The Reluctant Healer

by Andrew D. Himmel

  22

  White Frogs

  A few weeks later, I noticed that I was being followed. I reached this conclusion not based on any heightened intuition, but because my stalker was clumsy and conspicuous. I first noticed him standing next to me on the subway platform as I waited for the eastside #4 train to take me to a midtown deposition. He was well dressed, in a business suit, and would have been unnoticeable but for a quirky tie decorated with the images of harpsichords and pipe organs, with cartoon figures tickling the keyboards as giant musical notes floated across the fabric. He stood close enough to me on the platform to cause a small degree of wariness, and maybe he trained his gaze on me for just a moment past the point of comfort. Otherwise, the encounter was unremarkable.

  I considered the possibility that I was being investigated for theft or jumping a turnstile. But I had an easier task accepting Erica’s view of the world than the notion that the government or a private firm would deploy resources to follow up on such trivial offenses, weeks after the infractions.

  After my deposition, I grabbed a coffee and croissant and found a seat in the Lipstick Building atrium on Third Avenue. I’d like to say that I spotted him expertly through the haze of coffee fumes as he tried to blend into the background, but the reality is that he sat right next to me, nutty tie and all. He made little effort to conceal his interest in me, but neither did he strike up a conversation. I got up and walked away, and he stood up as well, following me with a minimum of spycraft. I feinted left to walk uptown on Third Avenue, spun around and walked downtown, then turned left on Fifty-First Street. I walked briskly toward Second Avenue, turned downtown again, and headed left on Forty-Ninth Street toward the East River and the United Nations. I stopped abruptly and turned around. He was ten feet behind me.

  “Seriously?” I said. He looked downward in mock shame, smiled with his hands spread outward, then approached me.

  “You’re Will Alexander, correct?” Up close, he was fashionably unshaven, although perhaps ten years past the point of pulling off such a statement comfortably. “With Canaan & Cassidy?”

  “Are you a headhunter?” I asked. “Are you actually stalking me?” He smiled casually. “You could have called me at the office or sent me an email.”

  “I’m not a headhunter,” he said. “My name is Mark Lindquist. Maybe you’ve heard of me. I’m with Lindquist Analytics.”

  I’d heard of him alright. “You’re with Lindquist Analytics? You are Lindquist Analytics. And you’re suing Halter Trading Systems, represented by Canaan. Stop me if I have this wrong.”

  “No, you’ve got it right,” he responded.

  “Do you have some degree of appreciation for how improper this contact is?” I asked. “I not only work at Canaan, I’m on the legal team fighting your lawsuit. This conversation is pretty much over.”

  I began to walk eastward on Forty-Ninth Street toward First Avenue. Lindquist followed and grabbed my arm gently. “Do you know that Jerry Halter and I talk occasionally? That we’re practically friends?” I kept walking, and he released my arm, but he kept pace with me. “Yes, we’re fighting each other in court, but we both know we’ll settle our differences in due course. He infringed our copyright, by the way, but this litigation is really our way of settling a friendly bet.”

  I stopped walking and faced him. “This may be a game for you, Mr. Lindquist, but . . .”

  “Mark. Call me Mark.”

  “This may be a game for you, Mr. Lindquist, but this encounter can cost me my job, my license to practice law, actually.”

  “I really doubt that,” Lindquist responded. “Mostly since I want to talk to you about something that has nothing to do with the litigation.”

  Throughout my years of practice, clients represented by opposing counsel would occasionally telephone me to complain about some argument I made in court or some contentions I made in legal papers. My protocol in such moments was to hang up the phone immediately and then call opposing counsel to let them know about the attempted communication. An attorney talking to a client known to be represented by opposing counsel, especially in a vigorously fought litigation, was a serious infraction of the disciplinary rules.

  I took out my cell phone. “I’m calling your law firm, Mr. Lindquist, and letting them know about our conversation.”

  “That would cause me embarrassment, Will, and I ask you to reconsider.” He appeared concerned but remained unthreatening.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t play around with this . . .”

