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The TV is on when I let myself into Wilson's apartment.
He has one of those flat panel screens —high def, with more bells and whistles on the remote control than at NASA Mission Control— and he's cleared a space on his wall for it that was previously occupied by a French Impressionist print. I like the change. Wilson, I've discovered, is a closet Francophile. The bookshelf beside the door is stuffed with the typical assortment of spy novels and political thrillers expected out of a man who'd been a boy during the Cold War. But there're at least two English-to-French dictionaries and a few slim volumes of things by Molière. The Love-Sick Doctor is well-thumbed.
The TV is on and showing "His Girl Friday". He's had a good day. "His Girl Friday" and "Some Like It Hot" are indicators of cancers in remission, chemotherapies without incident, biopsies coming back benign and lunches without House's extra "We're together" tender. I worry when I find him watching "Casablanca" or "The Grapes of Wrath." Bogey and Fonda are bad for morale.
He's not in the living room so I palm the key and slip it into the front pocket of my bag and sling the bag from my shoulder, lining it up with the legs of the buffet table by the door. 'Give it a sideways kick with my heel. It tilts at an off angle and I corral it back with the tip of my shoe. James Wilson likes order. He'll come out—wringing his hands on a dishcloth, the cuffs of his powder button-up bleeding darker blue from water splashes—and subconsciously measure the alignment of bag-to-buffet angles. His eyes are corner-to-corner protractors. I like neatness, too, but not every shirt that hangs in my closet is chest-to-back with its neighbor.
He does come out of the kitchen then, and the ambient backlight frames the back of his head so I can't see his immediate expression. Pleased? Surprised? I've let myself into his place before—he had an extra key made, for godsake—but I think it still catches him off guard to see me standing there of my own volition.
Cuddy, M.D. as opposed to Lisa, The Woman I'm Sleeping With.
"Hey." Surprised and pleased. "I thought you had a meeting." Still in necktie and shoes; when he leans in to kiss my cheek 'hello' I can smell the hemisphere in which he's been cooking. He helps me with my coat and I follow him into the kitchen where various pots and pans are chattering to each other across the range. He laughs when I tell him that I once made it a personal goal to learn the Italian names of the different pasta types - 'cocciolette' instead of 'shells', 'ruote' rather than 'wheels' - and I laugh because his Italian is worse than my French (which is saying a lot). We eat dinner in the dining room, seated across the table from one another for the sake of formality, but the tips of my shoes touch his. We don't talk about House or my dad at all.
Afterward, on the couch. "Brief Encounter" is on and both of us recognize the irony of the scheduling choice (but neither of us mention it). My legs are slung casually over his knees and his arm is on the back of the couch and his fingers are against the side of my throat and I'm aware that some kind of peace is upon me but I can't define it. But if I turn my hips at this angle and prop a knee on either side of his left leg I can attempt to. He's got a beatific expression on his face at this point and when it's his mouth that bridges the gap instead of mine I know it's quite possible— if not mathematically certain —that there are hungers in James Wilson that House is altogether wrong about.
Later, he says "Lisa" and the way he says it makes me believe that there was more to add, but he stops because he knows he can't control everything that comes after my name.
On the drive home, a line of movie dialogue gets stuck in my head — "It's awfully easy to lie when you know that you're trusted implicitly. So very easy, and so very degrading."
He has one of those flat panel screens —high def, with more bells and whistles on the remote control than at NASA Mission Control— and he's cleared a space on his wall for it that was previously occupied by a French Impressionist print. I like the change. Wilson, I've discovered, is a closet Francophile. The bookshelf beside the door is stuffed with the typical assortment of spy novels and political thrillers expected out of a man who'd been a boy during the Cold War. But there're at least two English-to-French dictionaries and a few slim volumes of things by Molière. The Love-Sick Doctor is well-thumbed.
The TV is on and showing "His Girl Friday". He's had a good day. "His Girl Friday" and "Some Like It Hot" are indicators of cancers in remission, chemotherapies without incident, biopsies coming back benign and lunches without House's extra "We're together" tender. I worry when I find him watching "Casablanca" or "The Grapes of Wrath." Bogey and Fonda are bad for morale.
He's not in the living room so I palm the key and slip it into the front pocket of my bag and sling the bag from my shoulder, lining it up with the legs of the buffet table by the door. 'Give it a sideways kick with my heel. It tilts at an off angle and I corral it back with the tip of my shoe. James Wilson likes order. He'll come out—wringing his hands on a dishcloth, the cuffs of his powder button-up bleeding darker blue from water splashes—and subconsciously measure the alignment of bag-to-buffet angles. His eyes are corner-to-corner protractors. I like neatness, too, but not every shirt that hangs in my closet is chest-to-back with its neighbor.
He does come out of the kitchen then, and the ambient backlight frames the back of his head so I can't see his immediate expression. Pleased? Surprised? I've let myself into his place before—he had an extra key made, for godsake—but I think it still catches him off guard to see me standing there of my own volition.
Cuddy, M.D. as opposed to Lisa, The Woman I'm Sleeping With.
"Hey." Surprised and pleased. "I thought you had a meeting." Still in necktie and shoes; when he leans in to kiss my cheek 'hello' I can smell the hemisphere in which he's been cooking. He helps me with my coat and I follow him into the kitchen where various pots and pans are chattering to each other across the range. He laughs when I tell him that I once made it a personal goal to learn the Italian names of the different pasta types - 'cocciolette' instead of 'shells', 'ruote' rather than 'wheels' - and I laugh because his Italian is worse than my French (which is saying a lot). We eat dinner in the dining room, seated across the table from one another for the sake of formality, but the tips of my shoes touch his. We don't talk about House or my dad at all.
Afterward, on the couch. "Brief Encounter" is on and both of us recognize the irony of the scheduling choice (but neither of us mention it). My legs are slung casually over his knees and his arm is on the back of the couch and his fingers are against the side of my throat and I'm aware that some kind of peace is upon me but I can't define it. But if I turn my hips at this angle and prop a knee on either side of his left leg I can attempt to. He's got a beatific expression on his face at this point and when it's his mouth that bridges the gap instead of mine I know it's quite possible— if not mathematically certain —that there are hungers in James Wilson that House is altogether wrong about.
Later, he says "Lisa" and the way he says it makes me believe that there was more to add, but he stops because he knows he can't control everything that comes after my name.
On the drive home, a line of movie dialogue gets stuck in my head — "It's awfully easy to lie when you know that you're trusted implicitly. So very easy, and so very degrading."
