Jonathan Kellerman - The Conspiracy Club

During dinner, one of them, Jeremy wasn’t sure who, steered the conversation to hospital politics, and he and Angela talked shop. When they returned to the car, she took his arm. Back at her door, she looked into his eyes, rose on tiptoes, kissed his cheek hard, and retracted her head. “I had a great time.”

Drawing the boundary: this far, no farther.

Fine with him, he had no stomach for passion.

“I did, too,” he said. “Have a good night.”

Angela flashed perfect, white teeth. Clacked her purse open, found her key, and gave a tiny wave and was on the other side of the door before either of them was pressed to say more.

Jeremy stood in the grubby hallway and waited until her footsteps faded before turning heel.

Over the next three weeks, Angela and Jeremy went out four times. Scheduling was a challenge: twice, Angela had to cancel because of patient emergencies and a surprise request by the chief of medicine for Jeremy to deliver a grand rounds on procedural anxiety caused him to offer apologies- he needed the evening to prepare.

“No problem,” she said, and when Jeremy delivered his talk, she was sitting in the fifth row of the hospital auditorium. Afterward, she winked at him and squeezed his hand and hurried off to join the other residents on morning rounds.

The next night, they had their fifth date.

Basic, unimaginative stuff, their time together. No couples-bungee-jumping, no edgy concerts or performance art exhibits, no long rides out of the city, past the harbor and the western suburbs to the flat plains, where the moon was huge and you could find a quiet place to park and consider infinity. Jeremy knew the plains well. He’d spent most of his life in the Midwest, but sometimes it still shocked him.

Long ago- before Jocelyn, when he’d been simply lonely- he’d driven out to the plains often, speeding alone on a soporific highway, wondering how many flat miles you’d have to travel before the earth shrugged itself a hillock.

Their relationship grew in mundane soil: a quintet of quiet dinners at five separate, quiet, serviceable restaurants: two Italian, one Spanish, a quasi-French place that termed itself “Continental.” After Angela let loose her affection for Hunan cuisine, Jeremy found a blue-lit Chinese café that had gotten good reviews in the Clarion . More money than he was used to spending, but the smile on her face made it worth it.

Decent food, earnest conversation, a brushing of fingertips now and then, very little in the way of flirtation or sexual suggestion.

So different from the way it had been with Jocelyn. Jeremy knew comparisons were destructive, but he didn’t care. Comparison was what came naturally, and he wasn’t even sure he wanted a clear shot at something new.

Jocelyn had been sex and perfume, the perfume of sex. The serpentine duet of tongues, moist panties on their first date, hips lifted, a musky delta the gift proffered.

His first date with Jocelyn had ended before dessert. The frantic drive to her place, ripping each other’s clothes off. Someone so petite, but so strong. Her small, hard body had slammed against Jeremy’s with a force that thrilled him and left his bones bruised.

Jocelyn had always left him breathless.

Angela was polite.

On the second date, she said, “I hope this doesn’t sound rude, but can I ask how old you are?”

“Thirty-two.”

“You look a lot younger.”

Not flattery, the truth, and offered as such.

Jeremy had looked twelve at sixteen, didn’t need to shave until he entered college. He’d hated the reticence of his hormones, all those girls he desired regarding him a kid.

By his thirties, he’d ended up with one of those smooth, angular faces that resists aging. His hair was fine and straight, an unremarkable light brown, and no bald spots or gray strands had intruded. He wore it parted on the right, and unless he used some kind of hair product, it flopped over his forehead. He believed his complexion to be sallow, but women had told him he had great skin. One, a poet, had taken to calling him “Byron,” and insisted that his unremarkable brown eyes were well beyond intense.

He was medium-sized, medium weight, not muscular, wore 10D shoes and a 40 regular suit.

To his mind, about as average as you could be.

Angela said, “I mean it. You look really young. I figured you had to be about that because you told me you’ve been on staff at Central seven years. But you could easily pass for my age, or even younger.”

“Which is?”

“Guess.”

“Two years post M.D. means twenty-eight.”

“Twenty-seven. I skipped third grade.”

Same age as Jocelyn. He said, “I’m not surprised.”

Angela said, “I was just a precocious brat,” and began talking about the rigors of residency.

Jeremy listened. You never knew when professional training would come in handy.

The good-bye pattern begun on the first date continued: walking Angela to her door, the silence, the smile, the outstretched hand.

Then: a hard, defensive peck on the cheek and her claim, a bit too emphatic, of having had a wonderful time.

Jeremy began wondering what she wanted.

After the fifth date, both of them filled with Chinese food, she invited him into her compulsively neat but shabbily turned-out apartment, showed him to a secondhand sofa that still smelled of disinfectant, poured wine for both of them, excused herself, and slipped into the bathroom.

Jeremy looked around. Angela had a good eye. Each component was cheap, scarred, and conspicuously temporary. A sorry houseplant struggled for life on a chipped windowsill. Yet the composite was pleasing.

Still, he wondered: two physician parents. Surely, she could have afforded better.

She emerged from the bathroom wearing a long, green robe- silk or something like it- sat next to him, drank wine, sidled closer, dimmed the lights. They began kissing deeply. Moments later, her robe fell open, and Jeremy was inside her.

Being there brought him no tremor of triumph. On the contrary, he felt a cold wave of letdown course through him: She wasn’t moving much, didn’t seem there . He pumped away, hard, steady, detached, thinking irreverent thoughts.

Maybe it’s the Chinese food.

Maybe after five dates she feels obligated…

Jocelyn had been…

Opening his eyes, he looked down at her face. What he could make out in the ashy darkness was serene. Lying back, accepting him passively, as he thrust himself into her. Her eyes were clamped shut. Would they flutter open, sense his objectivity ?

He decided, To hell with it, pleasure myself, and forgot about her . The next time he looked down her face had changed. As if an internal switch had been flicked. Or she’d decided to come alive. Was she just one of those women who needed time- who the hell ever really knew about women? Now, she flipped her head to the side, grimaced, began grinding back at him. Gripped him with heels and hands and bit his ear and quickened her breathing to a hoarse pant as she tightened her pelvic vise and held him fast.

Jeremy’s objective, disinterested hard-on became something else completely as she cupped his balls and kissed him and cried out.

A shout- a bellow of pleasure- escaped from his mouth, and he collapsed, they both did, lying on the stinking couch, entwined.

Later, when thoughts of Jocelyn crept into his head, he shooed them away.

He drove home tingling below the waist. It was only later, hours later, lying fetally in his own bed, alone, aware of every detail in the room, that he allowed the twinges of guilt to temper his pleasure.