“Please stop it,” she said. “Dr. Bernstein is on his way up.”
“I thought he was Allan to you.”
“Only,” she said, “when I’m irritated.”
“Tell me you haven’t been to bed with him.”
“Who him? Dr. Bernstein? Tony? The grocery boy? What are you going on about?”
“Let’s start with the swarthy one bleeding on the four-thousand-eight-hundred-dollar couch.”
“I’ll stop,” I said, hearing the price.
“Please don’t do this to me now,” she said.
“Tell me you haven’t been to bed with him,” he insisted.
Sandy paused, stuck on her weak point, her inability to tell a direct lie. She knew how to be polite, euphemistic and evasive, but she had her limitations.
She was saved by the bell.
“Would you get that, please?” she said.
“I would really rather not,” he said, sipping. “This whole thing is pretty much entirely your problem. I would rather keep it that way.”
She went to the door. Dr. Bernstein came in looking like Mark Spitz. Does everyone work out these days? And diet? What happened to the kindly old flabby-looking doctors of yore? The husband shared the glare, that had been all mine, with the doctor.
“Hiya, Sandy,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “Howdy, Paul,” he said with a wave at the husband, “what’s me crisis?”
“Me,” I croaked.
Bernstein strolled cheerfully to the couch. Only the tousled hair and the T-shirt on inside out indicated that he had just been awakened.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Bernstein asked me.
“Are you going to tell me about it?” Paul asked Sandy.
“I’m pretty sure this rib is broken; everything else is just scratches,” I said.
“Tell you what?” Sandy sighed.
“That looks like an awful lot of bleeding just for scratches,” the doctor said.
“Go on, tell me you haven’t been to bed with him,” Paul said.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said, looking over and realizing blood was caked from just below the shoulder to the elbow, “but I think it’s just a flesh wound.”
He started to poke at it and it hurt.
“With who?” Sandy said.
“Do you remember knock-knock jokes, Doc?” I said, to distract myself.
“Sure, I do,” the doctor replied, starting to untie the rag.
“Knock, knock,” I said.
“Who’s there?”
“Our surprise guest, the dirty one,” Paul said, “or the doctor from down the block.”
“Owhhh,” I said, as he started pulling it off.
“Owhhh who?” the doctor replied.
“There has been no one since we got married,” Sandy said. “Since we met, in fact. You know that.”
“You’re being evasive,” Paul pointed out.
“Not ‘Owhhh who,’” I said, and winced again.
“I think I better soak it a little before I pull anymore. Why not ‘Owhhh who’? That’s the way I remember the game.”
“Sorry, my fault, the owh was a real owhh, not part of the game. I should have said ‘fuck,’” I said, wincing again. The scabs were breaking up and blood was flowing.
“What possible difference does it make?” Sandy said.
“To you? Probably none,” Paul said.
“You prefer to say ‘fuck’ when you’re in pain?” the doctor asked me.
“No, no, in the joke,” I explained.
“Please, can’t we stop this?” Sandy pleaded.
“There. It’s coming off,” the doc said. “OK. Fuck who?”
“No. Fuck whom,” I said.
“That’s not a very good joke,” the doctor said, “even for a knock-knock joke. Do you know any grape jokes or elephant jokes?”
“No. It can’t stop. Not when you bring your filth into our home,” Paul said. There were tears in Sandy’s eyes. “Have you been to bed with that man?”
“A long time ago,” she said, beaten. “Before I even knew you.”
“Now I get it,” the doctor said. “Not funny, but pungent indeed.”
“Fuck,” I yelled as he yanked the cloth from the wound.
“Not again,” the doc said.
Paul stared at Sandy. He spoke slowly, deliberately, and mean. “This is the apartment we moved into together. This is not where you lived before you knew me. How did your lover know to come here?”
“I must admit you’re right,” Bernstein said to me, “it’s just a flesh wound, didn’t even touch much muscle.”
“You really want to pick a fight,” Sandy said, losing.
