The Wilder Sisters (4 page)

Oh, what was the use of sleep, really? Lie down in the darkness and shut your eyes for eight hours. If the mystical antidote to daytime graced her—rare these days—bad dreams were likely to follow, or thoughts of quarterly tax payments, or orders she needed to write on medical products she no longer felt she could totally stand behind, or the egomaniacal surgeons she needed to fly twelve hundred miles to take out to a five-course dinner they didn’t have to pay for. All this to keep her in the winner’s circle, to play hardball with those bad boys

infected with MBA-itis. Such thoughts rose up like guffawing armies of nocturnal hyenas. Hyenas made her think of Buddy Guy, her overweight Queensland heeler, banished to the laundry room be- cause he did not approve of men sharing Lily’s bed. One guy she dated before Blaise had enjoyed both Lily’s company and a trip to the emergency room for stitches on the first date. The thing was, she loved sleeping with Buddy Guy. In fact, she worshipped her bad doggie more than any male on the planet. She would rather have his chubby blue-gray hide snuggled next to her than anyone, even Michael Jordan, who—face it—was a god in a mortal man’s skin. Buddy could sit up and beg, which in males was incredibly rare. He could play dead, which was not. Buddy had every single toy she’d ever bought him, squeakers intact, and he had learned to
put them away
in his basket. That was miraculous in those sporting the male appendage, though she’d had Buddy neutered when he was nine months old. Also, Buddy liked kissing. He’d slobber and lick until Lily yelled,
No more
! and even then try it one more time just in case she didn’t mean it. She lay down and put her head against her pillow, even though sleep was definitely out of the question.

Some days
, she mused, her blood jittering in her veins,
it seems like Krisprolls are the only thing that fills me
. As she shut her eyes, she wondered if one of the chemical components of semen could possibly be caffeine.

Meanwhile, in the laundry room, the reek of Outdoor Fresh Bounce dryer sheets abounded. Buddy had shredded the entire box of forty and chewed through the laundry basket as well. In its weave he could smell the ghost-aroma of Lily’s sweat-stained workout clothes, an odor that panicked him into thinking he might never see her again. Plastic was wonderfully satisfying, however, and chewed into tiny pieces it went down the gullet like butter. Buddy was bored, pissed off at not getting to sleep in the big bed, and he didn’t like the way the cabinetmaker had put his hands all over Lily during supper. In his wicker-and-flannel Dingo Den, Buddy tried to sleep, but when he closed his eyes, deep in the primal sections of his brain a nebulous idea of chasing sheep reared up. Buddy had never seen sheep and wouldn’t know one if it fell out of the dryer’s lint trap, but he desperately wanted to guide a herd into the proper field. Moonlight crept in through the

garage window, illuminating the front quarter panel of Lily’s creamy white leased Lexus. Buddy didn’t like the look of the windshield wipers, set at an angle like that, ready to swoop down like cabinet- maker’s hands. He got up, stretched all four legs, then sauntered nonchalantly over to the car. Wipers still there, still dangerous. He strained until he could take hold of the driver’s-side victim in his teeth. Oh yes, rubber. He knew it well. A close relative of plastic.

His five-hundred-dollar private obedience-training course disap- peared in a flash of instinct. For three or four minutes he became a feral dog, fierce to his bones, tearing the throat from a marauding wildcat. There. His precious Lily would never have to worry about sudden movements from that bastard again. Any minute now she’d open the door, throw him a biscuit, and shower him with praise.

“Later, baby. Got to get to the jobsite. Thanks for the shower fun. Hey, don’t make that Mexican pig dish again,
por favor
?”

Lily stood dripping in the shower stall, already late for her first appointment. Had she heard that right? Blaise dissing
posole
? Her family legacy, a recipe with more than two ingredients, not to men- tion made from scratch? “Excuse me?”

“You know, with the pork and the swollen corn? Last time you made that crap it gave me the runs. I was up all night,
señorita
.”

She wrapped a towel around her hair. “Don’t try to talk Spanish to me, Blaise. Coming out of your mouth it sounds racist.”

“Oh, lighten up. You know I dig your brown sugar. Both kinds.” He covered his wide mouth with his palm, and
woo-woo
ed like a cartoon Indian.

