Perfect Flaw, page 14
“Are you a patient of Demetre Kostas?”
Inside, the waiting room felt eerie. There were several patients seated. They looked like startled deer. Angelo forced a smile.
“Morning,” he said to Tiffany. “Is Dr. Stanzione here?”
“Yes,” she replied, staring plaintively back at him like a hostage too frightened to speak. Angelo and Jason walked through the door and down the hall, propelled by the pull of dread.
Stanzione was on the phone, scratching his head. Steven stood beside him, rubbing his shoulders.
“No, we haven’t heard from him . . . what about the reporters? Of course, we won’t let them in.” Overhead the rain was beating on the skylight, sounding like a marching army. “I don’t know where he is. How should I know if he’s under arrest? They just aired the fucking story last night! I didn’t see it!”
Angelo pulled Jason into his office. He had heard enough. Jason closed the door behind them and threw his arms around Angelo. He held him for several long minutes until Steven knocked on the door and invited them back in.
Jason explained that three separate undercover investigations of Demetre Kostas had taken place: one by a reporter from the Daily News, another by a local television news station, and a third by the New York state attorney general’s office. All three had been tipped off by Demetre’s former employer, Dr. Kathleen Eichhorn, after she saw Demetre’s ad in New York magazine.
Angelo saw patients that day even though the office felt like a tomb. Once he closed the exam room door, eyes would flash open, postures sprang up straight, waiting for him to spill the gory details. Of course, he knew only what he had read in the newspaper that morning not having seen the news the night before. Jason had said that there was footage taken from inside the exam room using a hidden camera, and that Demetre admitted he was a doctor, having graduated from New York Medical College. “He appeared drowsy,” Jason had said, “slurring his words like he was on something”.
Angelo thought back to last Thursday night when he found Demetre downstairs with Yossi. The undercover reporters had already been there earlier that week. Demetre looked tired that night too, with dark circles under his eyes. Angelo wondered what those undercover reporters thought when they saw him looking like that.
By the end of the day, Angelo sat at his desk rubbing his temples. There were several messages taped to his computer screen: one from Tammy, another from his sister, Camille, and the last one from Steven. Meeting tomorrow morning at 8 a.m.!!
That night Angelo went home and lay face down on his bed, consumed with guilt-ridden exhaustion. His cell phone never stopped ringing, and he was too tired to return anyone’s calls except Jason’s. “How are you?”
“I don’t know how to answer that,” Angelo replied. “It still hasn’t hit me.”
“Well, remember, what happened isn’t your fault.”
“You’re so nice. Why are you being nice to me? I’ve only been a dick to you.”
Jason chuckled. “I don’t know about that. I’d say that on the dick scale, you’ve been a micropenis.”
Angelo burst out laughing. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad?”
“You were a little dicky. It’s not like you were a monster dick. Just a mini one.”
“This is why you’ll get into heaven,” Angelo said. “You can make someone laugh even when they don’t deserve your kindness.”
“All right,” he said, turning serious. “Enough with the pity party.
“You’re right. Time to shut down this pity party and go to sleep.”
Seconds after hanging up, Angelo received a text from Demetre.
Can you talk?
Angelo took an instant to gather himself, then he threw his cell phone on the bed. Angelo sat frozen, toying with the idea of texting him back but convinced himself no good would come of it. The pull of curiosity was so intense. What could Demetre possibly say? The ding of a second text rattled Angelo.
Call me. I miss you.
Angelo powered down his cell phone and walked into the bathroom shaking his head.
Throughout the night, Angelo drifted fitfully on waves of unsettling dreams until he woke up in a panic that he had missed the meeting, but it was still dark outside. The glowing numerals on the digital clock read 4:13 AM. Minutes ticked by, and whatever had lulled him to sleep had now worn off because he was wide awake. In a trance, he walked to the bathroom, urinated, and fell back in bed. He looked at the clock. Only minutes had gone by. Angelo got up and rifled through the kitchen cabinets until he found an old bottle of whiskey. He poured a shot and drank it. Then he drank straight from the bottle for several long seconds, hoping inebriation would help ease his mind.
