I look him in the eye now and say, “Don’t make this harder than it has to be, Connor. The business is a mare’s nest right now. You know that. We’re losing patients left and right. It isn’t personal. I can’t afford to keep you on board.” And then I make all sorts of promises I’d make if I had to let anybody go, how I’d write a letter of recommendation, I’d put in calls to a few colleagues around town.
Connor’s eyes avert from mine, and he raises a hand to get the waitress’s attention, ordering a Dos Equis when she stops by. A Dos Equis. It’s only noon, and Connor has patients to see later today. He’s trying to provoke me, to get me to tell him what he can and can’t do. “Connor,” I say to him. “I don’t mean today. I’m not laying you offright now.There’s time to find a new job. I didn’t mean so soon.”
He shrugs. “Who said I had any plans of leaving today?”
The problem with Connor has to do with a problem with authority. A disregard for it. Connor doesn’t work well when he’s under someone else’s leadership. He wants to be the guy in charge. His last position he was fired from—or rather, asked to resign—because he went head-to-head with the boss too many times. Connor works well with me because I never treat him like an employee; we’re far more of a partnership.
Connor hasn’t held the same position for any two years in a row now, and this laundry list of jobs on his résumé will soon raise red flags.
“You have patients to see this afternoon, Connor,” I remind him. “You know I can’t let you see patients if you’ve been drinking,” I say as the waitress delivers the green bottle to his hand, and he raises it to his lips, taking a long, slow swig. He maintains eye contact all the time, staring at me, a challenge.
“Then fire me,” he says, with a look in his eye I really don’t like. One that’s charged and combatant, looking for a fight, and I know what that guy in the bar must have felt like months ago as Connor sidled up behind him and jabbed him in the nose.
“Oh, wait,” Connor says now, laughing, “you already have.”
But the laughter dies quickly, and he stares at me in a way that doesn’t back down.
“I didn’t fire you,” I say. “This is different. You know that, Connor. You know I wouldn’t do this if I had some other choice. This isn’t personal,” I tell him, pushing the plate of nachos supreme away. I’m no longer hungry.
“After everything I put into the practice,” he says, and without meaning to, I ask, “What? What did you put into the practice?” which makes him more mad.
“The patients I brought on board,” he spits, though the number of patients Connor brought into the practice was negligible. Most of the patients we have are mine, who I gladly share with him. Except that now I need them back.
“You wouldn’t have Clara if it wasn’t for me,” he reprises, Connor’s favorite refrain. “You wouldn’t have Maisie or that baby.”
“Leave my family out of this,” I say, voice composed.
“Your family is already part of this,” he says. “Your family, my family. We’re all family,” he tacks on, and then he laughs in that arrogant way that he does sometimes, asking, “Do you ever wonder how Clara’s life would have been different if she picked me instead of you? I bet she does. I bet she asks herself that all the time,” and it takes every ounce of self-control I have not to hit him.
He’s hurting, I tell myself. It’s an act of self-preservation, that’s all. I’ve fired him. I’m the asshole here, not Connor.
“My back is to a wall,” I say. “I don’t have any other options,” which I don’t. The way things are going, there’s a chance I’m going to be taking money out of Maisie’s piggy bank to cover Connor’s salary this year. I try to explain this to him, to remind him of my family, my mortgage, how I have a baby on the way, but it’s something he doesn’t want to hear.
“I have obligations, too,” he says, and that’s when things get even more personal, my unintentional implication that since Connor isn’t married and doesn’t have kids, he is of less value than me.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I say, but no matter what I say, he’s going to assume I did. The space between us drifts to silence as he pounds back the rest of his beer and asks for another.
“I’m sorry, Connor,” I say. “I really can’t tell you how sorry I am that it’s come to this.”
At that he leans across the table, so close that I can smell the jalapeños on his breath, and says, “You know what, Boss? It’s fine. It’s not a big deal at all. You know why?” and I ask, drawing away from his advance, “Why?”
“Because sooner or later, you’ll regret this. You’ll see,” and he rises from the table to leave, shoving the wooden booth into my gut as he goes.
It comes to me in the middle of the night, what I need to do.
It comes to me in a circuitous sort of way because I’m thinking of horses. Actually, what I’m thinking about is our unborn baby’s bedroom, and how I swore to Clara that I’d have it painted, and now here we were, mere weeks until launch, and the room had yet to be painted. I’m thinking about how much something like that costs—professional painters—because Clara wrongfully assumed I was too busy at work to do it myself, and suggested I hire someone to do it for me. I’d put off so many other tasks on the house—installing the crown molding that Clara wants, maintenance checks for the aging appliances, the sump pump, the hot water heater, the air conditioner, all for lack of money and not time. Clara had already picked out a color for the baby’s room—Let It Rain, it’s called, a delicate gray to pair with the pricey new quilt—so all I needed to do was pick up the paint.
It won’t take more than two hours to paint, I’d told her.Don’t hire someone. I’ll do it.
So there I am lying in bed, thinking about the paint and the paint store, and I start thinking about the horses we drive past on those country roads that lead to the paint store, back where Clara’s parents used to live. I think of Maisie, in the back seat of the car, always so excited to see the horses. “Look, Daddy, brown one!” or, “Horsey with polka dots,” she’ll scream, pointing, so that I find myself enamored by the smile on her face. Horsey with polka dots? Of course there’s no such thing. But I look anyway because that’s what Maisie wants me to do.
But thinking about the horses makes me think of horse racing, and though I don’t know a thing about horse racing, I decide it’s something I can learn.
I don’t actually bother going to a racetrack, but rather find an offtrack betting site online, one that links directly to my bank account so I can easily withdraw money to bet with, and have the winnings just as easily transferred back in. In the morning I stop by the bank and set up a separate account, only in my name so that Clara doesn’t see the comings and goings of cash in our personal accounts, not that she ever looks anyway but just in case. For whatever reason, I set up a POD at the banker’s suggestion, a payable-on-death account to keep my funds out of probate court in the unlikely chance that I should die. I name a beneficiary. Clara.
I’m not trying to be scheming, because that’s not the kind of man I am, but I don’t want Clara to worry about our financial woes; between her mother and the baby, she’s got enough on her mind right now and doesn’t need to be stressed about a problem I can solve. I just need to earn enough money to pay my debts, to get my practice back on track, and then I’ll be happy.
I do research on horse racing; I learn the vocabulary, backstretch and pari-mutuel, bankroll and trifecta. I create an online account and link it to my new bank account. I set myself up in my office during a forty-minute gap when I don’t have an appointment, and discreetly turn the lock on the door. I get to work.
