“And I checked it against the Metropolitan archives, and it’s the same day as the correspondent mentioned seeing the Comtesse de Saint-Honoré—that’s Jane, she’s a real husband-hunter—with her son at the Bluebird café.” I leaned my head back in the pillow and sighed to charm the angels. “It’s the best feeling in the world, isn’t it? When your research fits together like that, and all of a sudden you realize these were real people, living real lives, and . . . Are you listening?”
This time, no sound at all emerged from Doctor Paul’s body, which lay heavy and slack against mine, one arm thrown across my middle. And really, who could blame him? His shift last night was supposed to end at ten o’clock, and I’d gone to the hospital to meet him there, but no—some sort of emergency surgery, a kid hit by a car—he would be out in an hour, in another hour, and at about midnight I’d realized that the huddled couple at the other corner of the antiseptic waiting room must be the child’s parents, because they kept lifting their reddened eyes hopefully to the door whenever it moved, and the man’s hand was locked so hard with the woman’s that the bones of his knuckles shone white through his skin. I had sat there in a cold lump, no idea what to do. Couldn’t just walk up to them and say, Hello there, dearies, I’m Dr. Salisbury’s lover, and I can assure you those clever old hands can perform all kinds of miracles, or even I know Dr. Salisbury personally, and he’s the best new resident surgeon in years, and if anyone can save your darling angel, he will.
And just as I’d made up my mind to do just that—the second greeting, not the first—the door had opened and Doctor Paul himself walked through in his stained blue scrubs, and from the weight of grief on his face I knew the news was as bad as news could be. I had felt an instant compulsion to run to him, to toss my cashmere arms around him and give him the unrestrained Vivian, but he didn’t even see me. He walked right past my crossed and shapely legs and pulled up a chair next to the parents. He took the woman’s hand like a sandwich between his own, and I thought, Oh my God, oh my sweet twinkling stars, I love you so much, I can’t even breathe, I think my heart just stopped, somebody save me.
When I brought him back to my apartment an hour later, I’d thought he would want to go right to sleep, maybe accept a little comfort of the strictly platonic sort—look, a girl could take a rain check once in a while, in a good cause—but instead he threw me into the bedroom and engaged me like a lion, like a beast of the wild, in such a speechless frenzy of erotic energy that I, Vivian Schuyler, could hardly keep up. And I thought, as he lay sleeping and senseless the next instant, trusting and comatose along the length of my back, well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? To combat death with life. To fight back.
I lifted my other hand and ran it through Doctor Paul’s too-long sunshine hair, darkening at the roots now as November took its toll on all of us. Morning nudged through the cracks in the blinds. I needed my coffee and cigarette, but I couldn’t dislodge my poor dear doctor, could I? I reached for Violet’s gold watch, where it sat always on my nightstand, and wiped the glass with my thumb. Perpetual seven-oh-three. When time stopped for Violet and Lionel.
I said quietly, so I wouldn’t wake him: “I still don’t know when they began their affair. She mentions seeing him at a party at Jane’s apartment and that he’s recovering from an operation. And then he turns up in Wittenberg, where she and Walter rent a villa every summer. But it seems as if the more she likes him, the less she writes about him.”
I looked down at Doctor Paul’s head, tucked into my neck like a child’s, and touched the delicate tip of his ear with my finger. “I guess I can understand that.”
A plaintive gurgle emerged from my belly. I strained my neck to place a kiss on Doctor Paul’s peaceful head and then detached myself, limb by limb, from the tangle we’d gotten ourselves into. I tucked the bedclothes back around him, found my robe, and picked my way through the strewn clothes into the living room.
No sign of Sally. Surprise, surprise. I started the coffee going and rummaged in the icebox. If the mingled scents of bacon and Yuban couldn’t rouse my sleeping stallion, nothing could. I whipped the eggs to a proper froth and started a batch of toast, and I was just jabbing the fork in the toaster when a pair of arms came around my waist and a pair of lips collided with my temple.
“You again,” I said.
“Like a bad penny. That smells fantastic. Are you sharing?”
“I might, if you’re a good boy and find the plates.”
He didn’t move. He’d put his pants back on but not his shirt. I felt his heart beat between my shoulders. I reached to flip the bacon on the back burner.
He said, “I’m sorry about last night.”
“Nothing to be sorry about.”
“Are you . . . ?” Cleared the old throat. “I wasn’t too . . . ?”
“Doctor. This is Vivian, remember? I’ll let you know when I’m not enjoying myself.”
“Mmm.” Another kiss.
He was making me right at home in his skin-scented middle. Ready to let the bacon burn and the eggs scramble themselves. “Mmm yourself,” I said.
“So. Another thing.”
“There’s more?”
“Last night. In my primal haste.”