readingrat | Twelve Days, Day 2 (Reply)

Viola:
Conceal me what I am, and be my aid
For such disguise as haply shall become
The form of my intent. I'll serve this duke:
[Twelfth Night, Act 1 Scene 2]

May 17, 2010: Day 2
(The day of the crane disaster in Trenton)

Eight pm

ACROSS:
8. Big cousin to the violin (5)

Lucas chews on his pencil. Could be cello. Or viola. He sighs. He hates crossword puzzles, but he's already completed the sudokus in the magazine. He needs one letter in the word, preferably not the fourth one, to decide which one it is to be. Down 10, that starts on the last letter of Across 8, reads: River running through Shakespeare's birthplace (4). He scribbles AVON rapidly, then VIOLA into Across 8.

This is way too easy, he opines, tossing the magazine aside. Casting an irritated glance at the door of the house opposite his ice-cream van, he decides to decamp if nothing happens within the next fifteen minutes. If his target hasn't arrived by then, chances are that he won't visit his lover tonight. The incriminating photos will have to keep for another evening - Rachel is waiting and, even more pressing, he was supposed to have taken over from the babysitter five minutes ago.

His cell phone rings. He considers letting it ring - odds are that it's Lisa checking on him. She called an hour ago telling him that she'd be stuck out in Trenton for the rest of the night and asking him whether he could go home to look after Rachel. Control freak that she is, she probably doesn't trust him to make it back in time. Okay, she has a point. He'd promised her that he'd make it before eight so that Marina won't be pissed off . . . yet now he will be late, but hey, he'll sweet-talk or bribe Marina into a better mood when he gets home. As for Rachel, he can deal with her bedtime routine; there's really no need to keep checking on him and telling him stuff that he must have heard a thousand times by now. Kids are tough; millions of them survive every day under far worse conditions than those Rachel has to endure. He can understand, sort of, that Lisa worries about her in a special way - lose her, and Lisa's last chance at motherhood will have ended in a complete screw-up - but why worry about something that isn't likely to happen?

He knows Lisa won't let up once she's decided that there's something he absolutely has to know, so he reaches over and picks up the cell phone from the shelf that's supposed to hold ice-cream cones. Much to his relief the display reads 'Pete'. He's a colleague - they do each other favours every now and then.

"Hey, Pete."

"Lucas, how're you doing?"

"Great, absolutely great." He'd like to elaborate, but if he does, chances are he'll still be here in an hour, which will enrage Marina to the point that she'll report him to Lisa. "What can I do for you?" Pete doesn't call unless he needs a favour of some kind.

"Got a client here in Philly who wants to have a guy in Princeton observed. You still live there, don't you?"

"Yeah," he says, but without much enthusiasm. His schedule is more than full already, while Lisa undoubtedly harbours some sort of expectation that he'll be home every now and then as befits his newly established status as husband-and-father-to-be.

"Well, are you interested?"

Lucas hesitates. "Depends," he says. "Why aren't you taking the case?"

"I'm headed out with the old girl on vacation tomorrow. If I call it off, I won't be married much longer." Both men laugh wryly. "Don't worry, the client is above-board. He'll pay."

That is music in Lucas's ear. There is the slight matter of the engagement ring bought on credit. He's exceeded his budget by far, but there's no way he could have got some cheap, garish rock for Lisa. He may not be one of her bright young doctors, but he knows enough about the other sex to judge what a woman of Lisa's standing and tastes can be expected to wear. While money will not be a problem in the foreseeable future, he can hardly ask his fiancée to pay for her own ring.

"I thought of you," Pete continues, "because the target works at Princeton-Plainsboro. Isn't that where your girl-friend works too?"

"Yeah. Fiancée, actually," he corrects as an afterthought, the word gliding off his tongue as he rejoices inwardly at this windfall, this heaven-sent excuse to loiter around the hospital. Of course, Lisa mustn't get wind of what he's up to - she'll be livid if she finds out that he's targeting one of her precious lambs - but he can drop in to see her on paid time so to say, combining work with pleasure while implying that she's important enough for him to find the time to visit her despite his work load. It's a win-win. Plus, he gets to keep an eye on her, which'll help him to figure out what's been stressing her lately. She's been oddly silent about her work these last weeks. It's not that he ever listened all that attentively when she talked more about PPTH, but her reserve of late has been noticeable. And somewhat worrying. The name 'House' has disappeared from her active vocabulary altogether, and while he used to believe that he'd welcome the day when that happened (if it ever did), he now finds that not hearing about House any more is much more of a threat to his inner equilibrium than a daily dose of being wised up to his latest antics.

"Really? Congratulations! When's the happy day?"

"Uh, we haven't got that far. I proposed yesterday, and we're moving in together as soon as the new place is clear, but we haven't talked about the details as yet."

"Well, that's terrific. Though I can understand if you haven't got the time for this job, what with your new responsibilities ... she's got a kid, hasn't she?"

"Yes, a little girl. No, it'll be fine - I'll take it." Lucas can sense Pete's meaning. It's the same with everyone he's introduced Lisa to: they can't figure out how a guy like him got a girl like her until they hear that she's a single mom with a career, at which point they assume that he's a glorified babysitter. But it isn't quite like that. There's no denying that Lisa longs for a normal family life, dad-mom-kid, but she's got Marina for the actual child-care stuff, stuff that she'd rather not entrust to him, if truth be told. That rankles, as does the knowledge that he needn't have bothered proposing if it weren't for the disadvantage that her being single is proving to be in the adoption process.

But it isn't in his nature to look at a glass and see it as half-empty. The glass of his future is half-full; viewed from the right angle it even seems closer to three-quarters. This time last year he was just an ordinary sort of guy, doing his job, living in a run-down apartment, hanging out at bars and watching the odd ball game with a friend. Now that he's got the kind of girl he used to fantasize about without ever believing he stood a chance, they're moving into a place with a huge back yard (he'll build a swing and a sandbox for Rachel and they can have a dog, a Golden Retriever or a Labrador), financially everything is looking rosy (he's not the type to go into a brown study because his wife is more successful than he is) and given Lisa's age it's unlikely that the size of their future family will be an issue. It's not that he isn't fine with Rachel, nor would he have objected to a child of his own, but since Lisa is earning the big dollars it isn't a bad thing that they won't have to depend on his income while she pops out one kid after another. Still, the macho part of him resents the implication that he's at Lisa's beck and call. He's his own master, so he'll take this case that promises a reliable cash flow.

"Who's the client?"

"He's called Dr Nolan."

"Nolan?" The name rings a bell.

"N-O-L-A-N. Darryl Nolan. He runs a place called Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital. Here's the phone number."

Lucas notes down the number, his head spinning. Can this be a coincidence?

"You don't know the name of the target by any chance, do you?" he asks cautiously.

"Wait a sec.... Here, got it. It's House, Gregory House."

Somewhere up in the heavens a benign deity is smiling down on Lucas Douglas.

Continue reading here