Jonathan Tropper Read online

  After a few minutes, Dr. Sanderson nudges my leg and tells me to open my eyes. At some point while my eyes were closed, Camille took her leave, and it is now just the doctor and me. I become conscious of a puddle forming on the protective paper beneath me on the table. “Don’t worry about that,” the doctor says. “It’s just excess water.”

  I have a glimpse into the continuous indignities of long-term medical care, the exposure, the clinical manipulation of your most intimate parts, the private by-products and secretions that will pour out, uninvited, for all to see. And all the while, the doctor looming above, unhurriedly doing his work, waiting until the last possible instant to share any findings with you.

  “So,” I say. “What do you see?”

  Dr. Sanderson frowns. “Hard to say,” he says. “There’s definitely a small mass there, just off the bladder wall. I’d be surprised if it’s cancerous, but still . . . We’ll do a biopsy, just to rule it out.”

  And even though I’d been steeling myself for continued bad news, I realize at this moment that for the most part I hadn’t really bought into the possibility. But now he’s used the words “mass” and “biopsy,” and I can feel an icy chill expanding upward from my hyper-clenched bowels. On the bright side, at least it’s too late for me to wet myself.

  I clear my throat. “When you say you want to rule it out, do you mean that in a ‘we’re living in litigious times and you need to cover your ass’ kind of way, or is it more like a ‘that mass looks like it may very well be a malignant tumor, and procedurally, a biopsy is the next step in diagnosis and treatment’ kind of way?”

  The doctor turns away from the screen to look at me. “Listen, Zack, I understand your concern. The odds are highly against someone your age, with your medical history, having bladder cancer. But what I see in your bladder is something that shouldn’t normally be there. That concerns me, and we need to figure out what it is. I’m sorry I can’t give you a more concrete answer right now. As hard as it is, you’re going to have to just believe in the odds and wait to see what we find out.”

  “I understand all that,” I say. “But off the record, what’s your gut?”

  “My gut?”

  “You see this stuff all day. You must have a gut reaction.”

  Sanderson exhales slowly. “My gut is, I shouldn’t be seeing something like that in someone your age and I’ll feel better when I know what it is.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “That wasn’t remotely helpful.”

  “Even if it does turn out to be a cancerous or precancerous growth, you should be advised that in most cases it’s highly treatable.”

  “Great.” For a guy who’s been doing this as long as he has, he is staggeringly clueless. I don’t want to hear “treatable,” because “treatable” means it’s something, and even if it can be cured, or removed, or whatever the term is for cancer, it won’t change the fact that it was there to begin with, that my body betrayed me by allowing this to happen, that I’ll never feel safe in my own skin again. Where’s the silver lining in that? I’m like Craig Hodges and his stupid purple swooshes, donning my blinders when it comes to reason and rationale, only interested in hearing that the problem isn’t really a problem.

  He performs the biopsy right through the scope, cuts a microscopic piece of tissue right out of me. I feel another hot pinch, this time in the depths of my belly, and the slightest convulsion, and then it’s done. Now that the scope has been in me for a while, I’m dreading its removal, imagining the slow, sickening drag as he pulls it out, but the anesthetic is still working and I barely feel a thing. Afterward, I piss for what feels like five minutes, the stream vibrating oddly through my numb instrument. There’s a lot more blood now, but I’ve been warned by the doctor to expect that for a day or two after the biopsy. I dry off with a towel and get dressed again. I examine my genitals carefully, but everything seems to be just as I left it. The doctor warns me that in addition to the blood, I might experience a mild burning sensation when I urinate over the next few days. If the pain or bleeding continues after that, I should give him a call. He’ll have the results of the biopsy by Friday, and I should try not to worry about it. “Statistically speaking,” he tells me again, “the odds of someone your age having bladder cancer are very slim.”

  Maybe so, I think as I ride down in the elevator. But do those odds still apply once you’ve already established that there’s a biopsy-worthy mass lurking in there? Somehow, at this point I think we’re dealing with a whole other set of stats, and while I’m not interested in hearing them, I’m fairly certain that they would be somewhat less encouraging.

