“You too.” We shook hands. His were soft and smooth, surgeon’s hands. “Gina’s told me a lot about you.”
He was tall, dark-haired, and normal-looking. He wasn’t ugly, but he wasn’t Hollywood handsome, either. His skin was darker than mine, although not from a tanning bed. His teeth weren’t unnaturally white, his fingernails hadn’t been buffed to a high gloss, and he didn’t look like he spent hours in the gym. In other words, he wasn’t at all what I thought a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon should look like.
Gina could still read me, even after all these years. “What’s the matter?”
“Honestly?” I laughed. “I was looking for a reason not to like him.”
John’s eyebrows rose.
“Gimme a minute,” I said, “I’m sure I’ll think of something.”
Be nice, Christy warned, but John knew I was kidding.
“I can help if you want,” he offered. “I know all my bad qualities.” Then he gestured at his shorts. “I’m shy, for starters.”
“Eh, who cares,” I said. “You have excellent taste in women. That’s all that matters.”
Gina couldn’t decide whether to be exasperated or relieved. She settled for the latter and smiled at the compliment.
We made small talk for a couple of minutes before cheers and then shrieks of triumph reached us from across the lake. We all turned to look.
Laurie had won a head-to-head race against Davis, and the younger girls were celebrating. Wren gave Laurie a high-five, which Davis didn’t like. Trip wasn’t the most enlightened guy in the world, but he wasn’t about to let his son get away with poor sportsmanship. He prodded Davis in the back, and the boy reluctantly congratulated Laurie.
I watched for another moment, until I was sure that Wren and Trip had things under control. All of our kids were competitive, but Davis had a legitimate complaint that the girls ganged up on him sometimes. Wren bent and said something to Laurie, who waded forward and hugged him.
“Can I meet your daughters?” Gina asked. She included Christy in the question, but we all knew she was talking to me. And it wasn’t really a question. It was an invitation to talk. Alone.
“Sure.” I glanced at Christy, but she didn’t have a problem with it.
John didn’t either. “I’ll stay here, if you don’t mind.”
Gina smiled and stretched upward to kiss him. Then she nodded to me, and we strolled toward the deep end of the lake. I didn’t know where to begin, so I started with the obvious.
“You look good.”
“Thanks. You too. I forgot how much you work out.”
I shrugged. “It’s a habit now.”
“You weren’t really pudgy. I always thought you were cute.”
“I dunno about that,” I chuckled, “but thanks.”
“Mmm.”
“So… how’re you? For real, I mean.”
“I’m good. You?”
“Good, thanks. Looking forward to moving back to Atlanta.”
“I bet.”
“How’s the other thing?” I said. “The program, NA?”
“Nine months clean.”
“So… you’re done with it? Coke, I mean. No more problem?”
“I’ll never be ‘done with it,’” she said neutrally. “I take things day by day.”
“Is Regan still…? Um… clean?”
“She is. And going to meetings with me. She had a relapse a couple of months ago, but she’s doing better now. It’s… harder for her.”
“How so?”
“Stress. Her job. Her family. Or lack thereof.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah. I’m the only one she has, so…” Gina looked over her shoulder, toward John. “She sort of lost it when he asked me to marry him.”
I hadn’t noticed the ring, but I hadn’t been looking at her fingers, either. I chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” she asked. “Never mind. I think I know.”
“Yeah, sorry.”
She shrugged. “It’s nice to know I can still get your attention.”
“You always could.”
We shared a smile that wasn’t exactly sad, but it carried a lot of baggage, the things that might have been, if only we hadn’t been so young and focused on our own problems.
“How’s life otherwise?” I asked. “Your career? Doctors Without Borders?”
“Good. We returned from a trip a couple of months ago. They’re building a new clinic in San Salvador. John recruited some other specialists, and they’re teaching the local surgeons how to use the new equipment. Oh, Paul, you should’ve seen some of the machines they had before. The new ones are all obsolete here in the States, but they’re decades newer than the ones they had. It’s heartbreaking.”
“What about you? What do you do when you’re there?”
“My job’s a little easier. We mostly focus on family planning and access to contraceptives.”
“Seriously? That’s more important than healthy childbirth?”
“Paul, women have been giving birth for thousands of years, often in primitive conditions. But if you give them control over their bodies and reproduction, you improve life for them and their children—the entire family.”
“What do their husbands think? I mean, that’s a pretty macho society.”
“Poco a poco,” she said.
“Which means…?”
“Oh, sorry. Little by little. We’re changing society as much as individual lives.”
“How’re things going back in LA?” I asked. “Leah said you have a new clinic.”
“Two, actually.”
“Oh?”
“We just moved our main practice to Beverly Hills.”
“Ah, so you’re in 90210?”
“Only three days a week. I work at the other clinic the rest of the time.”
“Where’s that?”
“East LA.”
My eyebrows flew up. I wasn’t an Angeleno, but even I had heard about the problems there.
“Aren’t you worried about the gangs?” I said.
“Not really,” Gina replied calmly. “We’re sort of neutral territory.”
“For real?”
“Yeah. We had problems in the early days, but not since.”
“How’d you manage that? Security guards or something?”
“No. The women took care of it.” She smiled at the memory. “They convinced the men that it was in their best interest to let us operate without problems.”
“Convinced…?” I prompted.
“They cut them off.”
I felt a stab of sympathetic pain. I might’ve gulped audibly too. “Not… their balls?”
“No!” Gina laughed. “They cut off sex.”
“Oh, okay.” My cheeks warmed in embarrassment. “I… um… hadn’t thought of that.”
“We have some smart chicas in the barrio.”
“Ha! You sound almost Mexican yourself.”
“The language is Spanish, Paul. And the people are Americans.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. It’s a sore spot with me.”
“I should know better,” I admitted.
She looked at me with a question.
“A friend,” I said vaguely. “Someone I used to… um…”
Gina’s laugh was soft and full of warmth. She understood.
“Anyway,” I continued, “her family’s Hispanic, all the way back to the Conquest. But her father made a big deal about being American. He wouldn’t even let them learn Spanish in school. She had to take French instead.”
“That’s like John’s family,” Gina said. “Well, not the French part, but the rest. They’ve been in California since before the American Revolution. They’re proud of their heritage, though. They should be.”
“Why?”
“They were LA royalty, back when it was still part of Mexico.”
“For real?”
“Yeah. They were big landowners. One was even alcalde— Sorry, the mayor of Los Angeles. These days, they just have a street named after them. Still, it’s the longest in LA.”
I shrugged ignorance.
“Sepulveda Boulevard.”