(1987) The Celestial Bed

by Irving Wallace

  ‘Gayle, please let me come inside and — ’

  ‘And what? Let you fuck me the way you’re fucking her? No way!’

  ‘Gayle, give me a chance to talk to you.’

  ‘I’m not talking to you again, until you’ve broken up with your little Nan or you have Freeberg insist that you do. Until then — ‘ she pushed her door open ‘ — fuck off!’

  With that, she ran into the house, slamming the door in his face.

  Brandon sat dejectedly behind the wheel of his car in front of her house, trying to decide what to do.

  For many minutes he sought to focus his resentment against Gayle on her. She was being a fool, a childish fool, he kept telling himself, allowing immature jealousy to intervene in their relationship. Her jealousy was so displaced as to be unbelievable.

  But to Gayle it was believable, and for some minutes he tried to see his involvement with Nan from Gayle’s point of view. He could see that although she was a professional sex partner, she was not a professional female. Perhaps she knew more about the mechanism of sex than the average woman, just as a physician knew more about the mechanism of health than the average layman - but a physician could not heal himself any more than Gayle could overcome the insecurities of an ordinary woman.

  Examining Gayle’s anger, Brandon even considered the possible validity of her feeling. Did he enjoy making love to his patient and being loved by her in return? Could Gayle have intuitively hit on some truth there? He examined and reexamined this possibility, and what he emerged with were two stark facts. One was that he was sorry for Nan and wanted to help her, but was absolutely not in love with her. The other was that he was deeply in love with Gayle — and was seriously on the verge of losing her for now and forever.

  There was only one way for him to prove to Gayle that she — and not a patient named Nan Whitcomb — was his true love. Gayle had spelled out the one proof she would accept. He must

  personally be forthright with Nan and remind her that their relationship was purely a professional one and would terminate with their next encounter. Or he must in all candour inform Dr Freeberg of his problem, and seek Freeberg’s guidance in solving it.

  As a so-called professional he had been performing his work amateurishly. He must speak to Dr Freeberg at once and be totally honest with him.

  Brandon snapped on his dashboard light, held his wrist near it, and peered at his wristwatch.

  The time was close to ten forty-five. He half-remembered hearing somewhere that Dr Freeberg kept late hours, writing and reading until midnight, at least. If this were true, Dr Freeberg would still be awake. Brandon had to take a chance. The sooner the better.

  With determination, Brandon started his car, and began to drive around the neighbourhood until he found a shopping area. When he located it, he could see a filling station a block away, its lights on. He drove towards it, saw that the lone attendant was closing down the station, but that the door to the glass-enclosed telephone booth nearby was open.

  Brandon guided his car past the pumps, and parked in a vacant slot near the telephone booth. Getting out, feeling in his pocket for change, and then for his miniature address book, he started for the glass booth.

  Inside it, he closed the door and the light went on. Finding Dr Freeberg’s home number, Brandon sorted out his change, dropped the required coins into the telephone box and dialled Freeberg’s number.

  There were no more than two rings before Freeberg himself answered the phone.

  ‘Dr Freeberg? This is Paul Brandon. I hope I didn’t wake you.’

  ‘Not at all, not at all. I’ll be up for hours. Just pottering around with some research for a paper I was planning to write. What’s on your mind, Paul?’

  ‘It’s something I think is rather important, something regarding my relationship with my patient, Nan Whitcomb. I do need your advice.’

  There was a pause. ‘Is this something you meant to discuss with me when you phoned me earlier today?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Brandon, surprised. ‘How did you know?’

  Freeberg chuckled. ‘Because your afternoon call was uncharacteristic. It was obvious you had something important on your mind, but found yourself unable to get down to it. I’m pleased you’ve decided to discuss it now. You want to tell me what this is all about?’

  ‘My patient, Nan Whitcomb, she’s fallen in love with me,’ Brandon blurted out.

  ‘Ah, so that’s it,’ Dr Freeberg said. ‘You’re doing the right thing to tell me. I’d suggest you let me hear it all, omitting nothing. So Miss Whitcomb’s in love with you? You’d better give me every detail.’

