“A landlord and sharecropper.”
“We were, uh, friends in high school.”
“I’ll have to treat you as a spy or a mole until demonstrated otherwise.”
“Okay,” said Bruno, exhausted suddenly. “You don’t mind if I eat here?”
“Maximum freedom obtains within these four walls, my friend. Mutual aid, even for suspected spies and moles.”
Bruno wolfed his burgers, dipping or not dipping in the yellow and red pools in a state of maximum insecurity. The counterman was a type, with his ’50s glasses and bald head and bony elbows, with his absurdly demanding speech routines, but Bruno couldn’t be troubled to put the elements together and give the type its name. The sliders were delicious notwithstanding, whether red-or-yellow-gooped, or gooped not at all. Bruno’s physical appetites had landed belatedly, after a layover somewhere over the Atlantic. His hunger to live? Perhaps even that. If Tira Harpaz were in his room now, he’d have her immediately on the Murphy bed, not flee outside.
The counterman extended his dangerous spatula across the counter, balancing a third slider. He flipped it artfully onto Bruno’s grease-soaked plate.
“I can’t afford another.”
“This one’s on me, comrade. For an old friend of an enemy of the people.”
IV
He’d arrived early for his appointment at the surgeon’s office, in a drab cereal box of a building at the UCSF medical campus. Parnassus Avenue was a windy bridge of a street, vaulted by San Francisco’s perverse topography into the fog and wind, and at least ten degrees chillier than Market Street, where he’d changed to the streetcar. The hospital buildings had the span to themselves, apart from a café or two and a florist. Coffee for the visitors, and petals to litter the patient’s floor after the visitors had gone.
Shuddering in his insufficient layers, Bruno hurried inside.
The second-floor clinical wing seemed abandoned. Then, around a dusty corridor’s elbow, he located a nurse receptionist who’d been given his name. Yes, Mr. Bruno was expected in less than an hour by Dr. Behringer and could stay until then in this room here—she indicated a glassed-in nook full of nothing but identical chairs, magazine-strewn side tables, and a water cooler. Her attitude, however, suggested it was a poor idea, one she couldn’t recommend.
He sat. There were no people in this place, only People. Bruno tried to savor his boredom, an oasis in his journey into medical doom by way of BART and the streetcar from Market. San Francisco was a futuristic cartoon of the dozy, cozy city he recalled. The new place was alien, slick as Abu Dhabi in its top layer, with Bluetooth and Google Glass cyborgs strolling beneath glass towers. The underside was as gritty as Mumbai, with no one on the N-Judah streetcar except untouchables, Walker Evans photographs retouched with murky color. Bruno had likely descended to the status of untouchable himself.
He crept around the corner to see if the nurse had abandoned her post. She halted in her inaudible texting to catch him staring.
“Yes?”
“Nothing, just waiting.”
“You were early. Now the doctor’s late.” Her disapproval covered patient and surgeon both. Yet at that moment the man appeared. Noah Behringer, shorter than Bruno and heavier, came bustling from the elevator with a knapsack and wearing jeans and sandals. His white hair was bundled in a braid, and his beard was dark, with barely a white thread, as though provinces of his head were different ages entirely. Behringer was not a handsome man. His eyes were deep-set, warm, and asymmetrical. Nothing but a white linen coat said he was entitled to entry of a medical building on any basis whatsoever, and the coat could have been acquired at a yard sale or Halloween shop.
“Alexander Bruno.” The surgeon dropped his knapsack at his feet to clutch Bruno by both shoulders. His fingers were long, his grip persuasive. “You look nothing like your pictures. I’ve been living inside your face for the past few days. It’s a strange way to get to know someone.”
“I don’t understand.” Bruno had the CD full of imaging in the pocket of his lounge pants. He’d left his backgammon set and the bloodied paving stone behind, crossing the Bay with nothing but his mobile phone and the Charité scans.
“After we spoke, my assistant, Kate, located your German doctor, the oncologist, and we got hold of all your pictures. She’s a genius, Kate, she can find anything.” These words, once spoken, appeared to remind Behringer of something. He turned, releasing Bruno, to clasp the hand of the surprised receptionist-nurse in both of his. “Thanks for coming in and opening it up for me,” he told her, then added, for Bruno’s benefit, “I lost my key.”
