Walker chuckles again, pulse quickening and body temperature rising if his imperceptible little shudder is any indication. “What would be the bad things?”
I make sure those molten metal eyes are on mine before I answer. “Time will tell.”
The waitress brings our drinks, and we order appetizers and our main courses. I don’t think Walker is purposely choosing items that complement without mimicking mine, but even if not by design, he is helping make my review of this location easier and more robust, like my natural counterpart.
He tells me about his day stopping by the hospital to visit a child patient he is concerned about and then asks me about mine. I leave out that my day started with ensuring all my pieces were in place for Curtis’s disappearance and skip to my exploring of the city. I made three stops aside from this planneddinner, and it pleases me that Walker has only heard about one of them.
“If I knew them all, would you consider the day a wash?” Walker asks.
“Absolutely. I need to be on the cutting edge. If an influencer beats me to a point of interest, it’s already… what do the kids call it now?Basic.”
Walker laughs. “Come on. You aren’t in your thirties yet. We’re still kids.”
“As my mother would say, even at six I was going on sixty. I have an old way about me. But if that’s your clever way of asking, I’m twenty-nine.”
“I turn twenty-six in a few weeks.”
“And still act sixteen?” I tease.
“Sometimes. When I let the expletives fly.”
“A few weeks, hm? Your birthday overlaps with the start of your fellowship.”
The extra gulp Walker takes from his cocktail says plenty. “It’s the day before I start actually, so I can’t even get drunk in celebration.”
“You don’t seem like the type who usually has more than a cocktail or two.” Since he likes how well I read him, I don’t plan to stop.
“It aggravates my asthma if I overindulge,” he admits.
“You mentioned having a severe case. You keep an inhaler on you?”
“Always.” I hear the faint plastic thunk of Walker patting it in his pants’ pocket.
A doctor with health issues is well-acquainted with death. I appreciate that.
“Sometimes the silliest things trigger me, but I promise I’m not a basket case.”
As if to challenge what might send him gasping and fumbling for his inhaler, a rattle of glasses clinking too hard against each other draws our attentions to a nearby table with a start.
“Robert, maybe you’ve had enou—” The woman at the table tries to keep her voice hushed, but her partner interrupts without trying to match her volume.
“IsaidI’ll have another.” He pushes his empty glass toward the waiter attending to them and nearly slides it off the table like an attention-seeking cat. It seems he previously pushed the lowball into his water glass, which remains full as if untouched by any sobering sips.
The inebriated man is retirement age, the woman a decade or two younger, but definitely a partner, possibly his wife, not a daughter. He is irritable and drunk and acting brutish. A few too many drinks at dinner are clearly the least of what this woman weathers. The way she holds herself indicates she is used to this behavior. They always are. Embarrassed and frazzled but with no way to control him. He holds the control, and she is effectively trapped until she finds an escape—or someone offers her one.
“There always has to be some asshole,” Walker comments quietly. He looks as annoyed as I feel, though I am not showing it as perceptibly. “I tried telling myself that if Curtis had acted like that, I never would have fallen for him. But the truth is, he did act like that, it was just subtle until, well, until it wasn’t.” When our gazes meet, his eyes widen like he’s surprised he said all that.
“I’m familiar with the progression,” I say.
I can tell Walker wants to press for elaboration or maybe divulge more about his ex, but he shakes his head. “We don’t have to talk about him. It’s like a huge faux pas on a first date, right?”
“The only faux pas would be if I declined to listen when you need someone to hear you.” I reach across the table, inviting himto take my hand. “Go ahead.Ifyou want to talk about it, that is. If so, how did you two meet?”
Seeing Walker relaxing again almost keeps my attention solely on him, but although I do listen as he speaks, in my periphery I watch the couple. “We met at this bar where a lot of residents go to blow off steam. I was being DD. Predictably. Curtis was DDing for coworkers too. We bonded over sodas. He’s a sales guy for this marketing firm, blah blah boring, but he is really good at it. Driven. He had all this energy and charisma when we met.” Walker may be talking about Curtis, but it’s my hand he's holding, thumb circling across the back of it.
The woman at the nearby table is trying to covertly get their waiter to bring the check with that cocktail refill.
“I guess I fell for what his clients fall for,” Walker goes on. “Smoke and mirrors. We weren’t together long. Less than three months? If you go by Curtis’s estimates, more like two weeks. We rarely saw each other more than once a week during that time, which was unacceptable to him and apparently meant I don’t give a shit. He missed the memo ondoctorbeing part of my name.”
