Chapter One #2
Steve’s trail of ooze leads to a cluster of their old classmates in the right-hand corner.
She knows them all, but when she looks over, they all huddle up and do their best to pretend they don’t see her.
Part of Maggie is furious and wants to confront them, but a bigger part—a more honest part—wonders whether she’d be part of that eye-avoidance huddle had another classmate been this shamed instead of her.
Screw it.
Maggie heads straight into the heart of the huddle and says, “Hey, everyone.”
Silence.
She looks from face to face. No one meets her eye.
“Stephanie,” Maggie says to an old friend who is staring at her champagne as though it holds a secret, “how’s Olivia?”
Olivia is Stephanie’s daughter.
“Oh, she’s, uh, she’s doing well.”
“Did my recommendation letter help?”
Maggie knows that it did. She’d written the letter a year ago, when her name opened rather than slammed doors, and she knew of course that Olivia had gotten in, but right now Maggie is not in the mood to let anyone off the hook.
“Stephanie?”
Before Stephanie can answer, another classmate, Bonnie Tillman, takes Maggie’s elbow. “Can we talk privately for a moment, Maggie?”
Bonnie is an ophthalmologist in Washington, DC, and still (and forever) their class president.
Her helmet of hair is firmly shellacked into place.
She forces up a smile. It’s a big effort to hold it.
They say it takes seventeen muscles to smile and forty-three to frown.
In Bonnie’s case, it’s clearly the opposite.
They move through a set of old glass doors onto a terrace.
“We all feel bad about your recent troubles,” Bonnie begins in a voice that couldn’t be more condescending without some kind of surgical help, “but it doesn’t excuse what you did.”
Maggie says nothing.
“This event,” Bonnie continues, “is for esteemed physicians.”
“It’s for graduates.”
“You know better.”
Silence.
“Your medical license was revoked,” Bonnie continues.
“Suspended,” Maggie corrects. “Pending a review.”
“Oh, so you’re innocent?”
Maggie says nothing.
“You should leave.”
“I don’t think I will.”
“It’s unfair to your mother’s memory.”
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t own her memory, Maggie. Not on this campus. She meant a lot to many of us students. Your being here? It’s a blemish on her memory.”
“I was asked to present the scholarship,” Maggie says.
“That was before.”
“No one rescinded the invitation.”
“No one thought it was necessary.”
“So who’s doing it?”
Bonnie straightens her spine.
“Wait, you?”
“The administration thought it best.”
“But my mother always thought you were a stuck-up tight-ass bitch, Bonnie.”
Bonnie’s eyes widen as though she’d been slapped. “Well!”
Maggie says nothing. Bonnie recovers.
“Either way,” Bonnie says, “you should leave. Your being here sullies the reputation of our class.”
Bonnie spins to leave. Maggie closes her eyes, opens them, stares out.
“Bonnie?”
Bonnie stops and turns back to Maggie.
“My mother never said that. I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair. She always spoke well of you. You’re a good choice to do this.”
Bonnie swallows. “I’ll do my best. I promise you that.”
She leaves Maggie alone on the terrace. From inside, someone starts clinking their champagne flute with a fork to get people’s attention. The crowd quiets. Someone asks people to gather around so they can begin. Maggie stays out on the terrace.
Bonnie is right. She shouldn’t be here.
She stares out at the foliage. From behind her, someone closes the glass doors so that she no longer hears what’s going on in the room. That’s okay. She is tempted to reach into her purse and contact Marc again, but that’s an awful crutch and just makes her feel worse.
“Hello, Maggie.”
The man wears a bespoke tailored suit of cobalt blue with a tie so perfectly knotted that one assumes he had divine help.
His hair is gray, parted perfectly on the left.
Maggie knows that he’s in his early seventies—he’d been a classmate of her mother’s and she’d been invited to his seventieth birthday party a few years back, but she’d been overseas and couldn’t attend.
“Hello, Doctor Barlow.”
“You haven’t been my student for a long time, Maggie. Can’t you call me by my first name?”
“I don’t think I can, no.”
Evan Barlow smiles. He has a good smile.
He looks, to quote a sleazy classmate, so toned, so fit.
She almost asks him if he does sweaty hot yoga.
Evan Barlow heads up the Barlow Cosmetic Center, perhaps the most prestigious and discreet cosmetic surgery firm in the country.
When celebrities want the work done so that no one knows, they trust Evan Barlow.
They stand now side by side, staring out at the quad. “Do you know this is my first time back on campus since I graduated?” he says.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“So why are you back?”
“I think you can guess.”
“Mom?”
“I loved her, you know.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“She and your father are both gone, so I can admit it now.”
