Lucas. So brilliant, everyone said. Destined for great things, everyone said. Even then he was an abuser. Of drugs. Of people. It wasn’t just the occasional joint they all indulged in. No, Lucas was much more adventurous than that, much more inventive. Always pushing the edge. With Lucas there was always a sense of something about to happen. Something dangerous. That’s what had drawn Philip to him. That’s what had drawn Hattie to him as well. Lucas coming into their lives had been both a beginning and an end. It changed both of them.
After Tufts, Lucas and Philip, along with DeWitt Holland and Matthew Wilcox, applied and were accepted into surgical residencies at Bellevue Hospital in New York. Four friends, the Asclepius Society, together for another four years. She and Philip lucked out and got a subsidized apartment for married residents in one of NYU’s high-rise buildings just south of Washington Square. Lucas lived way over on the East Side on one of those streets named for a letter instead of a number. Avenue A or Avenue B. She couldn’t remember which. The area had already begun its slow transformation from a slum to an artsy enclave.
Those were lonely years. Philip spent most of his time at the hospital, working to exhaustion, sleeping a few hours, then going back and working some more. When he wasn’t working, he was often with Lucas. The two of them sitting together, smoking dope, in Lucas’s grubby little fourth-floor walk-up. She wondered how many patients they’d cut into, the brilliant young surgeons, both high as kites when they shouldn’t have been operating at all. She wondered how many they might have killed.
From her chair, Hattie could see a pair of cardinals on a branch of the large maple just outside their bedroom, barely lit in the last glow of the setting sun. The male preening his fiery plumage. The dull, brownish female, quietly pecking for insects by his side. She’d never known them to be out so late. Finally they flew away.
She remembered seeing Lucas in New York before he left. The winter of 1989. More than fifteen years ago. The city was raw and cold in its covering of sooty slush. The restaurant where they were meeting was a new place – one of dozens of sushi bars springing up all over the East Village. Hattie arrived first, coming directly from her office, and she managed to snag a table for four. The place was crowded, and because she felt embarrassed fending off the waiters as she waited for the others, she drank two large gin and tonics. Finally Philip and Lucas came tumbling in, noisy and laughing. Lucas brought a new friend. A boy with a Spanish name, Carlos or Eduardo or something like that. He was a dancer in the corps de ballet with one of the big-name dance companies – the Joffrey, she thought. He had beautiful dark brown skin exactly the color of the leather sofa in her father’s den. She finished her second gin, and they ordered sake. The sake was warm and felt good going down, so they ordered more. Lucas was showing off, ordering and eating esoteric bits of sushi not found on the menu. Revolting-looking stuff, Hattie thought. Leeches and slugs, for all she knew – and there was Philip pretending to love each slimy piece, though she was sure he hated it even more than she did.
Afterward, they all went back to Lucas’s place. She remembered climbing the four steep, narrow flights of stairs. The halls smelled of garbage and rotting food. At the top they practically fell into the studio, a tiny single room about twelve feet square with cracked plaster walls and a dirty brown commercial carpet. It was dominated by a huge king-sized bed. Hattie wondered how they’d ever gotten the damned thing up the stairs. Two small filthy windows looked out on an airshaft. The only furniture besides the bed was a chair covered in lime green vinyl, a small bedside table, and two lamps. Most of the light came from a dim overhead.
‘Behold!’ Lucas drunkenly exclaimed, flopping down on the mattress and pulling the giggling boy, Carlos or Eduardo, down on top of him. ‘Behold the playing fields of Eton! Upon which the Battle Sexualis is frequently fought and usually won.’
Lucas started kissing the boy, but he pulled away. ‘I want a drink,’ the boy said, slurring the words.
‘Not until you take your clothes off,’ said Lucas.
Hattie leaned against the door, watching, while Carlos or Eduardo undressed. He had a beautiful dancer’s body, long and muscular. He posed for Lucas. ‘Now do I get my drink?’ he said teasingly. He was the first black man she’d ever seen naked. His penis was very dark and uncircumcised. She realized she’d expected it to be huge, but it wasn’t, only a little bigger than Philip’s. Even so, his body excited her in a way Philip’s never had.