Telegraph Avenue

led to the underground structure of the office building that recently went up next door to the Nefastis Building. Jacket, tie, dressed for work, though as far as Gwen could remember, Garth worked in downtown Oakland. He must be here bright and early to see his doctor or dentist.

“How is Lydia?” Gwen said, feeling she lacked the energy to puzzle out how Garth had meant to engage her with his opening remark; let alone energy sufficient to engage him in return. But there was something off about his words, no doubt, something broken in his tight smile.

“How is Lydia? Lydia is very upset, actually. We are all very upset. The whole thing was traumatic for everyone. It was literally a trauma. All right?”

He was, and she did not believe she had ever encountered such a thing before outside the pages of a novel, white with anger.

“Garth—”

“Lydia had a dream, Gwen, and you and Aviva, you guys just— You fucked it up.”

“A dream?”

“Yes.”

“Garth, Lydia had a baby.”

“I am aware of that,” he said. “Yes, Lydia had a baby. She has a baby, and I have an attorney. His office is, ha, in the building right next door to you. Funny, right?”

“Are you— You’re suing us?”

“I plan to,” Garth said. “I very much plan to do just that.”

“But… what? Why? I know it was hard, things could have gone better, but she and the baby are fine.”

“Who knows if the baby is fine?” he said. “You don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Garth, please.”

They were already in enough trouble, she wanted to say, without him piling on some nonsense lawsuit, waste of everyone’s time and money. But if she said that, he would probably go and report it to the attorney in the next building, and somehow it would end up getting used as evidence against them.

“I hope your lawyer is better at their job than you are,” he said, easing his foot off the brake, punctuating the remark and the interview with an exclamation mark. The part of the exclamation mark was played with aplomb by Garth’s middle finger.

“Nice,” she said to the rear end of Garth’s Prius as he rolled down the ramp to the underground garage. Then, because it seemed to hold out the promise of expressing everything that she had been feeling that morning—toward her practice, toward her life, toward the world—she gave the finger to Garth, held it up so he could see it in his rearview as he drove away.

“Nice,” Aviva agreed, pulling up in front of their building in rattletrap old Hecate. “Like the Bob’s Big Boy sign, only hostile.”

“Ten years I’ve known you,” Aviva said, down on her haunches, poking around the cabinet beside the sink in examination room 2. The office was closed for lunch; the partners had suite 202 to themselves. “Never once had to give you first aid. Suddenly, it’s, like, our little thing we do.”

“Uh.”

“It’s like some kind of not-good date you keep asking me on.”

“I’m under stress, Aviva,” Gwen said, sounding peevish even to herself. She struggled ankle-deep through a wrack of regret, an unfamiliar ebb-tide stink of remorse. She had badly mishandled the situation with Garth Newgrange, and she knew it. It was time to confess, to acknowledge failure, to submit once again to Aviva’s crusty but goodhearted discourse of reproach. “I’m pregnant.”

“I know that, honey. It’s okay. You don’t have to explain.”

Gwen instructed herself to ease up on the woman, who had made no mistakes, ruined nothing. “That AC Transit had hit me?” she tried. “I would have owed Alameda County a new bus.”

“Funny,” said Aviva. “Aha.” She pivoted from the supply drawer and stood up, holding in each hand a small cardboard box containing an elastic support bandage. She had on an April Cornell dress patterned with morning glories, bought secondhand at Crossroads, knee-length, with a V collar and quarter-length drawstring sleeves. On anyone but Aviva, it would have looked matronly, but Aviva had those wiry arms. The whole woman was like a wire, all 104 pounds of her. She coiled and uncoiled. The flowered dress was trying to keep up, a bright but inadequate container for her movements. “Which look you want to go with? Caucasian or leper?”

“The beige. I don’t know, I guess… I guess I was just so excited to see a brown face.”

“I guess you must have been.”

“It’s so pathetic. Chasing after the child. You should have seen me taking those stairs.” She laughed, low and rueful. “Don’t laugh.”

Aviva stopped laughing. “I know why you went after her,” she said.

Gwen kept her legs dangling over the edge of the table, the crinkling paper offering its running commentary on her shifting behind as Aviva wrapped her right foot from arch to ankle. It didn’t appear to be serious, but Gwen had been on it all morning, and now whenever she put her weight on it, her bones thrummed like wire. The abrasion on her shin Aviva had already cleaned and taped with a Band-Aid. She bound Gwen’s ankle with the implacable tenderness of a practiced swaddler. She had that way of not talking; Gwen was powerless against it.

“It was Garth,” Gwen said. “That you saw me flipping off when you drove up.”

“Huh? You mean Garth Newgrange?”

“Right after the kid on the bike crashed into me, Garth pulled up. Going to see a lawyer next door.”

“A lawyer.”

“Talking about suing us. Seeing if they have a case.”

Aviva rocked back, letting go of Gwen’s foot. “Oh, fuck,” she said. She pressed the close-trimmed tips of her long fingers against the orbits of her eyes. “What?”

“That’s what he told me.”

“So you flipped him the bird?”

“He flipped me off first.”

“Yeah, but see, Gwen, you…” She shook off whatever she had been about to say. “Never mind.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You think it’s my fault that he flipped me off. That he’s suing us. You think he’s in the right. Because we screwed up so bad.”

“I— No. No, I don’t. Honestly. But I can’t help thinking that if we just, you know, went to him.”

“No.”

“And, you know.”

“Don’t say it.”

“Apologized.”

“We are not going to do that, Aviva. No. We have nothing to apologize for. We did nothing wrong.”

“Yes, okay, I agree with you, Gwen, but he’s fucking lawyering up.”

The door opened; it was Kai, chewing something leafy rolled in a lavash. “In case you wanted to know, can your one o’clock appointment, who showed up early, can she hear it, out in the waiting room, when you guys are having a fight in room two? I have your answer: yes.”

“We’re fine,” Aviva said.

“Really?” Chewing, acting unconcerned, tugging at the collar of her embroidered cowboy shirt.

“Sure, whatever. I’m fine. Gwen’s fine. Gwen will be fine for at least another…” Aviva looked at her watch, a man’s Timex with the face worn on the inside of the right wrist, as if she had everything timed, down to this pending revelation, and was committed to staying on schedule. She frowned, looking disappointed by what her watch told her. “Like, call it five minutes.”

Kai frowned, eyebrows knitting Sal Mineo–style, and closed the door behind her softly, as if in reproach.

“What’s happening in five minutes?” Gwen said.

“Gwen,” Aviva said. Then there was another long Aviva pause, profound and charged. “Gwen, have you talked to Archy?”