The Best American Noir of the Century

Adam and Jerry hated one another and I never understood why one, if not both, didn’t just walk from the game. It wasn’t as if the city was lacking weekly poker gatherings, and God knows most of them served better food and had a nicer selection of wines to choose from than what I offered and set out. Adam was a doctor and a noted one, often cited in medical journals and in the Science section of the New York Times as the gold standard in regard to matters pertaining to women and their bodies. He was handsome, with an easy smile and a scalpel-sharp sense of humor, except of course when he found himself sitting across a table from Jerry, cards in hand and a stack of poker chips resting between them. And while I could never quite put a finger to the pulse that got the feud started in the first place, in many ways I felt myself to be the one responsible. After all, as with the rest of the group, I was the one who brought Adam into the game. And I would just as soon bring the weekly session to an end than to see it go on without Adam holding his usual place at the far end of my table.

Dr. Adam Rothberg had saved Dottie’s life.

Three years ago, after a long bout with a flu that wouldn’t quite surrender the fight, Dottie, fresh off a five-day siege of heavy-duty antibiotics mixed with cough syrup and aspirin, collapsed on the floor of our tiny barely walk-into-it-and-move-around kitchen. She was doubled up and clutching her stomach, foam thick as ocean spray flowed out of her mouth, and her body shook as if it were resting on top of a high-speed motorboat. I was about to jump for the phone and dial 911 when I remembered that the new face that had moved in down the hall during the last week belonged to a doctor. I rushed out of the apartment and ran out into the narrow hall, banging at a door two down from mine. I felt like a boy sitting under a tree crammed with packages on Christmas morning when I saw Adam’s face as he swung open his apartment door.

He saved Dottie’s life that day, and we have been friends ever since.

In that span of time, Adam’s practice flourished and his stature rose, while mine pretty much hovered at the same level it had been for years. I don’t hate the work I do really, it’s just that I don’t love it, either. I look around this table and don’t see anyone happier at their chosen work than I am, except maybe for Adam, who truly loves putting on the white coat and playing God twelve hours a day. I am good at what I do, bringing a financial balance to the lives of my clients, despite the fact I can’t seem to accomplish those same goals for myself. I could never get it to where I was a step ahead, with all the bills paid and some money set aside. And I could never figure out where the hell it all went, especially since we didn’t have the financial burden of kids and had lived in the same apartment for more or less the same rent since we were first married and, except for a two-week splurge in Italy during our first year together, seldom took long or expensive vacations.

It bothered Dottie — I knew that. Not that I was an accountant, but that I was one without money and minus the drive or the talent to earn it. Women like Dottie go into a marriage and expect more out of it than they first let on, not wanting to be the kind of woman who lives her middle age in a financial and emotional rut. And the truth of that, the belief that I had let her down in some way, ate at me more than I would let on. I had failed her, and over time it chipped away at the love she felt for me. I could see it, sense it, her eyes vacant and drawn when she looked my way, her manner indifferent at best, her kisses directed more to the cheek than the lips, as if she were greeting a distant relative with whom she would prefer to have very little contact. It was so different from when we first met. Back then, I was sure we would love each other forever.

I first saw Dorothy Blakemore at a counter on the second floor of a department store on the Upper East Side. It was a week before Christmas and the place was mad crazy with shoppers with a hunger for gifts, credit cards clutched in their hands. She was staring down at a counter filled with men’s gloves and kept shaking her head each time a tall, thin, and harried salesclerk made the slightest attempt at a suggestion. “I don’t even know his size” were the first words I heard her say, her voice a sultry mix of Southern warmth mixed with a Northeast education.

“If I had an idea as to his height and weight, then perhaps I can narrow down your choices,” he said to her, his tone more condescending than consoling.

Dottie paused for a brief second and then glanced in my direction. When she turned and our eyes met, I knew that I was in the middle of a movie moment, standing a mere distance from a woman as beautiful and striking as any I would ever be lucky enough to see in my lifetime. “He’s about the size of this man,” she said to the salesclerk as she walked toward me.