Stash (17 page)

“You don’t have to answer.”

“We had a brief relationship before I met you,” Gwen said.

“Did it end before you started going out with me?”

“That’s what ended it.”

“I thought he was married then.”

“Do you want all the gory details?”

“No.” It was pretty much in line with what he suspected at the time. He and Gwen had never dissected each other’s past relationships, agreeing early on that the body count or details weren’t necessary
or desired. He leaned closer to his wife. “You were pretty protective of him in Roger’s office. It seemed like there might be something more going on.”

“What—then or now?”

“You tell me.”

“Stop it. Why are you doing this?” She felt a strange sensation of the remnants of Jude’s kiss on her lips. She wiped her mouth with her fingers. Brian sensed something, but she couldn’t tell him. That wouldn’t benefit anyone.

“But you’ve thought of him,” Brian said. “He’s the one you went to see when you were looking for weed.”

“I told you, he’s the only one I could think of. Don’t make a bigger deal out of this than it is.”

The kiss from Jude had not been a big deal. Nothing with Jude had been a big deal, even nine years ago, when she worked at the Patriot. Or it didn’t turn out to be one, whatever Gwen might have thought at first. Jude had taken an immediate interest in her, beyond the employer-employee relationship. But not romantic. Not sexual. Not at first. He protected her, like a big brother. He wouldn’t let her hang around after work if she had a class the next day. He had hired her although he knew she lied about experience, he showed flexibility with shift scheduling, and intervened when a fling she had with one of the cooks ended ugly and the guy started harassing her—making comments whenever she walked into the kitchen, showing up one night at her apartment and knocking on the windows, even slamming himself against her door trying to get in. Gwen wasn’t sure if Jude fired him or he quit, but she never saw or heard from that cook again. And while Jude seemed tuned in to her personal and academic life, she knew
little about him. Allegedly he had a wife, although he never talked about her and Gwen had never met her; not once had Gwen seen the woman in the Patriot. He also had a daughter, who unlike her mother did spend a lot of time at the Patriot, eating dinner in the kitchen, playing with dolls in an empty booth, eventually falling asleep on a cot in the office if the babysitter didn’t show up to take her home. She was a third or fourth grader then. Gwen helped her with homework a few times and taught her to sketch faces and fold paper into a cootie catcher that told fortunes.

One night Jude had to leave the restaurant in a hurry, pulling Gwen aside and telling her his wife had been taken to the emergency room, asking if Gwen could take Dana home after her shift. So he did have a wife.

He gave her the key to his house.

After work, Gwen lifted Dana from where she slept with a stuffed dog on a cot in the office and carried the sleeping girl and her pet down to her car. She drove to the address Jude gave her and parked in the driveway in front of a big wooden Victorian house with a turret and a porch. It was a historic house, completely restored, in one of the oldest neighborhoods.

When Gwen opened the door, Dana woke, asking where her father was.

“He had to go out for a little while,” Gwen explained.

“Are you my babysitter?”

“Yes, tonight I am.”

“Can I have ice cream?”

“It’s kind of late for ice cream,” Gwen said.

She escorted Dana up to her room. Sweet and sleepy, Dana leaned against Gwen as they climbed the stairs.

“Do you want me to help with your pajamas?” Gwen asked, but Dana had found her bed and was already drifting again. Gwen decided it was okay to let the girl sleep in her clothes, easier
than trying to get her undressed and dressed again. She tucked Dana in, pulling the blankets to her chin, then cinching them down a few inches. It wasn’t a cold night. She looked at the girl’s cheek for a few minutes, then leaned down and kissed it.

She went back downstairs and after poking around all the rooms fell asleep on the living room couch. She opened her eyes when Jude came in the front door. Her face stuck to the leather couch as she sat up; then she stood, wobbly, unsure of her environment. Had she gone out and then home with someone after work?

No.

In two long strides Jude stood in front of her. He placed a hand on each of her arms. He said, “Thank you so much. You really bailed me out.”

“How’s your wife?” Gwen asked. “What happened to her?”