  For over ten minutes, Brandon spilled out every detail of his series of sessions with Nan. He placed special emphasis on those moments when he perceived that Nan was falling in love with him - from her offer to move in and stay overnight with him to her declaration of love for him this very afternoon.

  ‘I should have discussed this earlier with you, Dr Freeberg,’ Brandon concluded, ‘but I was afraid you’d want to take me off the case and replace me with someone else. I worried that if this happened, it might wound Nan deeply and set her back, after we’ve made so much progress.’

  ‘I can understand your concern,’ said Dr Freeberg. Then he inquired, ‘How many sessions do you have left with her?’

  ‘Two at the most. Possibly, if all continues to go well, I might wind it up with the exercise we have scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.’

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Dr Freeberg was thinking this through, Brandon knew, and he waited anxiously.

  ‘All right,’ said Dr Freeberg, ‘I believe I know what must be done. I’m going to call Nan Whitcomb at her hotel right now. I’m going to postpone her session with you tomorrow and set it for the day after. Then tomorrow, I’ll see her.’

  ‘See her about what?’

  ‘Paul, under no circumstances, at this stage of the therapy, would I see fit to remove you from the case. You’re right, it could be a rude shock to her, set her back, and it might take a long time for her to establish a bond with someone else, even if I could find another male surrogate quickly. No, that’s out. What I intend to do is tell Miss Whitcomb I want to discuss her case with her. Then,

  I’ll - ‘ He paused. ‘ - I’m looking through my engagement book here, and I’m tied up until late afternoon … so that’s it - I’ll arrange with Nan Whitcomb to see her late tomorrow. I’ll have a good grandfatherly talk with her.’

  ‘What can you tell her?’

  ‘Basically, I’ll try to get it through to her that her relationship with her surrogate is not a personal one but a professional one. I think I can manage this without doing her any harm. Once this is done, I feel certain it will make it easier, more comfortable, for you to wind up your last exercise with her without further involvement.’

  ‘Thanks, Dr Freeberg. Thank you very much. My fingers are crossed. I hope you’ll succeed.’

  After he had hung up on Dr Freeberg, Brandon remained standing in the telephone booth. At last he dug into his pocket for more change. Once he’d found the change, he inserted the coins in the phone, and cheerful again, he began to dial Gayle Miller

  Late the following afternoon, Tony Zecca sat tensely and watchfully behind the steering wheel of his Cadillac parked less than half a block away from the Freeberg Clinic. His eyes, as they had been for the last three days, remained fastened on the entrance to the clinic, watching for every person who entered and departed.

  Still boiling inside at Nan’s deceit, Zecca’s real rage was directed towards the man who had seduced her and taken her away from him.

  Zecca had been obsessed by the need to find out who Nan’s seducer and lover was, and to make the bastard pay for it. So far, Zecca had not succeeded in uncovering the bastard’s identity for sure. He had suspected, from the outset, that Dr Arnold Freeberg, the doctor she had always been visiting, was the culprit, but so far, as of this minute, Zecca had not been able to prove it.

  T
he first day of his clinic watch, Zecca had thought he’d had Freeberg nailed down. Parking at his post, across and not far from the clinic, he had gone inside to case the joint. Luckily, at the receptionist’s desk, he had found a stack of brochures describing the function of the clinic, and these had included a biography and photograph of the eminent Dr Arnold Freeberg.

  Once he had learned what Freeberg looked like and what he did for his dirty living, Zecca had gone back to his parked car to watch

  for him. It had been a long and gruelling wait, but just before nightfall of that first day, Zecca’s patience and endurance had been rewarded.

  He had seen Freeberg leave the clinic, lock the front door, and get into his car in the adjoining parking lot to drive to wherever he was shacking up with Nan. In his Cadillac, Zecca had followed the fucking doctor, trying to decide what he’d do with the bastard once he arrived at wherever he was keeping Nan. Freeberg drove up to a new house at the edge of town, drove into the garage, and was greeted at the front door by a plain, plumpish woman, obviously his wife whom he was cheating on, as far as Zecca could make out. This meant that Freeberg had Nan stashed away in some hot love nest somewhere else.

