Hospital Love
“You asshole!” she shouts, throwing her phone at him.
“Madel… ouch!” Dave can’t dodge it – he’s trapped between his chair and desk and his foot’s tangled up in the telephone cable, so Madeleine’s phone hits him right in the chest. It doesn’t hurt anything, except for his pride. “Madeleine, wait,” he says, trying to stop her while she gathers her belongings from the sofa and the table. He feels like he has no dignity left after ten minutes spent inventing stupid excuses in the hope of reaching a consensual separation – hopefully a quick one without any consequences.
“We have nothing else to say to each other.”
“Brian, I’m sorry, something’s come up just now, I’ll call you back in a few minutes,” murmurs Dave into the phone while he continues to look at her. With a pained expression on his face, he hangs up – he hadn’t been expecting things to go so badly.
“It’s been two years! Two years!” she shouts while she grabs her bag from the sofa near the door. “I should have known better. You promised me you’d never do it again. But this is the last time you’re ever going to see me. You know that, right?”
“Please, try and understand…” Dave begs her, massaging his temples. “Can’t we deal with this like adults? Is what I’m asking really so absurd?” He walks from the desk across to the bookshelf where she’s standing. “All I need is a short break – and it’s for a perfectly understandable reason.”
“You’re saying that it was you who was asking? Really, Dave?” she replies, shaking her head and glaring at him disparagingly. “Of course it was you, because it’s always about you. You and only you. Nobody else exists. But did you ever wonder what I wanted instead?” she continues, pointing a graceful finger at her lovely yellow outfit of fitted blouse, pencil skirt and vintage belt. “San Francisco Fashion Week starts in less than three weeks, and you know very well how important it is for my life and my career. And on top of all this, I’m also going through a divorce, my personal trainer is on a spiritual retreat with yak herders in the Kailash mountains, my PA is on holiday and my house is constantly surrounded by paparazzi looking for a scoop!”
“Yes, I do know all that. I just want you to try and understand…” says Dave, caressing her shoulder in an attempt to calm her down. But not even that suffices to soothe her temper, because Madeleine’s emotions are on the verge of exploding – she looks as though she has gone completely out of control.
“And all this will make me eat, because food is the only way I have of unloading stress,” she says, plucking neurotically at her hair. “And my stress is just getting worse and worse. Yesterday I ate two donuts right after seeing our pictures in the New York Times. Two whole donuts, Dave! A coconut one and a cinnamon one. And then I had to spend almost three hours running on my treadmill! I can’t deal with all this right now. I have a show next Thursday, and I haven’t even finished my shoot for the Greenpeace campaign. I can’t sleep any more, and I’m throwing down all the pills I can get my hands on, but not even elephant sedatives have any effect on me now. I’ve had to go back to my therapist…”
“Oh come on, Madeleine, you haven’t gone back to that Buddhist bullshit artist, have you? You know that he’s just stealing your money!”
“Don’t…” Madeleine raises a warning hand. “Don’t you talk about him!”
“Madeleine…”
“No!”
“Look, I…”
“Shut up! Don’t you dare say another word!” she says, and snorts disdainfully.
Dave snorts back and raises his hands in surrender. Let her do whatever the hell she wants to. She’s never taken any of his advice anyway, why would she start now that they’re breaking up? Because of course they both know that they are breaking up, even if they’re still talking about something temporary. And they’d agreed from the start on taking things slowly and seeing how they evolved. They both just wanted to have some fun, without commitments or responsibilities. They were two consenting adults who would meet from time to time to release the tension they’d accumulated during a week of hard work. It had seemed to work just fine, but now they had different needs and different priorities. Madeleine should try and understand him, try and appreciate his honesty and the fact that he had actually decided to see her in person to talk instead of just calling her. He had behaved more than decently, so now he is really having a hard time understanding her reaction.
“Babe,” he tries one more time with an understanding tone. “I just can’t. I’m sorry too, believe me.” He takes one of her hands and then the other and holds them, and Madeleine almost seems to be about to give in. She looks so defenceless, with her red eyes and her half open mouth… “Madeleine, I want you to know that you are very special to me, and you always will be. I’m sure that pretty soon you’ll be able to laugh about all this and wonder how the hell we ever ended up arguing about it in the first place,” he jokes, trying to break the tension.
“Dave,” she replies, still seemingly in some sort of trance, “I want you to know that you’re a son of a bitch, and you always will be. And I’m sure that pretty soon I am going to look back on all of this and wonder why the hell it took me so long.”
“To do what?” he starts to ask, but before he has finished, she slaps his face violently and one minute later, all that’s left of Madeleine in that office is a tissue covered in mascara in the trash can and the echo of her steps as she marches away down the corridor.
