didn’t tell Kalaj what I’d done. “In your place I would have taken the money, gotten off the cab, and headed back by train.”
I looked at him and smirked.
“That’s what you did, isn’t it—that’s exactly what you did—and you weren’t going to tell me!”
I don’t think I ever bought a round of XO Cognac at Maxim’s with more gusto in my life than I did that evening with Kalaj.
The image of Kalaj as a leering waiter and me as a plutocrat had come and gone. Poverty had changed me. I was ashamed of the twenty-dollar bill. I tried to cloak what I’d done with all kinds of excuses and wished to shrug the whole thing off with affected insouciance, but there was no hiding the truth. I’d hustled the man who’d bought me dinner and whose daughter I was sleeping with.
THAT NIGHT I paid dearly for our dinner and our drinks. The pain I’d felt weeks earlier returned, an ache in the kidney area extending all the way to the right of my rib cage. One of the doctors had warned me to stay off fatty foods for a while in case it turned out to be what he feared. Well, last night’s meal was anything but lean. They had already run a test a week earlier, but I had never bothered to check the results, since I had never had a relapse. I tossed and turned, thinking of the girl who was probably wondering why I hadn’t asked her to drive me back to Cambridge, especially when it was clear that her parents liked me and knew we were sleeping together. I, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to run away from the three of them—like a Cinderella whose livery would turn into cabbage and turnips if she didn’t rush back to her little hovel.
An hour into the ache I figured I might as well return to the infirmary. As irony would have it, I had no money left to take a cab and was too much in pain this time to walk myself to the Square. I called Kalaj, but once again there was no answer. Linda had no car—so there was no point in waking her. Allison, I didn’t dare call. Sexual intimacy was one thing, pain-and-money intimacy, quite another. Frank and Claude, out of the question. I couldn’t have felt lonelier or more helpless in my life. So with complete despair, I decided to knock at the kitchen door of Apartment 43. It took them a while, but eventually the boyfriend opened the door, wearing nothing but pale blue boxers. Obviously I had woken him up. “So sorry, I know it’s very, very late, but I’m in great pain. Can one of you drive me to the infirmary in the Square?” I was begging for help. I had never in my life felt so denuded of dignity. On second thought, perhaps I should have called an ambulance. But it was now too late for this. “It’ll take me a second,” he said. I heard him whispering to his girlfriend, explaining, using my name. So they knew me by name. Even doubled over in pain I wondered if she’d ever liked my name or whispered it to herself when she was alone.
The car smelled of their dog. “I hope it’s nothing,” said the boyfriend, who insisted on dropping me at the door of the emergency entrance and then helping me out of the car, holding me with one hand under my armpit as I limped to the door.
I was admitted by the same head nurse and the same doctor as before. As soon as I was stretched out on the gurney, the pain began to subside. Could it all be psychosomatic? Most people feel better the moment they step in here, said the genial head nurse in her British accent. As she sat down and spoke with me—there were no other in-patients that night—she began to ask me where I came from . . . I figured it was small talk to get me to relax. I normally answered the where-from question by saying France. Then when asked more specific questions I might add Paris. If the person happened to know French well and was in a position to detect my accent, I’d instantly switch and say that I was really from Italy, which would sufficiently throw them off the scent and prevent them from inquiring further into my origins. But this time I wanted to open