Free The Secret Life of Violet Grant by Beatriz Williams

“You’ll come to me every week like this, Violet. You’re looking rather thin, rather pale; you must eat better. I shall stuff you with cake and sandwiches and send you on your way. Does that sound agreeable?”
    She smiled. “Yes, very much.”
    And so she and Dr. Grant came to take tea in his sumptuous offices every week, served without comment by his own personal secretary, talking and laughing and calling each other
Dr. Grant
and
Violet
, while the leaves changed color and fell from the trees, and the afternoon sky grew darker and darker, until it began to turn quite black by four o’clock, when she knocked punctually on his door. It was then a week before Christmas, and the air smelled of snow. Dr. Grant stood in his office with a pair of workmen, his white shirtsleeves glowing in the lamplight, wires and plaster everywhere; he was having a new telephone installed, he told her, shaking his head, and the case was hopeless.
    Perhaps they should take tea at his house in Norham Gardens instead?

Vivian
    D octor Paul’s living room had potential, and I told him so.
    â€œYour living room has potential, if you’d consider unpacking the moving boxes.” I waved my chopsticks at said boxes, which were clustered in haphazard stacks about the room, like some sort of ironic modernist furniture set. “Maybe a lick of paint, too. White is so sterile.”
    â€œAgreed. It’s like being in a hospital.”
    â€œHow can you stand it?”
    â€œI’m not here often. I usually sleep in an empty examining room.”
    I
tsk
ed. “And you’ve lived here four weeks. If I were a shrink, I’d suggest you were having second thoughts.”
    â€œAbout the apartment?”
    â€œAbout the apartment. About New York.”
    â€œMaybe I was.”
    In the absence of furniture, we were lying on the floor in an exact perpendicular relationship: fully clothed, I hasten to add. Our heads were propped up by a single upholstered cushion, provenance unknown, and the little white boxes of Chinese takeout sat agape between us, like a row of teeth awaiting root canals. I picked up one of them now and dug my chopsticks deep into a shiny tangle of chow mein. “What, the charms of our humble town have worn thin already?”
    â€œI don’t mean to offend—”
    â€œWhich means you’re about to do just that.”
    â€œâ€”but I haven’t seen much charm to begin with. I work in a hospital, Vivian. All I see is New York’s greasy gray underbelly. Do you know what my first patient said to me? My first patient, a little kid of eight years old, in for an appendix—”
    I put down my chopsticks. “You’re a
kid
surgeon?”
    â€œYes. He said to me—”
    â€œThis is just too much. Perfect Doctor Paul is so perfectly perfect, he saves the lives of nature’s little angels.”
    â€œI am not perfect.”
    I rolled my head against the cushion and looked at him, inches away. He was staring at the ceiling, chopsticks idling in one hand, chicken chop suey balanced on his ribs. His adorable hair flopped toward the cushion, a little disordered, close enough to taste. The expression on his face wrecked my chest. I said softly: “From where I’m sitting, you’re close enough to divine.”
    â€œDon’t say that.” He sat up, catching the chicken just in time. “My dad. Pops. He’s a gambler.”
    â€œThat’s a shame, but it’s not your fault.”
    â€œNo, I mean he really gambles. Deep. Drinks, too. I was lucky, I got out when I could, went to Princeton on scholarship. I have to send him money sometimes.”
    â€œWhat about your mother?”
    â€œDied when I was ten. Cancer. But I just want you to know, my family’s not like yours. We’re nobody special.”
    â€œFor God’s sake, why would I care about that? My special family’s a mess.” I removed the white