1 Chapter 1
Marlys already knew the real reason I’d agreed to go with her to Dr. Fortescue’s annual Holiday Hoopla—and it wasn’t to play Santa, as hilarious as my friends all found it that I’d sprouted both a belly pot and a gray beard this far ahead of thirty-five—so she passed on the guilt trip I started shilling tickets for as soon as she canceled on me.
“He’s still gonna be there,” she said.
“That’s not the point,” I told her, inadvertently admitting by knowing who she was talking about that it kinda was. “I mean, who?” I amended, ridiculously.
She laughed. “Who? As if we’ve talked about anyone else since Dr. Sabrosocame to the ER.”
Actually his name was Felipe Reynoso (M.D., thank you very much), but sabroso is a Spanish word for “delicious,” and boy, was he. Six-two in his hospital-approved clogs, beefy and broad through the shoulders, tight and trim in the tummy, his narrow waist flared into flanks like a speed skater’s that kept me up at night, lost in prayer: if I should die before I wake, I pray the lord my soul to take—and weave it into a pair of green cotton scrub pants, that I might spend eternity clinging to Dr. Sabroso’s thighs.
“But I’m not gonna know anybody,” I whined on, rewarming my theme. “You were my in. Dr. Fortescue invited you.”
“He invited usand you know it. You were standing right there.”
“He’s not gonna remember that. He only has eyes for you.”
“He’s gay.”
“Well, he certainly doesn’t have eyes for me.”
“He’s married. And him and husband have a little boyfriend, I think. He doesn’t ‘have eyes’ for anyone, he was just being friendly.”
“He doesn’t even know my name.”
Marlys made a show of taking a big breath in, then expelled one of her long-suffering sighs. “But he will recognize you, and you will tell him your name, and he will say ‘Oh yes, of course’ and thank you for coming and invite you inside and offer you a cup of eggnog. It’s not brain surgery, Chad, it’s holiday partygoing.”
“Yeah, but it couldbe brain surgery if he wanted; he probably knows how.”
“He probably does,” Marlys allowed. “Maybe he’ll show me; it can’t be as hard as trying to convince you to step foot out of your apartment one night every six months.”
“Hey!”
“Don’t Hey! me. If they let you drive the ambulance from home, you’d do it.”
“By remote?” I said, laying on the hopeful tone; she wasn’t wrong. “Like in a video game? They’ve gotta have the technology.”
“Right. Because self-driving cars don’t cause enough accidents, let’s put lights and sirens on them! Look, they switched Jeffrey’s schedule.” Her boyfriend. A paramedic, same as us, currently slogging through a hitch in dispatch thanks to a knee injury. “This is our crack at a Christmas dinner together, and if he wants to spring for surf and turf, by golly, I’m gonna let him. Dude, I shaved my legs.”
The nail in my night’s coffin. Marlys only shaved her legs when she was after one thing, and what with the crutches and the painkillers and all, she’d lately been giving the impression that it had been a while since she’d had it. I groaned in defeat.
“So don’t go,” she said.
“I kinda don’t want to if you’re not gonna.”
“So don’t.” I heard her shrug through the phone. “Stay home. You know, Netflix and chill.”
“You’re kinda supposed to do that with someone.”
“So go do it with Dr. Sabroso.”
I laughed. “Just go plop down on the couch during this party, put my head in his lap? Watch what, some Christmas movie?”
“Like if he asked you to you wouldn’t?”
“Like he might ask me to?”
“Not if you don’t go.”
I don’t know if she had a point, really, but I had already bought a snowman sweater and a tin of cinnamon-smelling spices suitable for hostess-gifting. Plus it was three days before Christmas and I hadn’t had so much as a sip of eggnog, and it’s not like I knew how to make it. This was pretty much my chance for Holiday Cheer that didn’t emanate from the Hallmark Channel, and I figured if Dr. Sabrosodidn’t fall head over heels after two eggnogs and steer me toward the mistletoe, I could order up a Lyft and bail.
Dr. Fortescue and his husband and their (rumored) little boyfriend lived across town, on a tree-lined avenue. I recognized the name but had only driven along it a handful of times. As I watched out the window of my Lyft, modest bungalows on small, tidy lots gave way to larger homes on larger lots set farther back from the street, which soon receded in deference to expansive piles of brick and glass swathed in twinkling lights peeking out from behind high snow-sprinkled hedges. La MaisonFortescue backed up to the public botanic gardens, tucked at the end of the avenue in a way that most of their “yard” was actually a large, popular city park, quiet at this hour save for the lilting party laughter that effervesced from within the embassy-esque compound.
