She paused. “I’m just an assistant.”
“You don’t look ‘just’ anything to me,” he said with a wink.
He was flirting. First the bartender last night, then the kid on the skateboard, and now him. “Thanks,” she said, smiling, then headed back to the elevators.
The Top of the Mark was all that. Posh, crowded, glamorous. San Francisco glittered out the windows, the triangular Trans Am building looking close enough to touch. The Golden Gate Bridge looked so romantic from here—and she’d just been on it! There was Grace Cathedral, Alcatraz, the Pacific.
The bar was packed with the sort-of familiar faces she’d seen over the past two days. She recognized Dr. Bahrani-Jones at a table by the window. The moderator from Lorenzo’s lecture. A white-haired woman who’d asked her where the California room was. She did not see Lorenzo.
“Please, miss, take my seat,” said an older man at the curving, beautiful bar. “I’m about to head out.”
“Thank you,” Winnie said, sliding onto the stool. She ordered a gin and tonic and just sat there happily, in this alternate reality where she was complimented and men gave her their seats and she belonged in this fancy-ass hotel. It wasn’t the most beautiful bar she’d ever seen—the Red Inn in Provincetown held that honor, with waves breaking against the windows during high tide in the winter. But still, it was simply gorgeous. She sipped her drink and just listened to the music and chatter around her.
“Thank God for that cartoon,” someone said. “Kept us all from going to sleep. Honestly, he is so full of himself. I get it, he’s talented, but the guy is as dry and dull as dust.”
Heat flooded Winnie’s cheeks. It was clear who the subject of the conversation was.
“Now, Damian,” said his companion. Dammy-AHN. “He’s intense, that’s all. And brilliant. I recorded his entire talk.”
“Oh, I know, I know,” Damian said. “But then there’s the way he bullies his residents. Dr. Satan, my ass. If I saw him lay into someone the way rumor says he does, I’d probably punch him in the face.”
“Sure, Dam. Sure you would.”
“Listen, I’d let him work on my own mother. But I’d also shoot myself in the head if I had to talk to him alone for an hour.”
“I wouldn’t,” said the other person. “I’d practically interrogate him. Did you know when he was a resident, he saved a man who’d sliced his carotid? Stuck his hand in the man’s neck and pinched it off, held it all the way to surgery, then sewed it back together in under a minute.”
“Yeah, yeah, we all have that one story we milk for all it’s worth. Did I ever tell you about the woman I saved after she fell onto an iron spike? She was climbing over a gate. Not sober, let me tell you. Singing at the top of her lungs, according to her friends, and then foop! She’s essentially eviscerated herself, pinned like a butterfly.”
Winnie glanced over her shoulder and saw the speaker was a good-looking Black man in a gray suit with a pink shirt, clearly amused with his own well-told story, laughing loud and hard. She knew his type. People with those carrying voices and great stories who let every person in the room know they were the main attraction, the light around which the moths should flutter.
Also, Lorenzo was not dry or dull. And yeah, maybe he was Dr. Satan, but he was also fucking brilliant. He just existed on a plane not many people could reach, that was all.
She turned back and took another sip of her drink, then jumped as Lorenzo himself sat down next to her. “Winnie,” he said.
“Hi! How was the rest of your day?”
“Do not ever tamper with one of my presentations again,” he said, his voice low. “That was humiliating.”
“What?” She sat up straighter, then lowered her voice. “It wasn’t humiliating, Lorenzo. It was funny, and it let the audience know you have a sense of humor.”
“I don’t have a sense of humor,” he said. “I am, however, greatly skilled at handling complications during very difficult surgeries. That was the subject of my talk, and yet seventeen people thus far have commented on your ridiculous cartoon.”
“Yeah, okay, but it showed you were human. Also, you do have a sense of humor. It’s just not blatant. It won’t hurt your reputation as a surgeon, and it just might help your reputation as a speaker.”
“My reputation as a speaker is unimpeachable. Or it was until today.”
She wondered what he’d say if she told him what Dr. Pink Shirt had just said.
“People laughed,” she said. “They paid attention.”
“They always pay attention.”
“Yes, but think of it as a comedic break during a very serious lecture. A chance for them to take a breath for a second.”
“Winnie, I know my audience better than you do.”
“Great talk today, Lorenzo!” came a voice. “Loved the OR humor, too.” He turned to Winnie with a smile and offered his hand. “Hello! John Granger, Linda Loma Medical Center. And you are?”
