Kerner sat there gape mouthed for a minute, trying to regain his composure. Finally he started again. “I was trying to say that I no longer have any money, which makes it so much harder for me. . . .” He paused, hoping the doctor would say something, but he had put his head down on the table top and was now making snoring sounds. “You see,” said Kerner, “I’m addicted to buying!”
The doctor shot up in his chair. “To what?” he asked, a sharp ring in his voice.
“To buying. I have to be constantly making a buy,” Kerner replied suddenly, feeling as though a weight had been lifted from him. “I know it sounds crazy . . .”
The doctor cut him off with a wave of his hand. With his eyes narrowed to razor-thin slits, he hissed, “Are you playing games with me, Kerner?”
“No, I swear, Doctor, I’m not.”
“I think you might be making me a bit paranoid again so I’ll just tell you now, so as to avoid confusion later, that each incident of paranoia provoked by you will mean a jump in my fee of ten dollars per incident.”
“Believe me, Doctor, I’m desperate,” Kerner pleaded. “This is no joke. I know it’s very unusual but it’s ruining me. It’s ruining my life. Unless I can make a buy every half hour, or hour, or few hours, depending on how effective my previous buy has been, I begin to go through a very painful withdrawal situation.”
Dr. Lehman said nothing and Kerner thought back to how it had all begun. It had started six months before. It just happened one day that he began to feel sick. He was overwhelmed by a prolonged wave of nausea of such force that he felt he was about to die and, at that moment, would have preferred death to a continuation of the sickness. He threw up non-stop for close to fifteen minutes. After that, he began to feel somewhat better, but because of the uncertainty of the original attack, he decided to see his general practitioner, Dr. Bender.
It was while he was sitting in Dr. Bender’s waiting room that he began to think about a certain attaché case that he had seen a few days before in Carlisle’s Men’s Store. Burnished alligator skin with a thick brown cut velvet lining and ten-karat gold clasps. He couldn’t get the image of this case out of his mind. He pictured himself driving down to Carlisle’s and purchasing it, taking it in his hands and caressing the cold hard skin of the alligator. Suddenly he found himself on his feet.
He could see the case looming in his mind, its dark colour gleaming with richness. At that moment he could even smell it. He had to buy it. He had to buy it immediately. He didn’t know why, nor did he care to know. All he knew was that he wanted it and wanted it badly. The more he thought about the purchasing of this item, the better he felt.
He sat down and tried to push the picture of the case out of his mind, but as he suppressed the image, he began to feel tense and nervous. A moment later the nauseous sensation which had originally brought him to that waiting room returned with a vengeance. He doubled over in his chair, then dropped to his knees, praying for relief and hoping he would not vomit on Dr. Bender’s carpet.
Again he began to think of the attaché case. It filled his mind as though it was projected on a gigantic Cinemascope screen. He had to buy it. The feeling of nausea was lessening in intensity now. He stood up and walked quickly out of Dr. Bender’s office. He would call later and apologize, but now he could think only of getting downtown as fast as he could and making a buy.
He sped down to Sherbrooke Street and, leaving his car in a no-parking zone, ran into Carlisle’s. He burst through the door and rushed to the area where he had last seen the case. His eyes scanned the high shelf, passing quickly over the other items stocked there.
The case was gone. Again he was overpowered by a terrible feeling of nausea which threatened to come barrelling up into his throat. Kerner caught the eye of a sales clerk.
“Where’s that alligator attaché case I saw in here the other day?” Kerner said to the young man.
“Oh, yes, that was a nice one, wasn’t it?” the clerk replied, smiling enthusiastically.
“Yes, it’s very nice. Now where is it?” Kerner snapped.
The clerk’s face fell sharply. “You mean the one with the gold latches, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Kerner half-shouted, trying to keep himself erect in spite of the cramps which were contracting his belly.
“That’s the one that had the plush brown interior, if I’m guessing right.”
