by Leslie Glass
“What’s it called?” he asked finally. “The play.”
“Strokes.”
“Ah, another S title. Who’s the author?”
Her triumph traveled east across the country with the speed of sound. “Simon Beak.”
“Wow, no kidding.” Now Jason’s voice registered real excitement. “Jesus, Emma, that’s thrilling. That’s Broadway. That’s—” Big time.
“Look, don’t get too excited. I probably won’t get it.”
“So what. I’m impressed,” he breathed. “I’m really impressed.”
“You didn’t think I was up to it, did you?”
“Yes, I did. You didn’t think you were.”
She didn’t say it took a far-out, trashy vehicle like Serpent’s Teeth for her to get noticed, and he didn’t say it, either. What people had to do to get what they wanted—well, it was more complicated than either had thought. They both knew more about ambition and drive now. Getting ahead in any field was no picnic.
“So, do you have to clear someone out of my bed? Or should I stay in a hotel?” Emma’s voice was light, but she meant it. She could take her lumps. That’s what got her through ordeals that shoved other people into the shredder.
“That’s a joke, right?”
“No. That’s not a joke. It’s no secret that they’re lining up for you, Jason. All those lovely ladies in the caring profession.”
“Ah, now you sound bitter,” Jason said, a little pleased that the wife who wandered away from him was jealous. Many wives of psychiatrists were psychologists or social workers or teachers, sweet, understanding women who didn’t make too many demands lest their busy husbands slap them down.
Whenever Emma met one of these wives, they always asked her if she was in the caring profession. And she always replied, “No, I’m in the uncaring profession.” To which no one ever reacted negatively because that would be aggressive and judgmental. Aggressive and judgmental weren’t politically correct in his field.
“Are we bitter?” Jason asked.
“Just a little. So what’s the story on the bedroom?”
“The story is the sheets are clean. You have nothing to fear on that score. I’ve been saving it all for you.”
“Oh, and what if I didn’t come back? What would happen to it then?”
“Baby, you know what you have to do. Move your things out and tell me it’s over. After that what I do is none of your business. Until then I’m yours.”
“Good, I’ll be home Saturday.”
Jason flipped to Saturday in his appointment book. “Any particular time?”
“I’ll let you know.”
There was nothing written down for Saturday. He scratched at his beard. Emma hadn’t seen it yet. Maybe he should get a haircut and a shave, but maybe he shouldn’t. He pondered: To shave or not to shave, that was the question. “I’ll be here,” he told her.
twenty-two
“Bobbie …”
Bobbie Boudreau heard the soft, muted cry and swung his body around to look for trouble behind him, his hands curling instinctively into fists. Half a block south on Broadway little Gunn Tram was hurrying after him, calling out his name in the noisy, densely populated, brightly lit rush-hour dusk. Bobbie had turned into the wind off the river and now felt the bite of approaching winter on his face. He had important business on his mind, scowled at having to be distracted.
Gunn quickened her small steps. For a second, she looked to Bobbie like an aging dachshund. Her big head and thickening body teetered precariously along Broadway on stubby legs and tiny black-sneakered feet. He didn’t call out to her but remained rooted where he’d stopped so she wouldn’t scream louder and draw more attention to herself.
Finally within hailing distance, she called out to him: “Going to the house?”
“Maybe,” he said slowly.
“Walk with me? I have news.”
“All right.” His eyes wrenched away from her, and he started moving again. He was pained to see this so-called friend in a shapeless pants suit and sneakers. It was embarrassing. It occurred to him that Gunn was letting herself go, was getting to be an old woman now, no longer bothering even with the pretense of carrying a good pair of shoes back and forth to her job in the personnel department at the Centre.
Gunn was sixty-two on her last birthday and joked about changing the dates in her own file so she couldn’t be retired. Not that anyone would think of retiring her, she said comfortably. “I’m the heart of the Centre, the human resource,” she liked to say.