He had a thought: What was Demetre doing right now? He imagined him sitting at the kitchen table with Tim. Hours of talk had passed with Tim wending his way through Demetre’s lies until they came to some mutual conclusion about what to do next. Angelo felt some consolation in knowing that Demetre wasn’t alone, and yet, he hated himself for that.
Angelo flinched awake, eyes searching for the clock. 7:30 AM. He stumbled out of bed, racing drunkenly toward the bathroom. In the medicine cabinet mirror, he caught a glimpse of himself: hair tussled, eyes irritated and tired. By the time he showered and dressed, he peeked in the mirror again and thought he looked more or less like himself.
Walking to the office he was unsteady. His face felt flushed and raw. He could still smell the whiskey on his breath. Coffee, he thought, but the thought of stopping at the bagel shop sent a coil of revulsion through him. A cold wind blew against him. It felt oddly refreshing. He hurried the rest of the way. When he turned the corner of Park Avenue, the crowd of reporters waited. By the time he reached the door, he was assaulted by the din of shouting with a familiarity that caught him off guard: Dr. Perrotta, how well did you know Demetre Kostas?; did you know he wasn’t a doctor?; Dr. Perrotta! Dr. Perrotta! Dr. Perrotta!
They were all there when Angelo entered Stanzione’s office, including Laura Ellis, sitting around like survivors hoping to be rescued.
“I can’t believe they’re out there again today,” Angelo said.
Stanzione squinted at him. Angelo could feel his eyes graze over his face. Angelo wondered if he appeared exhausted, hung over, or both. Under normal circumstances, Stanzione’s stare would have seemed rude, but these were not normal circumstances.
“This is going to destroy us,” Stanzione said, tugging at his lab coat. “I should sue Demetre.” Steven massaged his shoulders, but Stanzione wriggled away. “Fucking bastard. I can’t believe this. What a nightmare.”
“Why don’t you begin the meeting,” Laura proposed.
Silence fell all around them as Stanzione collected his thoughts. Hands trembling, he intertwined his fingers and set his hands on the desk. “It has come to my attention that Demetre has turned himself over to the police.”
Steven and Laura nodded as if a separate colloquy occurred prior to Angelo’s arrival—one in which the details had already been explained.
Angelo leaned forward and dropped his voice. “When?”
“Tim called last night. They’ve retained a lawyer, and Demetre was advised to turn himself in. The charge is practicing medicine without a license.” Stanzione looked to Laura who nodded slowly with encouragement. “This morning, I was informed that Demetre was released on a five-thousand-dollar bond.”
“Oh, so he’s not in jail,” Angelo clarified.
“Yes. Yes. That’s what I’m saying. My attorney insists that no one speak to the press. They are not allowed in the office, and they’re certainly not allowed to film any of our patients. If they do that then it’s a privacy violation, and we should notify the police immediately.”
Stanzione spoke slowly, his every move calibrated. Except for these few simple facts he recited back to them like a hostage reading demands with a gun to his head, Angelo saw no resemblance to the intimidating man he’d met during his interview. The incorrigible king who drank expensive dessert wine and commanded the chef to genuflect. A different Stanzione might have thrived on the challenge of restoring order, walked around them reciting his speech as if he were a general and they were his troops preparing for war.
The intercom buzzed. Steven stood up to answer it. “Yes. Oh. We’ll be right there,” he said, hanging up. “The police are here with a search warrant.”
Stanzione’s face turned white as flour. “This will destroy us. How will we ever recover from this?”
At that moment, Angelo didn’t know what was more surprising. That the police were waiting to search the premises or that this giant man he once admired had been reduced to a wavering, quivering minion, hiding behind his desk like a frightened elf in the forest.
At any rate, it didn’t matter because Laura stood up and set down her yellow legal pad.