  “Do you believe in white frogs?” he asked. “I mean, they probably exist in some exotic locales, like the Australian outback or African jungles . . . but how about right here, in Manhattan, in an apartment on the Upper East Side? In a high-rise?”

  I was struck by the absence of levity in his voice. I disconnected the call. “Maybe we can sit down, Will. I promise you I have no intention of talking about the case.”

  We found a nearby coffee shop and sat at a table away from the front window. New York had eight million residents, but if you disregarded the four outer boroughs, then further refined your geographical area to a narrow strip of real estate in Manhattan north of Forty-Second Street and south of Seventy-Ninth, you had some idea of the restricted patch of land where the professional class was likely to be found during work hours. New York could be so small.

  “White frogs,” I said.

  “I saw one in my apartment two nights ago,” Lindquist said. “Or, I saw a vision of one, can’t quite say, but it honestly doesn’t matter. I’m pretty sure it was not a hallucination. I think that it was a sign.”

  “You’re going to have to help me out here, Mr. Lindquist.”

  “I’m disintegrating, Will, slowly, but disintegrating all the same.” He smiled. “I have Alexander disease. It’s a fatal neurodegenerative disorder which progresses slowly but in a very determined way. You have no idea how rare this thing is . . . I’m going to assume you’ve never heard of it.”

  I nodded.

  “It’s a fascinating disease,” he explained, his smile beginning to fade. “There is no cure. The only treatment is symptomatic and supportive. I’ll spare you the details, except to say that it comes from a genetic mutation. Children are usually the likely victims, but I have the distinguished honor of being among a handful of adults with this disease. And I probably don’t have much time.”

  I was dizzy and fatigued, and wanted to leave the coffee shop, grab a taxi, and go . . . somewhere, anywhere. But I lacked the energy to move.

  “I wish I could paint a heroic picture, but the truth is, I’m frightened. I’m scared of dying, and there’s not one goddamn thing I can do. As you might guess, I’ve been to all of the experts.”

  He stopped talking, and I looked around the coffee shop. The windows facing First Avenue were streaked with parallel lines of dirt, the linoleum floor was cracked and punctuated with food particles, the waitresses were tired. What a dump we had stumbled into.

  “I live on Seventieth Street on the East Side, with a house in Chappaqua. I’m separated from my wife, though we have a good relationship. I live alone, and my kids live with Lorraine. I spend a lot of time talking to myself. I plead. I bargain. Sometimes I’m very demanding. I’m not used to being ignored.” He paused, and I think he expected some sympathetic gesture or comforting words.

  “And my dreams, by the way, are indistinguishable from reality. I dream that I’m scared shitless about the very disease that I’m suffering from. There’s almost nothing in the way of metaphors or symbols. I’m scared when I dream, and then I wake up into a nightmare. There’s no transition, no relief.”

  Lindquist’s words were dissolving into staccato utterances, and it was all I could do to follow him. I said nothing.

  “Two nights ago, I had enough,” he told me. “I woke up out of a miserable dream, and I was pissed, which was great, because it’s hard to be furious and scared at the same time. I know I can’t sustain that level of anger for long, but
this night, I felt wonderful, liberating fury. And you know what I did?”

  Our waitress came by with a plate of toast for Lindquist and a cup of tea for me, and I thought that maybe Lindquist would pause, but he pushed forward vigorously. “I demanded a sign. I insisted on one, whether hopeful or not, a sign that would give me some vision or sense of direction. ‘I want a goddamn fucking sign,’ I yelled. ‘You want to kill me, then do it, do it now, but not before you give me a sign.’ And I don’t know who I was talking to or what I was asking for. An explanation? A verdict? A time frame? I didn’t care. I wanted communication. I wanted to connect to something. I wanted to connect with anything.”

  “The white frog,” I said.

