the grass or a bench and tell himself the stories of his life exactly the same way, over and over—all the horrors right up to the day the bastard Harold Dickey and the bitch Clara Treadwell unjustly cut off his balls and destroyed his life after a thirty-year career in nursing. Because of them Bobbie Boudreau was no longer a nurse, not a nurse of any kind. For almost a year he’d been a cleaner, floor polisher, garbage collector, lightbulb changer—not even a plumber, electrical engineer, or handyman. His asshole boss said he had to work his way up for even that kind of work.
When he wandered along the labyrinth of underground passages that connected the six buildings in the huge hospital complex dressed as a janitor—a fat clip of official keys banging against his hip—Bobbie looked as if that seniority was already his. He was both big and broad, still hard enough in his spreading midsection to look disciplined. There was an air of authority in his movements. His face was solid with concentration and purpose. He had the belligerence of someone in charge. Seldom did anyone stop him. When they did, it was usually for directions. Doctors, nurses, administrators, maintenance, even security intent on their own troubles rushed past him every day. Those who took the briefest second to glance his way felt immediately reassured that he was just your average good-guy hospital worker, like they were—honest, trustworthy, caring. A person who would not waste a second before fixing something gone wrong. And he did fix things gone wrong.
He was about to cross the viaduct that formed a bridge over the Ninety-sixth Street entrance to the Henry Hudson Parkway when a powerful stench of excrement startled him. He was filled with disgust even before the bum shambled from behind a bush. The bum was muttering to himself; his sorry-looking penis still hung out of pants not yet buttoned and zipped.
Bobbie swerved to avoid him, but the bundle of rags figured he’d found a mark and didn’t want to let him go. “Hey, pal,” he called, forgetting to zip his fly as he hurried after Bobbie.
“Fuck off.”
“Hey, pal, that’s no way to talk. You got a dollar? I’m hungry.”
The bum followed Bobbie onto the bridge, whining. “I’m hungry, man. You know what it feels like to be hungry? All I need is a dollar. One dollar. What’s a dollar to a rich man like you?”
The piece of shit was disgusting, had no control. He stank; he defecated in the bushes like a dog. And now the filthy mongrel was following him across the bridge, mocking him. It was a mortal insult.
“I said fuck off.”
The bum grabbed at his arm, whining some more. Bobbie didn’t like to be crowded. A thin stream of traffic, heading north, whipped by behind them on the parkway. The light changed and a car crossed the intersection below.
“Hey, pal, think of Jesus. Would Jesus walk away from a friend in need?”
Bobbie stopped short and drew himself up to his full height. He was six two or six three and weighed two hundred and thirty pounds. The piece of shit was talking to him about Jesus. Bobbie stared.
The guy figured he’d scored. “Yeah, gimme a dollar. But for the grace of God I could be you, pal.”
He was wrong. Bobbie could never be him. Bobbie was good. Bobbie was clean. He was efficient. He was in control. Bobbie didn’t stop to think any further. He picked up the offense that thought it could be him and tossed it over the railing. His move took two seconds, maybe three. Some deeply soothing sounds followed: a grunt as the asshole was picked up, a scream as he fell, then the thud as he hit the ground. If the bum survived the fall, he didn’t live long. Almost instantly there was a series of crashes as an oncoming car, speeding up to enter the parkway below, struck him, braked abruptly, and was in turn bulldozed by the car behind. Bobbie kept walking. It all felt exactly like the Lord reaching down with His grace and punishing the wicked.
At three A.M., feeling on top of the world—like the right hand of God itself—Bobbie slipped into the Stone Pavilion of the hospital through a service door on an empty loading dock at level B2. After the incident with the bum, he had gone home to change into the gray uniform of a maintenance crew he didn’t work on and to pick up a toolbox that was not part of his job. He hadn’t yet acquired the correct jacket, so he wasn’t wearing one, even though the temperature had dropped way down again. The stolen plastic ID clipped to the stolen shirt identified his own slightly freckled, flat-featured, unsmiling face below slicked-back, gray-flecked curly hair as that of a senior maintenance worker in the Psychiatric Centre where he was no longer allowed to go.
