The Dismantling by Brian Deleeuw Page B

the room. He waited for somebody to say something more, and when nobody did, he asked if he could leave.
    â€œSo, what are you going to do?” Katherine asked, pulling him back into the room. “I’m sorry.” She waved a languorous hand as though to disperse her words. “We don’t need to talk about this now.”
    â€œIt’s okay,” he said. “I don’t know yet. Lab tech maybe. Medical consultant.”
    She nodded, as though she believed he was already considering these jobs, as though he had any sort of a plan yet. “You’ll have weekends, vacations. Time for other people. I’ll be jealous.”
    â€œOf what?”
    â€œYou know. Your social life.”
    But of course she wouldn’t in any way be jealous. Why should she be? There wasn’t any aspect of failure to be jealous of. And, anyway, he currently enjoyed no social life to speak of, his isolation first self-imposed then self-perpetuating. He didn’t see that changing simply because he was going to drop out of medical school and have some free time on his hands.
    He moved from the chair to the couch next to her, bent over the coffee table, and snorted another line. The drug hit him faster and stronger this time. He was pinned back against the cushions by the heel of a firm yet gentle hand. He reached out to touch Katherine’s knee, feeling the denim grow warm and damp under his palm. She didn’t move her leg or push his hand away. The air in the room grew thick, tropical. He looked over at her. Her face was tilted away from him, her eyes half-closed, her lips half-smiling. With an enormous amount of effort, he lifted his hand from her knee to her neck, to the smooth skin there, white as bleached bone. She turned to him; he leaned into her. Her lips were hot and dry, and she let them rest against his for a few moments. Then she gently took hold of his shoulders and pressed him back into the couch. “No,” she said, simply and not unkindly. She stood up and disappeared behind him, returning with a blanket. “Sleep here.” He allowed himself to be guided into a prone position, allowed the blanket to be spread over his body. It felt good to be taken care of like this. She turned out the lights, and he heard rustling and then a sigh as she climbed into her bed on the far side of the room. She’d left for class by the time he woke up the following morning. When she called him next, a week later, it was to say she thought she might have found him a job.
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    H E ’ D gone into his interview with Health Solutions knowing only what Katherine had told him, which wasn’t much. Peter DaSilva was a childhood friend of hers from Riverdale, in the Bronx. She’d been close with his little sister; he’d been the obnoxious older brother, teasing and pranking his sister’s friends. A big mouth, the neighborhood smart aleck. He was a natural hustler, she said, a schemer from birth, the kind of kid who sold loosies in the high school locker room and crafted fake IDs on his family’s desktop. Early in his adult life, he’d discovered the health-care industry to be fertile ground for a wide variety of scams and side deals. He’d been, officially, a pharmaceutical sales rep, a health insurance consultant, a hospital administrative staffer, but he was now, in his midthirties, involved in “organ transplant consulting services” that “weren’t totally legal,” and he was in need of someone “discreet” with a “decent knowledge of medicine.” Katherine had helped DaSilva out a bit during the company’s first year—meeting with potential clients mostly—but his business was expanding, and he needed somebody more committed. Now that she was in med school, she didn’t have the time to spare.
    They’d met at an Irish bar in Bay Ridge. Simon still didn’t know if this was near