Lucette and New Beginnings Cosmetic Surgery Center for two million dollars. New Beginnings had a law firm on retainer, but as Dr. Lucette’s partners pointed out, the new, almost slim Lillian Tuchman was a woman not in a mood to compromise. She had already refused a nuisance settlement offer of $100,000, and her lawyers were hinting that there were intimations of sexual misconduct while she was under anesthetic.
Thinking about that last absurd charge made Dr. Lucette more than simply angry—he was outraged. Never had he touched a patient improperly under any circumstances, much less in a brightly lighted OR full of assistants. The charge would never stick!
But he knew better than to be so certain of such matters. Any charge might stick in court. Juries were more and more unpredictable, and if you were rich, as Dr. Lucette had to admit he was, jurors considered you fair game, one of the enemy caught in the sights of the common man. The jurors would be much like Lillian Tuchman herself, rather than Dr. Lucette. In the minds of people like Lillian Tuchman, the rich existed only to be envied, cursed, and plucked—unless of course they could be joined.
Dr. Lucette got up from where he was sitting in his soft green leather armchair and went into the bathroom. He stood at the basin and washed his hands in a way so practiced that he thought little about his actions as he studied his haggard face in the mirror. He was sixty-two now and looked fifty, meaning he was almost ready for another eye operation and forehead lift. There wasn’t much more he could do about his thinning gray hair. Growth stimulants didn’t seem to work for him, and within another few years he’d be one of those men who plastered strands of hair sideways over the tops of their skulls so they looked like lines drawn with a felt-tip pen. Well, perhaps there would be advances in the field of toupees.
He suddenly realized several minutes had passed and he was still soaping and scrubbing his hands. He’d been doing too much of that kind of thing lately. Nerves? Or a developing compulsive disorder? Obsessive compulsion ran in the Lucette family on his mother’s side. He’d had a cousin, Herbie, who had actually scrubbed all the hair from the backs of his hands with a coarse brush.
He grimaced and turned off the water, then dried his hands roughly on a nearby towel. Not obsessive compulsion! he assured himself. Nerves! He sure as hell had plenty to be nervous about. His daughter, Minerva, about to flunk out of Wellesley. His son, Bob, probably hooked on cocaine.
And now goddamn Lillian Tuchman and her off-center navel. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so potentially costly!
The doctor went back into the living room and sank again into the leather armchair. Always he warned patients not to expect too much from cosmetic surgery. If done correctly, once the healing was complete they would look much as their usual selves, only younger or well rested. But for some of them that wasn’t enough; they wanted to look like someone else because they wanted to be someone else. He sighed. They were seeing the wrong kind of doctor, he felt like telling them. They should—
He heard the apartment door open and close. Sharon—finally! Already he felt better. They could talk things over. She would sympathize with him. Then, after her toenails dried, they could go out and get some dinner at a nice restaurant. Maybe that new place on Amsterdam that served a tasty Caesar salad and genuinely medium-rare steak with garlic potatoes—comfort food. A drink, a good meal, another drink, and the world might seem habitable again.
Dr. Lucette waited, but Sharon didn’t emerge from the entry hall. Maybe she was waddling carefully, not wanting to get any nail polish on the carpet fibers.
She was taking her damned time, feeding his irritation.
At last he noticed a slight change of light and sensed her presence behind him and off to the side. He turned to look up and greet her but instead gasped.
Someone was standing silently staring down at him, but it wasn’t Sharon.
ELEVEN
Outside the window, a cruel winter wind blew icy rain almost horizontally along the narrow avenue. The small patch of sky visible between the buildings across the street was gray as a bullet. Who was it who said weather needn’t affect mood?
Myra sat at her wide, custom-built cherry-wood desk in her Myra Raven Group office and tried to reason on the phone with Web Thomas without sounding desperate. “I managed to rearrange schedules here at the office so I could be away for the weekend, Web.” Making him feel guilty.
Not Web. He probably couldn’t even spell guilty. “I wish we could make it, Myra. I talked to somebody on the phone this afternoon, and the place is snowed in tight. She said it’s still snowing upstate.”
What did this guy want? Did he forget that he was the one who worked to talk her into this? They’d had three dates and he’d pushed her for three days—and nights—at what he called his “cottage” in upstate New York. Then suddenly, like so many before him, he’d changed his mind. Maybe because of something she’d done or said, some way she’d glanced at him. Whatever the reason, she knew he’d come to see her differently. Even through the phone connection she could feel him pushing her away.
Myra had been very much looking forward to this weekend. She knew that to somebody as rich as Web, a cottage could be somebody else’s idea of a mansion. She also knew from a conversation she’d overheard that he’d recently bought a new all-wheel-drive BMW that could probably cut through snow like an Olympic skier.
So maybe he didn’t want to risk a new car on icy country roads. “Our company car is a Lexus SUV,” she told him.
“That would be great except for the bridge.”
“Bridge?”
“Yeah, you have to drive across an old covered bridge to get to the cottage, and the weight of the snow caused the thing to collapse.”
He hadn’t missed a beat; maybe his excuse was genuine. Maybe he was going to suggest someplace other than his cottage. Dinner, a show, a hotel here in town. Or her place, her bed. She was ready to offer her bed if he hinted.
But he didn’t suggest something else. “Maybe it’s just as well, Myra. I’ve got a load of reports to go over, anyway.”
That was a laugh. If anyone had a make-work job, it was Web. Worthless Web.
“Maybe if—” She stopped herself. She had pride—maybe too much of it.
“Myra? You still there?”
“Not anymore,” she said, with more bitterness than she’d intended.
He laughed. “You’re taking this a bit too seriously.”
She didn’t like his laughter, or his remark. Because she was beginning to take him seriously.
“Here’s an idea, Myra. Why don’t we just meet at the Royalton about eight, have something to drink, then go on up to a room? The snow is all upstate, not here where we can still get together.”
Too late. And not even dinner and a show. “A weekend at the Royalton?’
“Not a weekend. Just tonight. I wouldn’t try to talk you into an entire weekend.”
“No, thanks, Web.” I don’t want to be your casual fuck.
“It isn’t as if we don’t know each other well enough, Myra.”
She
