Sorry I Worried You

Sorry I Worried You

16 Sorry I Worried You ”Did you know,” Dr. Parrish asked, “that there are birds who learned to open milk cartons? They pecked and lifted until they could get at the cream at the top.” “There hasn’t been cream on the top of milk since I was kid,” Ben said. “Exactly. This was way back. Before they stopped using those foil caps and started in with those impossible to open spouts. OK, now, bend over for me.” She’d started these exams the year Ben Nowak had turned fifty. For three years now, Ben had told himself if he had known what was coming, he would have changed doctors, but she’d announced it nonchalantly at the end of his annual exam, pulling on a latex glove and shoving herself inside him. Worse, Lori Rousch, who was married to his friend Jerry, had become the receptionist that same year, 17 and she was someone, Ben was sure, who would thumb through files when things slowed down in the office. Two years ago, the second time Dr. Parrish had examined him, he’d shriveled in the air conditioning and his nervousness. “Good,” she’d said, “nice and small,” and he’d felt the mix of relief and humiliation that comes, he thought, from being rescued. Later, Ben had wondered what Dr. Parrish had thought as he leaned over the table, his ass bared, his genitals hanging between his spread legs. She’d been his doctor for fifteen years; she was divorced and available, seven years younger than he was, attractive enough that he’d stared at her body, imagining it naked, while she pressed a stethoscope to his chest. “Unhhh,” he breathed now, astonished at how this exam always rushed the air out of him. And when she hesitated, not saying “Good” as she had repeated the three previous years, he froze, gripping the edges of the padded table. “OK,” she said, turning away to discard the glove, but the extra five seconds made him say “Really?” as he tugged his pants up. “You’re a little larger,” she said. “That happens.” Ben waited. “We’ll see what the lab says. It’s probably just another inevitable change.” “Like death,” he said, but she didn’t change her expression. “Come on, Ben. Let’s not be melodramatic. Usually it just means you’ll be getting up in the middle of the night from now on.” “Hey there, Ben,” he heard Lori say as he walked by, and when he gave her a short-armed wave instead of stopping to talk, he knew she would be into his file before the afternoon was over. When Ben walked into work at the bookstore, his assistant manager Shelly was pacing and crying in the back room. He looked at Erin, 18 a part-timer, who was sitting on a crate and repeating encouragements like a coach. “It’s only stuff,” she kept saying. “Nobody’s hurt.” “What?” Ben finally asked after Shelly passed a second time without slowing down. “Shelly got ripped off.” He thought of what he kept in the back room. A spare shirt, a toothbrush, magazines he brought back from the shelves and forgot to replace. “What was stolen?” he said. “Three pairs of shoes, my Walkman, and twenty-four CDs,” Shelly screamed. Erin shrugged. “Inventory,” she said. “It’s our job.” Kyle, thirty hours a week like Erin, stuck his head in the back door. “Don’t sweat the CDs,” he said. Shelly shut up and looked at him. “You replacing them for me?” she asked, as if something miraculous might occur in the back room of Read-A-Lot. “Don’t have to,” he said, sweeping an arm toward the open door. They all tramped into the alley that led to Rush Street. There was a trail of CDs all the way to the stoplight. Celine Dion. Jessica Simpson. Whoever had stolen Shelly’s stuff had pitched the CDs. The cases were open, and a couple of the CDs were lying loose— Mandy Moore. Dream. Greatest Television Love Themes. Kyle began to laugh. “The thief must have said, ‘Fuck this shit’ and tossed them all away.” “How come nobody else had anything stolen?” Shelly asked. “We don’t have anything to steal,” Kyle said. “It’s somebody who works here. It has to be.” “Where’s that come from?” Ben said. She glanced at the others...