Until recently, Bobbie had always thought so, too. Gunn was kind of saintly, soft on people. She was an optimist, she said, liked fixing bad situations. And she had the tools to do it. She had access to the computers with the business information, to the color-coded files on the shelves that had the personal stuff, to the progress and evaluation reports. Gunn knew almost everything there was to know about everybody who worked at the Centre, including the doctors and administrators. And she cared about everybody, especially him.
Bobbie had believed in Gunn all the way until he was fired last year and lost his insurance just when his mother got so sick. Gunn paid for the old lady to come north and told Bobbie how to get the maintenance job in the Stone Pavilion, but Bobbie still felt it was Gunn’s fault his mother had died. Gunn told him he couldn’t ever apply for another nursing job. Bobbie was bitter about that, too.
And now it was worse. He’d never minded the twelve years’ age difference between them. Gunn had been twelve years older than him all along, all the years he’d worked there. She wasn’t another white bitch out to get him, was Swedish and didn’t know how to be mean. He didn’t know why she was the way she was, maybe because she’d come from somewhere else, though you could hardly hear it in her voice anymore. She was bubbly and enthusiastic, never saw the bad in anybody. He liked her in spite of the annoyance of having to listen to her foreign ideas. Real good-looking never mattered much to him, anyway. He never spent any time looking at anybody, and fucking was just—fucking.
No, older had never bothered him, but old was beginning to get to him. Bobbie still felt like a young man, like the boy who’d gone off to the Army and still had opportunity in front of him. He still had the juice, expected to inherit the earth sometime soon. But more and more these days when Gunn bugged him about keeping his head down and holding his temper—when he looked at the strange, frightened old woman she was becoming—he felt he was history like Gunn and wanted to howl like a dog.
“The police came to the Centre today,” Gunn said as soon as she calmed down and caught her breath.
“Yeah, what for?” Bobbie didn’t slow his pace for her even though she had to struggle to keep up.
“You’ll never guess what.”
“A patient death.” He guessed what. What else was there?
“How did you know, Bobbie, you sly old fox? Have you heard already?” Her hand bunched into a tiny fist to punch playfully at his massive arm. He stood way over a foot taller than she, wore a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead, and had the tight, mean look that made cautious people make a wide berth around him. She changed her mind and put her hand back in her pocket.
“It’s not a hard one. Accidents happen all the time. Who’s taking the fall this time?”
“Oh, Bobbie, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.… I just thought you’d like to know, that’s all.”
“What then?” He spat out the words, didn’t give a shit.
“Clara Treadwell, that’s whose patient.” Gunn said it with great satisfaction. “Rumor is she was sleeping with him.”
“And she killed him for that? Overprescribed? The old cow should have been grateful.”
Gunn laughed. “She didn’t kill him. It was a suicide. She didn’t hand him the cup—”
“I didn’t do that.” Bobbie interrupted her furiously. “Alice gave him the stuff. Fuck, why did you say that, Gunn? I’d never hurt a patient, never.”
“Sorry—I’m sor
ry, Bobbie.” Gunn’s face was instantly repentant.
“I should take your head off for that,” he fumed, stomping along the sidewalk punching the air.
“I know. It just slipped out, I don’t know why. Forgive me?” She shook her head hard, pumping her own legs faster to get out of a bad situation. “I know you had nothing to do with it.”
“The resident gave him the wrong prescription,” Bobbie raged.
“I know, Bobbie. Everybody knows that. You weren’t responsible.”
“And Alice handed it to him.”
“I know, you’re right.”
“So why did I have to take the fall? You tell me that!”
“I don’t know, Bobbie.” She didn’t remind him about his knocking out an attending physician—not even a full-time member of the staff—after the patient’s death. Or that the committee had concluded he was a danger to the community, quite apart from the question of his guilt or innocence in the matter at hand.
