The Best American Noir of the Century

I was back at my seat looking down at a pair of tens and a queen high, the fresh drink by my side. I glanced to my left and caught Tony’s eye and was given a warm smile as a reward. “Everything good with you?” he asked.

“Good enough,” I said, trying to keep the conversation light and not veer it toward the personal, which is the road Tony always seemed to prefer.

It made sense that he would, of course, what with him being a shrink and all. Tony enjoyed doing hit-and-run probes into the lives of the men around the table, treating the entire night as if it were a casual group session with cards, chips, and money added to the mix. He would keep it all very chatty, never giving the impression he was picking and pawing or even the least bit curious about any one of us but always leaving the table owning a lot more information than he had when he first walked in. When he wasn’t busy jabbing at our collective scabs as casually as he would a platter of potato salad, Tony regaled us with tales of his sexual conquests, most of them arriving courtesy of his practically all-female practice. It was difficult not to envy any man who in a given week would bed as many as five different women, so you can imagine how well his tales traveled around a poker table filled with either those who had gone without for longer than they would dare to remember or the few who felt strangled by double-decades’ worth of marital gloom.

“This is one you won’t believe,” he said, dropping his cards on the table in a fold and sitting back, wide grin flashed across a face that looked far too young for a man one month shy of his fifty-second birthday. “I have this new patient, right? Drop-dead blonde with stallion legs and a killer smile. Only on her second visit, asks if it’s OK for her to call me at home. You know, just to shoot it whenever the urge hits.”

“You ever see any ugly patients?” I asked. I really didn’t want to believe that every woman who paid to tell Tony sad tales of an unfulfilled life was poster-girl material even though, deep in my heart, it figured probably to be indeed true.

“Only on referrals,” Tony said. “Anyway, I’m supposed to say no to such a request, I suppose. I mean if I’m going to do a line-by-line with the rulebook.”

“But you never have before,” I said. “No sense finding religion now, especially when it’s a different promised land you’re looking to find.”

“So, I give her my home number and go about the rest of my day,” Tony said. “I had no doubt she would make use of it down the road a bit, maybe get a few more sessions under her garters before she made the move.”

“Let me take a stab at a guess here,” Joe said. “She dialed your private line right about the start of the second period of the Rangers game. Right or not?”

“If that’s about eight or so, then yes, you win the stuffed bear,” Tony said. “She was very upset, needed to talk, and couldn’t make it wait. I offered to do a free phone consult, but she wanted a face-to-face. An hour later we were down a half bottle of red and doing a wild roll on the water bed.”

“I didn’t think anybody still had a water bed,” Steve said. “Or that they even made them. You don’t have a lava lamp, too, do you?”

I brushed Steve’s question aside with one of my own: “This woman, was she married or single?”

Tony stared at me for several seconds before he answered. “Would it make a difference either way?” he asked.

“It might,” I said, “to her husband.”

“She is married,” Tony said with more a sneer than a smile. “Truth be told, most of the women who come to me for help are bound to the ring. If they weren’t, then maybe they wouldn’t be so damn unhappy and I wouldn’t be pulling down seven figures to dole out my pearls of acquired wisdom.”

“Does any of that ‘cause you concern?” I asked. “I mean, forget about the doctor-patient mumbo-jumbo crap. I’m talking here as a man. Does it bother you one inch to be taking another man’s wife into your bed?”

“It never has.” Tony stared right at me as if his measured words were meant for my ears alone. “And it never will.”

“Is there any more pie?” Jeffrey asked. “I don’t know what it is lately, but I can’t seem ever to get enough to eat.”

“That may well be because you’re celibate,” Tony said. “You need something to replace what the body most needs. If you took my advice, which I rarely offer for free, you would switch gears and reach for a warm body instead of a warm plate.”