Dr. Knox Read Online Free PDF Page B

boxers from behind a cushion. “Pediatricians don’t need a bedside manner?”
    “I didn’t think you were a child, though maybe I got that wrong. For grown-ups, I prescribe a few milligrams of smug, plus a shower and coffee.”
    I’d met Nora a year ago, at a wedding extravaganza in Santa Monica, where I was a reluctant plus-one for a pediatric resident who’d been volunteering at the clinic. Nora supervised my date at UCLA Medical Center, along with both of the brides, and she’d come to the reception accompanied only by her considerable self-possession. She wore a gray gossamer dress, and smiled as she crossed the hotel terrace and introduced herself. She knew who I was, and had a champagne flute for me, and one of her own. We refilled them several times as the toasts kept coming, and left together before the cake.
    I’d had more than a few relationships in the decade since my marriage had sputtered out, all brisk, friendly, but slightly chilly affairs, with sadly consistent contours: the company was amusing and bright, the sex vigorous, and the exit doors were always in plain sight, none further than a few months away. I told myself that that’s what happened in war zones, but my relationships in L.A. hadn’t been any different. Until Nora. I wasn’t sure what accounted for how long things had lasted between us. Maybe it was her intelligence, or the warmth and kindness I saw whenever she volunteered at the clinic—the way the kids took to her. Or maybe it was because she was as suspicious of romantic entanglement as I was, and expected even less. Or maybe, after a long time alone, I was ready not to be.
    Showered, shaved, and drinking coffee at the kitchen table, I felt slightly less fragile. I spread strawberry jam on a croissant and told Nora about the latest letter from my landlord.
    “I get that he’s serious about selling,” I said, “but he’s delusional about the asking price.”
    She looked at me over the top of her iPad and smiled. Her teeth were very white. “Delusion is what L.A. real estate is about. He’ll get his number, or something close—if not in August, then a few months later.”
    I drank some coffee. “What happened to the market being in the toilet? Underwater mortgages, abandonments—where did all that go?”
    “Do you ever look at the business section? There’s all this foreign money in town, looking for a place to park. An American safe-deposit box with a view—that’s what the guy on
Bloomberg
called it.”
    “It’s Skid Row, for chrissakes.”
    “That’s authentic urban grit down there. Hipsters pay up for that—it makes the artisanal cheese taste better. And they’re just the first wave; a few years from now your street will look like Melrose.”
    “You know, that building’s in shit shape.”
    Nora laughed. “Don’t try to understand it: it’s Chinatown, Jake. The real question is: what are you going to do when he sells?”
    I rubbed my jaw and felt tired again. “Find someplace else, I guess. There’re other vacant storefronts in the neighborhood.”
    Nora shook her head. “You think other landlords will be different? Even if you find a place you can afford, you’ll be going through the same thing in—what—a year or two? The tide’s running against you there. You should check out the Valley. Over there you could find a place to live that’s not above your office, and maybe then you’ll finally unpack. How many years has it been, living out of a backpack? Four?”
    “Three and a half—and I don’t live out of a backpack. And screw the tide; screw the Valley too.”
    “Excellent wind-pissing,” Nora said, laughing. “What’s so bad about the Valley?”
    “Besides being too hot, flat, and ugly?”
    “And where you are now is such a garden spot? There are sick people in the Valley. Poor ones too.”
    “My ex said something like that before I went on my first gig with DTR.”
    “And?”
    “I told her that there were doctors in New Haven to