“You’re guessing right,” Kerner said, wanting to bash the sales clerk in the face.
“The one imported from Italy?” the clerk asked, smiling.
Kerner was sure the sales clerk knew what he was going through now and was trying, for some sadistic reason, to prolong his agony. He wanted, at the very least, to insult the clerk but he knew that wouldn’t be wise. The clerk would then tell him it had been sold. He tried to force a pleasant smile now.
“I don’t know where it’s imported from but we’re talking about the same case.”
“I believe we might still have one,” the clerk said.
Kerner felt the pains in his stomach dissipate. He gave the clerk an overly appreciative smile.
The sales clerk looked up at the shelf that Kerner had already scanned. He turned back to Kerner. “I’m afraid we’ve sold the last one.”
Kerner felt the sickness return faster than it had left him a moment before. Again he had the urge to drive a fist into the clerk’s face.
“Are you sure you’ve sold your last one?” he snarled.
“Yes. Yes, I’m sure, sir.” The clerk now had a frightened look on his face.
“How do you know you have?”
“I just know, sir. I sold the last one,” the young man said nervously, taking a half-step backwards.
“You! You sold it?” Kerner said, advancing towards the frightened clerk.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure. Maybe it was someone else. . . . Yes. Yes, it was another one of the staff. Yes, I remember now. I was out to lunch at the time it was sold and when I came back everyone was talking about how the alligator attaché case had been sold. It was all over the store. I’m trying to remember now who it was that sold it. . . . Yes, now it’s coming back. Everyone was saying that Larry sold it. Larry Johnston. He’s not here now. He sold it. You can ask anyone. I wouldn’t have sold it. I liked keeping it around the store. A lot of people wanted to buy it from me but I wouldn’t sell it. I kept telling them it’s not for sale and they went away. There’s no way I could have sold that case. If we get another one, I’ll never sell that either except to you.”
Kerner was gripping the edge of the showcase. The clerk’s voice was an unintelligible drone in his head. The clerk backed away slowly. “Maybe we have another one in the storeroom,” he said, now a good twenty-five feet away from Kerner.
Kerner’s head snapped up. “You think you do?” he asked, feeling the nausea ease up slightly.
“We might, unless the boss took that one home for himself. He really liked that item,” the clerk said, still backing away.
“What the hell is he doing buying from his own store?” Kerner shouted, feeling a tightness spreading throughout his body. “Who the hell does he think he is! The merchandise is for the customers, not for him. What kind of a lousy store is this anyway?” As he finished, Kerner was aware of customers staring at him from all parts of the store. They all seemed to be looking at him strangely but he didn’t care. He could see the clerk now sprinting away towards the back of the store, throwing quick frightened glances as he ran.
Suddenly a man whom he recognized to be the store manager approached. “Yes, hello there. Is there some problem, sir?” the manager asked.
“They sold the lousy attaché case,” Kerner said, his voice cracking.
“Which one was that?” the manager asked sympathetically, bending over towards Kerner.
“The nice one. The alligator-skin one.”
“Oh, yes. Well, just let me check and see if we don’t have one in the back.”
“Don’t waste your time,” Ker
ner said in a choked voice. “Your stupid boss took it home.”
The manager blinked almost imperceptibly. “We just might have one left. I’ll go and check.”
Kerner nodded sullenly as the manager turned and walked off.
He looked around, his eyes wandering from shelf to shelf. He walked over to the section where the men’s sweaters were displayed. At the far end of the shelf he spied a beige cashmere one. He moved quickly over to it and picked it up. He ran his hand along the soft material and began to smile. He held the sweater up in front of him to better observe its colouration. He had never seen such a subtle tone of beige, he thought. It was truly beautiful. He looked at the label. Made in Italy especially for Carlisle’s, it read.
He picked up the price tag. One hundred and ten dollars. He nodded slowly to himself. It wasn’t unreasonable. He slung it across his arm and suddenly realized that his symptoms were gone. He felt all better. . . .