  The instant I turn my cell phone on, it starts to beep and flash the message icon. I have three urgent messages from clients who need to hear back from me first thing in the morning. When you’re a middleman, everything is always an emergency. The last message is from Hope, wondering where I am. Since it’s just about six, I decide to surprise her at her office. I cut over to Fifth Avenue and then downtown through the Fifties, to Rockefeller Center. The sidewalks are swarming with the after-work crowd, grimly staring ahead, talking on cell phones, or taking in the questionable merchandise in the hodgepodge windows of immigrant electronics shops.

  I wait in the lobby at Rockefeller Plaza, leaning against the wall as I watch the exodus pour out of the elevators, the men in their upscale, corporate-casual outfits, the women looking as if they’re all headed to an audition for Sex and the City, dressed to titillate in aggressively short skirts, expensive haircuts, and designer shoes that clack authoritatively against the marble floor.

  After about fifteen minutes, Hope emerges with two women I don’t know, the three of them immersed in laughing conversation. She looks magnificent as always, in dark dress slacks and a light, formfitting cardigan. I watch her for a few seconds, reveling in the grace of her walk, the swing of her hair, and the furtive and not-so-furtive glances she elicits from the men she passes. Observing her in this manner, I feel a rush of pride and inevitable skepticism. I still can’t get over the fact that someone this beautiful would have any use for me. It occurs to me that Hope might have made plans, and will not appreciate my spontaneous arrival, but when she sees me, her face brightens gratifyingly, and she charges across the lobby to give me a kiss.

  “What are you doing here?” she says happily.

  “I had an appointment in the area,” I say.

  “Fantastic!” She kisses me again in a rare public display of affection.

  “You’re in a good mood,” I say.

  “And why shouldn’t I be?”

  I could give her a reason or two. At this point, she remembers her two friends, who are now hovering behind her with anticipatory so-this-is-him grins. “Oh, sorry,” Hope says, stepping out of my embrace. “Zack, this is Dana and Jill.”

  Nice to meet you, heard so much about you, congratulations on the engagement, isn’t it so exciting? Under Hope’s watchful eye, I smile and charm to the best of my abilities, wishing that I were taller and better dressed, more for her sake than mine. After all, I’ve already gotten the girl.

  As we walk uptown, I find out what has her so excited. “I’ve been asked to help catalog a private collection for the nineteenth-century group,” she tells me. “It’s the first time they’re sending me alone.”

  “That’s great,” I say. “Where’s the collection?”

  “In London.”

  “London, England?”

  “The very same.”

  “When do you leave?”

  “Tonight,” Hope tells me animatedly. “I’m heading home right now to pack and get a cab to the airport. Isn’t it insane?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “How long will you be gone?”

  “I’ll be back Friday evening. That will give me all day Saturday to rest up for the party.”

  Hope stops walking and looks at me. “What’s with you?”

  The anesthetic has now completely worn off, and it feels like someone jammed a knitting needle into my crotch
. “I had a procedure done today,” I tell her.

  “What kind of procedure?” she asks, concerned. I tell her about the blood in my urine and the cystoscopy, but leave out the part about the biopsy. “Turns out it was nothing,” I say offhandedly.

  “Well, you needed to be sure.”

  “Yep.”

  Hope takes my hand and smiles. “Well, I was going to suggest a bon voyage quickie at my place, but it sounds like you’re not up for it.”

  I nod, shuddering at the thought of intercourse in my current state. I suspect it would be something akin to putting my penis through a meat grinder. I think about my near infidelity at the WENUS gig, and thoughts of poetic justice and divine retribution run briefly through my head. “I’m not,” I say. “Thanks for the thought, though.”

  “Why don’t I get us a cab,” she says. “You drop me off, then go home and rest.”

  “Okay.”

  In Manhattan’s Darwinian traffic sprawl, only someone who looks like Hope can get a cab so quickly on Fifty-third and Park. I collapse into her on the seat, and she puts her arm around me, rubbing my back sympathetically, while her perfume puts up a valiant but futile struggle against the redolent stink of the driver’s body odor.

