Writers & Lovers(32)

I pick up the phone at the bar.

It’s Dr. Dermatologist. Two of the three moles are precancerous. The other is a squamous cell carcinoma, and while he’s gotten all of it, it would be best to come in for some further scraping just to be sure. This was the kind of skin cancer, he says, that he usually finds on much older people. He repeats that I cannot expose my skin to the sun without protection again. He says, ‘I know you are drunk on youth and immortality, but this is how you die.’

I tell Harry, and he gives me another careful hug. And later an old man at Harry’s corner deuce complains about his breezy manner and Harry tells him he is just drunk on youth and immortality. The man reports this to Marcus on the way out, and now Harry is on probation, too.

The next day I decide to call Oscar. I work a double and carry his letter with his number around in my apron, but I never get up the nerve during lunch to do it. During my break I go to Bob Slate’s for a ream of printer paper—I’d typed the last chapter into the computer that morning and was ready to print out the whole thing—and when I get back Marcus tells me Oscar called.

Harry comes in for the dinner shift and tosses out my coffee and gets Craig to pour me a glass of red wine. ‘You drink this, then you call.’ But alcohol doesn’t have that effect on me. It makes me tired then sad then puking.

While I’m drinking, the phone rings. If you are listening for it, the phone is always ringing at Iris. People call day and night for reservations. Sometimes they’re looking for a table for that night. Sometimes it’s for a year from now. People are crazy in their planning. How do they know where they will be living next year or if they will even be alive? I’m too superstitious to make plans like that. I’ve never owned a planner or datebook. I keep everything in my head.

‘Marky Marcus at eleven o’clock,’ Harry says.

I slide the glass behind the computer.

‘Casey. Phone. Again.’

I take it on the pastry phone. There’s just Helene there, spooning mousse into adorable pots.

My heart gallops. The wine hasn’t helped.

It’s Dr. Gynecologist, who explains that I have severe dysplasia on my cervix and that I have to come in for some scraping of the area. He says his nurse will call in the morning with an appointment time.

I go back to the wait station. ‘What’s with all the scraping?’

‘If you weren’t so pointy,’ Harry says.

‘I feel like a block of cheese.’ I pick up the water jug to bring it to the table Fabiana is seating me. ‘Health insurance sucks.’

After that I never have a moment to call Oscar until it’s way too late to call a man with two small children.

I get home near midnight, exhausted, skin humming. I take off my work clothes, shower, reapply the Vaseline to my mole holes. The black wires make them look like spiders. My phone rings. I’m out of doctors.

‘Someone named Harry with a smooth and flirty accent gave me your home number,’ he says. ‘And he insisted it wasn’t too late to call. And’—he says when I don’t say anything because my throat is burning at what a good friend Harry is to me—‘he seemed to know something about me, which I took to be a good sign. You there?’

‘I’m here,’ I say, pulling it together.

‘Good. My mother has told me that I mustn’t go chumming for women with my children and it’s too soon for mini golf. I’m sure this comes as a huge disappointment.’

I’m surprised that it does.

‘So I thought perhaps we might take a grown-up walk in the arboretum on Saturday. You are a grown-up, right? I mean, you just look youngish. You’re not in high school or anything.’

‘Would college be a deal breaker?’

Silence. ‘Yes. Yes it would.’

‘I’m thirty-one.’

‘Thank God.’ He sounds truly relieved.

‘How old are you?’

Another pause. ‘Forty-five.’

Older than I thought.

‘Is that a deal breaker?’ he says.

‘Depends on the deal.’





Oscar is waiting at the gate of the arboretum with an unhappy basset hound. The dog reminds me of a toy I had when I was a kid, a plastic dog on a string whose ears went up and down when I dragged him behind me.

I ride past him to a street sign that I can lock my bike to.

‘Is that you?’ Oscar says. He doesn’t look happy about it.

‘It’s me.’ I unwind the lock slowly. I’m not sure I want to be here.

I feel him standing behind me. ‘You have hair,’ he says. ‘It was sort of up before.’

‘Restaurant policy.’ I shove the two ends of the coil together and flip around the numbers. ‘You have a dog.’

‘That’s Bob. Bob the dog.’

I don’t know what to do once my bike is locked, so I squat down and stroke the head of his dog. It’s a little greasy. He presses his head up against my hand like a cat.

‘We don’t have a great relationship. I’ll be honest about that,’ he says.

‘Wanna go romp around, Bob the dog?’

‘Bob does not romp.’

‘What does Bob do?’

‘He malingers.’

I straighten up and run through the entrance pillars and spin around. ‘C’mere, Bob!’ Bob turns his head but keeps his body firmly facing the street. I get on my haunches again and pound the paved path. ‘C’mon, boy!’ The dog clenches his nails more firmly into the sidewalk.