The Pursuit of Alice Thrift. Elinor Lipman
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“You don’t? You can’t think of any reason a guy would want to see you outside the hospital?”
I said, “If this is leading up to a compliment, I’d prefer you didn’t. I wouldn’t believe it anyway.”
He reached over and turned a page of the menu so “Pesce” was before me. “Doctors—they watch what they eat and they know about good cholesterol. What about a piece of salmon?”
I said fine, that would be fine.
“And here we go,” said Ray as the waitress made room on the table for our oval platter of deep-fried, lumpen morsels. “I’ll have the usual,” he said, “and the lady will have the salmon.”
“Cooked through,” I said.
Ray winked at me and said, “If she looks at it under the microscope, she doesn’t want to see anything moving.”
“Remind me what your usual is …”
“Vingole,” he said. “Red.”
The waitress asked if she could at some point talk to me in the ladies’ room. It would only take a sec.
“Ask her here,” said Ray.
“Can’t,” said the waitress. “She’s gotta see it.”
I said no, I couldn’t. I was in training. I wasn’t qualified. I’d only rotated through plastic surgery. No, sorry—shaking my head vigorously.
“Are you okay?” Ray asked her. “I mean, is there, like, an infection?”
I was immediately ashamed of my lack of even basic medical curiosity. Here a civilian was saying the right thing, exhibiting a bedside manner that years of schooling had not fine-tuned to any degree of working order in me. So I said, “Is something wrong, or did you just want to show me the results?”
She turned away from Ray and whispered, “One of the nipples. It looks different than before, a little off-kilter.”
“Did you call your doctor?” I asked.
“I’m seeing him in a week. So I’ll wait. It’s probably nothing.”
Ray broke off a piece of bread and dipped it into a saucer of olive oil. “How long could it take, Doc?” he asked.
THE NIPPLE WAS fine—merely stressed by an ill-fitting brassiere—but it gave Ray an early advantage, establishing him as a more compassionate listener than I. He was now drinking a glass of something that looked like a whiskey sour. Mathematically half of the appetizers were awaiting my return. “How is she?” he asked.
“Fine. But I’d like to explain why I resisted. It’s not like the old days. The hospital’s malpractice insurance doesn’t cover diagnoses based on quick glances in the ladies’ room.”
He smiled and said, “She could sign a release that said, ‘My patron at table eleven, Dr. Thrift, is held harmless as a result of dispensing medical advice to me in the ladies’ room of II Sambuco.’”
I said, “If I seemed a little cold-hearted—”
“Nah. You’d be doing this every time you left your house.”
I might have expanded then on my life: That when I left the house, it wasn’t with an escort at my elbow, introducing me left and right as Dr. Thrift, surgeon. I didn’t socialize. I worked long hours and went home comatose. The hospital was teeming with people who wanted to talk, idly or professionally—it didn’t matter. My day was filled with hard questions, half-answers, nervous patients, demanding relatives, didactic doctors. Why would I want to make conversation at night?
“Speaking of your house,” he said, “you never answered my question about roommates.”
“I have one,” I said.
“Another doctor?”
“A nurse, actually.”
“Are you friends?”
“We share the rent,” I said. “But that’s the extent of it. Occasionally we’ll eat dinner or breakfast together, but rarely.”
“How’d you pair up if you’re not friends?”
“An index card on a bulletin board. I think it said, ‘Five-minute walk to hospital. Safe neighborhood. No smokers.’”
“How many bedrooms?”
“Two. Small.”
He launched into a discussion of the rental market—about places I could probably afford that had health clubs, swimming pools, Jacuzzis, off-street parking, central vacs, air-conditioning, refrigerators that manufactured ice …
I tried to stifle a yawn. “I’m usually in bed by this hour.”
“Is she a good roommate?” he asked. “Considerate and all that?”
“It’s a guy,” I said. “Leo.”
“Gay?” he asked.
I said, “Not that I pay attention, or not that he’s flagrant in his dating habits, but when he does entertain guests, they’re women.”
This was what I deserved for agreeing to dine with a garrulous expatient. I asked if this was normal social intercourse for him—drilling virtual strangers about their home life and housemates.
“I’m getting to know you,” he said. “You’re welcome to ask me questions, too.”
So I asked, “Do you live in an apartment?”
“A house.” He bit his lip. “Alone. At least now.”
“Now?” I repeated.
He drained his whiskey sour and blotted his mouth with his big maroon napkin. “I was married,” he said. “And then I was widowed.”
The waitress was back with our entrées just in time to hear his declaration. After leaving the plates, she stayed, as if waiting for the next cold blast from my arsenal of bad manners.
“I’m so sorry,” I said to Ray. “How long ago?”
“A year and a day,” he said.
I said to the waitress, “I think we’re all set for now.”
“More bread when you have a chance,” said Ray.
I asked how his wife had died.
“Not from natural causes.”
“Automobile?”
“Yes,” he said. He raised his wineglass. “If you don’t mind, I’d just as soon not go into the details. It’s too upsetting.”
“Of course,” I said.
He scooped a littleneck from its shell and chewed it with something like rapture.
I dug in, too. My salmon was dry, but I’d brought that on myself.
“Good?” asked Ray. “Because I was hoping you’d really like this place.”
“Excellent,” I said.
And this is exactly how a woman agrees to see a man a second time after finding him neither interesting, intelligent, nor compelling: He announces that he is a recent widower, vulnerable, like a man without an epidermis. That you are his first plunge into the treacherous waters of the Sea of Dates. Thus, when he finds the courage to ask if you’d like to do this again sometime—try another place, maybe Chinese or Ethiopian, maybe take in a movie—you say yes or you say no, and you understand that the look on your face and the speed of your answer will harm him, help him, or possibly save his life.