by Frank Deford
“Really?” Nina asked, totally surprised.
“Yeah, some druggie. We nabbed him early this morning, just ’round the corner, trying to break into another doctor’s office. Looking for drugs.”
“But I’m a psychiatrist, Officer. Why would anyone come in here? There’s probably more drugs in the average East Side medicine cabinet than I keep here.”
“Look, these guys don’t pause to get your resume,” Officer Gomez said. “We still catch these characters breakin’ into dentist offices, lookin’ for gold. Idiots. Dentists mostly stopped using gold for inlays years ago.”
“Well, thank you, Officer,” Nina said. “I’m delighted to know that all this has been resolved in such an ordinary fashion. Just a run-of-the-mill perp, right?”
Gomez smiled. “Yes ma’am. The NYPD always gets its perp.”
They laughed together, and Nina was so pleased to know that the intruder hadn’t been Buckingham’s spy, that she might even have considered being marginally more forgiving of Bucky. However, just then the phone rang, and momentarily, Roseann held it out to her, saying, “A Mr. Venerable? Returning your call.”
“Venable?” Nina mumbled, as convincingly as she could feign some confusion.
“Oh yes, yes, of course. I better take this in my office.” She also made sure to close the door behind her and kick off her shoes before easing into her chair and chirping, “Oh, hi, Hugh. Thanks for getting back to me.”
“Well, it did catch me off guard.”
She pushed the mute button so he wouldn’t hear her catch her breath. But they had spoken! They had exchanged words. Dr. Winston was an adult SWF having a phone conversation with an old…uh, friend. It was going to be okay. “Everything all right?” Nina ventured then, unmuting.
“Oh, fine. Like the job. Miss the flock. But the students are bright, and they keep me on my toes. And you?”
“Well, you know, it’s the same fruitstand here. And that’s why I called, Hugh. One of my patients brought up a subject I thought you could help me with. If we could just, uh, get together for a few minutes sometime.”
“Might it be better to do it on the phone? You know what we agreed, Nina.”
There it was. Nina paused. No damn it, she’d gone this far to try to see Hugh Venable again, so there was only so much more of a fool she could make of herself. Onward: “Well, Hugh, I thought perhaps the statute of limitations had run out on that prohibition. Yes, we certainly could do it on the phone, but couldn’t we also at least show each other how we’ve held body and soul together?”
Hugh held his hands over the phone. “Temptress,” he sighed in a stage whisper. And then to her, “Well, all right Nina, although I’m sure your body has held together far better than mine.”
Nina grinned. Already, it was easy talking to Hugh the way they used to—so natural, by turns funny and profound and endearing. How had she actually spent five years of her life not hearing that voice? “And your soul?” she asked.
“Ah, I like that Nina. I think we’re putting together a mighty fine country and western song here. ‘You held my body together, but took my soul apart.’” And then he sang that. Worst singing voice in the world. God, it was sweet for Nina to hear that man sing again.
So, he agreed to meet her after work. After work! Split the difference. She’d go over to the West Side, and he come down from Union Theological Seminary to meet at a place in the Seventies he’d heard about. Yes, tonight. In just a few hours. If only she’d thought about wearing a more glamorous—sexier?—outfit today.
Oh well.
Hugh hadn’t seen her since she gotten the laser treatment. That should be enough, the first time back.
Suppressing her ecstasy, Nina came out of her office. Roseann looked very concerned. She pointed to a package that had just arrived by special messenger. “I think it’s from Mr. Buckingham,” she volunteered fearfully.
“Well, let’s open it up,” Nina said. “However distasteful the gentleman, I don’t think he’s the bomber type.”
And, indeed, it didn’t explode. Instead, when Nina unraveled the bubble packing, she exposed a doll—a mournful man wearing a fedora. There was a button and Nina pushed it. Immediately, the man began to speak in a sniveling voice, pouring out apologies, “Oh, please forgive me…I’m so sorry…I swear, I’ll never do it again…A thousand pardons… Can I ever obtain your forgiveness…? Oh, woe—”
Nina flipped off the switch, pretending not to be the slightest bit amused.
