The Ladies' Man (9 page)

“Please start,” Nash says.

Richard removes the toothpicks from his sandwich, and uses both hands to manage the triple-decker half.

“Your steak is just the way I like it,” Nash tells Adele.

Richard says, “Mine's delicious.”

Nash says, “What's yours again?”

“The lobster B.L.T.”

Nash asks if a lobster B.L.T. is a new regional dish, all the rage in Boston, because he saw it on the room-service menu at his hotel and had been tempted.

“Where are you staying?” Adele asks. She lifts the fork to her mouth, English-style, tines downward, elbows perfectly poised.

Nash replies cheerfully, “The Copley Plaza.”

Adele gasps. With a sharp intake of breath she inhales her first bite of steak, and it is gone—there, but not there. She cannot chew or swallow or talk. In an instant she recognizes what is happening, the excruciating embarrassment of choking in public, and the knowledge that she could die. She tries again to swallow and to find air before she must signal wildly that something is wrong.

“Adele?” says Richard, putting his napkin on the table, then his hand on her back. “What's wrong?” He stands up. “Are you
choking
?”

She tries again to make it go away. Her eyes are pleading for civilized behavior, for putting a discreet end to this potential public scene. But the piece of steak is unswallowable, lodged in a place that has no muscle and no traction.

“She's choking,” Nash says, and he is behind her, ripping off his jacket. “Stand up,” he commands. His arms encircle her, and his fingertips probe below her rib cage. He pulls a fist into her stomach, but futilely. Again, harder. Another try with his hands reversed, right pressing left. People are watching, gathering.

Nash jerks again, harder. His face is next to Adele's and he recognizes, in his growing panic, a familiar and pleasing scent from his youth, her perfume. “Oh, God,” Nash cries. He thinks he is breaking her bones under his hands, rupturing organs, but he doesn't stop. “Do something,” Richard is yelling. Nash answers with his best upward thrust. He hears a sound, a pop, from inside Adele, and at the same time the morsel of steak flies out of her mouth. It lands—more humiliation—in plain view on a white square of tile. Adele inhales noisily and exhales with a sob. Nash tries to turn her into his embrace, but she is in her brother's arms now. Richard is crying and smoothing her hair.

Nash stands to one side, stunned. Someone tries to shake his hand, but he waves theirs away. Richard is beseeching Adele to speak, to take a deep breath, to sit. A waiter hands him a clean linen napkin and leaves quickly with the offending platter of steak. Richard wipes her mouth and her tearing eyes, studying her face for signs of the old Adele.

“Let's get her out of here,” says Nash. “Let's get a cab.”

“The bill—” says Richard. “Fuck the bill,” says Nash.

The maître d' is begging their pardon, picking Nash's jacket off the floor and smoothing it with a solicitousness meant for a human casualty.

Richard takes the first step toward the door, one arm around Adele. “My purse,” she says weakly. A man, another diner, grateful to be of help, jumps forward and offers the pocketbook tenderly as if placing a wreath at a headstone.

“I'm okay,” Adele murmurs.

“Does your stomach hurt?” asks Nash. “Or your ribs? I might have done some damage. You're as white as a ghost.”

“She seems to be fine,” says the maître d'. “Absolutely I'd say so.”

“Maybe you should be checked out,” says Richard.

“No,” says Adele.

“Not now. At some point …” says Nash.

“Should I call Kathleen at work?” asks Richard. “She'll kill me if I don't. I know she'd want to come home early.”

The suggestion annoys Adele, and thereby restores her: “What the hell will Kathleen do? Besides bawl all over her silk underwear?”

Nash is also revived. Kathleen? he wonders. Which one is Kathleen?

R
ichard drives, and Nash sits in the back seat, trying to minister to Adele, who is having none of it. She leans against the window, as far away as she can slide from Nash, who reaches over paternally, and locks the door. “Don't want you falling out,” he says with a wink.

“Of all the hotels in Boston …?” She closes her eyes. “On one hand it's unbelievable. On the other hand, classic.”

“What happened to the Holiday Inn, by the way?” asks Richard.

Nash considers where he'd like to lead this conversation, and chooses unwisely. “Something drew me to the Copley Plaza. I know that now. On some unconscious level I must have wanted to go back and fix things.”

“Please,” says Adele. “Whom do you think you're talking to?”

Nash says to Richard, “I understand how she feels. I really do. A Heimlich maneuver can only fix so much.”

“She's tough,” says Richard. “Probably the toughest.”

“Of the girls, you mean?”

“Women,”
Adele snaps.

Nash settles back, belatedly buckles his seat belt, and sighs. “How about you?” he asks Richard. “What are you up to these days?”

“I work for the Sheriff's Department,” he says. “Suffolk County.”

“He delivers subpoenas,” Adele says, in a tone that tells Richard she resents his easy conspiracy with the enemy.

