Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
T he next morning, when the alarm went off, I was already up scouring the Internet for clues. The plan had come to me in the middle of the night, in between the tossing and the turning, a vision forming as I stared at the ceiling above.
Ever since the reunion, memories and thoughts about Jack Thompson had wormed their way into my brain. I had spent the past twenty years trying to forget him and what he had done to me, but one chance encounter now had me spinning, his words bouncing around in my head.
I was hoping we could talk.
So I could apologize.
Make it up to you somehow.
If you’d let me.
The smart thing for me to do would have been to rip up Jack’s business card, have a hypnotist erase all my memories, and then join a convent in Tibet.
Then it occurred to me. That’s what the old Mary would have done. Run away and hide. Curl up on the bathroom floor in the fetal position and let life kick her around. But I wasn’t the old Mary, I was the new Mary. And the new Mary didn’t back down from a … fight? Challenge? Super hot, once unattainable guy who, for some strange reason, showed a hint of interest?
The truth was, I had no idea what was going on or why it was happening. Was I still physically attracted to Jack Thompson? Of course. Who wouldn’t be? Was I intrigued by the potential possibilities? Guilty as charged. Did I want to prove to myself that after twenty years I was no longer the Queen of the Geeks? Bingo.
It wasn’t that hard to find him, although the list of people with the name Jack Thompson was surprisingly long. After adding a filter for the keyword “Winter Park”, the town listed on Jack’s business card, I found a reference to a Dr. Jack Thompson in the blog archives of Modern Podiatry.
Now I know what you’re thinking. Because I thought the same thing. A podiatrist? What kind of man enjoys spending all day looking at feet? Feet are all wrinkly. They can be hairy. A lot of times they smell. But then I realized something. A man who knows his way around a foot is bound to give one hell of a foot massage.
After closing my laptop, I glanced over at the bed where Purrfect was curled up against the pillow. She glared at me as if I was to blame for interrupting her beauty sleep.
I hopped in the shower, shaved everything that needed shaving, then shotgunned an entire banana kale smoothie.
After applying my best make-up, I doused myself in perfume, then wiggled my way into the sexy red dress I saved for special occasions. The one that showed off my calves and made my ass look like I did squats every day.
“I’ll be back in a couple hours,” I told Purrfect.
A whisker twitched.
“I filled up your dish with cat treats.” My strategy was to bribe her with food to mitigate the inevitable cat-tastrophe the inside of my apartment would endure. Like a cat-nado. Or a purr-icane.
“Just try not to destroy anything. Please.” She didn’t make me any promises.
* * *
Traffic was light that early in the morning, so it was easy to get across town. I had an appointment at the nail salon, the first appointment of the day. I ordered something off the VIP Deluxe menu called the Velvet Cucumber, which, coincidentally, was also the stage name of someone Janet and I met on a road trip to Fort Lauderdale back in college.
“Mimosa Mrs. Mary?” The receptionist presented a tall glass of fizzy refreshment on a silver tray.
“It’s Miss. And yes. Thank you.”
Sinking deeper into the massage chair, Vivian, the nail technician, buffed my cuticles, wedged cucumber slices between my toes, then propped my feet up on a soft velvet pillow. The candy red polish was a perfect match for my dress. A slathering of cucumber lotion made my feet smell like spring.
“Another mimosa, Miss Mary?” Vivian dug her thumbs into the back of my calf muscles, firm hands kneading away like she was making a loaf of sourdough.
I checked my watch. I still had plenty of time before my big date. “Why yes, thank you, don’t mind if I do.” Sixty minutes of VIP Deluxe pampering does wonders for one’s mental state. By the time the vibrations from the massage chair subsided, the emotional traumas of my recent ordeals had all washed away on a velvet pillow boat in a river of cucumbers.
After tipping generously, I left the salon and scoped out the tall glass building across the street. I couldn’t help but smile at my own clever brilliance. Strategically, I had booked my pedicure appointment at that salon because of the proximity to that building. A five-minute walk later and I was there.
As I walked through the parking lot, another red BMW caught my eye, almost the same color and model as mine. The personalized plate read, DRMEOW. A fellow cat lover? Hmmm.
As I got closer to the building, I saw a directory listing the business occupants. My heart skipped a beat. There it was, on the right-hand side, in gold lettering near the bottom of the marble slab.
Suite 250. Jack Thompson, M.D.
Like I said, C-L-E-V-E-R B-R-I-L-L-I-A-N-C-E.
I took several deep breaths, then made my way to the front desk of Suite 250. I scribbled my signature on the sign-in sheet. My hand shook so badly from nerves it was even less legible than usual.
The receptionist looked up at me from behind the desk. Her name tag read, “Susan”. I tried to smile but when I glimpsed myself in the plexiglass, my face looked like I was about to barf.
“Do you have an appointment?” asked Susan.
