Page 43 of Collateral Claim

My turn to groan. “Only if you’re buying and bringing me my phone.”

“It’s a date.”

“It’s not. Bye.” I slam down the receiver.

Rie gapes.

I straighten my coat. “Give me fifteen minutes, then start calling in the patients. I’ll follow your usual routine, and we’ll wing it today. If I see anything I can improve, I’ll tell you tomorrow. What time do you all take lunch?”

“At noon.”

“I’ll work through lunch today and see as many patients as I can before we close at two. Will that work?”

Rie nods and follows me to the back. I need to freshen up again and finish my coffee. I move toward the room I woke up in, and he follows me.

“Dr. Pen, can I talk to you for a moment?”

“Of course.”

“Was that Endo Macarley on the phone with you?”

“Yes, yes, it was.”

Rie seems uncomfortable, shifting from one foot to the other. “I hate, absolutely hate to have to be the one to tell you this, but Endo Macarley is not the kind of man who will put up with being spoken to that way.”

“Pft.” I swat my hand through the air. “He’ll live.”

“Yes, but will you?”

I think about that for a moment. “Good point.”

Chapter 19

She makes me wait

Endo

My collateral said she’d never been on a boat.

Since we retire old boats and convert them into restaurants on the beach side of the harbor, I thought she might enjoy eating on the deck while I chatted with her father. From her phone.

The main reason I’m giving her her phone back now is because it took time to remove the bug someone (her father or Wilfred) put inside it and replace it with my own.

Even though I think Scarlett knows nothing about my brother or her father’s business, it doesn’t hurt to keep track of her conversations with her father or Wilfred. Otherwise, I’m uninterested in her private business. Like, for example, the relationship between her and her sister, who has called Scarlett over a hundred times. She left messages too, which I haven’t listened to because they’ve got nothing to do with what I’m after.

Tom, the server, comes by again and tops off my sparkling water.

“Another water, sir?” he asks.

I shake my head.

The clinic closes for lunch at noon, but Scarlett changed the schedule, so when Dec went to pick her up, she told him (and me by default) to wait. Dec knows better than to return here without her, which means I’ve been sitting at this table for over two hours.

Waiting.

I’ve never waited for a woman before in my life. Not even my first shag, a girl named Yannelis, who told me she’d meet me at the abandoned lighthouse when we were in high school. The next day, she confronted me about not showing up. I told her she mustn’t have been on time because I arrived at the top of the hour, and the lighthouse was empty. Yannelis told me I should’ve waited.

Scarlett would’ve probably said the same thing. But this time, I did wait. Not ten minutes. Or fifteen. Two hours. I hate that I remembered Yannelis and the lighthouse, because I remember why I didn’t wait back then. The girl wasn’t worth it.