Chapter 17 Doctor Drool
DOCTOR DROOL
Hannah was already nestled in a booth at the bar by the time I arrived.
Fortune Bar was a place that had made a stab at being glamorous once, then decided not to bother after all.
The booth seats were covered in a cheap faux red velvet that had soaked up everything thrown at it over the years.
Not unlike the clientele, sitting at the bar, drinking alone with their thoughts.
I gave Hannah an awkward look as I got closer, and she bounced up to greet me before noticing my expression.
“Hey! You try and find a bar in this city that doesn’t show sports or serve nachos!” She said wearily.
“Well, at least we’re the hottest things in here, I guess,” I said.
“Yeah, and with no sports, we’ll get all the attention.” She shot back with an amused grin. “I’ve already got my eye on Mr Patch over there, so hands off that one.”
He couldn’t have heard us, but maybe having one eye had heightened his other energetic senses, because the grizzled old man at the bar with long, greasy, grey hair down his back and an eyepatch suddenly looked over his shoulder in our direction.
Just before we could lock eyes—or, more accurately, eye—he coughed and wheezed into an old hanky, then turned his attention back to just sitting, perhaps pondering the decisions that had put him there.
“Oh, he’s cute,” I said back, whispering, just in case he actually could hear us.
We sat down, and Hannah eyed me for a second.
“So, you got fired yet?”
“Fired? I don’t think Bill would do that.”
“Sort of seems like you want to be, though, Lucy.”
Hannah could be blunt as heck sometimes, but I wasn’t going to pretend with her. I knew she had my interests at heart. I just couldn’t really say exactly what was going on with me recently, because I didn’t know myself. Or maybe I did know, but I just didn’t want to admit it to myself.
“I mean, I used to like my job.”
“No. You used to hide in your job. It was like there was no room for anything else. Or at least, you used it to make sure you didn’t leave room for anything else.”
“That’s not entirely true,” I started saying weakly. But the words didn’t even sound half-convincing.
“I love you, Lucy, but c’mon. Since he-who-shall-not-be-mentioned, you sort of disappeared from life for a while. And then there was Mexico,” A hum of excitement rang through her voice as she said it, “And now things seem to have changed again.”
I sat back, crossing my arms defensively. Hannah was looking for some hard truths, and I knew she wouldn’t let it go.
“Okay,” I relented, “Those three days with Randall. It’s ridiculous. He’s a nightmare. But I can’t shake it. Maybe, it’s just how fucking unresolved it all was.”
“You mean, when he abandoned you?” Hannah reminded me, making me wince.
“Yeah. I deserve an answer for that, don’t I? I really want to not care. I shouldn’t even care. But it keeps nagging at me. What happened? To be honest, I’m not sleeping well, Hannah.”
She eyed me with a concerned look and shook her head slowly, “He really got to you, didn’t he?”
“Also. Every time I see a peach… It makes me weak at the knees.”
Hannah laughed at this, and I chuckled shyly too, even though it was pretty much true.
“I can relate, sort of.” She said in a hushed voice, leaning over the table toward me. “Remember that Doctor?”
“Oh, yeah, what was it? Doctor Drool?”
“Drew. But yeah, him. He used to do this thing…”
Hannah looked over her shoulder as my intrigue began to peak, making me forget about my own feelings for a moment.
“What’s the thing?”
“So. When we were… Making love.”
“Butting uglies.”
“Doing jazz hands.”
“Feeding the pets.”
“Yep. All of that. He’d leave the room and go get his stethoscope. Then he’d come back into the room all doctor-like. ‘Now, let’s see about this patient, I think we might need to take emergency action’, annnnnd… Some other stuff I don’t really want to say.”
“Sounds kinda hot. Especially as he was an actual doctor.”
“Right! Then he’d put that cold steel drum on my chest and the stethoscope in my ears,” Hannah looked over her shoulder again, and in a low voice she pointed downward and mouthed, “Right before he went downtown.”
“Oh!”
“And fuck, Lucy. He was good down there. I mean, if a doctor doesn’t know what he’s doing, who does, right?”
“Right.”
“I’d lie there listening to myself, hearing my heart pounding in my ears, everything getting more and more intense, until I would literally hear myself come in my own ears.”
“Oh, fuck.”
“Yep. Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom. That was a few years back. But any time I have to go to a doctors and I see them touch that stethoscope, I’m so goddamn aroused I can hardly speak.”
We burst out in a cackle of embarrassed laughter, drawing a few looks.
“So, what you’re saying is, I’ll never enjoy the simple pleasures of a peach again?”
“Most likely, nope, never again will a peach be innocent in your eyes.”
“I’m gonna need tequila. Hey, your chest is flushed, you okay?”
“Yep. Fine. Just got a headful of doctor images that is making my head swim. Okay, let’s get tequila! But whatever happens, don’t let me call him!”
A few hours passed between us, happily chatting and laughing, until I started to feel a bit unsteady.
“Why don’t you go see him?” Hannah asked.
“Huh, who?”
“Randy.”
“Oh, right. I’ll just call him up on the number I don’t have for him and be like, hey, you ruined peaches for me.”
“You know the Ice-Hawks let anyone in to watch their training sessions for free?”
“I’m not the stalker type, Han. Too weird. Anyway, what would happen? He’d come skating over, pick me up in his arms, and carry me off while the crowd goes wild and ‘The Power of Love’ plays out in the arena?”
“Well. It’s definitely all over with him and Georgia Moss. She’s been posting crying reels about it. Completely fake though. It is sort of weird he’s not on social media anymore, though, isn’t it?”
“Yep. He took everything down.”
“Doesn’t do interviews after games. He’s like, off-radar.”
“Apart from appearing on massive billboards in only his underwear, you mean?”
“Hey. Man’s gotta make a living.”
“What are you doing?”
“Just looking at my phone…”
Hannah flashed me a smile.
“You’re thinking about calling Doctor Drool!”
“Drew! And yeah, I am.”
“Don’t do it, Han!”
But she was already walking off unsteadily, her phone up to her ear, “Heyyy, Doctor Drool, I mean Drew!”
I watched the men at the bar take a look at my friend’s ass as she walked away and cringed. To be fair though, it was a peach of an ass.
And she was right, too. I knew it. I had to resolve this. I needed some answers to be able to move on.
Hannah stumbled back to me.
“Um. Call in sick tomorrow.”
“I don’t think I can do that.”
“Oh, I know a doctor who can sign you off,” she winked at me.
“What’s tomorrow, anyway?”
“Drool wanted to know what I was doing tomorrow afternoon. The only thing that came into my head was to say I was going to the Ice-Hawks practice session thingy.”
Oh, God.
“So, take the afternoon. Let’s go.”
I grimaced.
“Lucy. You wanna get him out of your head, just go see him, get it out of your system.”
“It sounds like a terrible idea.”
“Well, you could do nothing, or you could at least try and see what happens. Can it be any worse than this?”
Our conversation was interrupted by the emboldened figure of a paunch underneath an untucked beige shirt. The owner of the paunch looked down on us, swaying slightly unsteadily on his feet.
“You girls looking for a good time?”
We both gawped at him, before Hannah replied. “Sure are, where can we go to find one?”
In response, the paunch tried, and then failed, to hold in a burp.
“Oh, cute,” Hannah said as she beamed back at him.
“Time to go,” I said.
“Sorry, Romeo, maybe next time,” Hannah told our suitor, before we rolled outside.
“Hey, Lucy,” Hannah called before she dipped into the open door of a cab. “Keep backing your rear end up until I tell you to stop.”