But then, how long could she stay mad at the irrepressible Mr. Buckingham? Sure, he had snooped on her, but he hadn’t been responsible for the break-in, had he? Besides, if it hadn’t been for Bucky, why, Nina wouldn’t have found the excuse to get to see Hugh Venable again—at last, this very night, somewhere, at a quiet little table in the corner.
8
Hugh was already there when Nina arrived, waving to her from the back. It was obviously a very trendy place. For a man of the cloth, the Reverend Venable was always up on these kinds of things, ahead of most curves.
Happily for Nina, there was a crowd at the bar that she had to negotiate her way through, so she could keep her eyes off of Hugh as she approached him. Nevertheless, by the time she reached him, her knees buckled a little anyhow. He looked magnificent. If he had aged a day in five years worth of days, it was not apparent. He looked yet so manly, so powerful, so…so Adonis-like…had Adonis just not gone on that silly wild boar hunt, but had lived on up into his fifties.
“Well,” he said to her, “you haven’t lost it, Dr. Winston.”
Nina pecked him on the cheek. Having gone through this sort of thing with Bucky, Nina had decided that not to peck him on the cheek would be more awkward. “Don’t you get any older?” she asked, sliding into the booth across from him.
“My secret plan is to retire as some eighty-year-old parishioner’s boy toy.”
Laughing, she noticed a drink before her. It looked very much like a martini. Certainly, it came in a martini glass. “What is this?”
“A martini, of course. They’re back in fashion.”
“God, I haven’t had a martini since I was a virgin.”
“See? Some things you can get back.”
Nina took a sip. The gin burned—nicely—but when she looked back up, planning to go right on bantering, Hugh’s expression had changed, the twinkle gone. He had to watch himself. He had given her the martini, and with it, he had doled out some repartee. But just so, just that much. “It is nice to see you, Nina. But I won’t pretend I think it’s a good idea.”
She caught her breath. What made her think it could all be as if nothing had happened? “Well, then, maybe I shouldn’t have pushed this on you. But I did think you could help me.” She took another sip. How bitter the gin was this time.
“So, what’s up?”
“Well, if you’ll give me just one peremptory challenge, your Honor.”
“I didn’t mean to sound brusque, Nina. But we agreed this was over.”
She thought: you agreed. But she only said, “I do want to thank you for that lovely note when Kingsley died.”
“It must have been so fast, the cancer.”
“A wildfire, they told me.” A sigh. “Maybe that’s best.”
Hugh kind of gestured to himself. “Did he ever know?”
“About us?” Hugh nodded. “No, I’m sure he didn’t. Thank God.” Suddenly, it was terribly uncomfortable, and they heard all the noises of the world all around them. Nina managed to change the subject, sort of. “Your children?”
“You mean, did they know about us?” Reluctantly, she nodded. “Not you in the specific. I think they both suspected there was another woman, but I just told them the same half-truth, which was that I’d simply fallen out of love with their mother. And Lenore has been very sweet, pleading with
the kids not to hate me. She always figured there was someone else, but she’s been a gem, undeserving of—”
“All right, all right—make me feel even more guilty.”
Sheepishly, Hugh reached over, patting her forearm. “I’m sorry, Nina. That wasn’t very thoughtful of me.” Quickly, though, he withdrew his hand and threw it up in the air. “But you see, that’s precisely why this can’t ever be any good. Too much guilt, both ways. So, let’s get professional. How can I help you?”
Nina smiled wanly and put on her therapist face, the one that heard but did not engage, that saw but did not involve. “Well, there’s this patient. Fascinating guy, really, because he’s so incredibly normal. Except—” She stopped.
“Come on, I’m all ears.”
“He thinks he’s lived in the past.”
“Ah, so the subject here is—”
“Reincarnation. Yes.”
