Fever(12)

“I’m sorry, I …”

“Don’t be. I told you, I’m used to it.”

She slammed the trunk lid, and without looking at him again she got into the car and backed it up and left him standing there alone, the glimpses he’d had of her face and her pain still sharp in his mind.





4




The kinds of things women will talk about to each other, casually, in public places and in front of men, never cease to amaze me. There doesn’t seem to be any subject matter too personal, too outrageous for discussion.

Cosmetic surgery, for instance.

Intimate cosmetic surgery.

Nip and tuck the likes of which I couldn’t have dreamed up in my wildest fantasies.

Friday night I found out far more than I ever wanted to know about this topic. And in the unlikeliest of places—over dinner in a moderately expensive, sedate Italian restaurant in Ghirardelli Square.

The two women in question were Kerry and Tamara. Since my semiretirement, and even more since her struggles with breast cancer, Kerry and I had been spending a lot more time together. She was cancer-free again, after months of radiation therapy, but she was still taking medication and still working through the psychological effects, and she would need regular six-month checkups for the rest of her life because there was always the chance that cancerous cells could recur. Time had become a major factor in both our lives. A cancer scare coupled with advancing age makes you aware of how little time you may have left and how important it is to make every minute you have together count. So we did family things with Emily, and on at least one weekend day or night the two of us went to restaurants, movies, plays, the symphony at Davies Hall, the new de Young Museum, a 49ers game at the ’stick.

It had been Kerry’s idea to invite Tamara to join us for dinner at Bella Mia. Tamara hadn’t been getting out much since her long-time, cello-playing boyfriend, Horace, who had moved east for a year’s gig with the Philadelphia Philharmonic, decided to play permanent bedroom music with another woman. There was nobody new in her life. By her admission and complaint, she hadn’t gotten laid since Horace left ten months ago—a tragedy of large proportions for a hormone-rich twenty-six-year-old. Added to all this was the fact that her best friend, Vonda, had turned up pregnant and was about to be married. She’d become a little reclusive away from the agency, and sometimes moody and mopey and grumbly at work. Kerry thought an evening with us might cheer her up, which I considered a dubious notion. I expected Tamara to decline the invitation, but she jumped at it. Good sign. Maybe it meant she was tired of the shell she’d crawled into and was ready to break out. Why else would she want to hang with a couple old enough to be her parents, if not her grandparents?

So there we were at Bella Mia, in a corner booth, sharing a bottle of good Chianti and chatting along comfortably about general subjects while we tucked into steaming bowls of minestrone. And then Kerry made the mistake, in my opinion anyway, of asking Tamara about Vonda’s wedding plans. This led into the nip and tuck business.

“You’ll never guess what Ben’s giving her for a wedding present,” Tamara said. “Gummy bears.”

I said in my naïve way, “Candy? What kind of wedding present is that?”

She laughed. “Not those kind of gummy bears.”

“What other kind is there?”

Kerry said, “That doesn’t say much for Ben.”

“No, it wasn’t his idea, it was Vonda’s. He’s cool with her just the way she is, but she’s always hated being a C cup.”

“Well, you know, pregnancy can sometimes increase size.”

“Probably won’t in her case. Doctor says she can’t nurse.”

“That’s too bad. Still, gummy bears haven’t been proven completely safe.”

I said, “What are you talking about? What’re gummy bears?”

“Breast implants,” Kerry said.

“New kind of silicon material,” Tamara said, “supposed to look and feel like the candy. You know, soft and gooey.”

I made a fast reach for my glass of wine.

“Maybe I’m just being alarmist,” Kerry said, “but after what I’ve been through, I wouldn’t allow any kind of foreign matter in my breasts.”

“Mine are saggy enough as it is. Wouldn’t want my nipples messed with, either.”

“Absolutely not.”

“My booty lifted, now, I could go for that.”

“Oh, there’s nothing wrong with your booty.”

“Not what my mirror tells me when I get out of the shower.”

“A woman I work with at Bates and Carpenter had an umbilicoplasty. Can you believe it?”