  As we ride uptown, I tell Hope about my father’s return. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she demands.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “It just didn’t seem real.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “I don’t know. Still a mess, I guess.”

  She nods. “Well, did you invite him to the party?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “He doesn’t belong there.”

  “He is your father,” she says. “Don’t you think I should meet him?”

  “Trust me, you don’t want him there,” I say.

  Hope gives me a look, and seems poised to say something, but then doesn’t, choosing instead to give me a soft kiss on my neck. “Well, you have a few days to think about it, I guess.”

  The cab drops her off in front of her building, on Eighty-ninth and Fifth. “ ’Bye,” she says, and gives me a long hard-lipped kiss. “You get some rest.” She pats my crotch gently. “I expect the both of you to be in top form when I get back.”

  “We’ll do our best.”

  “I’ll call you from the airport.”

  I tell her I’ll miss her, but by then she’s gotten out, and the taxi door slams on me in midphrase. As the cab heads west through Central Park, I wonder whether I’ve done the right thing, not telling her about the biopsy. She was on such a high about the London trip, I didn’t want to spoil her mood. She wouldn’t have been able to go off to London knowing that I’m sitting here on pins and needles waiting for the results. Still, I feel bad that I didn’t tell her. Or maybe I feel bad because I suspect she might have still gone anyway.

  Chapter 15

  This is what happens. You’re out at a bar on a cold Friday night with your two best friends, feeling inferior and hopeless because one, Jed, is the indisputable stud and the other, Rael, is newly married and just along for nostalgia’s sake, to bask in the utter irrelevance of it all. So one has nothing at stake and the other has nothing to prove and there you are in the middle, with plenty at stake and everything to prove, and no real prospects of success. It’s been eight months since your last relationship, six months since you’ve had any kind of sex, and that was of the desperate, rebounding nature, and you’re starting to feel invisible in the Big City, wishing you could go back home to your small town, where it was so much easier and the girls were so much more approachable, so much less jaded. Except that you don’t come from a small town; you come from here, or, at best, a soulless suburb of here, and there’s nowhere to go back to, so you’re just going to have to soldier on, get over your fear of rejection, and find someone who will somehow recognize that thing in you, that thing you can’t even recognize in yourself but you know is there, that will make you seem like a worthwhile investment, the thing that will somehow inspire a woman to take you home and exchange fluids and then stories and then secrets, in the hopes of finding a love that will fill you both up to the point where you can stop looking for it.

  Who could blame you for being a little drunk?

  Your crew is well positioned on three stools by a high table at the window, where you can watch the people come and go, and you’re joking around rowdily with Jed and Rael, hoping you look like three guys who could care less if there are even any women in the room, feeling self-conscious even though you know there’s no reason to, since no one’s really checking you out.

  And then you see her, standing with her girlfriend against the wall, holding her Coors bottle just a little too perfectly, not organically, not like someone who has a genuine relationship with longneck bottles. And she has this sweeping mane of sandy-colored hair and a square jaw that frames her features perfectly, features almost childlike in their delicacy, that bespeak a childhood of privilege and insulation. Her eyes are the blue of faded denim, her nose small and wide, like a kitten’s, and her cheeks soft and ever so slightly plump, the cheeks of a nymphet. And you know, instinctively, that she hates those cheeks, that she habitually looks into mirrors when she’s alone and sucks them in, and you want to tell her she shouldn’t, because, set as they are atop her lean, gym-toned body, and under those mesmerizing blue eyes, they’re two pockets of soft, flawless flesh that hold the infinite promise of untold pleasures, like the perfect ass above her lean, muscled legs, or the lovely, upturned breasts above the flat expanse of her abdomen. You know what it will feel like to brush those magnificent cheeks with your own, what those cheeks will look like from above with her eyes closed, lips parted, as you lie on top of her, lowering your head to kiss her open mouth.

  And you’re so caught up that you forget to man the controls of your disinterest, and she catches you staring at her, so there’s nothing left to do but get off your stool and, drink in hand, walk over to where she’s standing, and as you do, you feel an alien resolve clicking into place with the muted thunk of a luxury-car door, and since you’re already committed, you decide there’s nothing to lose.