“Rubbish,” Hugh declared, all disdain, before going back to his martini.
“Rubbish? Just…rubbish?”
“Well, I’m assuming you’re asking me as a theologian. Certainly, there’s enough nonsense written on the subject—exceeded only, I suppose, by the stuff on the Kennedys and how to lose weight.”
“So then, as a theologian?”
“As a Christian theologian, there’s simply nothing in the entire Christian canon—or for that matter, the whole damn Judeo-Christian heritage—that gives a nod to reincarnation.”
“Nothing?”
“Look Nina, I’m well aware that tens of millions of Hindus and Buddhists and all sorts of other people believe in reincarnation. I make no mockery of that. And it’s not just in the East. The Dalai Lama is practically an American pop figure nowadays, and he’s the very essence of reincarnation. Obviously, no one knows. But from the perspective of a traditional westerner, Christian or Jew—” He paused. “I suppose your patient fits in there.”
“Yes.”
“Well, there’s simply nothing in our common heritage that supports that belief.”
Hugh took another sip of his martini, and Nina noticed it was almost finished. She gulped at hers to catch up, to be prepared if the waiter came over and Hugh was inclined to order another. “Of course,” he went on, “those who want to believe in reincarnation put, shall we say, a new spin on scripture. A favorite, for example, is from John, when Jesus tells the apostles: ‘In my father’s house, there are many mansions.’ Well now, somehow, people who want to believe in reincarnation have decided that many mansions is really code for many lives. Beats me how they’ve arrived at that, but hey, if it rows your boat.” Suddenly, he stopped and looked quizzically at Nina. “Wait a minute. You don’t believe in reincarnation, do you now?”
“No, Hugh. It’s just that this patient has had a very compelling experience.”
“Well, hell, be my guest. But Jesus really wasn’t all that complicated in what he said. I’m pretty sure that if he was trying to tell us that we were going to keep on coming back till we got it right, then he would’ve come right out and said so: ‘In my father’s house, we recycle souls.’”
Nina laughed. She always enjoyed Hugh most for his irreverence. She had never dared sneak into his church to hear him preach. It wasn’t because she was a Catholic and he was a heathen Lutheran; no, irrespective of religion, it was because she was a woman sleeping (in sin) with the guy in the pulpit. Nevertheless, she’d heard that Hugh brought the same kind of conversational wry wit to his sermons. “Oh, come on,” Nina said, “haven’t there been all sorts of dissident Christians and Jews who believed in reincarnation?”
Hugh leaned back, arms akimbo. “Sure. Matter of fact, I went out with one after the divorce.”
“You did?”
“I’m afraid that was my anti-Nina period. If it couldn’t be us, the last thing I wanted was a pale, cut-rate version of you.” Pointedly, Hugh neglected to mention that he was still in that period. Every woman he went out with, including his current enamorata, bore no resemblance—of appearance or personality—to Nina. “She used to argue reincarnation with me. It was basically her contention that the early church had covered up all the pro-reincarnation writings. Great conspiracy theory stuff! You see, she argued, if people knew they were going to get a lot more rides on the merry-go-round of life, they’d be much harder for the church to control. Pretty good argument, too. But she was cuckoo—a lotta fun, but off-the-wall.”
“Well, did she bring up all the stories about people under hypnosis who remember details about past lives—all sorts of things that can’t be explained? You know, they speak strange dialects, know secret hiding places from centuries past, all that sort of thing.”
“Ah, yes, Edgar Cayce and that crowd,” Hugh replied. “Well, I jes can’t ’splain eet, Lucee. And I am impressed—I’ll admit it—that the kinds of reincarnation memories do make sense, in a way.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, it’s documented that an inordinate number of people who claim to recall past life remember dying violently. Somebody eighty-sixes you with a poleaxe, yes, that would tend to stay with you, I suppose. And children who are presumably innocent of practicing any humbug—they often display the most vivid, inexplicable memories of some time past. But then these recollections fade as they grow older and get overwhelmed by their quote, new life.”