  Yesterday, Zecca had grimly waited once more for Freeberg to close up the clinic and leave, and once again Zecca had followed him when he drove off. And for the second time Zecca had seen the two-faced bastard go into his house to join his wife.

  Somewhat discouraged, Zecca continued his relentless vigil all through the long afternoon of this third day.

  Suddenly, through his car door window, he recognised a very familiar figure walking towards the entrance to the Freeberg Clinic. He saw her from behind as she went to the door, and then went inside.

  Nan herself, on the way to her lover and her daily shot. The bitch. But the hell with her. It was the old bastard he was going to get.

  Zecca’s instant response at the sight of Nan was to leap out of his car and confront her. He started to open his door, and then did not do so. Getting his hands on Nan right now was pointless. The smart thing to do was to wait and see if she came out of the clinic with a man, and if that man was Freeberg.

  Zecca huddled in his driver’s seat, alertly watching and waiting.

  It was more than twenty minutes, this wait, and it was getting dark when Zecca’s patience finally paid off.

  He saw Nan herself emerge from the clinic, someone holding the front door open for her to leave. Next the someone who had held the door for her emerged, too. It was a man all right, the man, the old prick who was her doctor, none other than Dr Arnold Freeberg, the very one Zecca had suspected from the start as the sonofabitch who had wooed her away from him.

  Locking the clinic door, Freeberg joined Nan, took her by the arm, and started her down Market Street, in the opposite direction from where Zecca was parked.

  Zecca contained himself. When he was sure that there was a safe distance between the frigging couple and himself, and he could keep them in view without being spotted, he leapt out of his car.

  Hugging the darker areas alongside shut-down buildings and store fronts, Zecca tracked the pair.

  They walked together only a short distance, then crossed the street, and disappeared into some tall building. Once Nan and her doctor had gone inside, Zecca quickened his step, hastening to find out their secret place of assignation.

  Zecca stood before the building now. It was a hotel. The Excelsior Hotel. So this was where Nan was hiding out, and where her doctor friend was going every day to fuck her.

  Zecca’s first temptation was to go inside also, learn Nan’s room number, and burst in on the two of them locked on her bed, and to beat up old Freeberg until there wasn’t an unbroken bone left in the old shit’s body, and then to slam Nan around and take her by the hair and drag her back to his home where she belonged.

  Eager as he was to have a go at them, some survival instinct inside Tony Zecca restrained him from the act.

  If he burst in on them, and beat up Freeberg, there could be trouble. Zecca might find himself arrested and in the morning headlines. It was the last place anyone high up in the mob would want him to be. Zecca was only on the fringe of the mob, a lesser light financed by it, doing occasional favours for it, but still one of their boys. The mob did not like any of its own being in the hands of the police or on the front pages of papers. Definitely not.

  The getting even, he decided, should be done in a quieter and safer place. The getting even should be done by one of the mob’s hit men, more expert in these matters than he himself was.

  Maybe.

  He started back to his Cadillac. He would think about it.

  There were two pull-up armchairs in Nan Whitcomb’s hotel room, and Dr Freeberg waited for Nan to occupy one before he took the other. After refusing Nan’s offer of white wine, and gaining her permission to allow him to smoke, Dr Freeberg lighted a cigarillo and sat back.

  ‘I wanted to speak to you,’ Dr Freeberg began, ‘and intended to do so in my office. Then I thought what I had to talk over with you could be discussed most easily in the privacy of your own hotel room rather than in the clinic or downstairs in the hotel bar. I hope you don’t mind?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Nan, her curiosity clearly evident.

  Dr Freeberg gestured at the room. T hope you find this comfortable. It was the best I could do when you called.’

  ‘I’m grateful you could get me anything.’

  ‘Does Mr Zecca know that you’re here?’