“That’s perfectly fine, Doctor,” said the nurse. Her tone contradicted the words, yet she regarded him with a certain helpless wonder. Bruno took solace in this. If his doctor was crazy but marvelous, perhaps this was what his marvelously crazy condition required.
“Come in, come in, I barely ever use this place, I’m sure it’s a disaster area. I keep an office at home. Sit down.” Bruno sat. The office was a mess, yes: thick dusty books slanted in postures of permanent damage to their spines, loose papers and file folders heaped on the desk. But Behringer’s office wasn’t thrillingly antic like Behringer, only desultory, in keeping with hospitals everywhere. The anomalous item, so far as Bruno could index anomaly here, was a framed Jimi Hendrix poster, with an autograph Bruno suspected might be real.
“I even spoke with the British lady, Benedict,” said Behringer. “She’s a good egg—get it? ‘Eggs’ Benedict, that would be a great nickname. And these pictures of yours are intense. The German machines are terrific. Of course ours are better.”
“So you’ve … already seen?” Bruno felt shame at the uncontrolled circulation of the blot’s mug shot, that Rorschach horseshoe crab squatting behind his eyes.
“Yes. I’ll order up a whole new set, of course. Kate will contact you with appointments. You’ll be swimming in appointments, she’ll run your life like she runs mine.”
“Is that Kate out there?”
“What, that unfriendly woman? I don’t even know her name, she’s just a nurse with a key to this door. Kate works exclusively on my caseload—she’s my unfriendly woman.”
“I see.”
“You’ll meet her soon enough. But meanwhile, listen, I’ve been on a fantastic voyage behind your nose and orbitals—your eyeballs. It’s good to meet the outer surface. It’s a fine-looking one, I’ll take the utmost care of it. Did Eggs get a chance to explain my procedure?”
“Maybe you’d better.”
“Think of your face as a door,” said Behringer. “One that’s never been opened.” If doctors ordinarily snowed you with jargon, Behringer seemed to prefer to work by rebus, or mime. “We’re going to open it, most gently. And then we’ll take it off its hinges and lay it aside, whole and undamaged. Much better than drilling and sawing at the door itself, don’t you think?” The surgeon talked with his hands, representing door, hinges, drill, and saw in the air with his curled, expressive fingers, the same that would attempt this carpentry on Bruno’s head.
“My eyes?” asked Bruno. “Do you … take off my eyes?”
“Not unless you’d like to go blind. No, preservation of the optic nerves is an utmost priority. Of course we’ll juggle them loose in their sockets to a degree, and flense some of their muscles temporarily, to retract them for entry—”
“Very well, thank you.” It might be as well that Behringer didn’t get any more evocative. “When do we take the cancer out?”
“There’s no hurry. And, incidentally, you don’t have cancer, not technically, or at least it’s highly unlikely you do. We’ll be more certain with tissue analysis, but my hunch is you’re carrying an atypical meningioma.”
If I’d known I was carrying it, I’d have gladly dropped it. This, Bruno floated toward Noah Behringer’s thoughts to see if it might be taken up and answered, the usual test. Apparently not. “In what sense atypical?” asked Bruno instead.
“For meningioma, we’d need to see radical
cell disruption, with metastases.” Now, the delayed jargon. “We can’t make any assumptions with a neoplasm of such radical extent, but it seems fairly well differentiated …” Bruno began to drift into passivity and inattention, as when, long ago, the women at the compound in Marin had insisted on giving him a reading with tarot cards or analyzing his astrological chart. The terminology seemed to detach him from himself.
“Differentiated,” he managed. “Is that a good thing?”
“That’s a very good thing. Atypical describes a region between cancer and not-cancer—you probably didn’t even know there was such a region, did you?”
“No.”
“Like a lot of things, cancer’s actually a spectrum.”
“Wow.”
“You could even say we’re all living there, in that place between cancer and not-cancer.”
“Wow.”
“You’re just living there a little more urgently, that’s all. But you’ve got plenty of company.”