“It was nice knowing you,” she said, “but I can’t be a part of this anymore.”
Sometime around three o’clock, Angelo was applying leads to a patient’s chest to perform an EKG when he heard a loud hullabaloo outside the exam room door. “You can’t be here. Do you understand? I want you to leave.” Angelo opened the door a crack and saw Demetre and Stanzione by the stairwell. Steven loomed nearby.
“I spoke to Tiffany and told her I was coming,” Demetre argued.
“We only assumed you were coming to pack up,” Steven insisted. “The next thing I know clients started showing up for appointments.”
“I need to work,” Demetre said. “I’ll go bankrupt.”
“No, no, no!” Stanzione shouted, covering his ears. “You can’t be here. You just can’t.”
Demetre held up a finger about to say something, but then stopped himself and walked downstairs.
“Call the police!” Stanzione said to Steven. “I want him out of here.”
Angelo stepped into the hall. “What if you call Tim? Maybe he can get through to Demetre. You don’t want to attract any more attention by having the police here again. It’ll only scare the patients and give the reporters something to film.”
Stanzione’s head started shaking. “I don’t care who you call. Just get him out of here.” Then he lumbered back to his office, scratching fiercely at his head.
“Tony is being irrational,” Demetre said to Steven. They whispered in the stairwell as Angelo listened.
“I don’t think Tony’s the irrational one in this scenario,” Steven said. “Let me talk to him.”
“Okay, I’ll be downstairs packing up,” Demetre said, inching closer to Steven. “You know you have incredible skin. Has anyone told you that?” Demetre held Steven’s jaw, moving his head from side to side, inspecting his complexion.
“I moisturize.” Steven grinned like a moony schoolgirl flirting with the varsity quarterback.
“You always look good,” Demetre said. “It’s not just your skin. I mean look at those biceps.” Steven flexed spontaneously. “They’re enormous.”
“Let me speak with Tony,” Steven said. “I’ll be down in a bit.”
Angelo ducked into an empty exam room before Steven noticed he had been eavesdropping. Why would Steven acquiesce to Demetre’s compliments when he had proven he himself a liar? It didn’t make sense to Angelo, but then he recalled his own struggle the night before, and how he was tempted to speak with Demetre even after all that had happened. Angelo had and still believed he was a victim to Demetre’s charms. Unbidden, the memory of Demetre’s sexually charged flirtations that day Angelo helped him move the laser into his office reconstituted itself before his eyes. Now, he understood that Demetre was motivated by pure ego and a total disregard for consequences.
In the end, Demetre agreed to evacuate the office in return for his security deposit along with the month’s rent he’d already paid. Stanzione went home early complaining of chest pain. Steven urged him to call his cardiologist, but he simply left without saying good-bye.
Once the last patient was gone, Angelo sat at his desk sifting through messages. It was after seven in the evening. The sky overhead was dark. Leaves collected on the skylight leaving little room for the moonlight to streak through. When Angelo looked up, Steven was standing in the doorway.
“Why don’t you ever turn on the light?” he asked, flipping the switch. Angelo squinted at him. For a moment, he remained in silhouette until his eyes adjusted. “It’s over.”
“What’s over?” Angelo asked.
“Demetre’s gone. His friend came by and helped him move. Some shaved-head muscle guy with tattoos.”
Yossi.
Steven slithered into the chair, eager to talk.
“I told Tony not to trust him. I knew something was up from the beginning. I never liked the whole Dr. D thing.” Then he leaned forward and added, “I think Laura was in on it. She had to know what was going on.”
“Well, like you said, it’s over now. He’s gone. How is Dr. Stanzione feeling?”
“Tony is so upset,” Steven said. “I’m trying to convince him to go up to the Cape this weekend.”
“I think that’s a good idea. It’s all in the police’s hands now. There’s nothing more we can do.”
“You should see it downstairs,” Steven said. “What a mess. It’s going to take me hours to clean up.”