Dave stands for a few moments staring helplessly at the door she left open while members of staff come and go in silence outside his office. He got exactly what he wanted: he won’t be seeing her any more, she’s out of his life and – all in all – without any serious consequences. Something is still bothering him though. He can’t say what it is exactly, at least not immediately. He starts rubbing his smarting cheek but even the gentle pressure from his fingers is enough to set the pain off again, and he finally understands why he’s still perplexed: he can easily accept the end of a relatively long relationship, but he really hadn’t been expecting to not feel anything at all about it. He already knew he wasn’t in love, but he had never realised how indifferent he actually was.
He tries to pull himself together after that unexpected revelation, closes the door and goes back to his desk, collapsing in his chair as though he were a tired warrior after a hard battle, and at that moment he remembers Brian, picks up his phone, dials his friend’s number and waits for him to answer.
“Are you having an interesting day?” asks Brian immediately, as though he had been waiting for the call.
“I’d rather talk about something else,” replies Dave, already thinking of the thousand things he has to organise: missed meetings, orders, deliveries, analyses, proofreading… He’s holding the phone between his shoulder and ear while simultaneously typing on his computer keyboard. He needs to organise all the notes he’s taken into the various different files which are all on his desktop now.
“No, please, don’t spare me any details – I want to hear exactly what happened.”
“Brian, I’m busy. Why did you call me earlier?” Dave asks abruptly. “I’m presuming there actually was a reason?”
“Let me think… Err, no.”
“Well, in that case…”
“Did I really hear Madeleine’s voice earlier?” Brian asks, trying for a last minute confession.
Dave doesn’t reply, which makes Brian realise without a doubt how things actually went.
“Aw, man, I wish I’d seen that little scene,” says Brian before bursting into laughter.
“Hey, screw you, dude!”
“In less than a month you’ll be surrounded by the most beautiful women in the country anyway. Aren’t you happy?” he asks ecstatically while he tries to imagine his friend’s frowning face.
“And that’s just where you’re wrong,” Dave corrects him, “I won’t be surrounded by anyone at all.”
“And how exactly are you planning on doing that? You do remember that you’ve been invited to the opening ceremony of San Francisco Fashion Week, don’t you?”
“Of course I remember, but I won’t be handling the event myself! I’ll just have to make sure that things proceed smoothly. I’ve already found a substitute for the occasions when there actually needs to be someone there in person. That way, I won’t have to meet any women – formally or otherwise.”
“And who is this person who’s going to substitute for you?”
“The only woman you’re going to see me with for the next three months. I selected her very carefully and after taking into account all possible complications. She’ll be the shield that will protect me from the outside world for as long as I need to live a quiet life. Perfect, right?”
“I’m not sure… Anyway, why did you choose a woman? You were supposed to steer clear of them and now you’ve hired one full-time instead? I don’t follow your logic.”
“Well, that’s because she’s not like other women – she’s Sam.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Sam Preston started as a trainee and is now Margaret’s assistant. She’s the absolute opposite of what I consider feminine. She doesn’t talk, doesn’t argue and doesn’t ask questions. And best of all, she’s a simple girl without any expectations. I am totally safe around her.”
“If you say so.”
“You sound like my idea doesn’t convince you.”
“All I’m saying is that she’s still a woman…”
“And you’re saying that because you’ve never seen her.”
“Why? Is she that ugly?”
“No, she’s not ugly at all!” he mumbles, struggling to find the right words, “She’s just… just boring, and she never wears anything sexier than jogging pants and fleeces… You know what I mean? And even her appearance…”
“What about it? Ah, okay, I get it. You’ve chose Auntie Fester as your secretary and you think that will stop you from sinning. Jeez, man, you’re really serious about getting that hundred bucks off me!”
“Hey, I never said that she was repulsive. She’s just not the type of woman I would normally take out to dinner. Having her around will reduce my external contacts to the absolute minimum and will make it practically impossible for my body to have any kind of reaction towards the other sex, at least until my life is back under my own control.” He leans back in his chair, taking his hands off the keyboard for a moment. “I’m actually really looking forward to this break from women,” he says, turning serious. “I’ve already argued with Simone, Madeleine doesn’t want to see me any more, and my answering machine is full of unanswered messages. Finally I’ll be able to relax and concentrate on work for a change.”
“If you say so…”
“I do!” He replies confidently, and he’s about to go on, but someone knocks at his door and interrupts him. “Hold on, someone’s at the door,” he says and puts him on hold, moving the handset away from his ear for a moment. “Come in.”
“It’s Sam, can I come in?”
“Dave? Dave? Are you still there?”
Dave lifts his eyes to take a casual look at her, then lowers them again to his monitor to try and process the visual information he has just received. Then he looks again at the door of his office – which is on the third floor of a building located on one of the busiest roads in Union Square – and finds he is unable to look away for a few moments.
“Dave?” shouts Brian again down the phone line. “Dave, answer me, goddamnit!”