  “Yes, exactly,” Lindquist said. “Right then, I saw a white frog. It was skinny and flat and comical and inquisitive, and it moved quickly, but I saw it. I was amazed it was there, and I followed it around my apartment. It was fluorescent—otherwise I don’t think I would have seen it at all. When it came to a halt, its head moved around in crazy contortions. I spent ten minutes chasing this thing through my apartment, trying to catch up to it. And here’s the incredible thing . . .”

  I had to smile at that.

  “The most incredible thing has nothing to do with the frog, per se. The incredible thing is that for ten blessed minutes, I did not think about my disease,” he said. “Then, I realized that this might be the sign I was demanding. I told the frog to be still, but he ignored me, so I began lunging for it. He was beautiful to watch. He had perfect form, actually. When he was airborne, all of his limbs were tucked in, and he was aerodynamic and sleek. And then, I got really close and lunged for him, and I caught him! And even though his body looked smooth, it felt calloused and oily, and I felt him squirm, and he slithered out of my grasp and darted away. I lunged again and tripped against my bookcase in the living room. An entire stack of papers from the Lindquist-Halter litigation fell on me.”

  Lindquist recognized that he was probably manic in tone, and he took a deep breath before continuing. “The frog was gone. Then, as I was cleaning up, I came across an affidavit signed by Halter on some arcane procedural point, and your name was on top of the caption. I was struck dumb. Alexander. Your last name. And my disease. What are the odds?”

  “Alexander is a very common name,” I said. “And my name is frequently on legal papers in your case, if I had some involvement in drafting. I’m not really blown away by the coincidence . . .”

  “Alexander is the name of a very uncommon disease, and I came across your name on a legal document right after I demanded a sign, after I chased an albino frog through my apartment. So you know what I did?”

  Lindquist suddenly seemed to care about who might be listening, and he surveyed the room to make sure that no one was eavesdropping. “I called Halter, right there and then. At three thirty a.m. On his cell phone. He was pissed off and told me that I had just woken him up out of a deep sleep. I was amped. So I said to him, ‘Jerry, I just read some affidavit of yours in the litigation, and you’re completely full of shit. Just wanted you to know that.’ And he started to laugh, thanked me for taking the time in the middle of the night to pass on this information, and told me my lawsuit was going down in flames. He sounded good. We went on like this for a while. I assured him that he was an asshole, and he pointed out that I was abusing the legal process.”

  Lindquist grabbed his toast and smeared it with jelly, then stuffed it into his mouth, chasing it with a large glass of tap water. With his mouth still full, he continued, “‘Jerry,’ I said, ‘what do you know about Will Alexander?’ And there was silence. And I mean the kind of silence that you do not expect from Jerry Halter. I thought he might have hung up on me. ‘Jerry,’ I said, ‘you there?’ And he doesn’t respond, but I hear him breathing really loudly. ‘Jerry,’ I said, ‘speak up.’”

  I was alert now, and I noticed that we were the only ones left in the coffee shop. I couldn’t even see any of the waitresses, although I assumed they had simply gone into the back room. Lindquist paused to swallow. “‘Why are you asking?’ Jerry says. And I said, ‘Why do you care that I’m asking? It’s a simple question, Jerry.’ More silence. Two silences in a row from Jerry Halter. This doesn’t happen.”

  “Mr. Lindquist . . .”

  “Mark. Call me Mark. So Jerry says, ‘I really shouldn’t say anything,’ and right there, I knew something was going on. I said, ‘Jerry, I need help. Who is Will Alexander?’ I kept pushing, he kept pushing back, asking what was wrong with me, and I didn’t want to give him any specifics. So this goes on for a while, and maybe he tuned in to how desperate I sounded, because he finally tells me a story, Will, about you, about how you helped him, and I’m sorry, but this is too much. It is asking too much of me to ignore all of these signs. He didn’t go into much detail, by the way, but he said enough. And I knew I had to reach out to you.”

  The waitress made an appearance, glanced at us briefly, and disappeared again. Another couple had come in from the outside, and they were dripping wet. I looked outside to find a torrential rain pelting First Avenue. The city pushed through the muck stubbornly.

