Tell No One

by Harlan Coben

My fourteen-year-old patient sat on an examining table with a roll of sanitary paper we pulled down fresh for each kid. For some reason, the way the paper rolled out reminded me of wrapping a sandwich at the Carnegie Deli.

“Beats the hell out of me. Now that lesbians are chic, our social calendar is ridiculous. I almost long for the days when we hid in closets.”

“Remember the last time you set me up?” “With Cassandra.” “Right.” “So what was wrong with her?” “For one thing, she was a lesbian.” “Christ, Beck, you’re such a bigot.”

I kept hearing that “better to have loved and lost” bullshit. Another falsehood. Trust me, it is not better. Don’t show me paradise and then burn it down.

Here is the truth about tragedy: It’s good for the soul. The fact is, I’m a better person because of the deaths. If every cloud has a silver lining, this one is admittedly pretty flimsy. But there it is. That doesn’t mean it’s worth it or an even trade or anything like that, but I know I’m a better man than I used to be. I have a finer sense of what’s important. I have a keener understanding of people’s pain.

Still, death is a great teacher. It’s just too harsh. I wish I could tell you that through the tragedy I mined some undiscovered, life-altering absolute that I could pass on to you. I didn’t. The clichés apply—people are what count, life is precious, materialism is overrated, the little things matter, live in the moment—and I can repeat them to you ad nauseam. You might listen, but you won’t internalize. Tragedy hammers it home. Tragedy etches it onto your soul. You might not be happier. But you will be better.

innocent. I’m not above making quick judgments based on appearance—or, to use a more politically current term, racial profiling. We all do it. If you cross the street to avoid a gang of black teens, you’re racial profiling; if you don’t cross because you’re afraid you’ll look like a racist, you’re racial profiling; if you see the gang and think nothing whatsoever, you’re from some planet I’ve never visited.

“Was your son born here, yes or no?” He calmed down enough to say “Yeah.” “Is he circumcised?” Tyrese relit the glare. “You some kind of faggot?” “You mean there’s more than one kind?” I countered. “Was he circumcised here, yes or no?” Grudgingly, Tyrese said, “Yeah.”

It surprised me at first that Tyrese would be able to track down Helio Gonzalez so quickly, but the street network was as developed as any other. Ask a trader at Morgan Stanley to locate a counterpart at Goldman Sachs and it would be done in minutes. Ask me to refer a patient to pretty much any other doctor in the state, and it takes one phone call. Why should street felons be different?

The crickets hummed an almost pretty melody, as though the super-rich could even manipulate that.

She muffled a sob with her hand and sprinted toward me. I opened my arms and she jumped in. I held her. I held her as tight as I could. My eyes squeezed shut. I smelled the lilac and cinnamon in her hair. She buried her face into my chest and sobbed. We gripped and regripped. She still … fit. The contours, the grooves of our bodies needed no adjusting.