One hundred and ten dollars. Very reasonable, he thought. Eminently reasonable. He felt great. His face was now one huge grin of pleasure. He was still smiling when the manager returned to tell him that the last attaché case had been sold.
Kerner’s stream-of-consciousness recounting of his story was suddenly interrupted by Dr. Lehman.
“Mr. Kerner,” he said quietly.
Kerner looked up at the doctor who was now slowly rising above the desk in his chair.
“You’re completely bananas.”
“I know there is something wrong with me,” Kerner said, blushing now with embarrassment.
“Wrong with you!” the doctor half-screamed, giving himself three quick turns in his chair. “You are so fucked up, my friend, that I cannot even begin to comprehend the scope of it all.”
Kerner was about to protest but, before he could say a word, the doctor continued.
“But don’t worry about it. Like I said the other day, we will effect a cure.”
“Do you really think there’s some hope?”
“Look, my friend, if I could cure the Wasp who was speaking Yiddish, I can cure you.”
“The who?”
“The Wasp. Don’t you know what a Wasp is?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, so I had one as a patient. He woke up one morning and went to a board meeting of his company—one of the biggest in Canada. He was about to sign a deal with a multimillion-dollar mining concern from Germany. When it came time for him to speak, he began addressing the Germans in Yiddish. No matter how hard he tried to speak English, he could only talk Yiddish and I mean fluent Yiddish. He spent the entire meeting questioning them about their activities during the war. Then he wanted to know if they gave money to Israel, if they ever did any canvassing for the Combined Jewish Appeal, and so on and so forth.
“Later that same week, he was due to address the Rotary Club, which he did, again speaking entirely in Yiddish.
“A while later he issued a memo in Yiddish to all his company personnel, forty-five hundred people, making Yiddish the official working language of his company in the future.
“He finally, of course, alienated his entire family and all his friends. They forced him, against his will, to come and see me, and I cured him.”
Kerner felt a surge of elation. If the crazy doctor could cure that man, then he might have a hope of regaining his senses.
“How did you cure him?” Kerner asked, trying to sound calm.
“That’s for me to know and for you to find out or, to put it more plainly, it’s none of your fucking business,” the doctor snapped back.
“But I just . . .” Kerner began.
“What? What?”
“Nothing,” Kerner said.
“Right. We’re getting off the subject. Let’s get back to you and your messhugas, okay? Because from the sound it it, my friend, you’re in deep trouble.”
“You’re right, I am. This damn buying sickness is ruining my life. You can’t believe what it’s done to me. It just keeps getting worse and worse. If I try to fight it I go through sheer agony. Nausea, cramps, diarrhea, vomiting, nervous tension, splitting headaches, terrible anxiety.”
“My heart bleeds for you,” the doctor said and pressed a button so that his chair reclined all the way back like a bed.
“Why are you so insulting with me?” Kerner asked, feeling angry.
“Look, don’t start with me, okay? You wanted to talk, so talk while you have your chance. If I want to make comments, that’s my prerogative. This is my office and I can do whatever I want in here. Okay? So just talk and shut up.”
The doctor lay back on his chair and closed his eyes.
Oh God, Kerner said to himself, help me.
“So c’mon. I’m waiting,” the doctor said.
“I was saying that I go through agonizing withdrawal whenever I try to control myself from making a buy. . . .”
“And I said, ‘My heart bleeds for you.’ Now go on already,” Dr. Lehman mumbled.
“Okay, okay. Don’t rush me. I have to think this out.”
“Now you have to think this out?” Dr. Lehman grunted with his eyes closed.
“Yes, well, I want you to know exactly how this thing is affecting me.”
“All right, go on.”
“Okay. Let’s see . . . Right. I’ve been pulling money out of my business for six months now. I got over-extended. My company has grown quite fast.”
“I’m not impressed, Kerner. I finished medical school when I was twenty. Just stick to the facts,” the doctor said.
“I’m not trying to impress you. It’s part of the story.”