“I guess I better look at the rib,” the doc said. “You get kicked around a lot, do you?”
“I hardly need to pick one,” Paul declaimed. Very deliberately he threw the remainder of his brandy in her face.
“Ouuarrghhh,” I said when Bernstein’s fingers felt for the break.
Sandy slapped Paul across the face. Paul marched out of the room.
“Yup. It’s broken.”
He felt around some more. I winced and bit my tongue. Sandy stood stockstill, dripping in the middle of the room. Paul came marching back. He had exchanged slippers for shoes. He carried his suit in one hand, his briefcase and socks in the other. He gave us all, and the room, one last imperious gaze and marched out.
“Some Demerol and tape, X rays in the morning,” I said.
“That’s a pretty fair diagnosis and prescription. I hate to agree with my patients, but that’s what I would have said,” Bernstein said.
While he rummaged through his bag for a needle and the pain sweetener, Sandy wandered over to me couch. It was something to watch instead of the door that had just closed.
“Do you get beat up a lot?” Bernstein asked.
“Not as often as I would like,” I said fluttering my lashes in an imitation of Alan Alda imitating Groucho Marx.
“From the way you diagnose,” the doctor explained, “you seem to know your pain very well.”
“We all know our pain well,” I said as sententiously as possible.
“You bastard,” Sandy said.
“What?”
“You just had to make your grand entrance. The big dramatic gesture. And bleed all over my couch.” Then she hiccuped and said, “Oh God,” starting to laugh with the tears. I started laughing too. Of course that hurt like hell, and I clutched my ribs to hold the pain in place.
“Good,” Sandy said, “I hope every ‘ha’ hurts like hell.”
“We have to turn you over,” the doctor said.
“OK, if you help,” I said. I opened my pants before the turn.
In midroll the pain shot through my stomach and washed up and down, but when I flattened out, it backed off. Once I was over on my side, he yanked my pants down.
“Usually I let my nurse do this. She gets off on it,” he said, jabbing the needle in my ass. I was only a few moments away from lovely and I knew it. “I love you, Doc.”
“Are you sure you want to say that to a man who just pulled your pants down?”
The pains were beginning to recede as I drifted into the Demerol. I rolled over onto my back. All by myself!
“You want a shot too?” Bernstein said to Sandy.
“No, thank you, Allan, I think I’ll just do inner resources.”
“Sandy, do you think he’s gone for good?” he asked.
“Who knows?”
“Well, you know, I mean, what I’m trying to say,” Allan tried to say, “is that you know how I’ve always felt about you … and in this time of loneliness and loss, I would like to take advantage of your weakness.”
“Allan, it would be unethical.”
“The doctor-patient relationship is sacred,” I put in, wanting to discourage this.
“That’s not the problem,” Allan said, “she’s not my patient.”
“That’s right,” Sandy said, “I’m his therapist.”
“Sandy,” Allan swore, “I swear it would be all right with me. I would not feel victimized.”
“Allan, don’t you think we should deal with your dysfunction first?”
“A sexual dysfunction?” I asked.
“No,” he replied, “medical.”
I went out at that point, drifting away from Sandy and the doctor with the medical dysfunction, wondering where Franco had gone.
When my eyes opened, Bernstein was gone; I was alone with Sandy. She was sitting on the couch beside me. I was thirsty as hell and took a sip of the drink she was holding.
“I’m sorry I busted things up.”
“No. He was just looking for an excuse.”
“Do you have many lovers?”
“It is a common thing to project your own faults and guilts on other people. He does that.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again. She leaned over and kissed me. Soft, clean and cool. I slid my good arm around her and held her to it. It was a kiss that went with Demerol the way strawberries go with cream, soda goes with whiskey, bicycles go with spring.
“Do you want to do this in your condition?” she said when it stopped.
“I’ll manage,” I bragged, “but only if you’re gentle with me.
