The Dirty Book Club(13)

“No,” he said with a scoff.

“Not into sports?”

“The opposite. They were hard core. Joan played softball. Margaret was a black belt, Serena was a track star, and Norma dated two quarterbacks. But no one seemed to notice that stuff. It was always: Take care of your mothers, Danny. Protect those beautiful sisters of yours, Danny. You’re the man in the family, Danny. Be the man, Danny. It was this constant—” He stiffened his fingers into an arthritic claw.

“Pressure?”

“Yeah.”

“No wonder you loved those games so much.”

Dan looked up at M.J., eyes wide and ready to receive.

“No one to take care of,” she clarified.

He considered this. “Probably.”

M.J. sat. Her knee joints cracked on the way down. They needed a couch. “I’m surprised you became a doctor. You know, since taking care of people is kind of the whole point.”

Dan snickered, as if just clueing into the irony. “Maybe it was that earthquake.”

“What earthquake?”

“October 17, 1989,” he said. “It was the third game of the World Series, Giants versus the Oakland A’s. Twenty minutes before the game started I felt this shaking . . . I thought it was nerves, or maybe too much soda, until everyone started screaming, ‘Earthquake!’ Popcorn was flying, people were slamming into one another . . . it was intense. Uncle Ollie was dragging me toward the exit, pulling my shirt so hard I could barely breathe. And I was crying my goddamn eyes out.”

“I’m sure,” M.J. reached for his hand. “You must have been terrified.”

“Only that we were going to miss the game.”

“They played?”

“No.” Dan grinned at the memory of his younger self. “It was chaos. It took us six hours to get home. Of course my family thought I was dead and I thought they were dead but everyone was fine. They were all . . . fine. And something about that—”

“Set you free,” M.J. said flatly, without judgment, the way Dr. Cohn would have.

Dan’s eye lit on her.

“They didn’t need you to save them. They were fine and that pressure was lifted.”

“Exactly!”

M.J. sat taller. Is this how psychologists felt? Part God, part psychic and pure genius? She kept going, “But there were people out there who needed to be saved for real. Not because they were born female, but because they were wounded and sick. Because their traumas were legitimate, not borne from hypothetical conjecture or male chauvinism. And that’s what made you want to become a doctor, right?”

“No,” Dan said. “It was the surgeon who gave us a ride home because we couldn’t get to Ollie’s car. He had this tricked-out Mercedes with a surfboard strapped to the roof and a smokin’-hot girlfriend, and I said to myself, I want to be this guy.”

“What?” M.J. gave him a playful smack on the arm.

Dan grinned. “And maybe a bit of what you said, too.” He kissed her softly above the right eye in deference to the day they met. “I’m a sucker for a hot mess.”

M.J. giggled at the memory.

She was in Pearl Beach for a corporate retreat at the five-star Majestic Resort and Spa. Enjoying some downtime, M.J. was lounging poolside and marking up a piece about a communal living trend in Queens. Her chest was starting to burn. She sat up, reached for her aerosol body-mist sunscreen, shook the can, and—thwack!—pegged herself right above the eye.

When she came to, there was a hazel-eyed doctor with caramel sea-salted skin holding an ice pack to her eyebrow. He had been at the outdoor bar, meeting with a potential partner for his clinic, and saw the whole thing. Potential Partner was ready to respond, but Hazel-Eyed Doctor insisted he stand down. He had been watching Hot Loner all afternoon. This one was his.

A petite blond with a sticky southern accent said they made a beautiful couple. M.J. corrected her, saying they had just met. The blond insisted that it didn’t matter, they were destined to be together. She knew this because she was the resort’s Liaison of Love. A professional expert on amour. And as it turned out, she was.

Dr. Dan Hartwell took M.J. to dinner that night so he could monitor the wound. Though it was healing well, he quickly learned that M.J.’s pain went far deeper than an accidental blow to her supraorbital foramen. And he’d been trying to save her ever since.

“Do you pity me?” M.J. asked, while returning his souvenirs to the box soon-to-be marked GARAGE.

Dan stood. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because I’m fucked up.”

“Everyone is fucked up.” He handed her a white paper bag. “Happy Friday.”

She peered inside. Three regional magazines, a black Moleskine journal, and a pencil peered back. “What is this?”

“It’s me not pitying you.” He cupped her shoulders, and with a sympathetic bedside-manner sigh, said, “It’s time for you to get out of the house.”

“I’m acclimating.”

“I know. And I know you’re crushed and scared and pissed off. But arguing with boxes and drinking in bed?” He tucked her hair behind her ear. “You’re losing your fight, M.J. Burn the bathrobe. Write. Think about your next job.”

Job.

There was that word again, M.J. thought as she sat out on the deck later that afternoon and flipped through the pages of Pearl Beach Living—which were tragically similar to those in Orange County Today and West Coast magazine. She didn’t want a job. She wanted a career that doubled as a lifestyle. She wanted a bottomless pit of culture and innovation with a glut of keen writers who could find compelling angles, then sharpen them to a cutting edge. She wanted what she had at City, and Pearl Beach was not the place to find it. Here the pit was more like a puddle dedicated to restaurant reviews, medical spa openings, and socialites who were heavy on social and lite on style. All those cruise-ship corals and purplish blues. No credible magazine would allow that. And as long as they did, fetal was the only position M.J. would take.