The Pursuit of Alice Thrift Read Free

clinically, a gum-baring grimace. “Just had a bleach job,” he said. “I’m supposed to avoid red wine, coffee, and tea.”
    The waitress pointed to the wine list, under the leather-bound menus, with the end of her pencil.
    â€œI’ll let her pick,” he told the waitress. “She must have good taste. She’s a doctor.”
    â€œWhat kind?” asked the waitress.
    I said the Australian Chardonnay would be fine for me. One glass.
    â€œI meant what kind of doctor.”
    â€œSurgeon,” I said. “Still in training.”
    â€œNot your garden-variety surgeon,” said Ray. “A plastic one.”
    The waitress did something then, squeezed her elbows to her waist so that her chest protruded a few degrees more than it had at rest. “I had plastic surgery,” she said, “but I didn’t go crazy. Would you have known if I didn’t tell you?”
    I said no.
    Ray said, “Isn’t it nice that you can speak about it so openly.”
    â€œShe’s a doctor,” said the waitress. “I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.”
    â€œI didn’t know you before, but they look great,” said Ray. “Did you feel that having larger breasts would improve your quality of life?”
    â€œYeah, I did,” said the waitress.
    â€œAnd have they?” asked Ray.
    â€œI like ’em,” said the woman. “I guess that’s what counts.”
    Ray told the waitress that I had talked him out of a nose job and he’d done a complete one-eighty: He went in wanting one and came out a new man.
    â€œBecause she likes it the way it is?” asked the waitress. “Because when she looks at you she doesn’t see the shape of your nose but the content of your character?”
    â€œNope,” said Ray. “None of the above.”
    â€œI don’t know him at all,” I said.
    â€œIt was an office visit,” said Ray. “I came for a consultation. And now I’m buying her dinner because she saved me ten thousand bucks.”
    The waitress looked thoughtfully at her pad and said, “I’ll be right back with your drinks and your appetizer.”
    I told him, “Everybody has a procedure on their wish list or a scar they want to show me.”
    He asked if plastic surgery was more lucrative than the regular kind.
    â€œIt can be. Not if you volunteer your time and pay your own expenses to operate on the poor and the disfigured.”
    â€œYou do that?”
    â€œI hope to.”
    â€œI’ve seen those doctors who fly planes into jungles. The parents of these deformed kids walk, like, hundreds of miles to bring their Siamese twins to some American doc to separate, right?”
    â€œHardly that,” I said. “That’s major, major surgery, with teams of—”
    â€œMaybe I’m mixing up my
60 Minutes
segments,” he said. “But you know what I mean—the freaks of nature.” Our waitress returned with the wine and said she’d be back with the appetizer combo platter. Ray raised his glass. “Here’s to you, Doc, and to your future good deeds.”
    I said, “I don’t understand why you wanted to have coffee with me, let alone a full-course dinner.”
    â€œYou don’t? You can’t think of any reason a guy would want to see you outside the hospital?”
    I said, “If this is leading up to a compliment, I’d prefer you didn’t. I wouldn’t believe it anyway.”
    He reached over and turned a page of the menu so
“Pesce”
was before me. “Doctors—they watch what they eat and they know about good cholesterol. What about a piece of salmon?”
    I said fine, that would be fine.
    â€œAnd here we go,” said Ray as the waitress made room on the table for our oval platter of deep-fried, lumpen morsels. “I’ll have the usual,” he said, “and the lady will have the