  Lindquist read my mind, knew all of the tired phrases that were forming in my sluggish brain. “I’m a science guy,” Lindquist said. “Always have been. I believe in evidence. Cause and effect. Experiments. Double-blind placebo studies. But you know what? This disease eats away at your brain. Probably why I’m seeing white frogs on the Upper East Side. Well, who cares? I’ve decided to use this charming feature of the disease to justify considering things that I would have previously viewed as criminal fraud.”

  “I’m a purveyor of criminal fraud, but you’re too demented to know this, so I should help you. What could go wrong?”

  “But that’s just the thing,” Lindquist said. “If I’m right on this, you’re not purveying anything. You don’t believe in any of this . . . what should I call it . . . nonsense, I guess. Am I right?”

  “What do you have in mind, Mr. Lindquist? What do I do now?”

  “I don’t know,” Lindquist hissed loudly. “You’re the healer, not me.”

  “I am not the healer,” I said. “Let’s get this straight.” Lindquist stood up, reached over and grabbed the cup of tea I was drinking, and gulped down the last half. Then, he took the tea bag out of my cup, held it over his head, and squeezed the remaining drops into his mouth. He looked at the plates in front of me for anything else he could absorb, found nothing, tossed a twenty-dollar bill onto the table, and walked out. I stared at the drained tea bag, attached to a frayed string that floated in a puddle of water.

  I walked out and headed uptown on First Avenue in the pouring rain to Eighty-Fourth Street, then headed east to Karl Schurz Park. I sat on a bench overlooking the East River and watched joggers on Roosevelt Island circle the lighthouse at the northern end. My consciousness had split into two realms, the law firm and Erica. The separateness of the realms made each tolerable. But that was the key: separation. My encounter with Halter hinted at an unwanted breach, but that concern died down. Lindquist, however, presented a more direct threat. He was desperate and committed. I had not heard the last of him. He would push and scrape and harangue. I needed a reprieve, and I had to make a choice.

  The rain abated. I called my parents’ house, and they both got on the phone.

  “How much money do you guys have?” I asked.

  “We’re not in any trouble at all,” my mother said. “We’re fine. We’re more than fine.”

  “I’m asking for myself, not for you. If I was no longer working at Canaan, in fact if I was no longer working anywhere, for a period of time anyway, could you loan me enough money, just enough to see me through for a while?”

  “Will, what’s going on?” my father asked.

  “It’s a simple question. Forget it. I’m sorry I asked.” I hung up and headed across Eighty-Sixth Street toward the West Side, through Central Park, past the Boat Pond and Bethesda Fountain. I sloshed through the soak
ed grounds of Strawberry Fields until I reached Central Park West, then headed due north along the western edge of the park. My parents and Erica repeatedly called me, but I refused to answer. When I reached 110th Street, I turned right and walked along the northern border of the park toward Fifth Avenue. I knew I was in a dangerous area, but no one seemed interested in me. My phone rang again, and I answered.

  “Your parents just called me, and they’re worried sick,” Erica said.

  “I’m fine,” I answered. “I can’t talk right now. I’m staying at my apartment tonight. There’s nothing to worry about. I just need some space.”

  “Will,” I heard Erica say, but I disconnected the phone and continued my walk along the perimeter of the park, heading down Fifth Avenue. When I reached Fifty-Ninth Street, I continued on Fifth Avenue, past Tiffany’s, past Rockefeller Center, toward Midtown.

  I recalled a story in the New York Times about an eight-year-old boy who wandered away from his parents and walked down the eastern edge of Central Park, then southward through Midtown. The article superimposed a drawing of the child’s path on a street map of Manhattan, with a small but strangely elaborate stick figure representing the boy. The artist managed to convey a sense of purpose and direction on the child’s part, not overcome by fear but somehow captivated and propelled forward by the stimuli of an ever-changing landscape. He was eventually reunited with his parents, and I frequently wondered, even at such a young age, whether this wayward journey reset his priorities, bestowed on him an inchoate sense of daring that endured through the years.