  ‘God no, he’d be the last person I’d tell.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll try to find you?’

  Nan shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. When he found my note, he may have said good riddance. But knowing his ego, I suspect he’ll try to find me and drag me back. Even if he traced me, I’d never go back with him, never. Not now.’

  Dr Freeberg nodded understandingly. ‘I can’t say that I blame you. You’ve suffered a particularly brutal experience. But don’t think you’re alone in that. Your experience, in a way, was not dissimilar to what so many women go through with their husbands or lovers.’

  Nan seemed surprised. ‘Really?’

  ‘Usually women with an incompatible mate don’t suffer physical brutality, but rather they endure emotional brutality. This is probably because many men get too used to their women, and begin to take them for granted. Such men gradually regard their women not only as servants but as someone to service them sexually — someone to have intercourse with — without an exchange of loving and caring, with no time for caressing and enjoying foreplay. These men want only to have their own orgasm and feel better. Such men don’t see women as individuals with feelings of their own. They’re out of touch with their mates as sensitive human beings to be nurtured and loved.’

  ‘You can say that again when you speak about somebody like Tony Zecca.’

  ‘Mr Zecca is an extreme example. I simply wanted to reassure you that you are not alone. On a more civilised scale, his behaviour goes on all the time everywhere. But soon you’ll find there are more thoughtful and sensitive men you can have relationships with

  ‘I’ve already learned that, Dr Freeberg,’ Nan said, ‘ever since I met Paul Brandon.’

  ‘Yes, of course, Paul Brandon,’ said Dr Freeberg, puffing on his cigarillo. ‘Actually, it’s Paul I want to talk to you about.’

  Nan showed genuine bewilderment. ‘Talk about what? I’ve told you all about him, our relationship, in my sessions with you. Haven’t I told you everything?’

  ‘Not quite, Nan. Not quite.’ Dr Freeberg stamped out the butt of his cigarillo, and leaned forward in his chair. ‘You recall, Nan, don’t you, the first meeting we had after you became my patient? The first meeting Paul and I had with you, all three of us together? At that time we made a verbal contract, an agreement. You had a problem, hardly entirely your own. So we set a goal. Through therapy and exercises, we laid out a programme that we were confident would help you reach your goal of complete sexual enjoyment. We held nothing bac
k from you. We laid out every aspect of the treatment and exercises. That’s true, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  ‘One thing I told you in complete candour. Under my direction, Paul Brandon would professionally help you, be a surrogate partner to teach and direct you. You were paying for Paul’s expertise, not for his emotional caring for you. From the start you knew that your relationship with Paul, while it would become an increasingly intimate one, was a professional relationship, a temporary partnership for a limited number of weeks. You were made to understand that once your surrogate had succeeded in solving your problem, he would have finished his work and would return to his own private life and own personal relationships, and you would have concluded your therapy and go on with your own private life and your own relationships.’

  Dr Freeberg saw that Nan was staring at him, a pained expression on her face. He paused, and waited for her to speak.

  T think I know what you’re trying to tell me,’ Nan said slowly. ‘You’re trying to tell me you think I’ve fallen in love with Paul, and I shouldn’t have.’

  ‘That’s what I think, Nan, listening and reading between the lines of Paul’s reports.’

  ‘And you think I’ve made a mistake.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a mistake,’ Dr Freeberg said without equivocation. ‘As your surrogate, Paul cares for you very much — he’s developed a

  bond with you. This is the relationship we hoped would develop between you. It had to develop. But it also has a beginning and an end. Paul is really only a stepping-stone to what is waiting for you in the outside world. Now you both must sever that bond, he to go his way, and you to go yours. He has a private life, and this is merely his work. I repeat, you are paying for his expertise, not for his caring. It would be wrong to expect anything more. Can we discuss it further, Nan?’

  She sounded tearful. ‘No, I don’t believe that will be necessary.’

  ‘My dear Nan, for everyone the reality of a situation is

  sometimes difficult to face. I am positive you can do it, and be