For one horrible second, Angelo had this vision of Steven rifling through Demetre’s garbage, searching for art supplies. “Did you find anything interesting?”
Steven shifted uncomfortably. “Well, he took all the medical equipment but left his waiting room chairs and receptionist’s desk. He even left the nude photos. Talk about tacky. I realize the art up here is outdated, but who hangs nude photos of themself?”
“I didn’t know those pictures were of Demetre.”
“Weird right, but not really when you think about it. Demetre is so full of himself. I don’t know why Tim put up with him for so long. When we first met Demetre he was a real party boy who bounced from boyfriend to boyfriend. Then he started dating Mitch Lyon. He’s the one that put an end to Demetre’s crazy lifestyle.”
Angelo stared at him, uncomprehending. “Who’s Mitch Lyon?”
Steven had a devilish, secretive expression. “He owned a spa in SoHo. Mitch hired Demetre to do construction work, and they started dating.”
“Construction? I thought Demetre was a landscape designer.”
Steven laughed condescendingly. “Yeah, I heard that too. The truth is that Demetre was a construction worker by day and a go-go dancer by night at some bar in New Jersey called Feathers. He was living the real-life version of Flashdance.”
“How do you know all this?”
Steven pursed his lips, savoring his words as though they were too delicious to speak. “We met them on Fire Island like ten years ago. Mitch was Tony’s patient. One summer he brought Demetre out, prancing him around like some show pony. I’ll admit that Demetre was a sexy guy, but it’s not like Fire Island doesn’t have its share of gorgeous men. Anyway, Mitch was the best thing that happened to Demetre. He trained him how to use lasers, paid for his education, and eventually Demetre became certified. But everything went downhill once Mitch died of AIDS.”
There was something almost diabolical about Steven’s revelations, and Angelo wondered why he kept all these secrets from him. When Angelo looked at him, he was grinning with a playful malevolence as if Demetre’s downfall was his plan all along.
“Come with me,” Steven said. “I want to show you something.”
Downstairs, the office looked like it had been looted. Chairs were turned on their side, loose papers scattered on the floor.
“See here,” Steven said, showing Angelo a tangle of wires by Laura’s desk. “The police took the computers.” Then he opened the file cabinet to show him that the client charts had also been confiscated. The exam rooms were all empty except for a stool in one and a silver tray still prepped with gauze and alcohol pads in the other.
Demetre’s office appeared the most ravaged with papers everywhere. Desk pushed into the center of the room. A mesh of wires where the computer once stood. Angelo opened the file cabinet to see if it was empty too. Among the remaining folders, he found one labeled Jeune Toi. When Angelo opened it, he found the product brochure Rachel had presented to them at lunch along with the pricing table.
And there it was.
A copy of the letter he had signed, the one designating Angelo Perrotta as SkinDem’s medical director. Of course, there was no reason the police would have thought to take it, but how fortunate this was for Angelo.
A quick glance over his shoulder showed Steven was collecting supplies from the cabinets—alcohol pads, gauze, tape—throwing them in a fresh garbage bag to take upstairs. Angelo took the letter from the file and slipped it in his pocket when Steven wasn’t looking. “I think I’m going to head out,” Angelo said. “Are you going to stay?”
“Yeah, you go on home. I’ll be here just another hour.”
Angelo walked back to his apartment, dreading the thought of being alone. Even with the blaring city sounds all around, nothing could distract him from the images of Demetre that paraded in his mind: drinking bourbon, shopping at Barneys, dancing at the Roxy, and catching him downstairs with Yossi. Angelo tried to jerk his head to shake them away but after a little while, they started up again like some relentless video, playing over and over on a loop.
He texted Jason, but there was no response.
Lying in bed, Angelo picked up the phone and called Tammy. She seemed sleepy and a little drunk. “Did I wake you?”
“Nah, how are you?”
“I guess you heard.”
“Uh, yeah,” she said. “It’s been in the newspaper every day. Heard that jagoff is in jail.”
“He’s out on bond. You know he actually came in today to see clients.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I’m completely serious,” said Angelo.
