James Hayman - The Cutting

Fast-forward three years to the graduation party. The same tiny apartment crammed with Philip’s fellow medical students, drinking wine and beer. Smoking a little grass. Celebrating the end of four grueling years of study, the awarding of their MDs. Lucas was there. Late in the party, when they were all high, Lucas pushed her into a corner and kissed her, his tongue probing her mouth. She pulled away. She was married. It didn’t matter to Lucas. He always thought he was entitled to whatever he wanted. Even his friend’s wives. Even his best friend’s wife. Handsome, talented Lucas. So brilliant, everyone said. Destined for great things, everyone said. Even then he was an abuser. Of drugs. Of people. It wasn’t just the occasional joint they all indulged in. No, Lucas was much more adventurous than that, much more inventive. Always pushing the edge. With Lucas there was always a sense of something about to happen. Something dangerous. That’s what had drawn Philip to him. That’s what had drawn Hattie to him as well. Lucas coming into their lives had been both a beginning and an end. It changed both of them.

After Tufts, Lucas and Philip, along with DeWitt Holland and Matthew Wilcox, applied and were accepted into surgical residencies at Bellevue Hospital in New York. Four friends, the Asclepius Society, together for another four years. She and Philip lucked out and got a subsidized apartment for married residents in one of NYU’s high-rise buildings just south of Washington Square. Lucas lived way over on the East Side on one of those streets named for a letter instead of a number. Avenue A or Avenue B. She couldn’t remember which. The area had already begun its slow transformation from a slum to an artsy enclave.

Those were lonely years. Philip spent most of his time at the hospital, working to exhaustion, sleeping a few hours, then going back and working some more. When he wasn’t working, he was often with Lucas. The two of them sitting together, smoking dope, in Lucas’s grubby little fourth-floor walk-up. She wondered how many patients they’d cut into, the brilliant young surgeons, both high as kites when they shouldn’t have been operating at all. She wondered how many they might have killed.

From her chair, Hattie could see a pair of cardinals on a branch of the large maple just outside their bedroom, barely lit in the last glow of the setting sun. The male preening his fiery plumage. The dull, brownish female, quietly pecking for insects by his side. She’d never known them to be out so late. Finally they flew away.

She remembered seeing Lucas in New York before he left. The winter of 1989. More than fifteen years ago. The city was raw and cold in its covering of sooty slush. The restaurant where they were meeting was a new place — one of dozens of sushi bars springing up all over the East Village. Hattie arrived first, coming directly from her office, and she managed to snag a table for four. The place was crowded, and because she felt embarrassed fending off the waiters as she waited for the others, she drank two large gin and tonics. Finally Philip and Lucas came tumbling in, noisy and laughing. Lucas brought a new friend. A boy with a Spanish name, Carlos or Eduardo or something like that. He was a dancer in the corps de ballet with one of the big-name dance companies — the Joffrey, she thought. He had beautiful dark brown skin exactly the color of the leather sofa in her father’s den. She finished her second gin, and they ordered sake. The sake was warm and felt good going down, so they ordered more. Lucas was showing off, ordering and eating esoteric bits of sushi not found on the menu. Revolting-looking stuff, Hattie thought. Leeches and slugs, for all she knew — and there was Philip pretending to love each slimy piece, though she was sure he hated it even more than she did.

Afterward, they all went back to Lucas’s place. She remembered climbing the four steep, narrow flights of stairs. The halls smelled of garbage and rotting food. At the top they practically fell into the studio, a tiny single room about twelve feet square with cracked plaster walls and a dirty brown commercial carpet. It was dominated by a huge king-sized bed. Hattie wondered how they’d ever gotten the damned thing up the stairs. Two small filthy windows looked out on an airshaft. The only furniture besides the bed was a chair covered in lime green vinyl, a small bedside table, and two lamps. Most of the light came from a dim overhead.

‘Behold!’ Lucas drunkenly exclaimed, flopping down on the mattress and pulling the giggling boy, Carlos or Eduardo, down on top of him. ‘Behold the playing fields of Eton! Upon which the Battle Sexualis is frequently fought and usually won.’

Lucas started kissing the boy, but he pulled away. ‘I want a drink,’ the boy said, slurring the words.

‘Not until you take your clothes off,’ said Lucas.

Hattie leaned against the door, watching, while Carlos or Eduardo undressed. He had a beautiful dancer’s body, long and muscular. He posed for Lucas. ‘Now do I get my drink?’ he said teasingly. He was the first black man she’d ever seen naked. His penis was very dark and uncircumcised. She realized she’d expected it to be huge, but it wasn’t, only a little bigger than Philip’s. Even so, his body excited her in a way Philip’s never had.

Lucas got up and opened a pair of louvered doors, revealing a tiny kitchen a few feet from the bed. Really more of a closet than a kitchen. The small sink was piled high with dirty dishes. He pulled out a bottle of vodka and a glass from a cupboard and handed them to the boy, who poured some and lay down on the bed and began drinking. Then Lucas began taking off his own clothes.

Hattie thought she should leave. Instead, she stood, her back to the door, watching Lucas until he, too, was naked. She glanced over at Philip. He was sitting in the vinyl easy chair, watching her watching Lucas. She felt both nervous and exposed. Lucas opened a drawer in the bedside table and took a joint from a small plastic bag. He lit it, took a long drag, got up, and walked to where Hattie was standing and handed it to her. She took a drag, held the smoke in her lungs, and handed it back. Then Lucas took her hand and put it on his cock. She began stroking it and it got hard. She exhaled the smoke. ‘I didn’t know you still liked it with girls, Lucas,’ she said.

‘With you, Hattie, I think I could like it very much.’ She felt a tremor rather like electricity. ‘Besides, Philip and I share everything.’

Lucas was staring at her with those extraordinary eyes. He was tall, like Philip, but with a more intense face and a harder body. ‘Including me?’

‘Especially you.’

‘Have you ever fucked Philip?’ she asked.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Many times — and will again. You and I have that in common.’

She looked again at Philip. He was enjoying this. Getting off on it. The bastard. ‘Are you going to take your clothes off, too?’ she asked him.

‘No. I’m going to watch you take yours off.’

The boy on the bed pouted. ‘Oh, Lucas, you are such a bore. Don’t you have anything more interesting than pot? And why are you fooling with that girl? Don’t you love me?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Lucas said, ‘of course I love you, and I have something much better than pot for you. I got these specially from the hospital.’

‘What are they?’

‘Something special.’

‘Well, let me have them.’

He handed the boy some white pills from a gunmetal pillbox on the bedside table. Eduardo or Carlos swallowed a couple, washing them down with vodka.

‘Philip?’ Hattie said. ‘Don’t you think you should take me home?’ She was still leaning against the door, still wearing her red goose-down ski parka, making no move to leave.