“No kidding? Full-time?”

“Lots of cases, and lots of asshole witnesses out there,” he says.

“How does someone get into that line of work?”

“By accident.”

Adele clicks her tongue in annoyance.

“What?” says Richard. “Am I being too nice to him? Maybe a little too grateful for saving my sister's life?”

Nash asks humbly, “Is my going back to the house out of the question?”

“You
are
going back to the house,” says Richard.

“No, he's not.”

“Ever see anyone bounce back from death as fast as this one?” asks Richard.

“I'm in pain,” says Adele. “I'm in no mood to be teased.”

“What kind of pain?” asks Nash.

“Are you having trouble breathing?” says Richard.

Adele is looking out the window, refusing to answer. She touches her midsection and Nash notices.

“It's sore?” She nods.

“Sore like it's bruised from the punching, or like I broke something?”

Adele shrugs.

Richard asks what she said.

Adele snaps, “Just sore. I'm not a doctor.”

“We'll call him when we get home. Maybe he should see you.”

Adele is feeling under her ribs. Something hurts, but she doesn't speculate aloud on what. “I should go back to work,” she says.

The X-ray shows a broken rib, which the doctor says can, on the rare occasion, result from a misapplied Heimlich. But still, he points out, Adele is a lucky woman. Go home and have a glass of wine and count your blessings; if you cough or sneeze, splint your side with your hand.

Richard and Nash are waiting in molded blue chairs, sharing a package of peanut-butter crackers. Nash spots her first.

“I'm fine,” says Adele. “One broken rib—an ‘undisplaced fracture.' ”

“Did I do that?” asks Nash.

“A small price to pay,” says Richard.

“Does it hurt like hell?” asks Nash.

Richard says, “Only when she laughs.”

Nash says, “I want to pay any and all of your medical bills.”

“That's ridiculous. I have insurance. Besides, they don't do anything for a broken rib. It heals itself.”

Richard says, “He saved your life today. Maybe
you
can't say thank you, but I can.”

Adele says without expression, “Thank you for saving my life. My brother is very grateful.” She turns to Richard. “Where did you park?”

He points out the plate-glass window to a cylindrical garage and says he'll bring the car around.

“Don't be ridiculous. I'm not an invalid.”

Nash asks Richard, “Don't you have to work? Don't you have subpoenas to deliver?”

Richard says, “Yes, but—”

“We'll take a taxi,” says Nash. “If that's okay with your sister.”

“It won't be,” says Richard.

Adele sits on an adjacent green chair, wincing. “I have no say in anything, apparently. You two work it out. I just want to go home and forget this ever happened.”

“At least she's given up the return-to-work crusade,” says Richard.

“I have to call them,” says Adele. “They'll think I fell under a train.”

“I'll call,” says Richard.

“And say what?”

Richard knows what she'd like him to say:
I came down with something at lunch. I had to go to the emergency room
. “It's best to tell them exactly what happened,” he says. “They're your friends. They should know you almost choked to death, and now you have a broken rib, in case someone wants to wrap you in a bear hug when you get back.”

“Unlikely.”

“Near-death experiences,” Nash says solemnly, “are the kinds of things that can change a person's whole outlook. People leave jobs, marriages, go start new cults. Books have been written on such topics.”

“Whole hours on
Larry King Live
have been devoted to such survival stories,” says her brother.

Adele says, “I don't find either of you remotely funny.”

Nash is skilled at reducing chapters of his history to short paragraphs. “Her name was Dina,” he narrates on the short taxi ride back to the Dobbin apartment. “We stayed together much longer than was good for either one of us.”

“Then what?” asks Adele.

“That's it. There's no more to tell.”

“I meant, Did you get your own place? Did you move onto a friend's couch? Did she?”

“Oh, you mean real estate. Of course I let Dina have the house. She's what they call a reflexologist—she massages feet for a living—and she has an office there, and a big table. Also, she wouldn't have to change her phone number or get new cards printed up.”

Adele leans forward, holding her side and a five-dollar bill, to tell the driver that it's the apartment building with the slate face, just ahead on the left.

“I'll take you up,” says Nash. “I promised Richard.” He rushes around to her side, opens her door, and extends his hand. Adele ignores it. He takes her elbow just the same.

She says, “If it appears to you that I'm being hospitable, I'm not. I'm waiting to hear the rest of your life's story, and since you haven't told me one damn thing that explains why you ran away and why you came back, I figure this might be an opportunity to interrogate you.”

“I welcome it,” says Nash.

“I expect my sisters will turn up before long. I'd like you to be gone by then.”

“Of course,” says Nash.

“You have a way of charming people,” says Adele. “I seem to be the only one immune to it, but I don't think my sisters will be. If you're here when Kathleen comes home, she'll be weepy with gratitude and invite you to dinner.”