  “I’m Zack,” you say, raising your voice to be heard above the din of the jukebox, the loud conversations going on around you, and the frenzied fluttering of the butterflies in your stomach.

  “Hope,” she says, extending her hand, and for the briefest instant you don’t realize it’s her name, but imagine that she’s wisely identified the defining motivation that brought everyone in the place out tonight.

  “There’s no easy way to break this to you,” you say, “so I’m just going to come right out with it. I’m here to hit on you.”

  Hope laughs, and it’s a rich, musical laugh, unguarded and comfortable, like you’re old friends. Not at all what you expected. “Well,” she says. “I appreciate your candor.”

  “May I begin?”

  “Go for it.”

  And what follows is two hours of perfect conversation, the kind you couldn’t have scripted if you wanted to, the kind where it becomes instantly apparent that your sensibilities and wits jibe, and when the conversation turns to banter, it’s easy and fun and never veers away from the substance of the discussion. And she quickly becomes familiar, touching your wrist when she laughs, leaning in to you easily when the crowd jostles her. And after a while, you realize your friends have left, and her girlfriend is long gone, and it’s with mixed feelings that you realize that they’re ringing last call at the bar, because on the one hand, when was the last time you made it to last call, but on the other, what the hell do you do now? You’ve long ago determined that tonight will not be about sex (as if it were up to you anyway), not because you don’t want it, God knows you do, but because you don’t want to ruin this one with a crude one-night stand. But you don’t want the night to end, either, even though it already has. So you offer to walk her home and she acquiesces, and that works out well because it’s bitterly cold outside and she d
oesn’t so much hold your arm as wrap herself around it, and the wind blows her hair into your face, drawing tears as it whips at your eyes, and there’s intimacy in this, so much more so than with casual sex. Her building is one of those posh monoliths on Fifth Avenue, and you start to say good night, your voice hoarse from hours of shouting above the jukebox, but she pulls you past the doormen—“Hi, Nick. Hi, Santos”—and into the elevator. And before you can work up the nerve for a good-night kiss, she does it first, kissing you deeply, hungrily, backing you up against the elevator wall, the full length of her body pressed against you, making you wish to God you weren’t both wearing thick coats. And this goes on for fifteen flights, and then a little bit more, since she doesn’t stop when the door slides open on her floor. And then she steps back, breathless and windswept, deliciously disheveled, and says, “That was lovely.” She pulls out a silver Cross pen from her bag and writes her name and number down on your hand, and under that she writes To Be Continued, and then she turns serious and says, “Listen, Zack. I’m not into games and I don’t like players. If you like me, call me, okay? There’s no appropriate waiting period. If I don’t hear from you tomorrow, I’ll assume you’re not interested.”

  “I passed interested about three hours ago,” you say.

  She smiles and kisses your nose. “Then I’ll speak to you tomorrow.” And then she ducks out and the door slides shut, and you fall to your knees, savoring the sweet pain of the unfulfilled erection shrinking in your pants, and offer a short prayer of thanksgiving as the elevator car slowly brings you back down to earth.

  We began dating after that, intensely and exclusively, and I kept waiting for the bubble to burst, for Hope to look across the table at me and realize that somewhere, an error had been made, that she’d mistaken me for somebody else. But her smile always seemed utterly sincere, and she laughed at my jokes and returned my kisses with unchecked ardor, and when we walked, she always reached for my hand while I was still considering the implications of reaching for hers. That was pretty much how it went, Hope leading the way while I refrained from making any moves, terrified of calling any undue attention to myself that might cause her to reconsider my general worthiness. But it never happened, and three weeks into it, as we climbed into a cab after a late Friday-night movie, she interrupted me as I started to give the driver her address, and gave mine instead, smiling out the window as I trembled silently beside her. When we got home, I unwrapped her like a gift and we fell into bed, and at some point during that thrilling, sleepless weekend, I forgot to worry about it and just accepted that she was mine, that it could really be this easy, and the way she devoured me left no doubts that I was hers as well.