“But there’s no hurry to get it out?”
“We’ll operate soonish, sure. But this isn’t going anywhere. The German pictures are great, but I want a better look. Think of it like this, Alexander, can I call you Alexander? Or Alex?”
“Anything.” Though the surgeon wasn’t so much older than Bruno, with his sandals and ponytail and Hendrix poster, he struck Bruno as essentially June’s peer. In such, he evoked everything Bruno had fled California to avoid. Yet today Bruno saw him through his mother’s eyes, as consolingly simpatico. Sandals, knapsack, beard, all inspired Bruno’s fledgling love.
“Think of it like this. What’s inside you, behind your face, it’s been traveling for many years to this rendezvous with me. And all this time I was getting ready to be the one to meet it, inventing and perfecting my technique. I don’t mean to sound like Dr. Frankenstein or something. But this is fateful!”
“Your technique of opening the door and … laying the face aside.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, of course take the time you need, Doctor.”
“Call me Noah.”
“I’m only … at the moment I’m reliant on the generosity of a friend. Did Dr. Benedict explain—”
Behringer flapped his hand. “I’ll waive my fee, which is all I’m in control of. I’m happy to do it. The hospital costs are something else, they can’t be helped, and frankly, with a resection like we’ll be doing, they’re incredible. We’ll have a team in there in shifts, we’re looking at a twelve-, fourteen-hour procedure—”
“Fourteen hours? I’m sorry?”
“Yeah, at the least—”
“A team—doing what?”
“More or less taking your face off, like I said. So I can scoop it out with my copper spoons—you let me know when this is getting to be too much. Then we put you back together, which takes even longer. That’s on top of surgical nurses, anesthesiologists, which I suspect you’ll need three of, the whole deal. My residents do a lot of the cutting and arterial cauterization and so on, and they all go in and out and sleep and eat in shifts, but don’t worry, I’ll be running the whole show, I never budge.”
“When do you eat and sleep?”
“Afterward. That’s just me: I don’t feel hunger or exhaustion until I’m done.”
It was the first time Bruno suspected that Behringer wished to impress his patient. The boast inspired a first flare—perhaps it would be the only one—of professional kinship. Bruno had more than a few times gambled through a night and the whole day after without noticing his appetite, or desire for sleep, until he stepped out of the arena. He sometimes barely used the bathroom.
However, he’d heard just enough of arterial cauterization, even if he chose not to admit it. “So this little army of your helpers, mopping your brow and so forth, they all need to get paid.”
“Through the hospital, but yeah. You’re an expensive problem, man. I’d estimate it at, like, three or four thousand dollars an hour in there. And there’s your recovery, immediate post-op you’ll be in intensive care, that’s costly stuff too. But your friend Keith was already in touch. He’s covering it all, flat out. That’s a pretty terrific friend you’ve got there, Alexander.”
“Thank you. And please accept my apology for not paying your personal fee.” Thanks and sorry, thanks and sorry—Bruno’s new stance as a penitent stretched to the indefinite horizon.
“Listen, forget about it. Thank Christ you found me. Thank Eggs Benedict, I mean.”
“I owe her a bouquet or a box of chocolates or something,” said Bruno. “I’m a little short of cash at the moment.” Though he’d readied himself for further help and interference, in fact there’d been no evidence of Keith Stolarsky or Tira Harpaz. He’d treated himself to another latte from the Caffe Mediterraneum before realizing he needed his last dollars for the BART fare to the consultation appointment with Behringer, so stuck to baloney-and-cheese sandwiches from the goods Tira had salted in his refrigerator.
“Do you need a loan?” Behringer dug in his front pocket and flopped balled cash onto his desktop. Apparently he didn’t use a wallet. “Here—” He sorted out three twenties, the exact amount Stolarsky had bestowed two days before. Sixty bucks, the handout you could apparently expect between mutually self-respecting acquaintances.
“I wasn’t trying to touch you—”
“Please.” The surgeon slapped at the bills and shoved them in Bruno’s direction.
