A Fatal Debt

paper, wrote a number on it, and gave it to me.

“Call me if you like. I’m in the city sometimes.”

I felt the urge to justify to myself asking her out, but I resisted. It was a bad idea, no matter how tempting.

“I don’t think I should. Business and pleasure, you know,” I said awkwardly.

“So,” she said. “You think I’m pleasant.”

I laughed despite myself as I climbed onto the sidewalk. Then she eased the Range Rover into the traffic while I stood and watched her disappear.

8

That Saturday, I went to the greenmarket in Union Square, and when I returned, laden with paper bags, I was halted in the lobby by Bob Lorenzo, the head doorman of my apartment building. Bob had a neatly trimmed beard, bloodhound eyes, and an air of fortitude under pressure. We got on fine, though I tried to avoid discussing the Mets or the co-op board, both of which were painful topics.

“Dr. Kaufman came by, Dr. Cowper,” he said, holding up an envelope with “Ben” written on it in Rebecca’s round script and then underlined. “You just missed her. She asked me to give you this.”

“Thanks, Bob,” I said. I had once tried to persuade him to call me by my first name, but it had not stuck. The envelope was weighed down at the bottom by something, and I felt the shape inside: her key to my apartment. Bob regarded me with a look of disapproval, as if he knew what the package signified.

“She said she wouldn’t be here so much anymore. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I’m sorry, too,” I said. I felt a surge of irritation at his silent judgment, compounding my guilt. What was wrong with these people? First my father and Jane, and now I couldn’t walk into my apartment building without being made to feel ashamed. That probably would have been my mother’s reaction, too. Are you quite sure, Ben? she’d have said with an undertone of reproach.

Back in my apartment, I lay on the bed, took a breath, and tore open Rebecca’s envelope with my thumb. Inside was a sheet of paper folded over upon itself, with her key attached with Scotch tape.

Ben,

I’m sorry I had to go. I miss you already but I think it’s for the best. I expect I’ll see you at work. I’ll be the one who looks like she’s been crying.

R.

I wanted to weep, but nothing came-my emotional tank was empty. It would have been easier if she’d been angry with me. Her affection and sad dignity were a kick in the stomach. If I hadn’t known her so well, I’d have thought that she’d calculated it to cause me pain, but she wasn’t like that.

I got up and paced around the room for a while, but the desolate feeling wouldn’t pass. I felt weary, but I didn’t want to stay at home, feeling bad about my ill treatment of Rebecca and entanglement with Harry, and worrying about my father’s heart. I needed something to distract me. I laid her note on the bed, walked into the living room, and called a friend from the hospital. He was a party animal who’d known in our first week of residency which bar to drink at and where to go afterward. Sure enough, he was heading out to a gathering later on.

“A guy Emma knows invited us to his apartment in TriBeCa. His parties are great, they say. He works on Wall Street,” he said.

“I don’t know, Steve. I don’t think I want to spend my Saturday night with a bunch of bankers.”

After my week with Harry and his entourage, it didn’t feel like relaxation to be plunged back into his world.

“Right. You’ve got so many other choices, don’t you? That’s why you’re calling me at six o’clock. Come on, it’ll be fun.”

When the sun had set and the lights had gone on in Union Square, casting a glow over the rooftops, I went into the bathroom. I opened a medicine cabinet above a jar of seashells that Rebecca had collected on a vacation we’d had in Cape Cod. I poked among the lotions and deodorants, behind the Ambien that she’d sometimes taken to help her sleep. I found a bottle full of orange ovals-30-milligram tablets of Adderall. Doctors shouldn’t self- medicate, especially not with amphetamines meant to treat attention deficit disorder, but Steve did and sometimes I did, too. At that moment, I craved anything that would blank out the thoughts in my head.

By the time I’d hailed a taxi downtown, my skin was prickling and a sheen of sweat had broken out on the backs of my hands as the amphetamine salts filtered into my blood, tampering with the norepinephrine and dopamine inside my brain. My mouth was dry and I felt the worry of the past few days drop away, leaving a light- headed fascination with the colors and shapes around me. All of the emotional clamor, the buzz of discomfort, grew muted. The discordant groans of the taxi’s air conditioner congealed into a pleasing harmony. I lowered the window as we shot along Broadway and the lights streamed behind us like a vapor trail in blue sky.

I pushed fruitlessly at the buzzer on the metal door to the building for five minutes before a couple rolled down the stairway on their way out and admitted me. It was obvious why I’d been ignored when I reached the tenth floor of the building and heard the roar of voices from inside the apartment. It was a vast multifloored loft with white-painted iron columns and a crush of guests shouting over hypnotic music being mixed on an Apple laptop by a DJ. Urban wealth was on display everywhere, from the canvases of rusting bridges and desolate landscapes on the walls to the black-uniformed waiters pouring Krug champagne into flutes. I walked out through the doors onto a terrace with a glittering view of nearby towers and, in the distance, City Hall. Steve was standing in a knot of people, and I walked up to him.

“So you made it. Ben, this is Lucia,” he said.

The young woman by him smiled. She was pretty-dark cropped hair, mascara, and gleaming eyes. She wore a silk dress, and the amphetamines made the straps over her shoulders appear to sparkle in the light.

“Great to meet you,” I said, feeling her soft hand in mine.

“Isn’t this apartment awesome?”

“Amazing.”

“It’s Gabriel’s. He’s over there with Josh.”

She pointed to a corner of the balcony where two men were talking. The man she indicated had a ruddy face, a flat jaw, and alert eyes. He seemed amused by the whole event, as if he were a guest rather than the host.

“I’m going to find a drink. Can I get you one?” I said.

Later on, back at her apartment in the East Village, after she’d gone to sleep, I stood at her bedroom window overlooking a dark alley and stared at the brick wall opposite. It was two a.m. and the Adderall was wearing off, making me shaky and paranoid. I remembered my walk on the beach, Harry telling me how he’d lost everything in the crash, and shivered, my faith in him evaporating along with the drugs. He’d told me he wouldn’t harm himself. Why should I trust him? I thought.

Hot water cascaded over my head and down my body on that Sunday morning as I stood in the shower at the gym, trying to absorb the news. I’d just watched it on television, the thing I’d feared. I’d left Harry in what I’d believed was a stable condition, and he had taken his own life. If I’d stuck with my instincts-the treatment in which I’d believed-instead of giving way to Duncan, I could have saved him. I thought of Nora and the distress she must now be in. After all she’d been through to save him, Harry had abandoned her. How could I face her again?

After a few minutes, I turned off the faucet and stepped out of the shower to dress. The treadmill runners were still panting on their machines as I’d been half an hour before, oblivious to the outside world. Walking out of the gym, I saw the same spring scene-the chess players on the sidewalk, a couple walking a dog, an old lady talking to a doorman-but my pleasure in it had gone.

Back home, I lay on my bed for a minute, thinking about Harry’s death and what it meant for me. I couldn’t talk to Rebecca; I didn’t want to worry my father in his convalescence; I couldn’t face calling Episcopal. Reminding myself that I advised patients not to wallow in their misery, I got up and paced my living room for a while. Then I decided that I had to find out exactly what had happened. Felix, I thought. He’d know. I looked through my jacket for my phone and scrolled through the Calls Received list to the previous week. There was the cellphone number from which he’d called me to fix the return trip