Gibbs wanted to talk about it with us; Sterling didn’t. I’d guess he was pushing her to try something she didn’t want to do, and he didn’t want our votes counted.”
“Swingers swingers? Like… you know?”
“Yeah, like having sex with other couples on a regular basis. That kind of swingers. Do you know another kind?” She giggled to herself. I assumed it was at the thought that I might possess more esoteric deviant sexual knowledge than she did.
I didn’t admit that I had been actively considering the country-and-western dancing connotations of the word “swinger.”
“Gibbs and Sterling, swingers? How exactly did you come to this conclusion? She never actually said anything about that, did she? Did she say something to you in private? God, you’d think I’d remember if she’d implied they were swingers.”
“I just knew where she was going. You could tell.”
“How come I didn’t know where she was going?”
“What we do? Psychotherapy? People sometimes think we read minds. But what we do is more like seeing in the dark, you know? I knew where Gibbs was going. Sterling knew where she was going. You, sweetheart? You’re such a prude. You don’t like to go places like that. You’re a very good therapist, but where sex is concerned, you can’t see too well in the dark. Honestly, it’s one of the things I love about you.”
“You love that I’m a prude?”
She placed a mug beneath the dripping brew to catch the first, strongest cup of coffee. “I have to pick something to love, don’t I?”
SEVEN
Sam’s heart attack wasn’t awful by heart attack standards. The cardiologist didn’t think he’d suffered significant muscle damage.
During my visit to the hospital early Monday afternoon, Sam pointed out the location of the narrowing they’d discovered on a plastic model of the human heart that was about the size of a grapefruit. I’d had to hand him the model; he was flat on his back with some strange device that looked like a single-span suspension bridge straddling his groin. He’d explained that it was pressing on the incision in his artery with approximately the force that nature used to turn coal into diamonds.
All in all, not the precise degree of pressure that most men preferred in the vicinity of their groin.
“The one that got blocked up is called the diagonal artery. It’s that one there.” He pointed at a little red line on the model. “They put a stent in it to hold it open. You know what that is?”
I nodded. I rested my fingertip on the diagonal artery on the model in my hands and tried to visualize the blockage in Sam’s heart and the small wire-mesh pipe propping open his fragile blood vessel.
“Doctor said it could’ve been much worse. My other arteries are open. Not wide open. But enough open.”
“That’s good news, right?”
“It’s not bad news. But best case is you want them all wide open.”
“Where’s Sherry?” I asked. I sat and held the model heart in my hands. It seemed inappropriate to set it back down. Even though it was plastic, I felt like I should be extra careful with it.
“She’s been here most of the day. Right now she’s taking a walk or something. Getting some tea, I don’t know. She said she needed a break from all this.” He waved at the voluminous paraphernalia of the cardiac care unit. Monitors, pumps. Lots of plastic tubes and two- and three-digit LEDs telling those intelligent enough to understand them important things about Sam’s condition. “It’s okay.”
I knew Sam’s wife pretty well. I thought I knew her well enough to guess that her sympathy for her husband’s condition would erode at some point and that her anger that Sam didn’t do shit to take care of himself would emerge in a form that would cause him to cringe.
“Is she mad already?” I asked.
Sam nodded. “I fucked up. She told me this was coming. The heart attack. My father had one, you know. Same age I am right now. She’s been bugging
“Swingers swingers? Like… you know?”
“Yeah, like having sex with other couples on a regular basis. That kind of swingers. Do you know another kind?” She giggled to herself. I assumed it was at the thought that I might possess more esoteric deviant sexual knowledge than she did.
I didn’t admit that I had been actively considering the country-and-western dancing connotations of the word “swinger.”
“Gibbs and Sterling, swingers? How exactly did you come to this conclusion? She never actually said anything about that, did she? Did she say something to you in private? God, you’d think I’d remember if she’d implied they were swingers.”
“I just knew where she was going. You could tell.”
“How come I didn’t know where she was going?”
“What we do? Psychotherapy? People sometimes think we read minds. But what we do is more like seeing in the dark, you know? I knew where Gibbs was going. Sterling knew where she was going. You, sweetheart? You’re such a prude. You don’t like to go places like that. You’re a very good therapist, but where sex is concerned, you can’t see too well in the dark. Honestly, it’s one of the things I love about you.”
“You love that I’m a prude?”
She placed a mug beneath the dripping brew to catch the first, strongest cup of coffee. “I have to pick something to love, don’t I?”
SEVEN
Sam’s heart attack wasn’t awful by heart attack standards. The cardiologist didn’t think he’d suffered significant muscle damage.
During my visit to the hospital early Monday afternoon, Sam pointed out the location of the narrowing they’d discovered on a plastic model of the human heart that was about the size of a grapefruit. I’d had to hand him the model; he was flat on his back with some strange device that looked like a single-span suspension bridge straddling his groin. He’d explained that it was pressing on the incision in his artery with approximately the force that nature used to turn coal into diamonds.
All in all, not the precise degree of pressure that most men preferred in the vicinity of their groin.
“The one that got blocked up is called the diagonal artery. It’s that one there.” He pointed at a little red line on the model. “They put a stent in it to hold it open. You know what that is?”
I nodded. I rested my fingertip on the diagonal artery on the model in my hands and tried to visualize the blockage in Sam’s heart and the small wire-mesh pipe propping open his fragile blood vessel.
“Doctor said it could’ve been much worse. My other arteries are open. Not wide open. But enough open.”
“That’s good news, right?”
“It’s not bad news. But best case is you want them all wide open.”
“Where’s Sherry?” I asked. I sat and held the model heart in my hands. It seemed inappropriate to set it back down. Even though it was plastic, I felt like I should be extra careful with it.
“She’s been here most of the day. Right now she’s taking a walk or something. Getting some tea, I don’t know. She said she needed a break from all this.” He waved at the voluminous paraphernalia of the cardiac care unit. Monitors, pumps. Lots of plastic tubes and two- and three-digit LEDs telling those intelligent enough to understand them important things about Sam’s condition. “It’s okay.”
I knew Sam’s wife pretty well. I thought I knew her well enough to guess that her sympathy for her husband’s condition would erode at some point and that her anger that Sam didn’t do shit to take care of himself would emerge in a form that would cause him to cringe.
“Is she mad already?” I asked.
Sam nodded. “I fucked up. She told me this was coming. The heart attack. My father had one, you know. Same age I am right now. She’s been bugging
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