Nina nodded. Hugh went on. “But look, there are lots of things we can’t explain, and my suspicions about reincarnation are considerably heightened by the fact that most people who claim these lives from the past invariably say they were Columbus or Cleopatra or George Washington. Funny, isn’t it? Nobody ever turns out to have been a peasant from Bolivia, even though there have been a helluva lot more Bolivian peasants than there have been George Washingtons. Now, if you go out to the nuthouse—”
“Heavens, my good Reverend Venable, that’s terribly politically incorrect.”
“Yeah. If you go out to the nuthouse, and a guy’s walkin’ around like this”—Hugh thrust his hand into his jacket front—“and screaming, ‘On to Waterloo, Josephine,’ we stick him in a rubber room. But: same guy comes into your office, lies down”—hand in his jacket again—“and says that under hypnosis, you take him at face value.”
Nina had to smile, even if she did say, “I see your doubts about the efficacy of the noble psychiatric profession have not been modulated in my absence.”
“Nina, I am no less dubious about those dear folks who have near-death experiences. They all walk down the same bright tunnel, and they all see the same great white light, and then the Jesus figure in white, beckoning—the whole nine yards. I am dubious of that, even though I want desperately to believe that, to believe everything those people say.”
“You’re more of a skeptic than I realized, Hugh.”
“No, Nina.” He held up his glass, staring at it, before he drained the last bit. “I’m a man of great faith—otherwise my life has meant nothing. So, I must have faith that my faith is the right faith.” He shrugged. “Now, having made that pronouncement, I’ll give you two good reasons why I’m full of it.”
Smiling, Nina held out her hands: a go-ahead gesture.
“First, if we were in Bombay right now, or in all sorts of other places in this world, reincarnation would be the holy order of the day. So you’re welcome to remind your patient of that. He’s got a huge peer group out there, and I’m sure they’re all smarter than yours truly.”
“Noted. And the second reason?”
“Look, Nina, I got dealt some pretty good cards. Just being born in America. But more: reasonably well-off, reasonably intelligent, good family, good friends, good health.…” (Plus, Nina thought, handsome to a fault and incredibly charming.) “In the whole scheme of things, I’m what? One out of a thousand? One out of ten thousand? Blessed. That’s the word for me. I’ve been put on this earth, blessed by Go
d. And you too, Nina. Of course, I’ve screwed things up a little.”
“With my help.”
“We’re not flagellating ourselves here. I’m simply toting up the score, and having done that, I’d rather take my chances on making heaven than on coming back here. Next time, if there is a next time, sure as shootin’, to even things out, I’m gonna be that Bolivian peasant. So maybe none of what the theologian has told you has anything to do with anything rational. Maybe I’m just scared of reincarnation.”
The waiter appeared. “Shall we do this again, sir?”
For just an instant, Hugh seemed ready to order another round, but he caught himself, and instead, “No. We’re finished here.” Finished.
He dug into his pocket, but Nina piped up, “Please—it was my invitation. I’ll put it down as a business expense. ‘Two martinis—interviewed potential Bolivian peasant.’”
With that, Hugh stood up. Nina wanted to stop him. She wanted to tell him more about Bucky so that he would advise her to stop dealing with him. She knew it was best to give up Buckingham as a client. She knew how professionally out-of-order she had behaved. She knew the whole business was too bizarre to be healthy. And she also knew that Hugh could tell her to do what she couldn’t tell herself: call it off. Pronto. But there was no more chance. It was only, “Sorry, Nina, gotta run.”
His eyes were everywhere now but upon her. So easy had it been for Hugh to look Nina square in the face when he was talking about some subject, something inanimate or theoretical. Now, though, he could barely glance at her when he said, “Nice to see ya again, Nina. You still look like a million bucks—and I hope you find some terrific guy.”
“Thanks,” was all she bothered to say—although when Hugh turned away and began to weave out, never looking back, she did mouth to herself, “Thanks, but I already found one.”