Alison could not for the life of her understand why going to a party in the Hamptons tomorrow might be considered an excuse for lousy behavior today, and she sincerely wished that she might be asked to care more about the young man’s character than his résumé. But Lisa’s attention had moved on to other subjects. Alison watched as her friend found herself caught in a web of arms and hands reaching desperately for the half-empty bottles of cheap wine, which cluttered the table behind her. Lisa was an elegant, slender blonde who moved with an amused grace through the center of it all. The apparently ravenous young professionals who surrounded her were consuming a simple tray of grapes and cheeses in mere seconds in a piranha-like frenzy. Blonde Lisa laughed with delight and threw her hands up in a gesture of mock despair. “I never get enough food,” she admitted happily.
In the Midwest, there’s always enough food, Alison thought. She thought of her mother’s housewarming parties, where neighbors who had known one another for thirty years would gather on the back porch and talk about golf scores and school functions and the weather. Her mother would serve hot hors d’oeuvres, sesame chicken with a honey-mayonnaise dressing, toasted cheese rounds, and everyone’s favorite, sausage balls, a spectacular concoction made of grated cheddar, Jimmy Dean sausage, and Bisquick all mashed together and cooked in the broiler. Then Mom would load the dining room table with platters heaped with sliced ham and turkey and roast beef, alongside a breadbasket filled with miniature sandwich rolls, around which she had curled lovely little dishes of ketchup and mustard and even more mayonnaise. And down there at the far end of the table, a big bowl of salad for anyone who was maybe thinking of trying to eat healthy. After everyone had gorged themselves on sandwiches and finger food and a few bites of salad, there would be plates of cookies and brownies and, if Aunt Sis was coming, a chocolate sheet cake, or an extra plate of those crazy peanut butter cookies with an entire Hershey’s Kiss shoved into the middle of each.
Beside the memory of this plenty, the one platter of Brie, Swiss, crackers, and seedless grapes that Lisa had bought at a deli two blocks away looked exactly like what it was—lame. It was already finished off a mere thirty-five minutes after the first guests had arrived; the piranhas had swept it clean and moved on to the consumption of more wine and booze, of which there was a river.
Lisa picked up the empty platter and held it over her head. “Go back and talk to Seth,” she ordered Alison.
“We didn’t like each other, Lisa,” Alison said clearly, hoping this would put an end to the discussion.
“You talked to him for three minutes! You have to try harder, I mean it. I’ve been in New York a lot longer than you and I know what’s out there. Trust me. He’s the only guy in the room smarter than you.” Having delivered this pronouncement with definitive finality, she sailed off into her minuscule kitchen.
He’s not smarter than me, Alison said to herself. Which, she admitted in her proud and lonely heart, was the problem.
two
“NO, HE DOESN’T have a temperature but he’s been extremely fussy for five days, it’s been five days and his nose is running nonstop,” the determined woman announced. She clutched a miserable two-year-old on her knee and talked over the kid’s head impatiently, like he was some kind of unmanageable ventriloquist’s dummy, although he was really quite patient, Kyle noticed. Not listless, just tired. Slightly heightened color in the cheeks but no tears or frustration, no fussiness whatsoever. “I saw Dr. Grisholm last week and he said that it was a virus and there’s nothing anyone can do for a virus but this has been going on much too long and he needs an antibiotic. I don’t know why you people can’t just prescribe that stuff over the phone, it’s not going to hurt anybody and we need it and I’ll tell you I know you make us come down here to pick up the prescription just so you can charge us for the office visit and it’s ridiculous, the way you are gouging us when all we need is an antibiotic! He’s sick! He’s really sick! And I’m tired of all this messing around with the insurance company. If there was someone to complain to I would, I would really complain but, well, you’ve fixed that, haven’t you, no one is even allowed to have an opinion without being charged for it.”
Kyle reached out his hands with a gentle confidence, holding them open toward the child with a simple gesture. “May I?” The bottle-blonde mother was only too willing to get the kid off her lap. She handed him over abruptly. The baby looked up with mournful brown eyes as Kyle swung him through the air with a breezy lift—that always made them grin or giggle, no matter how bad they felt—and set him on the edge of the stainless steel counter, rather than the examining table. They liked that too.
“Is that safe?” the dreary mother asked.
“It is when you have a big boy, like Joseph, who’s not reeeeally sick,” Kyle observed, ruffling the kid’s curls easily, like he was some kind of pet dog. He floated his fingers under both sides of the boy’s jaw, palpating the glands so gently the kid thought he was being petted. The little boy looked up at Kyle with contented adoration while Kyle carefully wiped his nose with a Kleenex. “Let’s just take a peek into your brain here, Joseph, just for the heck of it,” he said.