Inside, the waiting room felt eerie. There were several patients seated. They looked like startled deer. Angelo forced a smile.
“Morning,” he said to Tiffany. “Is Dr. Stanzione here?”
“Yes,” she replied, staring plaintively back at him like a hostage too frightened to speak. Angelo and Jason walked through the door and down the hall, propelled by the pull of dread.
Stanzione was on the phone, scratching his head. Steven stood beside him, rubbing his shoulders.
“No, we haven’t heard from him . . . what about the reporters? Of course, we won’t let them in.” Overhead the rain was beating on the skylight, sounding like a marching army. “I don’t know where he is. How should I know if he’s under arrest? They just aired the fucking story last night! I didn’t see it!”
Angelo pulled Jason into his office. He had heard enough. Jason closed the door behind them and threw his arms around Angelo. He held him for several long minutes until Steven knocked on the door and invited them back in.
Jason explained that three separate undercover investigations of Demetre Kostas had taken place: one by a reporter from the Daily News, another by a local television news station, and a third by the New York state attorney general’s office. All three had been tipped off by Demetre’s former employer, Dr. Kathleen Eichhorn, after she saw Demetre’s ad in New York magazine.
Angelo saw patients that day even though the office felt like a tomb. Once he closed the exam room door, eyes would flash open, postures sprang up straight, waiting for him to spill the gory details. Of course, he knew only what he had read in the newspaper that morning not having seen the news the night before. Jason had said that there was footage taken from inside the exam room using a hidden camera, and that Demetre admitted he was a doctor, having graduated from New York Medical College. “He appeared drowsy,” Jason had said, “slurring his words like he was on something”.
Angelo thought back to last Thursday night when he found Demetre downstairs with Yossi. The undercover reporters had already been there earlier that week. Demetre looked tired that night too, with dark circles under his eyes. Angelo wondered what those undercover reporters thought when they saw him looking like that.
By the end of the day, Angelo sat at his desk rubbing his temples. There were several messages taped to his computer screen: one from Tammy, another from his sister, Camille, and the last one from Steven. Meeting tomorrow morning at 8 a.m.!!
That night Angelo went home and lay face down on his bed, consumed with guilt-ridden exhaustion. His cell phone never stopped ringing, and he was too tired to return anyone’s calls except Jason’s. “How are you?”
“I don’t know how to answer that,” Angelo replied. “It still hasn’t hit me.”
“Well, remember, what happened isn’t your fault.”
“You’re so nice. Why are you being nice to me? I’ve only been a dick to you.”
Jason chuckled. “I don’t know about that. I’d say that on the dick scale, you’ve been a micropenis.”
Angelo burst out laughing. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad?”
“You were a little dicky. It’s not like you were a monster dick. Just a mini one.”
“This is why you’ll get into heaven,” Angelo said. “You can make someone laugh even when they don’t deserve your kindness.”
“All right,” he said, turning serious. “Enough with the pity party.
“You’re right. Time to shut down this pity party and go to sleep.”
Seconds after hanging up, Angelo received a text from Demetre.
Can you talk?
Angelo took an instant to gather himself, then he threw his cell phone on the bed. Angelo sat frozen, toying with the idea of texting him back but convinced himself no good would come of it. The pull of curiosity was so intense. What could Demetre possibly say? The ding of a second text rattled Angelo.
Call me. I miss you.
Angelo powered down his cell phone and walked into the bathroom shaking his head.
Throughout the night, Angelo drifted fitfully on waves of unsettling dreams until he woke up in a panic that he had missed the meeting, but it was still dark outside. The glowing numerals on the digital clock read 4:13 AM. Minutes ticked by, and whatever had lulled him to sleep had now worn off because he was wide awake. In a trance, he walked to the bathroom, urinated, and fell back in bed. He looked at the clock. Only minutes had gone by. Angelo got up and rifled through the kitchen cabinets until he found an old bottle of whiskey. He poured a shot and drank it. Then he drank straight from the bottle for several long seconds, hoping inebriation would help ease his mind.
