Inside the ballroom, Bunner saw Adam Fuller coming back from the men’s room. He didn’t know Adam belonged to the club, and he straightened up in his chair as much as he could, raised his hand, and called thickly, “Hey, Adam. Hey, Sport...”
A compadre at last, he thought. A man who could talk about something besides golf and the stock market.
Bunner was alone at the table; everyone else was dancing or table hopping. Mary was across the floor in that new beaded creation that probably cost five hundred bucks. Five hundred bucks to go to a jerkwater country club dance in the town time forgot. She was dancing with Bill Apted, a Yuppie asshole who pretended he was a satyr. Probably a repressed fag, Bunner thought. Apted’s hand was way down on Mary’s back—another couple of inches and he’d be feeling her ass.
Adam sat down. “Hi, Bunny,” he said pleasantly. God, Bunner thought, he is such a pleasant young man. Too pleasant, too calm, too much in control of everything, except when it came to women, and even then his lapses were perfectly normal, perfectly understandable in a man who’d spent most of his adult life getting an M.D. at Dartmouth. Perfectly normal, Bunner thought. The only normal person in the place and he should like him—did like him, he told himself. They were patient and therapist, doctor and doctor, and they had something more in common: their interest in Adam’s adjustment to the world, which was excellent, all things considered.
Or looked excellent. Then why did he come to see Bunner once a week, and why did Bunner let him?
Deep questions that should be asked another time, Bunner decided. When he was sober.
He grinned at Adam. “Lemme get you a drink.” He emptied some ginger ale out of Mary’s glass into the flower vase on the table and picked up the bottle of scotch. He poured a couple of fingers for Adam, filled his own glass to the brim, and sipped daintily. As long as he was dainty no one could accuse him of being really drunk, though he was getting there—definitely getting there. He’d started with martinis, always a bad sign. Eaten some very dry meat that had been billed as filet, covered with gummy gravy with chewy foreign objects that might have been mushrooms or twigs.
Suddenly the dinner he’d consumed a couple of hours ago wasn’t sitting well.
“Bunny?” Adam said, sounding concerned.
Interesting. There was no missing the concern in his voice, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Nothing ever reached Adam Fuller’s large, brown, almost beautiful eyes. Nothing at all.
“Yeah, Sport?”
“You okay? You look a little pale.”
“No, as a matter of fact, I am not okay. I am plastered,” he said, eyeing the glass of scotch with sudden loathing, “and if I don’t get some fresh air in about ten seconds, I’m going to throw up in my lap... or yours.”
Adam grinned; it was such a pleasant expression, perfect for the circumstances, Bunner thought. A little amused, a little worried. The mouth knew exactly how to form it. But nothing happened behind those eyes.
Adam put his hand under Bunner’s arm and lifted. Meekly, Bunner rose to his feet.
“Where’re we going?” he asked. He was actually slurring his words. He didn’t think he’d been this drunk since the night twenty-two years before when he’d finally gotten the precious M.D. and he and Dave celebrated. Tonight’s drunk was Dave’s fault for bringing that woman to see him. Then sending in that stupid note. He hoped Dave had gotten some sense and gone home.
“We’re going outside to get you some air,” Adam said. Even his intonation and the pitch of his voice were perfect. Perfect Adam.
“What about your date?” Bunner asked.
“Oh, she’ll be okay.”
“Who’s she?”
“Naomi Segal, from the hospital. She’s over there talking to some people. She won’t miss me for a while.”
Bunner had to force himself to focus. He knew Naomi Segal, head of pediatrics. She was short and plump, with a huge mass of dark hair, fat rosy cheeks, and bright brown eyes that almost disappeared when she smiled. She was wearing a gown of royal blue satin with lots of gathers across the front that made her look even fatter, darker, jollier.
She was deep in conversation with two other women who had their backs to Bunner.
“You gonna lay her?” Bunner asked as Adam led him away from the table toward the sliding glass doors that took up all of one wall.
“Gonna try,” Adam said cheerfully.
Cheerful Adam.
Adam slid open one of the doors and half led, half pulled Bunner out onto the clubhouse’s flagstone terrace. It had stopped raining; the air was clear, cool, and damp, and it hit him like iced white wine. He reeled, grabbed for the door frame, and missed. Adam held him up easily. He must be very strong, Bunner thought; his fingers were like iron bars on Bunner’s upper arm, and Bunner felt solid muscle as he leaned against him.
“Here,” Adam said. “Sit here, it’s dry.”
Bunner collapsed on a stone bench. It was dry, but very cold; the chill went right through his trousers to his butt. It would play hell with his hemorrhoids, but he couldn’t get back up on his feet. He sat still and breathed in fresh, sharp, almost metallic air. The clouds were gone, stars pricked the sky, and the moon still looked full.
Night of the full moon.
The moon and lights from the clubhouse and along the drive to the road lit the golf course, turned the perfect lawn to a slightly heaving, immense expanse of smooth felt green.
He breathed in again; his head started to clear.
“Better?” Adam asked.
“Infinitely. Don’t think I’m gonna lose my lunch. Dinner, actually. Not that it would be much of a loss. Rotten dinner. Seventy-five bucks a head and the best they can do is shaved, re-formed unidentifiable meat and the only canned gravy that does have lumps.”
“I think the lumps were mushrooms.”
“Mushrooms,” Bunner said faintly. “Let’s not talk about it.”
They were quiet. Then Bunner said, “Thanks. Sport.”
“For what?”
“For helping me.”
“You help me,” Adam pointed out. Tit for tat in his mind; such a neat young man. So excellent, ordinary, normal. So why was he Bunner’s patient? What was Bunner supposed to do for him?
Get some expression into those handsome eyes, Bunner thought.
“Do I help you?” he asked, feeling slightly maudlin. “Do I help anybody?”
“Of course you do.”
Bunner started to shake his head, felt the solid stone bench sway slightly under him, and he stopped moving. “Didn’t help Ken,” he mumbled.
“Who?”
“Ken. No last names, please. But you know who he is, Sport. He wound up in your emergency room just about this time last year.”
“Oh. That Ken.”
“That Ken. Didn’t help him. Dug around in that truly nice man’s head for months and got zilch. Total fuckin’ zilch. Sport. Then she comes along and does it all in ten minutes. Not even...”
“Who does what?” Adam asked gently.
It was exactly the right tone, if only he could get a matching expression into those empty, empty eyes.
Bunner said, “A psychic—that’s psychic with a P, Sport. A psychic saw the scars on Ken’s hands.”
“Scars...” Adam’s voice was suddenly as bleak and empty as his eyes. But Bunner wasn’t to be stopped. He’d started and had to keep going; trying to force this back down now would be like swallowing sewage sludge.
“Scars... from when he was a kid.”
Adam was backing away from him. Bunner expected him to slip back through the doors to the happy folks having a good time inside. Only they weren’t happy, he thought; they were a bunch of middle-aged assholes trying to do some tribal-rite dance without knocking their backs out of whack.