Dirk
Istare at my reflectionin my shaving mirror, mercifully small, revealing only the parts of myself I need to see. No parsley stuck in my teeth. No whiskers missed. Graying temples and hair neat enough, even if it’s longer than Millie ever liked it.
Fifty pushups? Done. And the fifty sit ups, yes, though they nearly killed me. My daughter, Dee, is an exercise scientist – tells me every time I see her that if I don’t use my muscles, I’ll lose them.
Yes, I know a doctor should be healthy, but my patients were always in worse shape than I was. I focused on them, not myself.
Breakfast is over, my bowl placed neatly in the dishwasher. Teeth, shave, hair. Now to iron the shirt and retrieve the paper.
Millie always did the ironing. Jamison tells me I can request online that Mrs West do it each week, but I don’t mind the task. There’s a sense of satisfaction in ironing out wrinkles. If only there were irons for faces.
Steam rises as I press the hot metal against the fabric and release the fresh smell of the laundered cotton. Millie taught me to iron after her diagnosis.
“You’ll need to know,” she’d said in her earnest voice. She’d been wrong, and she’d been right, but now it’s part of my routine, the routine that holds me together now she’s gone.
“You won’t want to be one of those sad old men, unkempt.”
”Unkempt,” I tell my reflection in the tall mirror, and snort. I pat my stomach, draw myself to my full height and frown.
Jamison offered me a role in his business, but what can an old, burnt-out country doctor offer a slick city funds manager? Jamison uses his height and breadth well; moves and shakes it with the big end of town time after time, so he says. He inherited my build, but what do I know about money?
“It’s a people business, Dad,” Jamison told me yesterday over lunch. “Same as treating their sicknesses. People want solutions, answers, reassurance. They want to know where to park their money, and I give them options. Tell them what they need to hear. I’m just a money doctor with a talent for IT. You could do it with your eyes closed. You’re still smart, Dad. You could learn about our product offerings.”
“I’ll think about it.”
If my days are a little too long and a little too empty without my practice, I don’t plan to dwell on it.
I snort again at my reflection. Self-pity’s the worst, and self-pity about self-pity is beyond fruitless. The sun has risen, the newspaper awaits me – real paper, the sort you can flip through all day if you wish – down at the gate. I’ll have time to read every word, maybe even finish the cryptic crossword. I nailed it last Tuesday.
Lunch with the old boys at the club at noon will be followed by a long walk home, with all the world’s best crime novels to greet me on my return. It’s choir night tonight, too, with Walt, my old buddy from college. Tomorrow is film night at my old alma mater, for people like me, people they hope will leave a bequest one day. They also invite me to student art exhibitions and plays – daytime affairs that suit me if I’m free. I’m usually free. There’s still too much time on my hands, but at least there are options here in the city, so close to downtown. People who claim their lives are boring are boring people.
I turn on one heel, grab my keys, let the apartment door click shut behind me, and spring down the stairs – straight into something, someone – warm and fragrant and altogether far too soft and silky for comfort.
“Oooff!”
In the stairwell, the heavy bundle of human drops backwards below me, a slo-mo future fracture for sure, but I grab it, grab her – it’s a her – lest she tumble.
She finds her footing in silver slippered toes. In the crook of her arm is a newspaper, white against the lavish crimson silk of her gown. Her hair is lush and tousled as she shakes her head rapidly, like shampoo commercials I remember from my childhood. Shot with silver, the lustrous waves of it settle around her shoulders, around her curves as she grabs at the stair rail with bejewelled fingers.
I remember those diamonds. It’s her. Lucy. Impossible. What are the odds? Is she stalking me, or does she live here, too, at Brighton Court? Is Lucy the new tenant, below me?
I drink her in like a long cool, welcome glass of tonic; this vision. She’s every bit as striking as she was in Jill’s shop. Surprises are rare in my life these days. I thought I’d seen most things; done most things.
I close my eyes, open them, refocus on a mark on the wall that needs repainting. It’s a shame tenants drag their furniture up and down without enough care for the shared spaces.
“Excu ...” she begins.
“No, no. Excuse me. My fault entirely,” I say. Jamison or Dee would say “my bad” but such phrases never slide easily off my own tongue. “I wasn’t looking where ... is that my paper?”
“Oh. Is this yours?” Lucy’s voice is rich and modulated, amusement lurking just below the surface, a trained thing, on a leash. Is my new neighbor a retired diva or movie star? She’s nobody I recognise, yet she’s riveting, a vision.
“I wondered whose it was,” she says. “I was just going to scan the headlines, then pop it back.”
“That’s theft.” My smile is prim. I hate myself for it, but really ...
“Borrow it?” she says.
“Without permission.”