“To be honest, she’s in a rehab facility right now. She was having convulsions and had to be taken to the emergency room.”

“I hope she’s okay. I didn’t know—I wouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, I’m glad you asked. You’re one of the few people I don’t mind telling,” Jude said. “How was Dana?”

“An angel—now a sleeping angel.”

She wanted to hear more about Claire, but Jude didn’t go on, and she didn’t ask. He said he was having a glass of wine and did she want one. He chose a bottle of red from a rack on the wall and poured two glasses. With a deep exhale he sunk in next to her on the couch and handed her a glass. He looked at her as if undecided about something. Then a movement, like a tremor, passed through his eyes. She thought he might kiss her and she prepared for it, panicking about her sticky mouth, her sleepy breath. She took a quick drink of wine and swished it around her mouth.

Nothing happened. Yet she was sure he wanted to. Kiss her. And he did, finally, after they’d shared a few lines of coke, smoked
a joint, and drank most of the bottle of wine, which turned out to be the recipe for Gwen to forget a little girl sleeping upstairs and a convulsive, addicted wife in the hospital. She was pretty wasted but fully into it and had sex with Jude twice on his plush leather couch. They fell asleep together covered by an afghan and Gwen opened her eyes only when someone shook her shoulder.

It was Dana, who’d heard a noise and come downstairs to get her daddy. “Are you going to be my new mommy?” she asked Gwen.

She left the house as pink dawn began to filter through the windows, head pulsing and stomach queasy.

They slept together a few more times—at her apartment—and she half expected something complicated and electrifying to start up, or maybe it already had. That churning feeling in her stomach from the first night never entirely toned down, the edge remained. But they never talked about their relationship; they gave each other no status reports; they didn’t take each other’s temperature. Jude didn’t bring up the subject and neither did she, but those late nights when he showed up at her apartment, she always let him in and didn’t ask about his wife. And then around that time she met Brian, which eliminated any chance of getting more involved with Jude, because she fell in love with Brian right away. He fit a vision of her ideal man in a way that Jude never would. She didn’t tell Brian about Jude. The recent all-nighter of getting wasted and having sex with her boss, then repeating, the sense of stepping along an edge—it wasn’t a talking point in a new relationship.

The waiter brought their lunch and two extra plates. Brian told the waiter to leave just the one plate in the middle and they’d share.

“Now who are you going to call?”

“What do you mean?”

“To get your supply.”

She shook her head no, she wasn’t going to be pulled into that conversation.

“All I’m asking is that you tell me if you do—and who it’s from,” Brian said.

“If I ever do, I’ll let you know.”

“So why were you so hesitant to give Gates’s name—considering the consequences to you and your family? You owe an old boyfriend such loyalty?”

“It’s called integrity, Brian. I gave him my word I wouldn’t say anything.”

“Did you get high with him when you picked up the pot?”

“No, and you already asked me that question. And he wasn’t my boyfriend.”

“So, you just smoked by yourself in the park.”

“Yes.”

He looked at her. Close to tears, but beautiful still—after almost nine years together and two kids and even or maybe especially now when she was upset. So she had a history of past relationships, what halfway normal person didn’t? She’d clipped her hair back this morning, the way he liked it, and put on more makeup than usual and even lipstick and the diamond earrings Brian had given her when Nate was born. With the stitches out, just a thin red line remained where her eyebrow was starting to grow back. She wore a chocolate skirt paired with one of his favorite blouses, pure white with simple pearl-like buttons, sheer enough that you could see the outline of her camisole when she leaned and the fabric formed to her. One extra button open at the top showing the tiny birthmark to the left of center. Earlier, he’d wanted to punish her for withholding Jude’s name for so long.
Now he wanted to make love to her. He wished he could blow off his meeting and take her to a hotel for the afternoon.

He put down his fork and reached and held her free hand.

“I know this was hard for you, I don’t mean to twist it into something it’s not. You did the right thing.”

“I don’t know if he’s a drug dealer or not,” Gwen admitted. “Really, how can I know what he does? But if he isn’t and is just doing me a favor, then I don’t want to be the person that gets him harassed. And if he is some kind of drug dealer, I don’t want him knowing I snitched on him.”