“You don’t have to brag,” she said. “Everyone knows you’d have to die before you admitted you couldn’t fuck. I was asking about your emotional condition.”
“My emotional condition?”
“The last time I saw you, you were very serious about maintaining a relationship. I’m reminding you, just in case that hasn’t changed.”
“Well, the truth is, I’m in love.”
“Oh,” she said.
“With another woman; actually, with both of them.”
“You are a bastard,” she said pleasantly, “and I’m glad you’re not my problem.”
“It’s a real problem,” I said defensively. “It’s a conflict.”
“You can tell me about it during office hours. I’m off duty now.”
“Well, then,” I said, “can I nibble your lower lip? I always had a thing for that lip.” She came close and let me do it. It became one of those strawberry, whiskey-soda, spring-day kisses. And her breasts felt ripe against my chest.
“So you’re not worried about infidelity anymore,” she murmured in my ear.
“I don’t know. I mean since I already am, does this make it twice as bad, or half as bad, or is it a geometric progression?” She giggled. “Besides, I can always say I was stoned. And out-of-town. Out-of-town doesn’t count, does it?”
I was stoned. I was grateful to be alive. Sandy had just gone through a confrontation and a trauma. She was an abandoned woman. And I was out-of-town. None of those things were excuses. They were the spices. It was a scene right out of The Late Show. It was heaven.
21
THE TODAY SHOW
THE ONLY NICE THING about the morning after was that there was no blood in my urine.
Sandy helped me get up. She loaned me a toothbrush. She found some of her husband’s clothes and helped me into them. She called a cab and guided me into the backseat.
“How about some Demerol?” I said to Dr. Bernstein.
Just as cheery and bright as the night before, Bernstein said, “Let’s do the examination first.”
He X-rayed the ribs. He pulled the bandage off the wound, inspected it, antisepticed it, rebandaged it. I gave him a urine sample. He stared at it with apparent satisfaction.
“Now are we ready for the Demerol?” I said.
“How about some Tylenol? Or aspirin?”
“Don’t be cruel,” I whimpered. “I’m in pain. I can’t sit by myself. I can’t stand my myself. I need help.”
“I’m sure you would enjoy the Demerol,” he said. “But you don’t need it. The pain is not that severe, nor is there shock, as there was last night. I hate to disappoint you, but I believe doctors should be ultra-conservative in prescribing substances open to abuse.”
“Look, Doc.
“No. No. Which will it be? Aspirin or Tylenol?”
“Aspirin,” I said. He gave me a free sample of generic aspirin. It must have been worth all of $00.000015.
“Look, Doc, I’m sure you get people hustling you for the fun drugs all the time, but just gimme a listen. You’re right. The pain is bearable, or would be bearable, if I did not have to move. I’m in the middle …”
“Look, I’d like to help …”
“Just hear me out,” I said. “Number one, I was following a guy, a killer, before this happened. I have to find out if he’s still around.”
“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Bernstein said. “The job he already did on you seems quite adequate to me.”
“Number two, there was a guy who was supposed to be backing me up. When I got in trouble he wasn’t there. Maybe something happened to him, maybe not. But I gotta find that out too. Number three, I do have to talk to the police, the D.C. police, about what happened last night, and the Virginia police about the man who got away. He’s the perp in a killing in Culpeper County. Number four, I got to try to explain to Avis why their car is upside down on a cliff in Rock Creek Park. …”
“Didn’t you get the extra collision coverage? You should always get the extra collision.”
“I did. I did, but …”
“So you have nothing to worry about then.”
“Goddammit, Allan, you’re not listening to me. It’s not the fucking car. It’s not the pain. I gotta get things done. …”
“I would like to oblige. But not as a doctor.”
“Allan, if I have to get down on my knees and beg, I promise you that you are going to have to help me back up.”
“All I’m trying to say, Tony, is that I do understand. I will do what I can to help. How about some coke? Will that do it?”
“What?” I said.
“Some coke.”
“Sure, that should do it.”