Bobbie liked thinking that if the two bastards who ruined his life knew he was still around, they’d finish him for good. They thought they could kill people and get away with it. Bobbie snorted at the fact that he was too smart for them. They didn’t know he was still around. He hummed his little God ditty. “The Lord’s too slow for Bobbie Boudreau.”
He turned down a branch in the tunnel that began its descent to level B3. He heard the clicking of the relays in the machine room that provided electricity to the nearest bank of elevators. He passed on to the long, long pump room that drove hot water through the pipes and radiators of all twenty floors of the Stone Pavilion and heard the fierce hiss of steam, jetting harmlessly into the air from dozens of safety valves. Then he passed the deep-cold quiet of the morgue at the center of the H in the building’s courtyard, a ridiculously long way from everything.
Abruptly the ground started to rise up to level B2 again. The color of the stripe on the floor changed from yellow to blue, signaling passage into another building, the Psychiatric Centre, the funny farm. Whatever you want to call it, Bobbie Boudreau was coming home to finish the work he’d started.
three
At seven-thirty A.M., Dr. Clara Treadwell felt some satisfaction at the miserable weather as she walked the half-block from her impressive penthouse overlooking the Hudson River to her impressive executive suite with the same view on the twentieth floor of the Psychiatric Centre. The sky was battleship-gray, hanging low over the choppy water. Although it was only the first of November, already it was a winter day, a harbinger of the many dismal days ahead.
She flipped up the collar of her navy cashmere coat and congratulated herself for insisting on returning to New York yesterday straight from Sarasota, instead of spending the night in Washington with the Senator as he had wanted. He was getting very demanding lately, almost like a husband who couldn’t stand sleeping alone a single night. She decided it was time to start setting limits for him. Getting home by five-thirty, she’d had the evening to pick up her messages, return calls, go over the dozens of memos and reports she had to deal with as Director of the Psychiatric Centre, Chief Psychiatrist, Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the medical school, and Mathew McPherson Appleton Professor.
When she’d been a medical student at the university and later a psychiatric resident at the Centre, Clara Treadwell never thought she’d have a single one of those titles, much less all of them. Nor did she ever dream that she’d be appointed to a President’s Commission on Mental Health and meet the Senator who’d made that cause his life’s work. When she’d been a resident, she never would have believed that a woman past forty-five could not only attain such status but could also attract a man of similar accomplishments (and far greater wealth) and that they could fall in love with all the passion and excitement of teenagers.
Every day when Clara Treadwell awoke in her stunning apartment, decorated with fine antique furniture and painted in shades of beige and peach to soften the light and flatter her complexion, she felt the thrill of her accomplishments all over again. The apartment, a perk of her job, cost her only a dollar a year. That was gratifying in itself. But even more thrilling was the fact that she was the first woman ever to have it.
She was the first woman Chairman and Director of the Psychiatric Centre, the first to be head of the department and the first to have the name professorship. Her freshly washed hair whipped around her face in the wind off the river despite the generous dose of hairspray she’d given it. She ducked quickly into the cavernous building, patting her hair back into place.
“Morning. Morning,” she murmured as she waited for the elevator, conscious of her position and how important it was to acknowledge the people around her.
She unbuttoned her coat, could not resist showing off the sleek new suit and trim body under it. She had to admit her figure wasn’t perfect anymore, but she dressed well, moved gracefully, and knew she still looked—if not great—at least good enough to attract attention wherever she went. It was with the warm feeling of being able to assess herself critically and come to an objective conclusion that Clara Treadwell entered the elevator of the Psychiatric Centre. For nearly six minutes, as the crowded box made its tedious progress upstairs, she concentrated on her strategy for the various meetings at which she would preside that day, feeling a sense of mastery in all things.
