The Side of the Angels by Christina Bartolomeo, Kyoko Watanabe Page B

and give you some ideas.”
    His florid complexion, so unbecoming in a man, grew a shade redder. You can’t win with a guy like Doug. Assertive females threaten him, and docile women earn only contempt for their pains.
    I gazed at him blandly. He looked from me to Tony, but Tony’s face was wooden. Doug laughed. He gave Tony a playful punch on the arm.
    â€œTell her to give me a hand, since she says you’re the boss.”
    â€œI’m my own boss,” I said. “And I don’t want to promise away my time on insignificant tasks until I get a sense of what’s on the front burner. In fact, Tony, I need to be brought up to speed, which means I need to meet with Clare. Any idea when that can be arranged?”
    â€œClare’s still at the CLC,” Doug said. “She wanted me to tell you, Tony, that Peter Arseneault from Channel Eight is going to be interviewing Bennett Winslow in front of the hospital in twenty minutes, and you should be there to get our two cents in for the eleven o’clock news.”
    Winslow was the president of St. Francis Hospital and Coventry’s mouthpiece in all this. He’d been doing an adroit job with the press so far. I was curious to see him.
    â€œDamn,” said Tony. “You could have told me sooner.”
    â€œI was overwhelmed with joy at seeing Nicky,” Doug said nastily.
    â€œYour reunion brought tears to my eyes,” said Tony. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”
    â€œWant to tell me where the hospital is?” I said.
    â€œSkip this,” said Tony. “I can get back in an hour and fill you in.”
    â€œI’m coming.”
    â€œI said you don’t have to, Nicky.”
    â€œAnd
I
said I’m coming. Where is it?”
    I was furious at him. He hadn’t said a word during the exchange with Doug, just stood by and let me duke it out for myself. Not that I needed any Sir Lancelot sticking up for me, but Tony and I both knewthat if Tony was silent when Doug baited me, Doug would see it as a green light for his feeble attempts to throw his weight around.
    â€œKate can take you,” Tony said. Kate had come over in the last minute and was contemplating Doug with frustrated revulsion, as if he were a giant palmetto bug who had crawled in through the hot water pipes yet again, even though the exterminator had been and gone.
    â€œYes, I’ll take her, since you paragons of chivalry haven’t offered,” said Kate. “And then afterward we’re going to get something to eat. She’s been traveling all day and you guys didn’t even fetch her a cup of coffee. Where were you raised, in a barn?”
    She handed me a large chocolate chip cookie and a carton of milk, took my briefcase from me, and shoved an extremely unbecoming brown-and-blue-striped wool cap over her ears and forehead. It reminded me of the ones my aunt Deedee used to knit and inflict on us as Christmas gifts. The last thing I saw before the swing door closed behind us with another beauty-shop jangle were Doug’s and Tony’s faces still turned in our direction. Tony was scowling, his face scrunched up like a rebellious schoolboy’s. Doug was frowning petulantly, a frown of balked entitlement, as if he’d just arrived at the theater and someone else was sitting in his seat.
    Outside the wind was ten degrees colder than it had been when I arrived. When I took a chilled breath, I realized that early November meant true winter here, winter fully arrived and final. Back home, the scent of loam and falling leaves and damp earth was still in the air. Here the leaves were all off the trees and if the air smelled of anything at all, it was of wet stone and car exhaust.
    Ahead of me lay weeks of this same cold. I was going to miss the last of Washington’s southern autumn, with its gentle blues and muted golds. I wasn’t going to be able to dawdle along Skyline Drive with Louise as