“These are precisely the areas,” Ava said, rushing — there was a certain soberer affect she assumed in these meetings, her voice a bit lower and slower, but today she couldn’t keep the excitement, the speed, out of her voice—“where we could benefit greatly by having a monthly NYC convocation, flying out some of the investigators of these studies in smaller cities for a few nights in New York. Show them a good time, get a block of Broadway seats out of the mayor’s office, let them know they’re in good hands and they’re not going to be knifed on the street, then basically hole them up here during the day — or in, say, a catered meeting room at the Sheraton — and pick out of them how they implemented these programs. Then we’ll figure out how to scale them up for New York — size problems.”
Renny was leaning in, engaged, but she noted that Lauren had wheeled her chair back from the table a bit, was regarding her in a civil pose but with murderous eyes behind her glasses.
“The funny thing, Doctor,” Lauren began — and, uh-oh, she was calling her “Doctor” and not “Ava,” which signaled chilliness and maybe a hint of bite, and not collegial warmth—“is I was just about to brief on the Minneapolis directly observed-therapy study and more or less make the same suggestion that we have the investigators come to New York. Or deign to visit them.”
Uh-oh. She caught Hector’s terrified eyes — though a touch intrigued, perhaps? Renny cleared his throat. Awkwardness hung in the room. “Either way!” Ava finally chirped. “I’ll be happy to throw my beret up to the sky in the middle of downtown Minneapolis.” She smiled sweetly, innocently, at Lauren.
Everybody laughed. “You’re gonna make it after all, Aves,” Blum cracked. The boys liked her far more than Lauren, she knew that much. Lauren had no choice but to smile along like a good sport.
“Lauren, talk to the support staff about getting the Minneapolis people here,” Renny said. “And Mary Richards here can decide if we’ll take them to A Chorus Line or Sugar Babies.”
Everybody laughed again. This was quite a bit of humor for these dry health types! She ducked her head down, smiled. Renny’s crack was a reminder that he liked her, was amused by her. Easily now she could touch his arm after the meeting and set up a lunch date. She managed to be quiet for the rest of the meeting, excepting her own briefings, of course, but her mind was racing. Out of any half-baked idea floated in the room today, she might squeeze a truly great one! And that’s why, whereas before she’d occasionally jotted down a word or two on her pad, today she was sketching out a flowchart of the meeting, graphic style, to try to capture who said what and what it led to and how it all looped back and connected. Blum was sitting next to her, and at one point, she caught him looking at her pad quizzically.
“What the hell is that?” he whispered.
“I’m capturing ideas,” she said.
“Rosemary’s taking notes, though,” he whispered back. His eyebrows scrunched down, toward each other. “You okay, Aves?”
Oh God, it was because Blum, her best friend at Health, knew; he knew about that period about a year ago, because she’d confided in him, knew about the crying, the anxiety, the inability to concentrate, the insomnia, Sam’s worry over it, Emmy’s fearful sensing of it, the Valium, then the having to roll back on the Valium, the new drug that finally seemed to make things better over the course of a few months. That’s the thing about sharing this stuff with your work friends — they’re always looking out for you and for signs, signs.
“I’m great,” she whispered. She was!
He shrugged with his eyes, as if to say, Well, okay, if you say so. She caught Hector peering at them. Nosy Hector! She winked at him. He half smiled, looked away, exquisitely young and awkward. The meeting ended and she took him down to Chinatown for lunch since she had to check in on a restaurant-hygiene drive down there anyway. They made the round of a few restaurants on Mott and Canal. At the ancient Wo Hop, she noticed the lack of DOH hygiene-rule signs on the wall. She strode toward the woman absently nibbling on wontons at a back table, a stack of purchase orders by her side. Hector followed her.
“Faye! Why no signs? I brought you signs last time. You’re violating health rules.”
Faye looked up, grimaced. “Kai—” She made a kind of methodical smoothing gesture, then mimed tacking something up.
“What? Faye, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Kai—” Faye began again.
Ava turned to Hector. “Kai’s her husband,” she said. “The owner. He speaks good English.” Hector nodded.
“So to wipe. To wipe!” Faye continued. “To keep clean.”
“What?” She felt a bit more aggressive and impatient today toward Faye, and she wasn’t sure why, because she considered Faye almost a friend, and Kai, too.
Faye looked at Hector, shrugged helplessly.
“Oh!” Hector said. “You mean to laminate the signs? To wipe them clean?”
Faye broke into a relieved smile. “Yes! Laminate! To wipe them.”
Hector turned to her. “He took the signs down to laminate them,” he said.
She frowned at Faye. “They go right back up?”
“Of course.” Faye said it as though she were an idiot. “They go back up tonight.”
Ava felt strangely disappointed that she had to let the whole thing go. She’d come down here today weirdly looking for some sort of crusade, perhaps so Hector could see her in action. “Well, okay,” she said. They made a quick round through the kitchen. It looked okay except for some shrimp tails she saw scattered on the floor and an empty soap dispenser over the utility sink. “Pick those up,” she told Faye, who knelt and picked up the shrimp tails with her bare hands. “Fill that.” Faye turned and barked in Cantonese at one of the workers, who walked toward the back, returning with a plastic tub of bubble-gum-pink soap. “Looks good otherwise, Faye.”
“Thank you, Ava,” Faye singsonged back to her.
Hector inadvertently laughed. Faye giggled, too. So the minorities were having a laugh at her, eh? Anger stabbed her, then she laughed herself, just as unbidden. “We need to feed this boy, Faye! Two egg-drop soups.”
“Special for you,” Faye said, leading them out of the kitchen.
She and Hector sat up front. “Did you see that poor guy in the back?” she asked him. “I wonder how much they’re paying him. Did you know they’re trying to unionize at the Silver Palace dim sum parlor? Good for them. It’s slave labor over there.”
“They’re scared, though, ’cause they’re immigrants,” Hector said.
She looked up from her soup at him. “Would you do me a favor?”
His eyes widened, frightened.
“Would you take off your glasses for a minute?”
“Take off my glasses?”
“Yeah. Just for a minute.”
He obliged her, removing the squarish plastic frames. Now that was better. “Have you ever thought of getting contact lenses so we can see how handsome you actually are?”
He smiled and blushed, exquisitely embarrassed. “I have them, but they hurt my eyes.”
“When did you come here from Puerto Rico?”
“When I was thirteen.”
“Oh, so you went to high school here?”
“Bronx Science.”
She beamed. “My brother went to Bronx Science! I went to Cardozo. Did you have Mr. Levy with the cauliflower growth on his neck for chemistry?”