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Authors: Gini Hartzmark
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Mother. “Miriam has it from Sissy Linder that there’s been a ring of thieves positively casing this neighborhood for weeks.”
“He was a client of mine. I was at his house this morning right after he was shot.”
Stephen, who’d heard all about it in the car on the wav to my parents, listened politely to my recitation of the day's events.
“He finally cheated the wrong person,” pronounced my father when I’d finished, his face flushed with gin.
“Nonsense,” replied my mother. “People who in vest in futures expect to be cheated.”
“Not cheated, Mother,” I protested, ever loyal to my client. “People who speculate are prepared to lose money. They know it is a risky investment.”
“He was a no-good Irishman who finally got what was coming to him,” declared my father.
“What was he like?” Stephen asked.
“Not quite our sort,” interjected Mother knowingly. “Flashy. Pamela did her best with him, but everything Bart did had to be the biggest and the most expensive. It really was tiresome. People put up with him of course, for her sake, but he’d never been accepted in the normal way.”
“And were they happy together?” I inquired. “Happy?” echoed Mother as if the word was not familiar to her. “Who can say whether a marriage is happy? They certainly made a great show of affection. But Bart had a terrible temper, too, and I know they fought sometimes. They were at a party at the club Saturday night, and I know they had some sort of argument—at least Gladys and Elmer Cranshaw had to give Pamela a ride home. But I think in general everyone agrees that they got along.”
“And it was a lucky thing,” piped in my father. “Pamela was always a peculiar girl. Odd. I’m sure no one thought she’d ever marry. Bart might have not been a sahib, but he did a lot to bring her out of herself. The Mandersons have always been strange. Her father, Sterling, was a bully and a prig.”
“No matter what anybody thought of Bart, I’m sure this is a terrible thing for Pamela,” said Mother. “How embarrassing. I can’t imagine anything more vulgar than being shot.”
* * *
I arrived home to find my roommate lying on the living room floor. Dressed in her habitual scrubs of surgical green, she had clamped headphones over her ears The cord that connected them to the stereo snaked across the floor.
“Bad day?” I shouted.
Claudia opened her eyes, got up wearily, and turned down the volume. She was a tiny woman, barely five feet, but with a core of toughness that transcended her size.
“Did you have a rough day?” I asked again.
“It was like Calcutta,” replied my roommate with feeling. “No, I don’t think Calcutta ever gets that bad. It was like Calcutta on drugs.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, the usual shit, only twice as much of it. We had two stabbings—teenage boys trying to settle an argument about a tape player they stole. They tried to eviscerate each other with kitchen knives. One of them had practically bled out by the time they got him in. After they were prepped for surgery, some genius parked them next to each other in pre-op. The next thing you know, one of the kids has hopped off the gurney, bleeding all over the place, and is trying to choke the other one.
“Next, I get a sixty-three-year-old Portuguese woman? with a fractured tibia, only the orthopedic resident has mismarked the X ray and the first thing I do is open the wrong leg. I finish with her; then I do an emergency ruptured appendix and assist on a quick-and-dirty patch job on an eighty-two-year-old woman who was hit by a bus and was bleeding inside from every organ. Finally, it looks like there’s a break in the action, and who do they bring in but the same Portuguese woman with the broken leg. It seems that while they were shifting some patients around in post-op, the orderly parked her gurney for a minute in the hallway and she got run over by one of those huge nutrition carts, the ones
“He was a client of mine. I was at his house this morning right after he was shot.”
Stephen, who’d heard all about it in the car on the wav to my parents, listened politely to my recitation of the day's events.
“He finally cheated the wrong person,” pronounced my father when I’d finished, his face flushed with gin.
“Nonsense,” replied my mother. “People who in vest in futures expect to be cheated.”
“Not cheated, Mother,” I protested, ever loyal to my client. “People who speculate are prepared to lose money. They know it is a risky investment.”
“He was a no-good Irishman who finally got what was coming to him,” declared my father.
“What was he like?” Stephen asked.
“Not quite our sort,” interjected Mother knowingly. “Flashy. Pamela did her best with him, but everything Bart did had to be the biggest and the most expensive. It really was tiresome. People put up with him of course, for her sake, but he’d never been accepted in the normal way.”
“And were they happy together?” I inquired. “Happy?” echoed Mother as if the word was not familiar to her. “Who can say whether a marriage is happy? They certainly made a great show of affection. But Bart had a terrible temper, too, and I know they fought sometimes. They were at a party at the club Saturday night, and I know they had some sort of argument—at least Gladys and Elmer Cranshaw had to give Pamela a ride home. But I think in general everyone agrees that they got along.”
“And it was a lucky thing,” piped in my father. “Pamela was always a peculiar girl. Odd. I’m sure no one thought she’d ever marry. Bart might have not been a sahib, but he did a lot to bring her out of herself. The Mandersons have always been strange. Her father, Sterling, was a bully and a prig.”
“No matter what anybody thought of Bart, I’m sure this is a terrible thing for Pamela,” said Mother. “How embarrassing. I can’t imagine anything more vulgar than being shot.”
* * *
I arrived home to find my roommate lying on the living room floor. Dressed in her habitual scrubs of surgical green, she had clamped headphones over her ears The cord that connected them to the stereo snaked across the floor.
“Bad day?” I shouted.
Claudia opened her eyes, got up wearily, and turned down the volume. She was a tiny woman, barely five feet, but with a core of toughness that transcended her size.
“Did you have a rough day?” I asked again.
“It was like Calcutta,” replied my roommate with feeling. “No, I don’t think Calcutta ever gets that bad. It was like Calcutta on drugs.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, the usual shit, only twice as much of it. We had two stabbings—teenage boys trying to settle an argument about a tape player they stole. They tried to eviscerate each other with kitchen knives. One of them had practically bled out by the time they got him in. After they were prepped for surgery, some genius parked them next to each other in pre-op. The next thing you know, one of the kids has hopped off the gurney, bleeding all over the place, and is trying to choke the other one.
“Next, I get a sixty-three-year-old Portuguese woman? with a fractured tibia, only the orthopedic resident has mismarked the X ray and the first thing I do is open the wrong leg. I finish with her; then I do an emergency ruptured appendix and assist on a quick-and-dirty patch job on an eighty-two-year-old woman who was hit by a bus and was bleeding inside from every organ. Finally, it looks like there’s a break in the action, and who do they bring in but the same Portuguese woman with the broken leg. It seems that while they were shifting some patients around in post-op, the orderly parked her gurney for a minute in the hallway and she got run over by one of those huge nutrition carts, the ones
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