“Yes,” I replied. Why was my voice two octaves higher?
“And your name?”
“Mary. Burns. Mary Burns. With a B. And an M.”
Susan frowned as she reviewed the schedule. “Your appointment is at three thirty.”
I smiled and nodded.
Susan looked down at her watch, then back up at me. “It’s only ten thirty.”
“I like to be prompt.”
Susan handed me a clipboard stacked with paperwork. “Have a seat and fill out these forms. You’ll hand them to Dr. Thompson once he comes in. We’ll call you in a few …” Susan looked down at her watch again. “… hours.”
While I was filling out the paperwork, I took peeks at the other patients when they weren’t looking. There was a young couple holding hands, the anxiety clear on their faces. Like they were waiting for some critical life alternating diagnosis. Was it a hangnail or a bunion?
There was a pregnant woman who looked like she was about to explode. Her feet were so swollen she wasn’t wearing shoes, only socks. Maybe a severe case of athlete’s foot.
I don’t know if it was Purrfect waking me up in the middle of the night, the relaxing chair massage, or the three consecutive mimosas, but it wasn’t long before I found myself unable to stifle the yawns. I decided it wouldn’t hurt to rest my eyes. Just a little bit. Just a momentary respite.
* * *
I must have fallen asleep, because when I opened my eyes again, the waiting room was empty and I was alone. Except for Jack.
I saw him standing by the door that led back to the exam rooms. A crisp white doctor’s jacket hung on his shoulders, like a superhero’s cape. A stethoscope hung around his tautly muscled neck. There was a twinkle in his eyes. He looked at me like he had x-ray vision.
“Hello Mary.” I didn’t just hear his voice, I felt it in my bones. “Are you ready to come?” Jack held the door open wide.
Following him on wobbly legs, Jack led me back to an exam room. All the nurses must have already gone home.
Jack motioned to the exam table. “Sit,” he commanded.
I obeyed.
Jack walked over to stand in front of me, looking me over from head to toe. He smiled again, then dropped to his knees, sending my pulse into heart attack territory. “Give me your foot.”
I did.
“I’m going to remove your shoes,” he said. “Then I’m going to need you to spread your legs.”
My head was nodding up and down before I even realized it was moving.
“Is it okay if I touch you now?”
I wanted to tell Jack he could do anything and everything to me, but my voice no longer worked.
Jack gently grasped my ankles, fingers like feathers on my skin. He removed my shoes, prodding muscles and bones and tendons. I closed my eyes as a gasp slipped out of my throat. I could feel his touch working up the inside of my calfs, underneath my dress. My muscles melted in his palms.
Our eyes locked. He flashed that smile again, sending my heartbeat racing. Boiling blood rushed through my body in a torrent.
Jack’s hands smoothed past my calves and then up over my knees, kneading into my quadriceps, cupping the back of my hamstrings. He played the nerves on my thighs like a master violinist performing a symphony.
He moved closer. His body now pressing against mine. I could feel his breath on my inner thigh. See his lips quivering, a hair’s breadth from my skin. Hear the rasp in his throat as he tugged my dress up to my hips.
Just when I felt like I was going to erupt like a Yellowstone geyser dormant for a thousand years, his fingers moved even higher. Teasing. Probing. I felt a finger slip under the edge of my panties, now moist from the inferno which was raging between my legs. His other hand came in behind me, squeezing the flesh of my bottom and pulling me closer to his mouth.
“I want you Mary. I need you. I need you now.” Every muscle pressed against me was hard and pulsing, like a tightly coiled steel spring. “Do you want me Mary?”
“Yes,” I moaned. “Yes Jack, take me. Take me now, please!”
* * *
“Mrs. Burns?” A voice echoed from the darkness. “Mrs. Burns? Are you awake?” I opened my eyes to find a nurse standing over me. She was young, blonde, and pretty. Her name tag said “Kelsey.”
I needed a moment to regain my bearings. When I looked around the crowded waiting room, all the other patients were staring at me.
Every. Single. One.
“Was I snoring?” Instinctively, I wiped the drool from my chin.
The pregnant woman across from me slowly shook her head, then said, “It wasn’t snoring … exactly.”
“It was more of a moaning,” said the mom sitting with her teen daughter, who still hadn’t blinked.
“Do you need anything Mrs. Burns?” Kelsey’s face looked like she was trying not to smell a fart.
“It’s Miss,” I said. “I’m not married.” The pregnant woman, the mom, and the teen daughter all nodded as if that fact was already well understood.
I followed Kelsey out of the waiting room and into the hallway. She pointed to a scale. “If you could just step there.”
“You’re weighing me?”
“For our records, yes.”
“Does the doctor see this?”
She made the fart face again. “Is there a problem?”
“No problem.” I handed Kelsey my car keys, then I took off my shoes and handed her my phone. I considered stripping naked to shed a few extra pounds, but assumed that would be frowned upon.