“He won’t know.”

“And his daughter, Dana. What happens to her if Jude gets in trouble?”

“There’s nothing we can do about it. They have their life and we have ours.”

“She’s only eighteen.”

“What about his wife? What happened to her?”

“Ran off years ago from a rehab facility, I think it was just after I stopped working at the Patriot. Hasn’t been seen or heard from since.”

Brian looked at his watch; he had to get back for his one o’clock with Jennifer Stallworth.

“So for you it was an integrity issue?”

“Weren’t you taught not to be a tattletale?”

Brian nodded. “Sometimes you have no choice—or your choices aren’t good and you have to pick the one that does the least damage.”

“While preserving your integrity.”

“If you can. If you have your priorities straight, then integrity flows from that. You make decisions based on your priorities—on what’s important to you.” He might as well have been talking about his situation at work, trying to discover where priorities and
integrity fit in. He wanted to discuss it with Gwen, but this wasn’t the right time.

“You’re saying I was wrong to buy pot from Jude—or from anyone?”

Brian shook his head. “If you want it, you have to get it somewhere, and there aren’t a lot of options in our circle. And if you don’t know anyone, how do you go about asking? Who do you approach without risking a stain on your reputation?”

“It’s definitely not college dorm days where you could follow the smell down the hall and everyone knew the resident dealer.”

The waiter returned to clear. The plate was empty except for a curl of gristle Brian had trimmed off one end of the steak. Gwen had managed to eat her share.

Did they want dessert or coffee?

Before Gwen could answer Brian said no, just the check, they had to leave.

“You need to get back?” Gwen asked.

“I’ve got a meeting in thirty minutes. But I’d rather spend the afternoon with you in bed.”

“That’s a nice offer—or it could be.”

But he had only enough time to walk Gwen to her car and make out for a few minutes.

Brian was on the phone with Dr. Marta Everson, whom he knew from industry conferences and Caladon’s physician seminars. A short, caved-in woman with tight coils of oily hair springing from her head, Dr. Everson looked like the absentminded professor, garbed in stained clothes and eyeglasses worn askew on her nose. She promoted herself aggressively, published widely, and lectured incessantly. She contributed a monthly health column for
Female
magazine and served as an expert source of quotes for journalists working on women’s health stories. You could find her speaking at medical conferences and trade shows on her favorite topics. Caladon paid her to travel to resorts and present “Trends in Obesity Treatment,” an educational seminar for physicians, where she subtly spread the word about Zuprone. Onstage or in front of a room, despite her physical deficiencies, she had the dynamic presence of a Hollywood starlet. Brian believed a lot of her success as a presenter had to do with her voice, which was rich and resonant as an oboe, sexual even, in complete opposition to her appearance.

“How many patients did you say were in your study?” Brian asked.

“I’m tracking twelve patients for whom I’ve prescribed Zuprone for weight loss, and three are showing significant symptoms of anorexia.”

Well, there you go. That’s weight loss, isn’t it?

He shouldn’t have had the extra glass of wine at lunch with Gwen.

“How long have they been taking Zuprone?”

“Between six and eighteen months.” That husky voice, making
six
sound like
sex
. Although no one would be taking Zuprone for sex, since one of its documented side effects was reduced sex drive in those treated for anxiety. Which seemed to Brian a case of piling on the anxiety, not mitigating it.

“What dosage are you prescribing?”

“120 milligrams daily.”

“That’s twice the recommended dosage,” Brian pointed out.

“For anxiety, yes. There are no recommended doses for weight loss—it’s not FDA approved for that indication.”

As if she were telling him news.

“The fact is, Brian, you have a serious issue with Zuprone and you must do something about it.”

“It could be a dosing issue.”

“Are you a licensed physician?” Everson asked, knowing the answer. “It’s common knowledge among the medical community that 120 milligrams is the weight-loss dosage. It’s what I’ve been mentioning in the seminars.”

“That’s right, the seminars,” Brian said. “Caladon is paying you to present at seminars twice a month.”