“The thing is, it has to be between you and me personally. Not you and me as doctor and patient. And please don’t tell Sandy. As my therapist she’ll be very angry with me.”
“I understand,” I said, thinking I might figure it out at some later date.
“It’s a buck seventy-five a gram, and I can let you have one.”
“Hey, hey, hey, Doc. I know this is D.C. and I’m from out of town, but that is a little steep.”
“Hardly. This is pharmaceutical.”
“Sure,” I said. Pharmaceutical is one of those things one hears about but never sees. Like water into wine, levitation or a good garage mechanic.
“Really,” he said with pride and sincerity. “We have an optometrist in our little medical group here.”
“Sounds good,” I said. He went to his desk, opened a locked drawer and brought out a premeasured bottle. I gave him money, he gave me coke. I laid out four lines and we each snorted two. The blood that had been trudging so sluggishly through my veins began to surge for my arteries. The acceleration was smooth.
“I take my role as a doctor,” the doctor said, “very seriously. I will not overprescribe. I will not be a drugstore. As a private person,” he giggled, “of course, my situation is a lot looser.”
“What I will do,” I said, “is continue to be irritated at Dr. Bernstein because he wouldn’t give me the Demerol, but be grateful to my friend, Allan, for helping me out with a little of this pharmaceutical, but nonprescription, pick-me-up painkiller.”
“That,” he said seriously, “is precisely the thing.”
I called Franco’s home. I was very eager to find out precisely what he had been doing with himself while I was being shot at and used as a football at field-goal practice. If he didn’t have a darn good excuse, I intended to say several offensive things to him.
He was not home. I called Gene, in the hopes that he might know Franco’s whereabouts. Gene wasn’t in either.
But his secretary had a message for me. If I called, she was instructed to ask me to m
eet him at St. Agnes, Mother of Mercy Hospital, in or around room 510. I asked if there was something wrong. She said no, he was there on some sort of business.
The cabbie the cab company sent was a polite little cracker who moonlighted as an alcoholic on his off years. It had taken a lot of his strength away. When I clung to him to climb into the back of the cab, he fell against my ribs.
After the color returned to my face and I was able to shut off the flow of apologies, I told him I would get in the front seat by myself. Thank you.
I spotted Gene in the fifth-floor corridor. I called to him, and he turned and headed toward me.
“Tony, where the hell have you been?”
“Where the hell have I been? The real question is where the fuck was Franco?”
“Jeez, Tony, you look like hell. What happened to you?” He reached out, with concern, and grabbed my upper arm on the bullet wound.
“You stupid fuck, get your hands off me.”
“Whatsamatta? Whatsamatta?”
“That’s where I was shot, you stupid fuck.”
“Jesus, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were shot.”
“Is thatta him? Is thatta him?” another voice cried from down the hall. I turned to see a woman of about sixty-five, short, squat and mean-looking, rolling at me like a tank. By the time I realized who she was talking about, it was too late to run.
She came at me, spinning her pocketbook like a Russian hammer thrower angry about not going to Los Angeles. She was screaming in a mixture of Italian, English and a Sicilian dialect.
Roughly what she was saying was, “You bastard, you bastard, you did this to my Franco. I’m gonna kill you. I’m gonna make your blood flow till your veins run dry. I’m gonna wring your neck like a scrawny chicken.”
First I gaped in astonishment, then I grunted in pain and shock as the pocketbook connected with my ribs.
She wound up for another shot. But I was too smart for her. I doubled over and sank quickly to the floor. The pocketbook whistled over my head and caught Gene, who was stupidly trying to step between us.
Disappointed at hitting only a secondary target, she drew back her foot to kick at me. Screeching in her mangle of languages she said, I think, “I’m gonna tear off your little balls and put them in a garlic press. I’m going to remove your tiny masculine tool and sell it to the sausage factory where they will grind it up into small Neapolitan salamis.” Sicilians generally have a low opinion both of Neapolitans and their salamis.
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