is.
6
PATRICE
“Did we ever talk about my first time?” George asks Patrice at the hospital that night. The radioactive treatment required her to suspend her thyroid-replacement therapy, and she has been left feeling, as she puts it, ‘energetic as moss.’ At 7:00 P.M., she lies in the hospital bed, paging through a magazine. George himself is wrapped like a present-paper gown, cap, and booties-and sits behind a line taped on the floor, seven yards from his wife. Tonight, after they let him through the sealed outer area into her room, he did not get within ten feet of her bed before his wife raised both hands in warning to keep him from embracing her. ‘George, don’t be Sir Galahad. I know the nurse just told you not to get near me.’ She made him leave the burrito dinner he brought her on a table across the room, from which she retrieved it.
Despite the required distance, it has been a companionable visit, much better than their stilted exchanges yesterday through the prison-like phones. Patrice is looking forward to her possible release tomorrow night and has offered several entertaining thoughts on what she refers to as ‘life as hazmat.’ But the question he just asked her was apropos of nothing, and Patrice’s eyes, a penetrating blue, distinct as gemstones, flash toward him, one eyebrow encroaching on her dark forehead.
“I mean sex,” he adds.
“I understood, George,” she says and with that casts her eyes at the intercom rising on a separate metal stalk beside her bed. George, however, is secure. A loud bleat echoes from the speaker before the nurses’ station may listen in. More to the point, his memories from the garage lie on him like a heavy stone rolled off the entrance to a tomb. He has been waiting for the right moment to discuss all this with Patrice and has spoken up suddenly, knowing the staff will shoo him out soon. The radiation-sensitive badge they pasted on his gown over his heart remains green, but the bar is shrinking.
“Did I?” he asks. He has known Patrice’s story for decades. At seventeen, with a man of twenty-six, for whom she thought she had a passion. The backseat of a car. The usual squirming. Tab A. Slot B. And realizing in the aftermath that her main desire had been to get it over with and not for the smashing, handsome, worthless buddy of her older brother.
Patrice frowns, turning another page. “Not that I can recall, Georgie,” she says, then adds, with typical tart understatement. “Perhaps it means something that I never asked.”
He plows on, though, eager for her help.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it,” he says. “In the context of this case.”
“What case?”
“The one with the four boys? From Glen Brae?” He forces himself to say, “The rape. I told you it was argued today.” George heard a press account of the argument on the radio as he was driving here. ‘Dramatic developments,’ the reporter said. One judge had suggested that the entire case might be tossed out. Tape rolled of Sapperstein crowing on the courthouse steps as if Nathan Koll had not clobbered him from behind. George constantly longs for the days when public discourse was sterile and proper, and not the semaphore called spin.
“And how did that go?” Patrice asks, already forgetting what he told her on the phone this afternoon. It is one of the incurable issues between them that she takes his profession lightly. Her achievements as an architect are tangible. Buildings can stand for centuries. Beauty, above all, endures. Attorneys, by contrast, just mince around with words. But because Patrice so often sees the legal enterprise as farcical, and lawyers as a swarming scrum of uncontrolled neurotics, she enjoys George’s description of the contest between Jordan Sapperstein and Nathan Koll. It’s a virtual travel poster for her view of the land called Law. Even in her weariness, she laughs at length for the first time this evening.
“And where do you come out
6
PATRICE
“Did we ever talk about my first time?” George asks Patrice at the hospital that night. The radioactive treatment required her to suspend her thyroid-replacement therapy, and she has been left feeling, as she puts it, ‘energetic as moss.’ At 7:00 P.M., she lies in the hospital bed, paging through a magazine. George himself is wrapped like a present-paper gown, cap, and booties-and sits behind a line taped on the floor, seven yards from his wife. Tonight, after they let him through the sealed outer area into her room, he did not get within ten feet of her bed before his wife raised both hands in warning to keep him from embracing her. ‘George, don’t be Sir Galahad. I know the nurse just told you not to get near me.’ She made him leave the burrito dinner he brought her on a table across the room, from which she retrieved it.
Despite the required distance, it has been a companionable visit, much better than their stilted exchanges yesterday through the prison-like phones. Patrice is looking forward to her possible release tomorrow night and has offered several entertaining thoughts on what she refers to as ‘life as hazmat.’ But the question he just asked her was apropos of nothing, and Patrice’s eyes, a penetrating blue, distinct as gemstones, flash toward him, one eyebrow encroaching on her dark forehead.
“I mean sex,” he adds.
“I understood, George,” she says and with that casts her eyes at the intercom rising on a separate metal stalk beside her bed. George, however, is secure. A loud bleat echoes from the speaker before the nurses’ station may listen in. More to the point, his memories from the garage lie on him like a heavy stone rolled off the entrance to a tomb. He has been waiting for the right moment to discuss all this with Patrice and has spoken up suddenly, knowing the staff will shoo him out soon. The radiation-sensitive badge they pasted on his gown over his heart remains green, but the bar is shrinking.
“Did I?” he asks. He has known Patrice’s story for decades. At seventeen, with a man of twenty-six, for whom she thought she had a passion. The backseat of a car. The usual squirming. Tab A. Slot B. And realizing in the aftermath that her main desire had been to get it over with and not for the smashing, handsome, worthless buddy of her older brother.
Patrice frowns, turning another page. “Not that I can recall, Georgie,” she says, then adds, with typical tart understatement. “Perhaps it means something that I never asked.”
He plows on, though, eager for her help.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it,” he says. “In the context of this case.”
“What case?”
“The one with the four boys? From Glen Brae?” He forces himself to say, “The rape. I told you it was argued today.” George heard a press account of the argument on the radio as he was driving here. ‘Dramatic developments,’ the reporter said. One judge had suggested that the entire case might be tossed out. Tape rolled of Sapperstein crowing on the courthouse steps as if Nathan Koll had not clobbered him from behind. George constantly longs for the days when public discourse was sterile and proper, and not the semaphore called spin.
“And how did that go?” Patrice asks, already forgetting what he told her on the phone this afternoon. It is one of the incurable issues between them that she takes his profession lightly. Her achievements as an architect are tangible. Buildings can stand for centuries. Beauty, above all, endures. Attorneys, by contrast, just mince around with words. But because Patrice so often sees the legal enterprise as farcical, and lawyers as a swarming scrum of uncontrolled neurotics, she enjoys George’s description of the contest between Jordan Sapperstein and Nathan Koll. It’s a virtual travel poster for her view of the land called Law. Even in her weariness, she laughs at length for the first time this evening.
“And where do you come out
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