Once I stepped on the scale, Kelsey meticulously documented my measurements while I cursed the bowl of ice cream and nachos I had the prior night. To be clear, the nachos weren’t on top of the ice cream, although they were in the same bowl.
“Right this way.” Kelsey started down the hall, her tight ass swaying back and forth. “So what brings you to see Dr. Thompson today, your annual checkup?”
“You’re supposed to get checked annually?” I looked down at my freshly painted feet, confused. I had never heard of annual foot exams at the podiatrist office. Maybe, because they DON’T ACTUALLY EXIST! That should have been my first clue that something was amiss. But in my blind rush to see Jack, I missed one tiny little detail in my scheming.
Kelsey wore her fart look again. “You don’t get regular checkups?”
“No, this is my first time. I thought people only went to this type of doctor when they had a problem.”
“Problem?” Kelsey’s fart look kept getting worse.
“Yes, you know, like a fungal infection or funny smells.”
Kelsey stopped. “You have a ... fungal infection? Or funny … smells?”
I laughed her off. “Me? Oh, no. No fungus here. And the last time I sniffed down there everything smelled normal. I mean, you know, as far as I can tell.” The expression on Kelsey’s face should have been my second clue that something was off. It was a mixture of terror and, well, more terror. But I was too busy looking at my perfectly pedicured foot to notice so I blindly barreled ahead. “Mine is just a little sore. I’ve been taking on so many new clients lately. Maybe I just wore it out. You know how it is, right?”
Kelsey looked like she had no idea “how it is,” at all.
“It’s always in and out, this way and that way, back and forth. And of course they want me to do EVERYTHING. I’m always bending over backwards for everyone.”
Kelsey opened her mouth as if she was going to say something, but then she just made the fart face instead.
“You’d be surprised what some clients demand these days. I mean, sure, the money’s good, but it would be nice every once in a while to prop up my feet and relax. Let them do some of the work for a change.”
Kelsey pointed to the open door of an exam room. “You’re in here.”
“Are you married?” I asked.
Kelsey hesitated for a beat before answering. “Single.”
“If you’re ever in the market, I help a lot of single women,” I explained. “I know some like to try the self service route, but you’ll get better results with a professional.”
Kelsey took a long step back to let me pass by, careful not to make skin to skin contact.
As I stepped into the exam room, I noticed the inclined chair with the paper cover and the stirrups sticking out. My initial thought was that it was strange that a podiatrist would use the same chair to examine feet that a gynecologist used to examine vaginas.
But I didn’t really get it until Nurse Kelsey pointed to the paper gown folded on the chair. “Everything comes off. Well, except for your shoes. It’s not like he’s going to be looking at your feet.”
I realized the magnitude of my miscalculation when I saw the framed medical license on the wall. “Jack Thompson, M.D. Certification in Obstetrics & Gynecology”. I realized the enormity of my error when I saw the life-sized plastic vulva on the desk, right beside the box of rubber gloves and commercial grade tube of lubrication.
Nurse Kelsey pointed again at the paper robe. “Doctor Thompson will be right in.” If she had been wearing a silver crucifix, I think she would have been holding it up at that point and dousing me with holy water. But since she apparently didn’t have her exorcism kit handy, she just shut the exam room door and fled.
Once again, somewhere out there in the cosmos, I heard the Universe laughing.
In hindsight, I should have done a little more research. In my rush to find Jack, I had missed a few key details. If I would have searched a little longer, perhaps a little more thoroughly, I would have discovered that Dr. Jack Thompson, Podiatrist, practiced medicine in Winter Park, Colorado , most likely specializing in ski accidents and snow shoe injuries, not Winter Park, Florida .
And perhaps, if I had been a wee bit more thorough in my investigative efforts, I wouldn’t have paid two hundred dollars for a VIP Deluxe Velvet Cucumber just to have the man who had been tormenting my dreams for over two decades get up close and personal with my unwaxed hoo-haw in a desperate plot to talk to him again.
Obviously, I couldn’t let Jack see me like that. I had to escape.
As I was sneaking past the front desk, I overheard Susan, the receptionist, talking with Nurse Kelsey. “That’s the last of the appointments for today,” said Susan. “Jack took the rest of the afternoon off.”
“Must be nice to make your own rules,” Kelsey said. “What’s he up to this time?”
I had to get down on all fours when she glanced back toward the hallway.
“Oh, you know, the usual.” They both giggled like it was an inside joke. Where was he going? Or who was he going to see?
My original plan was to escape Jack’s office, sneak down to my car, and then keep driving until I hit Canada. But after eavesdropping, I decided on a new plan. A plan that involved me finding out what Jack Thompson was up to. A plan where, perhaps, my $200 Velvet Cucumber wouldn’t go to waste after all.