Everything Changes

them. “As you might imagine, this has been a very tense week for all of us.” The doctor steps forward and lunges for Norm’s shoulder, but Norm spins away from him and steps into the center of the room. “But his doctor took the day off, and so we’ll have to spend all weekend wondering whether or not Zack might have bladder cancer. Can you imagine that? And all because no one in this office has the common decency to break protocol and make a simple phone call on our behalf.”
    The patients look down into their laps, chagrined at being dragged out of their waiting cocoons and into this unseemly drama. The doctor’s face is now crimson, his fists clenched at his sides, and he looks ready to doff his white coat and jump Norm. For a moment, it truly appears as if the whole absurd situation is about to descend into actual violence, when Jed emerges from the inner offices.
    “Forget it, Norm,” he calls out from behind the reception desk. “Let’s go.”
    “What the hell are you doing back there?” the doctor sputters, spinning violently to face Jed.
    “It’s okay, Doc,” Jed says. “Everything’s under control.”
    “Who are you?”
    Unlike Norm, Jed is as tall as the doctor and he steps right into his face, meeting his glare with a breezy indifference. “I’m the guy who’s going to make this problem go away.”
    The doctor backs off and we head for the door, stopping only to yank Norm along with us when he launches into what sounds like the preamble to a lengthy apology to the waiting patients. On the elevator ride down, Jed proudly shows us a piece of paper torn off a prescription pad, on which Camille has scribbled the name of the country club in Westchester where, she is quite certain, Dr. Sanderson is trying to squeeze in as many rounds of golf as possible before winter.
    “The Larchmont Country Club,” Norm reads. “I know the place.”
    “Couldn’t we just call him?” I say, cringing at the thought of another incursion with Norm.
    “She didn’t know his cell number,” Jed says.
    “So what’s that?”
    “Oh. That’s Camille’s number.”
    “I thought it might be something important, the way she underlined it twice like that.”
    Jed smiles and folds the paper into his pocket. “You see the things I do for you?”

Chapter 27
    I fold myself into the minuscule backseat of Jed’s convertible and Norm rides shotgun, which is unfortunate, because he somehow mistakes this necessary accommodation as an invitation to take Jed under his wing.
    “What’d this car run you, sixty grand?” he asks.
    “Norm,” I say.
    “What? I’m just asking. He doesn’t have to answer.”
    “It’s rude.”
    “Why? We’re among friends.”
    “Sixty-three,” Jed says, grinning at me in the rearview mirror.
    Norm nods, affirmed. “And you haven’t worked in a few years, so my guess is you have more than a few million sitting in the bank.”
    “I’m okay.”
    “Okay,” Norm says. “So you’re a rich, good-looking guy, in the prime of your life. You can be doing anything you want, literally anything.”
    Jed nods, no longer smiling.
    “So why the hell are you sitting in your apartment all day watching television?”
    “Norm!” I say. “Leave him alone.”
    “If Jed wants me to shut up, all he has to do is say shut up, Norm.”
    “Shut up, Norm,” Jed says.
    “Oh, come on!” Norm says exasperatedly. “We’re men. We’re supposed to speak our minds. What’s with all the tiptoeing around here? You two amaze me with all this evasion and sensitivity, like a couple of uptight women. You want to know what I see?”
    “No,” Jed and I say in unison.
    “I see two young men living in the most exciting city in the world. Your prospects are literally infinite, and yet you choose to sulk around in your million-dollar apartment, you frying your brain with television like it’s heroin, and you”—he points a thumb back at me—“perfecting the art of general discontentment, too scared to take any positive steps to change anything. I’ve never seen a sorrier sight than the two of you. It’s a goddamn waste, is what it is. You think you’ll be this age forever? Let me tell you something, old age is coming faster than you think. It’s a fucking locomotive, gathering speed.”
    “I’m regrouping,” Jed says.
    “You’re hiding,” Norm says, not unkindly. “Both of you are scared of I don’t know what. Your friend died, and that’s certainly tragic, but along with mourning