He had a thought: What was Demetre doing right now? He imagined him sitting at the kitchen table with Tim. Hours of talk had passed with Tim wending his way through Demetre’s lies until they came to some mutual conclusion about what to do next. Angelo felt some consolation in knowing that Demetre wasn’t alone, and yet, he hated himself for that.
Angelo flinched awake, eyes searching for the clock. 7:30 AM. He stumbled out of bed, racing drunkenly toward the bathroom. In the medicine cabinet mirror, he caught a glimpse of himself: hair tussled, eyes irritated and tired. By the time he showered and dressed, he peeked in the mirror again and thought he looked more or less like himself.
Walking to the office he was unsteady. His face felt flushed and raw. He could still smell the whiskey on his breath. Coffee, he thought, but the thought of stopping at the bagel shop sent a coil of revulsion through him. A cold wind blew against him. It felt oddly refreshing. He hurried the rest of the way. When he turned the corner of Park Avenue, the crowd of reporters waited. By the time he reached the door, he was assaulted by the din of shouting with a familiarity that caught him off guard: Dr. Perrotta, how well did you know Demetre Kostas?; did you know he wasn’t a doctor?; Dr. Perrotta! Dr. Perrotta! Dr. Perrotta!
They were all there when Angelo entered Stanzione’s office, including Laura Ellis, sitting around like survivors hoping to be rescued.
“I can’t believe they’re out there again today,” Angelo said.
Stanzione squinted at him. Angelo could feel his eyes graze over his face. Angelo wondered if he appeared exhausted, hung over, or both. Under normal circumstances, Stanzione’s stare would have seemed rude, but these were not normal circumstances.
“This is going to destroy us,” Stanzione said, tugging at his lab coat. “I should sue Demetre.” Steven massaged his shoulders, but Stanzione wriggled away. “Fucking bastard. I can’t believe this. What a nightmare.”
“Why don’t you begin the meeting,” Laura proposed.
Silence fell all around them as Stanzione collected his thoughts. Hands trembling, he intertwined his fingers and set his hands on the desk. “It has come to my attention that Demetre has turned himself over to the police.”
Steven and Laura nodded as if a separate colloquy occurred prior to Angelo’s arrival—one in which the details had already been explained.
Angelo leaned forward and dropped his voice. “When?”
“Tim called last night. They’ve retained a lawyer, and Demetre was advised to turn himself in. The charge is practicing medicine without a license.” Stanzione looked to Laura who nodded slowly with encouragement. “This morning, I was informed that Demetre was released on a five-thousand-dollar bond.”
“Oh, so he’s not in jail,” Angelo clarified.
“Yes. Yes. That’s what I’m saying. My attorney insists that no one speak to the press. They are not allowed in the office, and they’re certainly not allowed to film any of our patients. If they do that then it’s a privacy violation, and we should notify the police immediately.”
Stanzione spoke slowly, his every move calibrated. Except for these few simple facts he recited back to them like a hostage reading demands with a gun to his head, Angelo saw no resemblance to the intimidating man he’d met during his interview. The incorrigible king who drank expensive dessert wine and commanded the chef to genuflect. A different Stanzione might have thrived on the challenge of restoring order, walked around them reciting his speech as if he were a general and they were his troops preparing for war.
The intercom buzzed. Steven stood up to answer it. “Yes. Oh. We’ll be right there,” he said, hanging up. “The police are here with a search warrant.”
Stanzione’s face turned white as flour. “This will destroy us. How will we ever recover from this?”
At that moment, Angelo didn’t know what was more surprising. That the police were waiting to search the premises or that this giant man he once admired had been reduced to a wavering, quivering minion, hiding behind his desk like a frightened elf in the forest.
At any rate, it didn’t matter because Laura stood up and set down her yellow legal pad.
“It was nice knowing you,” she said, “but I can’t be a part of this anymore.”