“Thank you, again.” Bruno’s shame dissolved in bitterness. The part of him that hated Noah Behringer like he hated any healthy person—it was not so different from hating the rich man across a backgammon board for having money when Bruno had none—freed him to claim the handout. He’d spend it in contempt, go for more Kropotkin’s sliders, burned into cancer-encouraging cinders, and salt them with his own tears. Or blow the sixty bucks on a movie on Shattuck, on a bucket of fake-buttered popcorn and a shoe-box-size carton of Whoppers or Junior Mints. Cradling the bucket or carton he’d slip into the darkness, washed over by the phantasms of some sex comedy played by American actors a quarter-century younger than himself, who were meant to be taken for adults. This would make it permissible to die. Desirable, even.
“Listen, Alex, I grokked from Eggs that you’re, well, not accustomed to, uh, institutional authority. She said you and the Kraut oncologist didn’t exactly get along. She didn’t think you’d been to see a doctor for a long time.”
“That’s true.”
“I’m not here to judge you. Whatever you do, it’s cool with me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re a drug dealer, right?”
“No. I play backgammon. For money.”
“Fantastic. That’s just fantastic.” Behringer appeared delighted, whether because he regarded this as an implausible truth or an audacious lie, Bruno couldn’t guess. “Listen, you don’t have to tell me a damn thing about what you do. People look at surgeons like they’re some kind of gods, and a lot of surgeons play along. But I’m not an authority figure, I’m just here to fix your head, do you understand? You walk out that door and back into whatever life you want, I couldn’t be happier.”
Bruno apparently didn’t need to wear his tuxedo to inspire fantasy. Thanks to Dr. Benedict, he’d crossed the Atlantic dressed in mystique; this might be his only real talent. So let the surgeon be drunk on whatever European whispers had come his way. It cost Bruno nothing and apparently secured him a surgery. Or was it the outlandishness of the blot itself that had done that?
In any case, Bruno couldn’t sustain his hate for Behringer. He might be doomed instead to love him.
“Thank you.”
“Sure, of course. Here’s my card. Call this line tomorrow, I never answer, you’ll get Kate, and she’ll take care of your appointments. Now, listen, is there anything else I can help you with today, any questions I can answer?”
Bruno supposed he should want to know his odds. Or ask about his face, his appearance—what of it wou
ld remain? But his tongue felt numbed. He recalled a joke: A man walked into a bar with a frog on his head. When the bartender asked the man how long the disfigurement had been with him, the frog replied: It started a year ago as a wart on my ass. Even now the blot obscured Behringer’s searching expression. Was it so simple, then, to be parted from it? What if the blot were Bruno’s true self, or his unborn twin, or his talent for backgammon? What if it suppressed his unwished telepathy as it suppressed his sight? At its removal would the world explode in unwanted voices, worse even than the gabble in his childhood? Bruno was terrified the voices might come back. And yes, he was terrified for his face. Yet desperate to be shed of what lay behind it. Open it like a door, then! Unhinge and lay it aside! He sat in silence.
“Ask me anything,” said Behringer. His compassion was immense, a flood pool in which Bruno might dissolve.
“I had been wondering, if you might know the answer—” Bruno touched his shirt: the bearded man, ABIDE.
“Yes?”
“Everywhere I go, people call me ‘Dude,’ or say ‘the Dude.’ I have been away from California for some time—” It had happened seven or eight times, at least, on Telegraph Avenue as he wandered alone the day before. This morning, crossing campus toward the BART station, three young men saluted him with the elongated syllable, as if mooing: Duuuuuude. Then once again, just before entering the hospital building, on Parnassus.
“Yes! Of course!” said Behringer. “There’s a simple explanation for this.”
“It’s to do with this shirt, isn’t it?”
“That’s right. It’s from a film, Alex. It’s called The Big Lebowski. That man on your shirt, he’s Lebowski. But he prefers to be called the Dude. He’s very, uh, informal.”
“Lebowski.” Of course the surgeon had recognized the visage, one beard speaking to another.
“Yes. What were you thinking it meant?”
“The shirt? I liked the colors. And—‘abide.’”
“It’s a good word, a terrific word, in fact. Is there more I can help you with?”
“No,” said Bruno. “I think that’s fine. That’s all for now.”
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