A Friend of the Family Read Online Free PDF

nice guy would let him win, poor bastard, and then I thought, Joe would know if I was letting him win. So I brought up my game, played him hard, our sneakers squeaking on the polished wood. In sixteen minutes we were tied at twelve, and although Joe had elbowed me to the floor twice, I’d hung him up twice myself. In another ten minutes I’d won the game.
    “What are you doing now?” he asked as we toweled the sweat off our necks.
    “What am I doing?” All my days started the same way back then: the JCC, ten minutes in the sauna, then a shower, a stop at the Dunkin’ Donuts for a cinnamon cruller and a large coffee, in the office by 7:45. I’d always toss the doughnut bag in the lobby garbage to hide the evidence from Mina—she disapproved of sugar in the morning, or, frankly, ever.
    “You want to get breakfast?”
    I’d known him at that point for twenty years — I’d been the best man at his wedding, he was my only child’s godfather, I’d eaten a thousand meals with him. What made me feel so strange about eating one more?
    “Or if you’ve got to get going—”
    “Breakfast sounds great,” I said. “I was just thinking about eggs.”
    He had a nine thirty appointment, he said, on the Upper East Side — a Cornell psychiatrist nobody we knew had any ties to. His partners were taking on more than their share in the office so that he could attend to his family problems, his psychiatric needs and those of his daughter, his legal meetings, his lunch breaks with his wife. Joe was now only seeing his high-risk patients three afternoons a week. But still, he said, he liked to make time for breakfast.
    In the car, Imus blared from the radio. I moved to turn it off, but Joe said no, leave it, and we drove to the Old Lantern in silence except for Imus’s yammerings about Janet Reno’s decision to fire ninety-three federal attorneys. In the parking lot, I wedged my Lexus into a corner spot, and Joe and I dashed to the diner with our jackets over our heads. It had just started to rain.
    “So how’s Iris holding up?” I asked after we had sat down and chitchatted the waitress into bringing us some coffee.
    “Iris?” Joe blinked. “You know,” he said. “She’s got everything all figured out. Spreadsheets.” It was an old joke between us that our wives were the brains of our respective operations, and we were just the appendages.
    “I’m not surprised.”
    “Budgets, strategy plans, doctors’ appointments, lawyers. The trial’s set for December.” Today was the last day of June. “This lawyer we hired, I called your brother about him. Phil and I talked the other night. He said he’s very good.”
    “Well, Phil knows the field,” I said, guilt-stabbed. My brother had managed to return Joe Stern’s calls, and I hadn’t.
    “He offered me Knicks tickets.”
    “He what?”
    Joe laughed, rubbed his hand on his bald head. It was the first smile I’d seen from him that morning.
    “Your fucking brother. He said, Joe, I know you’re going through a difficult time right now, and I’d like to offer you something to help. I have Knicks tickets, next week, right on the floor. I want you and Iris to have them.”
    “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
    “I took ’em, too,” Joe said. “What the hell? It’ll be good to take Iris out to a game. You know how she ogles the players.” This was another joke between us, that our wives liked to fantasize about muscle-bound yahoos whenever circumstances allowed. As far as we knew, this wasn’t true about either one of them.
    The waitress came back for our order, a western omelet for me, oatmeal and a poached egg for Joe, and as she disappeared we lapsed again into silence. I wanted to ask about Laura—how she was doing, of course, and what her shrink thought, but also all the questions everyone else at Round Hill asked when we passed one another in hospital hallways, at the Grand Union, at the Garland Chophouse, where we took our Saturday dinners: How did