Sometime around three o’clock, Angelo was applying leads to a patient’s chest to perform an EKG when he heard a loud hullabaloo outside the exam room door. “You can’t be here. Do you understand? I want you to leave.” Angelo opened the door a crack and saw Demetre and Stanzione by the stairwell. Steven loomed nearby.
“I spoke to Tiffany and told her I was coming,” Demetre argued.
“We only assumed you were coming to pack up,” Steven insisted. “The next thing I know clients started showing up for appointments.”
“I need to work,” Demetre said. “I’ll go bankrupt.”
“No, no, no!” Stanzione shouted, covering his ears. “You can’t be here. You just can’t.”
Demetre held up a finger about to say something, but then stopped himself and walked downstairs.
“Call the police!” Stanzione said to Steven. “I want him out of here.”
Angelo stepped into the hall. “What if you call Tim? Maybe he can get through to Demetre. You don’t want to attract any more attention by having the police here again. It’ll only scare the patients and give the reporters something to film.”
Stanzione’s head started shaking. “I don’t care who you call. Just get him out of here.” Then he lumbered back to his office, scratching fiercely at his head.
“Tony is being irrational,” Demetre said to Steven. They whispered in the stairwell as Angelo listened.
“I don’t think Tony’s the irrational one in this scenario,” Steven said. “Let me talk to him.”
“Okay, I’ll be downstairs packing up,” Demetre said, inching closer to Steven. “You know you have incredible skin. Has anyone told you that?” Demetre held Steven’s jaw, moving his head from side to side, inspecting his complexion.
“I moisturize.” Steven grinned like a moony schoolgirl flirting with the varsity quarterback.
“You always look good,” Demetre said. “It’s not just your skin. I mean look at those biceps.” Steven flexed spontaneously. “They’re enormous.”
“Let me speak with Tony,” Steven said. “I’ll be down in a bit.”
Angelo ducked into an empty exam room before Steven noticed he had been eavesdropping. Why would Steven acquiesce to Demetre’s compliments when he had proven he himself a liar? It didn’t make sense to Angelo, but then he recalled his own struggle the night before, and how he was tempted to speak with Demetre even after all that had happened. Angelo had and still believed he was a victim to Demetre’s charms. Unbidden, the memory of Demetre’s sexually charged flirtations that day Angelo helped him move the laser into his office reconstituted itself before his eyes. Now, he understood that Demetre was motivated by pure ego and a total disregard for consequences.
In the end, Demetre agreed to evacuate the office in return for his security deposit along with the month’s rent he’d already paid. Stanzione went home early complaining of chest pain. Steven urged him to call his cardiologist, but he simply left without saying good-bye.
Once the last patient was gone, Angelo sat at his desk sifting through messages. It was after seven in the evening. The sky overhead was dark. Leaves collected on the skylight leaving little room for the moonlight to streak through. When Angelo looked up, Steven was standing in the doorway.
“Why don’t you ever turn on the light?” he asked, flipping the switch. Angelo squinted at him. For a moment, he remained in silhouette until his eyes adjusted. “It’s over.”
“What’s over?” Angelo asked.
“Demetre’s gone. His friend came by and helped him move. Some shaved-head muscle guy with tattoos.”
Yossi.
Steven slithered into the chair, eager to talk.
“I told Tony not to trust him. I knew something was up from the beginning. I never liked the whole Dr. D thing.” Then he leaned forward and added, “I think Laura was in on it. She had to know what was going on.”
“Well, like you said, it’s over now. He’s gone. How is Dr. Stanzione feeling?”
“Tony is so upset,” Steven said. “I’m trying to convince him to go up to the Cape this weekend.”
“I think that’s a good idea. It’s all in the police’s hands now. There’s nothing more we can do.”
“You should see it downstairs,” Steven said. “What a mess. It’s going to take me hours to clean up.”
For one horrible second, Angelo had this vision of Steven rifling through Demetre’s garbage, searching for art supplies. “Did you find anything interesting?”