“I thought you two just dated for a few weeks.”
“We were in our second year. But she broke my heart.”
Maggie frowns. “Haven’t you been married three times?”
“Four,” he says.
“And isn’t your current wife like thirty years old?”
“Thirty-two,” he says, spreading his hands. “See what a broken heart does to a person?”
Maggie can’t help but smile. Barlow does the same.
“Your father was such a good man, a much better choice for her. So I settled for friendship. But…” He shakes his head.
“You get old, you get sentimental and philosophical. I’m trying to be glib, but I’m also revealing a truth.
” When he smiles at her, she flashes back to surgical rounds at NewYork-Presbyterian, what a generous teacher he’d been to her, how exhausting and exhilarating it was just to be in his presence.
Evan Barlow had been a pure hit of crackling energy. You wanted to be around that.
As though reading her mind, Barlow says, “You’re the best student I ever had. You know that. You’re a surgeon, so you have the ego to know that what I’m saying is true.”
“Correction: I was a surgeon.”
She squeezes her eyes shut. She feels his hand on her shoulder.
His voice is so gentle. “Maggie?”
The tears push into her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“I let you down.” She opens her eyes. “I let her”—no need to say who her referred to—“down.”
“You didn’t,” he says. “Wait, okay, sorry, that’s condescending. You did. I won’t lie. May I speak frankly? You did mess up. Big-time. That’s why I’m here.”
“I’m not following.”
“I don’t need a scholarship ceremony to honor your mother’s memory. I can do it in a much more concrete way.” Barlow holds up his hand. “Wait, I’m not saying this right. Let me start again. I came tonight to see you.”
“Me? Why?”
“I have a favor to ask.”
When he doesn’t immediately continue, Maggie says, “Go ahead.”
“I’d like you to come by my office on Monday.”
“This Monday?”
“Yes. Ten a.m.”
“You have a Barlow Center in Baltimore now?”
“No, but maybe soon. Right now, they’re in Palm Beach, Los Angeles, and New York City. I’d like you to come up to New York City. I’ll arrange a private car to drive you, and I have a suite reserved at the Aman.”
“I don’t understand. Why do you want me to come to New York?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
“I just… it’s not my place.”
Maggie makes a face. “Then whose place is it?”
“It’s an intriguing offer. That’s all I can tell you right now.”
“I don’t have a medical license anymore.”
“I know. The offer is a tad”—Barlow looks up as though searching for a better word but finally shrugs—“unusual.”
“Can’t you just tell me now?”
“I can’t, no.”
She thinks about it. “If you don’t mind me saying, Doctor Barlow, this is all a little weird.”
“I know.”
“More than a little weird, in fact.”
“It is, I admit that. Look, I know you and Sharon are having serious financial difficulties—”
“How do you know that?”
“—but I’ll write you a check right now for twenty thousand dollars. Just to show up.”
He reaches into his suit pocket and pulls out a pen and…
“Is that a checkbook?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“What is this, 1987? Who still carries around a checkbook?”
Barlow can’t help but smile. “I wanted to be prepared.”
He starts scribbling on the check.
“You don’t need to do that,” she says.
“No, I do. You should be compensated for your time.”
“Don’t,” she says a little more forcibly. “I’m going to say it again: You’re being weird.”
“I know.” He puts the checkbook back in his pocket. “Do you trust me, Maggie?”
In truth she trusts no one anymore. Well, almost no one.
“One more thing,” he says.
“What?”
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone about this.”
“I have to tell my sister.”
“It would be better if you didn’t.”
“I’m living with her. I just can’t vanish to New York City.”
“Sure, you can.” He hands her a card. “I’ll have someone text you to arrange the car pickup.”
“I’d rather take Amtrak,” Maggie says.
“If that’s what you prefer. There’ll be a reservation under your name at the Aman hotel on Fifty-Seventh Street starting tomorrow night. We’ll be in touch about the details for Monday.”
Maggie takes the embossed business card, looks at it, looks at him. Dr. Evan Barlow runs one of the most successful high-end cosmetic surgery practices in the world. He is worth millions and reeks of it. She tries to read his face. It’s smooth, professional, handsome, full of gravitas.
But does she also see fear?
“What’s really going on, Doctor Barlow?”
“I can’t say more, Maggie. Take it or leave it.”
“And if I leave it?”
He shrugs. “It was nice to see you.”
Barlow kisses her on the cheek and heads to the door.
“How did you know I’d be here?” she asks.
Something crosses his face, something she can’t read. He gives his head a small shake and turns the knob.
“You’ll find out all on Monday,” Barlow says, and then he heads back inside.