“Bastards.” He strode north toward the brownstone on Ninety-ninth Street, where Gunn lived on the fourth floor. He had moved into the basement flat occupied by his mother the last year of her life. It did not surprise him at all that the head of the hospital was being questioned in a patient death. That bitch Clara Treadwell ruined people’s lives every day. She’d ruined his life. It was about time someone got on her case.
“Bobbie?”
“They won’t get her for it,” he muttered angrily.
“No,” she agreed.
“There’s no justice.”
“No … Bobbie?”
They were nearing Ninety-ninth Street. “What?”
“Will you eat with me?” Gunn asked softly.
He hesitated, chugging along for almost a block before he answered. “I don’t know. Maybe. If it don’t take too long.”
“It won’t take long,” Gunn promised eagerly.
twenty-three
Jason first heard about the death of Raymond Cowles from his friend Charles, who was in private practice all the way across town on East Seventy-ninth Street. Charles hadn’t heard it from a colleague. He’d heard it from his wife, Brenda, who was the chair of some fund-raising benefit for the Centre. Brenda came back from a meeting on Tuesday with the news that the great goddess Clara Treadwell had been sleeping with one of her patients, that the patient had killed himself, and they had all better fasten their seat belts for the rough ride ahead. Jason fastened his seat belt.
“I’m sorry to get you in here so early” was the first thing Clara Treadwell said to Jason when they met at the elevators on the twentieth floor at two minutes to eight on Wednesday.
“No problem,” Jason replied, although to meet Clara’s urgent request he’d had to cancel a patient he’d been seeing at that hour for the past three years.
“Thank you, anyway.” Clara extended her gloved hand with a small smile that acknowledged her advantage.
Jason offered his hand, only to have his bones crunched in a powerful grip. He had a good six inches on her, at least seventy pounds, and was surprised by her strength. Another smile curved Clara’s lips as she turned down the long hall to lead him to the one place in the hospital he rarely saw. Jason knew all the other floors in the Centre as well as he knew his own apartment. He had done his three-year training there, qualified as a psychoanalyst, and had been invited to teach there long before anyone in his class. If he had been chief resident, he would have had an office in the executive suite on the twentieth floor and been at home there, too. But he hadn’t been chief resident. His year the post had gone to the first Latino. Now the chief resident was a Hasidic Jew with tight little curls around his ears, a belly so big he didn’t know where to wear his pants, and a leather yarmulke.
Jason scratched his beard as he watched Clara unlock two separate locks in the door of the executive suite. Inside, she hit a few light switches, then led the way to her office. She had to find another key to unlock the door there, too.
“I didn’t realize security was so tight up here,” Jason remarked.
“Oh, we’ve had to tighten up in the last year. There have been some incidents.… Just mischief.” Clara shrugged out of her cashmere coat, unlocking yet another door and disappearing into the closet. After a moment, she came out wearing a pale green suit, the color of spring moss, tightly fitted over her breasts and hips.
“Please sit down,” she said formally. She indicated a leather tub chair opposite the vast expanse of polished cherry and tooled leather that was her desk.
Jason sat and studied the view of the river. It was a sparkling November morning. The rushing water twenty stories below shimmered in the early light. “How can I help you?” he asked.
Clara’s smile reappeared. The curve of her too-red lips sought to inspire closeness and confidence but lacked the warmth that might convince someone as sensitive to manipulation as Jason. His parents had been chilly masters of guilt and control when he was a child. Emma told him he could be pretty good at it himself. She didn’t mean it as a compliment.
“You’ve come a long way in a short period of time, Jason,” Clara said, studying him intently. She didn’t answer his question. “I’ve heard you speak, of course. I’ve read your papers. You get the highest marks as a teacher, both from the residents and medical students.” She smiled. “It’s apparent you’re our best teacher. And of course as a supervisor, you’re very sought-after. No one feels his training here is complete without working with you.”
Jason shrugged modestly. “Well, that’s very flattering,” he murmured.
