Read The Sandman for Free Online

drank. He liked Harry. He was a real American—a he-man—but he just wished he wouldn’t use that word “greased.”

4
    Nurse Debby Hunter sat in the small, concrete “park” which had been built by the hospital only the year before so that the staff might take advantage of the view of the East River. The park was a dismal failure, she thought. Not that they hadn’t tried. There was a fountain with a boy and a dolphin in it that was supposed to be arty but looked vaguely pornographic. What was the boy doing with the fish, anyway? There were flowers in wooden troughs around the edge of the place. But now that fall was coming, they were dying fast and their drooping stems only made the place seem more gloomy than before. What really finished the place were the white concrete benches. Debby always felt the cold coming out of them when she sat down, the cold that ran right up her ass, through her spine, and into her neck. She dreaded the coming Christmas, living alone as she did on 77th Street and York Avenue in a singles’ high-rise. That had been another mistake. She had only come to the city a few months before, after getting the job at Eastern, and the first nurse she met, Rose, had told her that the high-rise at 77th and York was a great place to live. “You’ll never be alone. There are all kinds of professional men there. Hey, one of the Yankees even lives there, some relief pitcher. Anyway, it’s a great place to meet men.”
    Debby hadn’t really wanted to meet men as much as she had wanted to avoid being alone her first year in the city. And besides, she thought, coming from upstate (Syracuse—Debby had done her residency work at Strong Memorial), she had wanted to break some of what she knew were her provincial habits. For years she had gone through a tortuous relationship with an incurable playboy surgeon named Mark Schmidt, had put up with his unfaithfulness, his egomania, his ambition, and now she was ready for … well, she was not quite certain what.
    Now, as she sat on the cold bench, eating a sandwich she had gotten out of one of the sandwich machines—a tunafish sandwich which tasted like it had been dipped in mercury batter—Debby thought of how easily the past had slipped by her. In a way it was frightening. Only six months ago she had been totally, irretrievably, hopelessly in love with Mark, and now she could barely recall what he looked like. Did that mean she was being turned into some kind of shallow, swinging-singles idiot? She doubted it, but then again, she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything since she moved to New York. But she was sure that her fear of loneliness would be outweighed by her detestation of all the shag haircuts, hairy chests, Nik-Nik shirts, and golden pendants she had been witness to in the past few months.
    Her thoughts were interrupted by noise behind her, and she turned and saw Harry Gardner following Peter Cross into the park. Before she could turn away, she saw Gardner give her the eye, and before she could gather up the wrappings from her sandwich and her empty juice carton, he was springing over to her. It was comical, really. She had just been sitting there, thinking of Mister Swinging Singles, and here he was, in the flesh.
    “Hi, Debby,” Harry said, his short, hairy arms hanging out of his green operating coat like those on a baboon.
    “Hello, Harry,” she said. “Have a good morning?”
    “Yeah,” he said, “a walkthrough, just a little hernia operation and a gallbladder, nothing the kid can’t handle.”
    “Which kid are you referring to?” Debby said.
    “The kid!” Harry said quickly, pointing to his own chest. “The kid, right here. Who else? Harry, the Kid.”
    “I’ve got to go, Harry,” she said. “Lunchtime is over.”
    “Yeah, well, listen,” Harry said, “your shift is off at five. So’s mine. Why don’t we go over to the Emergency Room and have a few drinks? I’d like to get to know you a little better.”
    “Oh,