They shared a moment of profound silence. Seemingly of its own volition, her still-wet hand closed around the tall white cylinder of Paul Mitchell mousse and aimed it like a shotgun at the arrogant carpenter. One French-manicured finger fired. It struck Lily this was exactly what her mother’s ancestors should have done generations back to every smiling white face that walked into Floralee to claim the land and shame the culture out of the people. But at this moment all Lily wanted to do was obliterate the half-assed picky eater, even if it meant she had to go to work with flat hair.

“Catch.” She threw him a towel. “From now on, Blaise, make your own damn dinner. And when you go, leave your key on the counter.”

He sputtered and wiped at his eyes. “Come on, Lily, you know I didn’t mean it like that.”

“There isn’t any other way to mean it,” she said. “I want you out the door in five seconds, voluntarily, or Buddy will be delighted to escort you.”

Blaise took a step toward her. “You’re a fucking bitch.”

The words stung, but Lily continued to point the can. “Maybe I am. But I’m armed.”

He backed out of the bathroom and down the hallway. As soon as she heard the front door shut, Lily sat down on the toilet and cried her brown eyes out for exactly five minutes, since that was all the time she had to spare. Then she dressed in her copper size 6 Dana Buchman suit, blow-dried her long, dark hair, tugged on her dreaded pantyhose, kissed Buddy thirty-five times (once for each year of her life), filled his dish with gourmet biscuits, and ran out the door. She drove onto the 5 freeway, pasting dollar signs in the pupils of her red-rimmed eyes, and merged with the unrelenting traffic. Immediately some balding control freak in an orange Dodge Viper cut her off. She pressed the button for the windshield washer, which had worked fine yesterday, and received only a windshield scratch for her efforts. How much would that cost to fix? She sighed, lifted her car phone and punched in the code for her messages.

Ms. Wilder, I’ve got a ten o’clock gallbladder scheduled for OR number four. Nothing special, but I’d like it if you observe
…

Wouldn’t it just figure. Dr. Help-Me-I-Can’t-Do-This-Procedure. Exactly what she needed on a Friday morning when the rest of her life had gone completely to hell. Usually her Fridays ended at eleven o’clock, and she drove out to the stables to ride for three hours. Rent- string horses weren’t the same as owning your own, but she’d made friends with a sweet little paint gelding, and the guy who ran the rentals usually saved him for her. Now, instead, she could look for- ward to freezing to death in the OR. Three months back Dr. Help- Me had some old lady split open from sternum to pubic bone, then got hung up on the phone with his attorney. The anesthesiologist hadn’t smoked the patient deep enough, and she’d sat up in the middle of the procedure. Lily’d had to break scrub—violate the sterile field in order to keep the patient’s guts from spilling out onto the floor like a hara-kiri victim’s.

Her job was insane—surgeons pulling down a jillion dollars a year, Lily doing half their work, making a fraction of their salaries, fielding their constant innuendo.
Why’s a pretty package like you still single? Are you a lesbian? Why won’t you go out with me
?

Because I don’t date freaks
, she wanted to answer.
Have me arrested
. But she had to grin and bear it and keep those orders coming in, even to the point of observing surgery. Lily Adrienne Wilder, aka the LAW: top gun in laparoscopic sales in Southern California. She crept along in the traffic, painting a picture of the Floralee ranch house in her mind’s eye. How good it would feel to sit on the wraparound porch in one of those falling-apart rockers, a cold drink in her hand, and stare all day at the Sangre de Cristos. Rum and Coke—now there was an autumn beverage, the rich, deep shade of a bay horse’s mane. She remembered family picnics at Ghost Ranch, stuffing herself on her mother’s tamales, Pop puffing on his pipe—Captain Black, White Label—that sweet-smelling smoke get- ting tangled in her hair as he told her story after story under the sky. How she missed that wide-open blue, blue sky with the impossibly white clouds scudding across it, that catch-in-your-throat sky. Back then, there was all the time in the world to get to Happily Ever After. Then, as her last resort, because it hurt her as much as it cheered her up, she recalled every detail of the best sex she’d ever had, which wasn’t sex at all, but making love, to Tres Quintero, her high school boyfriend, their clothes strewn along the banks of the Rio Grande. Tres had gifted hands, that magic middle finger, and the instincts of a cougar. What could compare to the feel of a man’s callused hands on your body when the calluses came from real work? Or getting your butt as tan as your shoulders? Rose told her that only sluts sunbathed nude.
Damn Rose anyway. Philip dies, and she won’t even let me say I’m sorry. That stripper thing was supposed to be a joke. Not to mention happened a million years ago. I need a drink
, Lily thought.
It’s eight o’clock in the freaking morning, and I want a pitcher of martinis, delivered intravenously. Either that, or to do my last nine years over
.

