Loving Time

Then, as the elevator doors opened on the twentieth floor, her body tensed at the unwelcome sight of Harold Dickey hurrying out of the executive suite. The tension started with the familiar tingle at the base of her neck that felt as if, once again, she’d been bitten by a tiny insect pest she’d repeatedly neglected to squash into oblivion.

“Ah, there you are!” Harold’s face creased into a delighted smile. “I was hoping to catch you.”

“I’ll bet you were,” she muttered coldly, brushing past him. Harold reached out and took her arm, halting Clara’s retreat. The tic in her cheek, which twitched only when she was absolutely exhausted or impatient beyond enduring, made its first tentative throb. She sighed. “What do you want, Hal?”

He smiled his old smile. “Just you,” his smile said.

She shook her head. Not a chance. Not a ghost of a chance.

“Did you have a good weekend with the Senator?” he asked.

“Harold, you were coming from my office.” Clara said the words slowly, giving herself a moment to calm down. She was deeply angry at his pushing, pushing, pushing her so that very soon, if he didn’t get a grip, he was going to force her to squash him.

“Yes, yes. I wanted to chat with you before the meeting about your proposed changes in the guidelines of the Quality Assurance Committee. I thought it might be useful.”

“Oh?” she said. Another management problem for her to finesse. This was how Hal blackmailed her to be with him. When she didn’t make time for him, he became difficult. He played the devil’s advocate in her meetings, raised questions that engaged the others on the committee in hours of wasteful debates about trivial points. Often he changed people’s minds about the issues.

Harold Dickey had quickly withdrawn his hold on her arm, but his face was still softened by that obnoxious expression of adoration no woman can bear seeing on a man she doesn’t admire. They were stopped right outside the entrance to the executive suite, where Clara’s assistant, the vice chairman, the chief resident, and various other functionaries could observe them perfectly well.

Harold’s expression was particularly offensive to Clara because he was way over sixty now and past his prime. His hair was white and had receded far enough to reveal the dome of his bright shiny skull. His stomach had grown, and so had the fleshy pouches under his eyes. The gray Brooks Brothers suit he wore was shapeless. He still ran, and still played tennis, but his fire was gone. The only thing about Harold that was the same as when Clara had been a resident under his supervision eighteen years ago was the mustache. The white mustache had been very distinguished then, made him look dapper and a little dangerous. It still made him look a little dangerous. But now he was dangerous.

She’d been lenient for a long time—understanding, gracious, thoughtful, sensitive. She’d given him projects and even referrals. Just last night she’d referred a patient to him, Ray Cowles. She remembered with annoyance the conversation she and Ray had had about it. Ray and Hal were difficult children who irritated her almost beyond endurance. Let them bother each other; they deserved it.

Clara’s day was not starting well. Every man in her life required boundaries and discipline, not diplomacy. She had to spend precious moments dealing with each one. Having to take the time to reason with them annoyed her. Her tic made its second throb. She shook her head impatiently to make it stop. “Harold, I’m late for a meeting.”

“Oh, my. I wouldn’t want to keep you,” he said with that asinine adoring smile. “What time would be good for you?”

“No time. I have the day from hell today.”

“Do you want to have dinner later? I could hold my thoughts until then.”

“No, I have an association meeting.”

“Great, so do I. We can go together.” He looked hopeful.

Clara’s lips compressed with disgust. She shook her head at how he just wouldn’t let it die. She had married and divorced twice, had had many lovers, and had made her way through the complicated politics of two other psychiatric institutions since Harold had been her mentor, her supervisor, her lover. Now, after all these years, even though she was his superior in every way, he still had the supreme arrogance to think that he could get her back. Harold Dickey had not figured at all in her deliberations about returning to New York after a thirteen-year absence. The return of his desire, his continued and growing interest after much discouragement, had surprised her at first. Then she was amused; she thought he could be useful. Now, however, she felt different.

“Hal, I said I’m busy.”

“I like that outfit,” he murmured. “You look very pretty, Clara. Is it new?”

The navy suit was new. His commenting on it was inappropriate. She was the Director of the Centre. She could force him out, eviscerate him. She’d done it to many better men than Dickey would ever be. She was terminating him, no question, just as she had terminated Ray. And Hal was absolutely certain she wouldn’t. The tic in her cheek throbbed, confirming her decision.

He smiled. “Have a good day.”

four

Almost before dawn on November 1, Maria Sanchez heard her son, Detective-Sergeant Mike Sanchez, rise from his solitary bed and cross the hall to the bathroom, yawning loudly. The bathroom door closed. Five or ten seconds later his water splashed loudly in the toilet. The toilet flushed. Then came the sound of heavy rain as the shower pounded the bathroom tiles. Each day it was the same. It took Mike exactly twenty minutes to urinate, shower, shave, and dress.

Each day Maria spent those twenty minutes waiting for her bitter coffee to brew and watching the joggers stretch at the entrance to Van Cortlandt Park, then disappear, their legs pumping easily up and down. The joggers ran in the summer heat, in the chilling rain. In the winter months they appeared before the sky began to lighten, some not even wearing sweatpants or jackets, their breath making steam. Maria knew who some of them were, what buildings they lived in, at what hour they took the Broadway elevated train that ran within view of her window into Manhattan.

Mike told her she was the kind of witness they liked to have on the stand in court, a person who knew what was going on around her, noticed when something was different and remembered it later. It made her feel good when he said that. Her hijo was an important man. He didn’t have to patrol the streets or wear a uniform anymore. He’d had his picture in the newspaper. Maria still showed the clipping of her son to her friends. She was proud that everybody in the neighborhood knew him, came to him asking for things. They thought her hijo could personally fix all their parking tickets, speeding tickets, all their problems with any government agency, including the IRS. She never told anyone otherwise.

She also knew her son could have any woman he wanted. Even without the uniform, he was a good-looking man, still excited them. The single women in the neighborhood kept their eyes on him, flirting all the time. And some of the married women, too. Maria didn’t blame them. No one had trouble when Mike was around.

The walls in the old building were thin. Behind the bathroom door she heard him burp, then adjust the water in the shower. The faucet whined as he turned up the hot and the pipes began to clank. She hesitated, unsure of what to do. She had a box of wooden matches in one hand and her favorite rosary with the pink cut-glass beads in the other. She was a superstitious woman, knew timing and ritual mattered. Yesterday was Halloween. She wouldn’t have lit a candle yesterday for anything. This year God had finally intervened for Mike. Mike’s wife, Maria, who had left him five years ago, was finally dead of her leukemia. Halloween was over and November 2 was tomorrow. Could she start the ceremony a day early, light just one candle now, or should she wait?

Maria Sanchez had celebrated November 2, Mexico’s Day of the Dead, faithfully for all of the thirty years she had lived in this Bronx apartment overlooking Broadway, the elevated train, and Van Cortlandt Park. This year, however, she’d begun her shrine to the dead two months earlier than usual. She took out the old, old photos of her mother and father, uncles and aunts long gone; mementos of other half-forgotten relatives; the relics of her two babies, dead in infancy many, many years ago in Mexico, and those of her husband, Marco, when he was young. She studied them one by one, then arranged them on the heavy, carved wooden table, along with offerings of food, candles, and the prayer cards she got from her church.

The shower droned on in the bathroom. As she weighed the odds of her desire against the possibility of doing wrong, the coffee perked, and the sky lightened to day. Because her daughter-in-law had been too religious to divorce, Maria was glad she was dead. Then, ashamed of the sinful thought, she quickly extracted a match from the