The doctor began snoring.
“Anyway, I figured the way the business had been growing I would eventually catch up. I just had to keep buying things. At first it was costing me a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars a day. Then it went up gradually so I was spending as much as five thousand dollars a week. Even though the business was growing, I couldn’t expand fast enough to compensate for the money I was pulling out. I started losing customers. I started paying late to my suppliers so some of them became leery of selling to me in the quantities that I needed, so I lost more customers. It was a vicious circle. I started borrowing from the banks to meet my commitments. Finally, they wouldn’t extend me any more credit. Now I’m on the verge of bankruptcy. Any day, any one of three major creditors could force me into bankruptcy. About two months ago I borrowed money from a loan shark. Now he’s sending an enforcer after me to put me in the hospital.”
“You borrowed money from a shylock?” the doctor said.
“I was buying time. I had to. I began to realize I was sick but I had to have time to figure out what to do about it. I needed time. I also needed money to keep my main creditors off my back for a few months. I was counting on digging up some new business but it didn’t work out that way. I still have a few thousand dollars in the bank and a worthless piece of land that I own up North, but this loan shark wants everything I owe him right away. I haven’t got it. I’m telling you, Doctor, what I’m going through is a real horror. The thought of being without money to buy terrifies me. I couldn’t take it. Thank God I still have my credit cards. If my cash runs out, I’ll be able to use them for a while before they cancel them. After that I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
Kerner lowered his head and stared disconsolately at the floor.
“Did you really make an effort to control yourself?” the psychiatrist asked.
“Are you kidding? I tried everything. I tried putting myself to sleep for days using heavy sedation. One time I slept for two and a half days. You wouldn’t believe the nightmares I had, and after I finally woke up, I made up for it with a three-thousand-dollar spree. Believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve tried everything.”
The doctor’s chair began to rise slowly. “So let’s see,” he said as he stopped the chair in an upright position. “To recapitulate, you’re a buying addict. It’s brought you to the brink of bankruptcy. You’ve borrowed money from a loan shark and
now he’s sending a goon after you. Yes, my friend, it sounds like you’re in a real jackpot. A real jackpot. . . . How do you feel about being chased by a hoodlum who might put you in the hospital, as you put it?”
“It doesn’t make me happy!” Kerner replied.
“Is there anything that makes you happy, Mr. Kerner?” the doctor asked sarcastically.
“Just buying.”
The doctor nodded slowly. “Something must have brought this all on, Mr. Kerner, wouldn’t you say?”
Kerner shrugged.
“Something must have happened around the time that you started acting crazy, wouldn’t you say?”
Kerner shrugged again. “I don’t recall anything special,” he replied.
“What were you doing six months ago, just before all this began?”
“Same as always.”
“Which is?”
“I don’t know. Like . . . you know, working and so on.”
“And so on? What does that mean? Do you have a family? Are you married?”
“No.”
“How come?” the doctor asked.
“How come I’m not married?”
The doctor nodded.
“I’m not the type. I like to play the field. I can’t see settling down with one woman. Not yet anyways.”
“Why not?”
“Because I like action.”
“You mean, pussy?” the doctor said.
“Yes,” Kerner nodded.
“You like that old beaver, eh?”
“Yes.”
“The old quim, eh, Kerner?”
Kerner nodded.
“And tits. You like tits, Mr. Kerner?”
“Yes, I like tits a lot,” Kerner replied. “I just like variety, Doctor. That’s why I’m not married.”
“Did you ever think about it?”
“About what?” Kerner asked, suddenly feeling tense.
“Don’t play games, Kerner. Just remember the fee.”
“You mean, did I ever think about getting married?”
“Yes,” the doctor replied.
“Not really,” Kerner said.
“Mr. Kerner, why are you holding your balls in your hand?” Dr. Lehman asked.
Kerner quickly withdrew his right hand from where it was resting in his lap.
The Last Collection Page 8
