Read Online The Pursuit of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman - Free Book Online Page B

to recall you didn’t mind having my hand on your knee earlier this evening between Sturbridge and Natick on the Mass. Pike.”
    I said maybe, but that was depression authorizing what appeared to be intimacy. Physical contact didn’t have to be sexual, did it?
    â€œPretty much,” said Ray.
    I confessed that I wasn’t a red-blooded gal. I didn’t know the signs and didn’t seem to be endowed with the hormonal cues that the rest of the population possessed. “Frankly,” I said, “I’m baffled as to why you want to see or drive or sleep with someone who gives nothing back.”
    It was then he declared, “It’s so obvious, Alice: I want to spend time with you and make love to you and wake up next to you because I’m crazy about you. And I have been ever since I walked into that examining room and found that the doctor was a woman, no wedding ring on her finger, and with a pretty uncluttered field once I asked around.”
    â€œWhom did you ask?”
    â€œThe secretary! She said you weren’t married.”
    I said I doubted that very much. Yolanda would never entertain personal questions about me or any other house staff. Even if she wanted to she couldn’t because we’d never discussed anything remotely extra-departmental.
    Ray grinned. “I wheedled it out of her. It wasn’t so hard.”
    â€œWas fudge involved?” I asked.
    Ray didn’t answer.
    â€œShe has a notorious sweet tooth. Everyone teases her about it and bribes her with Godiva truffles.” Everyone but me, that is. Yolanda was overweight, sedentary, and had a family history of Type 2 diabetes.
    â€œSo how about a kiss?” he asked.
    I waited, shrugged, switched my pocketbook to the opposite shoulder, announcing finally that a kiss would be acceptable. I closed my eyes.
    Nothing happened. I heard him step away, and when I opened my eyes he was three respectful paces back, tightening the knot in his tie. “You know what?” he said. “I’m not going to force you. Your expression is like a kid biting into a fish stick when he was expecting a French fry. I have more pride than that.”
    I asked, as any good clinician would, “Was it what I said, or the way I said it?”
    â€œWhat does it matter? I wanted to kiss you, and now I don’t.”
    It was excellent psychology: In an instant he was the hurt party and I was the villain.
    â€œNot sixty seconds ago I said I was falling in love with you,” he continued, “and all I get in return is a blank look and the third degree about which secretary said what.”
    â€œNot blank,” I said. “Surprised, or maybe just exhausted. And you’re the one who brought up Yolanda.”
    â€œEither way, it’s not very flattering,” said Ray, “although I don’t expect much from this life anymore. Me, Ray Russo, average ordinary widower without a bachelor’s degree, let alone an MD or a CPA after my name, thinking he can turn the head of Boston’s most eligible doctor.”
    I mumbled something to the effect that anything was possible. I’d seen in my own circles a famously obnoxious second-year resident chafe daily against her equally disagreeable chief resident, yet at the Christmas party they announced their engagement.
    â€œAre you saying there’s hope, or are you saying, ‘Let’s be friends, Ray. You and I are from different worlds, and even though this is America, where everyone is allegedly equal, and even though you dress well and drive a cool car and own your own business, I’m looking for a guy who I could take to a doctors’ dinner party and wouldn’t embarrass me or get drunk or talk back to the host.’ ”
    Of course I had to counter with something democratic and egalitarian. I said, “I took you home, didn’t I? And, by the way, I really appreciated your talking back to my father today, which I think