Steven shifted uncomfortably. “Well, he took all the medical equipment but left his waiting room chairs and receptionist’s desk. He even left the nude photos. Talk about tacky. I realize the art up here is outdated, but who hangs nude photos of themself?”
“I didn’t know those pictures were of Demetre.”
“Weird right, but not really when you think about it. Demetre is so full of himself. I don’t know why Tim put up with him for so long. When we first met Demetre he was a real party boy who bounced from boyfriend to boyfriend. Then he started dating Mitch Lyon. He’s the one that put an end to Demetre’s crazy lifestyle.”
Angelo stared at him, uncomprehending. “Who’s Mitch Lyon?”
Steven had a devilish, secretive expression. “He owned a spa in SoHo. Mitch hired Demetre to do construction work, and they started dating.”
“Construction? I thought Demetre was a landscape designer.”
Steven laughed condescendingly. “Yeah, I heard that too. The truth is that Demetre was a construction worker by day and a go-go dancer by night at some bar in New Jersey called Feathers. He was living the real-life version of Flashdance.”
“How do you know all this?”
Steven pursed his lips, savoring his words as though they were too delicious to speak. “We met them on Fire Island like ten years ago. Mitch was Tony’s patient. One summer he brought Demetre out, prancing him around like some show pony. I’ll admit that Demetre was a sexy guy, but it’s not like Fire Island doesn’t have its share of gorgeous men. Anyway, Mitch was the best thing that happened to Demetre. He trained him how to use lasers, paid for his education, and eventually Demetre became certified. But everything went downhill once Mitch died of AIDS.”
There was something almost diabolical about Steven’s revelations, and Angelo wondered why he kept all these secrets from him. When Angelo looked at him, he was grinning with a playful malevolence as if Demetre’s downfall was his plan all along.
“Come with me,” Steven said. “I want to show you something.”
Downstairs, the office looked like it had been looted. Chairs were turned on their side, loose papers scattered on the floor.
“See here,” Steven said, showing Angelo a tangle of wires by Laura’s desk. “The police took the computers.” Then he opened the file cabinet to show him that the client charts had also been confiscated. The exam rooms were all empty except for a stool in one and a silver tray still prepped with gauze and alcohol pads in the other.
Demetre’s office appeared the most ravaged with papers everywhere. Desk pushed into the center of the room. A mesh of wires where the computer once stood. Angelo opened the file cabinet to see if it was empty too. Among the remaining folders, he found one labeled Jeune Toi. When Angelo opened it, he found the product brochure Rachel had presented to them at lunch along with the pricing table.
And there it was.
A copy of the letter he had signed, the one designating Angelo Perrotta as SkinDem’s medical director. Of course, there was no reason the police would have thought to take it, but how fortunate this was for Angelo.
A quick glance over his shoulder showed Steven was collecting supplies from the cabinets—alcohol pads, gauze, tape—throwing them in a fresh garbage bag to take upstairs. Angelo took the letter from the file and slipped it in his pocket when Steven wasn’t looking. “I think I’m going to head out,” Angelo said. “Are you going to stay?”
“Yeah, you go on home. I’ll be here just another hour.”
Angelo walked back to his apartment, dreading the thought of being alone. Even with the blaring city sounds all around, nothing could distract him from the images of Demetre that paraded in his mind: drinking bourbon, shopping at Barneys, dancing at the Roxy, and catching him downstairs with Yossi. Angelo tried to jerk his head to shake them away but after a little while, they started up again like some relentless video, playing over and over on a loop.
He texted Jason, but there was no response.
Lying in bed, Angelo picked up the phone and called Tammy. She seemed sleepy and a little drunk. “Did I wake you?”
“Nah, how are you?”
“I guess you heard.”
“Uh, yeah,” she said. “It’s been in the newspaper every day. Heard that jagoff is in jail.”
“He’s out on bond. You know he actually came in today to see clients.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I’m completely serious,” said Angelo.