The patient was thirty-five years old, five years under the Fat, Fair, and Forty adage that seemed uncannily to support gallbladder dis- ease in Caucasian American women. But her ultrasound showed serious thickening of the organ’s wall, and she presented the typical profile:

intractable pain penetrating all the way through to her upper back and right shoulder, an indulgence in and intolerance to a high-fat diet. Lily stood to the surgeon’s right, watching the amiable anes- thesiologist explain what he was doing in an attempt to soothe the patient.

“This surgery’s very common. One hour and we’ll have you back out there with your husband. Here we go now. Some patients say they experience a taste in their mouth from the anesthetic similar to garlic. Do you? Okay, then I’d like you to begin counting backward from one hundred.” At the corners of his surgical mask Lily could see the man’s mouth turn up in an honest smile. She liked the gas docs. Their egos came in size medium.

The patient’s smile faded as the anesthetic began to take effect. She had only gotten to number ninety-eight. As her lids lowered, Lily wiggled her gloved fingers and said, “Bye.”

Meanwhile Dr. Help-Me fumbled with the trocar, probing the surgical cavity a little too enthusiastically for Lily’s taste, and nearly dropped the laparoscope. Lily waited patiently, not even bothering to look at the monitor screen. The videotape was a formality; these days a cholecystectomy was a breeze, finished off with internal staples. Thanks to her company’s innovative products and health care’s primary concern being cutting the expense of patient care while rewarding physicians with incentives, the days of lengthy in- cisions and weeklong hospital recoveries had become historical footnotes. Thanks to their regulations, she had to stand here and watch.

“Favorite Hawaiian island,” the anesthesiologist said, posing a discussion subject, something he and Lily often did because it gave them something to talk about when the surgeries were routine.

“Kauai, I guess.”

“What’s wrong with Maui?”

“Give me a break. Who wants to fly six hours to bump elbows with tourists?”

“I admit Maui’s gotten a little touristy, but the golf courses are to die for. And restaurants. It’s got the best eats.”

“Hawaiian vacations are about island wilderness and beaches,” Lily insisted, “not five irons and four-star dining. Um, doctor, do you really want to use that approach? I think the one we practiced might give you a better view.”

“I’m fine here,” he said, switching to her suggestion.

“Yes, you’re doing great,” Lily said, crossing her fingers. And he
did
seem to be getting the hang of things. Her neck was cramping with tension, and she tried to relax. She glanced up at the clock, as- sessing his time. He was almost on track.

“Australia’s got wonderful beaches,” the gas doc said. “Never been there,” Lily answered. She couldn’t afford it. “Try it sometime.”

“I don’t know. I think that long a plane ride might kill me. I get antsy after six hours.”

“Take a Xanax and upgrade to first class.”

Easy for someone who made all that money to say. “Tranqs don’t do much for me except make me hyper.”

“Really?”

“Yep. Like putting hyperactive kids on Ritalin. Exact opposite ef- fect.”

Dr. Help-Me looked over at them. “You know, Wilder, I bet you’d look pretty good on a topless beach.”

Definitely better than you would
, Lily thought. No way was she going to venture into sexual harassment territory while he had one of her laparoscopes in this woman’s abdomen. “How about we just finish up here and call it a day?” she said. “There’s all weekend for swim- suits.”

“I thought you were going to take me to lunch. I might want to approve that order, but I really can’t make a decision on an empty stomach.”

Lunch. Two hours of his knees poking hers under some trendy café table. But if he came through on this order, she’d earn a seven- hundred-dollar bonus, and that second territory she wanted might be within reach. “I guess there’s time to grab a quick bite.”

He gave her a wink. This Portly Short, a set of jowls on him like a bulldog, and
married
, not that that small inconvenience seemed to have made a dent in his overinflated ego, winked. “Your technique’s really improving,” she said, hoping a little flattery might redirect the heat.

“I graduated from USC, didn’t I?”