Miracle Cure

unbearable. Even the thought of food now made his stomach perform backflips.

Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony drifted across the room like a welcome breeze. Michael closed his eyes, allowing the melody to work like a gentle masseur against his aching muscles. His teammates gave him unlimited shit about his musical taste. Reece Porter, the black power forward who cocaptained the New York Knicks with Michael, was always goofing on him.

“How can you listen to this shit, Mikey?” he would ask. “There’s no beat, no rhythm.”

“I realize that the musical ear of a Chopin does not compare with that of MC Hammer,” Michael would reply, “but try to be open-minded. Just listen, Reece. Let the notes flow over you.”

Reece paused and listened for a moment. “I feel like I’m trapped in a dentist’s office. How does this shit get you psyched for a big game? You can’t dance to it or anything.”

“Ah, but just listen.”

“It doesn’t have lyrics,” Reece said.

“And your noise pollution does? You can understand the words over all that racket?”

Reece laughed. “Mikey, you’re a typical whitey snob,” he said.

“I prefer the term pompous honky ass, thank you.”

Good ol’ Reece. Michael held a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, but the thought of even a sip nauseated him. Last year the knee, and now the stomach. It didn’t make sense. Michael had always been the healthiest guy in the league. He had gone through his first ten NBA seasons without a scratch before tearing apart his knee a little more than a year ago. It was tough enough trying to bounce back from reconstructive knee surgery at his age… The last thing he needed was this mystery stomach ailment.

Putting down his glass, Michael moved across the room and made sure the VCR was set. Then he turned off the stereo and turned on the television. Sara would be making her NewsFlash debut in a matter of minutes. Michael fidgeted in his seat. He twisted his wedding band around and around and then rubbed his face. He tried to relax, but, like Sara, he couldn’t. There was no reason to be nervous, he reminded himself. Everything he had said to Sara on the phone was true. She was an amazing reporter, the best. Very sharp and quick. Well prepared and yet spontaneous. A bit of a wise-ass sometimes. A sense of humor when it was called for. A bulldog almost always.

Michael had learned firsthand how tough an interviewer Sara could be. They had met six years ago when she was assigned to interview him for the New York Herald two days before the start of the NBA finals. She was supposed to do a personal, non-sports-related piece on his life off the court. Michael did not like that. He did not want his personal life, especially his past, splashed across the headlines. It was none of anybody’s business, Michael told Sara, resorting to more colorful terms to get his point across and then slamming down the phone for emphasis. But Sara Lowell was not so easily thwarted. To be more precise, Sara Lowell did not know how to give up. She wanted the interview. She went after it.

A jolt of pain knocked aside the memory. Michael clenched his lower abdomen and doubled over on the couch. He held on and waited. The pain subsided slowly.

What the hell is wrong with me?

He leaned back, glancing at the photograph of Sara and himself on the shelf behind the TV. He stared at the picture now, watching himself hunched over Sara with his arms locked around her small waist. She looked so tiny, so achingly beautiful, so goddamn fragile. He often wondered what it was that made Sara appear so innocent, so delicate. Certainly not her figure. Despite the limp, Sara worked out three times a week. Her body was small, taut, athletic—dynamite might be a better way to describe it. Sexy as hell. Michael examined the photograph again, trying to look at his wife objectively. Some would say it was her pale porcelain complexion that accounted for her unaffected appearance, but that wasn’t what it was. Her eyes, Michael thought now, those large green eyes that reflected frailty and gentleness while maintaining the ability to be cunning and probing. They were trusting eyes and eyes you could trust. A man could bathe in those eyes, disappear forever, lose his soul for all eternity.

They were also sexy as hell.

The phone interrupted his thoughts. Michael reached behind him and grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”

“Hi, Michael.”

“How’s it going, Harvey?”

“Not bad. Look, Michael, I don’t want to keep you. I know the show is about to go on.”

“We got a couple of minutes.” There was a crashing sound in the background. “What’s all that noise? You still at the clinic?”

“Yep,” Harvey replied.

“When was the last time you got some sleep?”

“You my mother?”

“Just asking,” Michael said. “I thought I was going to pick you up at your apartment.”

“I didn’t have a chance to get out of here,” Harvey said. “I had one of the nurses rent me a tux and bring it here. It’s just so busy right now. Eric and I are swamped. Without Bruce here.”

Harvey stopped.

There was a moment of silence.

“I still don’t get it, Harv,” said Michael carefully, hoping his friend was finally ready to talk about Bruce’s suicide.

“Neither do I,” Harvey said flatly. Then he added, “Listen, I need to ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

“Is Sara going to be at the benefit tonight?”

“She’ll be a little late.”

“But she’ll be there?”

Michael recognized the urgency in his old friend’s voice. He had known Harvey almost twenty-four years, since a second-year intern named Dr. Harvey Riker took care of an eight-year-old Michael Silverman, who had been rushed to Saint Barnabas Hospital with a concussion and broken arm.

“Of course she’ll be there.”

“Good. I’ll see you tonight, then.”

Michael stared at the receiver, puzzled. “Is everything all right, Harv?”

“Fine,” he mumbled.

“Then what’s with the cloak-and-dagger phone call?”

“It’s just… nothing. I’ll explain later. What time you picking me up?”

“Nine fifteen. Is Eric coming?”

“No,” Harvey said. “One of us has to run the store. I have to go, Michael. I’ll see you at nine fifteen.”

The phone clicked in Michael’s ear.

* * *

Dr. Harvey Riker replaced the receiver. He sighed heavily and put a hand through his long, unruly, gray-brown hair, a cross between Albert Einstein’s and Art Garfunkel’s. He looked every bit of his fifty years. His muscle had turned to flab from lack of exercise. His face was average to the point of tedium. Never much of a hunk to begin with, Harvey’s looks had soured over the years like a two-dollar Chianti.

He opened his desk drawer, poured himself a quick shot of whiskey, and downed it in one gulp. His hands shook. He was scared.

There is only one thing to do. I have to talk to Sara. It’s the only way. And after that…

Better not to think about it.

Harvey swiveled his chair around to look at the three photographs on his credenza. He picked up the one on the far right, the picture of Harvey standing next to his partner and friend, Bruce Grey.

Poor Bruce.

The two police detectives had listened to Harvey’s suspicions politely, nodded in unison, jotted down notes. When Harvey tried to explain that Bruce Grey would never have committed suicide, they listened politely, nodded in unison, jotted down notes. When he told them Bruce had called him on the phone the same night he leaped from the eleventh-floor window at the Days Inn, they listened politely, nodded in unison, jotted down notes… and concluded that Dr. Bruce Grey had committed suicide.