“It’s more than flattering; it’s the truth. I’ve decided we can’t let you get away.”
“Oh?” Jason laughed. “Where exactly was I going?”
“You’re going places, there’s no question about that. A person of your gifts, your teaching abilities, your integrity …” Clara smiled again.
It wasn’t clear to Jason what was in the air, so he crossed his legs and smiled back.
“It’s people like you and me, Jason, who are going to be the leaders of our field in the new century. Yes, it’s true. I want you there with me, at the top of this institution, in Washington—wherever I go.”
Jason was taken aback. He was no follower. “I—”
“No, don’t thank me,” Clara interrupted smoothly. “Every gifted person needs a mentor and promotor. I’m going to be yours, that’s all there is to it.” The smile faded from Clara’s face as she lifted her eyes to the ceiling. Her voice took on a musing tone. “I’m going to tell you a little story, Jason. My first analysand was a young man named Raymond Cowles. My supervisor was Harold Dickey. At the time, Harold was the head of the genetics department, was on the executive committee, president of associations. A really big cheese.” Another faint smile. “He was the best, and so was I.”
No response from Jason. He was the best, too.
“I don’t suppose you ever forget your first patient in analysis. Raymond was a student in his early twenties when he came into Student Services and was worked up by Intake. He was considered for disposition as an appropriate patient for psychoanalysis and accepted by the Centre, all in the usual way. He was offered to me, and I accepted him with a good deal of excitement.
“Ray was everything a young analyst could hope for. He was highly motivated, highly intelligent. He had the capacity to maintain an observing ego, the capacity to free-associate. He even dreamed. He was handsome, well educated, knew literature and music, liked good food. His problem was persistent, recurrent homosexual fantasies that had resisted his efforts to suppress them by concentration and willpower. His was a clear case of homosexual fantasies as a defense against unconscious anxieties over heterosexual impulses. I thought it would be an interesting and profitable case. And it was.”
Jason said nothing.
“Last Sunday Raymond Cowles died under mysterious circumstances. The police are looking into it. They suspect he committed suicide.” She shook her head, disagreeing. “I presented the case at
meetings. It was a classic case. A successful case. I doubt Ray committed suicide.”
Clara checked her watch. “I have a meeting soon.”
Jason shifted in his chair. He had to leave soon, too, and now it was clear to him what was coming.
“I want you to review Ray’s case,” Clara said suddenly.
“Why me?” Jason asked.
“You’re an assistant professor without any administration duties, is that correct?”
Jason nodded. Yes, he was an attending physician there, not on staff.
“You are a supervisor?”
Again Jason nodded.
“Long hours, a lot of responsibility. No pay for any of it, correct?”
Jason watched her face. So?
“Well, you’d like that to change, wouldn’t you? A full professorship, a big job at the Centre, more time to do your own work?”
“I wasn’t aware there were any openings.” Jason scratched his beard.
“Well, something’s coming up, but I’m not really at liberty to discuss it at this time.… I have copies of the intake notes, my notes, Harold’s notes. The paper I presented on the case.”
“Ah …” That sounded like a lot. Why so much documentation on such an old case? Jason hesitated.
“I believe you know the police.” Clara glanced at her watch, impatient now.
Her statement startled Jason. “What if it was a suicide?” he asked Clara, keeping his voice impassive.
“Ben Hartley called me at home last night. He’s counsel for the hospital, as you know. Ben got a call yesterday from the lawyer of the insurance company that employed and insured Raymond. He was most upset about it. The bottom line is that if Ray Cowles was murdered, the insurance company has to pay a million dollars to his widow. There’s no out for them. If Ray was a suicide, they still pay, but they see a window of opportunity for getting their money back and more. Hartley told me the company and the widow intend to sue the Centre for malpractice. And I’m named in the suit, too.” A tic in Clara’s cheek that Jason hadn’t noticed before began to jump around when she said the doctor’s nightmare word: malpractice.
