Nobody Runs Forever

of his money out of him. No, no, it could not be contemplated.

One thing that article did do for him, however, was make him more self-aware and more open to anything at all that might bring comfort to his life. And his life needed comfort. He had come to believe, during that period, that many of his patients led much better lives than he did—even some with chronic medical problems, even those with quite serious illnesses. He could see happiness and hope in their faces, when he knew he had neither in his.

One of these patients was Jake Beckham, a hearty, rowdy man who would surely never put up with a woman like Ellen, not for (literally) a million dollars. Dr. Madchen admired and envied Jake, and when Jake was arrested and imprisoned, neither the admiration nor the envy lessened. How staunchly Jake took his bad luck; how thoroughly he refused to be defeated. There was a man who could imagine another life for himself and make a leap for it, and so what if he failed this time? He would surely try again.

It was a happy coincidence that Jake wound up in the same state prison where Dr. Madchen’s worthless cousin, after years of drug addiction, had inevitably been placed. It had been to remain in contact with Jake as much as to be of help to Conrad that Dr. Madchen had asked Jake to help the worthless man. And of course Jake had helped.

A very different kind of patient, toward whom Dr. Madchen felt tenderness and pity, was Isabelle Moran, a healthy and beautiful young woman whose medical problems centered on an abusive husband. It was Dr. Madchen who patched up the bruises and the sprains and the scrapes, while telling Isabelle time and again that she should report the husband to the police. But she wouldn’t; she couldn’t; she was too afraid.

When, shortly after reading the statistics article, he had to treat Isabelle once more, this time for a badly scraped knee, a broken rib, and a broken finger (the man always left her face alone), Dr. Madchen realized that he and Isabelle were in one way very much the same: tied to a hateful spouse, unable to escape.

But they could console each other. They had been consoling each other for nearly three years now, secretly, hiding from the wrath of their spouses, and it had become, for both of them, intolerable. They had to get away, somehow. Neither could divorce, but both could flee. Or they could flee if they had money.

Jake, for Dr. Madchen’s assistance and silence and cover concerning the upcoming bank robbery, would give the doctor a third of his share of the take. A third.

He and Isabelle already knew they would go to California.

The wall phone in the lounge rang, and another doctor, in green scrubs, went to answer it, then turned to say, “Dr. Madchen?”

“Yes,” the doctor said, dropping the unread magazine and getting to his feet.

“Your patient is ready.”

3

Feeling better about herself, feeling she had done everything she could to ensure her more pleasant future, Elaine Langen drove homeward in the crisp fall afternoon light and thought how she would miss the seasons here, if nothing else. Not this white Infiniti, beautiful as it was, and so much more like a glove she wore than a machine she drove. Not the house toward which she steered, full as it was of bitter memories. Not her past, her friends, her remaining relatives—all of them felt tired in her thoughts, a dusty and dog-eared aura about them. Only the seasons—that’s all that she would miss.

Not that the south of France doesn’t have seasons—of course it does, but they’re not the same ones. They don’t contrast so much; they don’t so often create their own excitement. Well, too bad. Once this bank business was over, Elaine was prepared to create her own excitement, on her own terms, in a setting of her own choice.

In the meantime, it was necessary to be amiable and accommodating with husband Jack just a little while longer. Jack was, she knew, her own damn fault, and the result of a rebellion against her father that had been wrongheaded to begin with. Harvey Lefcourt had been an authoritarian father, sure, but so what? He’d built Deer Hill Bank from scratch, and survived some very hairy economic times, too.

The fact was, when Harvey believed he knew what was best for his daughter, he was almost always right. Her angry feuds with him were not because he was wrong, but because he left her no space to come to the right answers on her own. Since he preempted the right, she had no choice, the way she saw it, but to defiantly claim the wrong as her own.

Thus, Jack Langen.

Well, it wouldn’t be for too much longer, and in the meantime Jack wasn’t particularly hard to get along with, all wrapped up as he was in the coming merger. A self-involved man, once he’d captured Elaine and the bank she sat on, he was content to let life just roll along.

Especially now, with this takeover that he’d insisted on, over her own objections and the posthumous objections of Harvey, relayed through Elaine. This was not a merger! It was a swallowing up, and Elaine knew it, and so did everybody else.

Well, Jack would be happy in the new headquarters of Rutherford Combined Savings, where he could play at being an old-money banker the rest of his life. And Elaine would be happy in the south of France, with all the money she’d need until she found the right well-off replacement for Jack. And Jake Beckham would be happy wherever he decided to go with his piece of the pie, so at the end of the day everybody’s happy, so what’s the problem?

Waiting, that’s all.

But now, she arrived at the house, deep in the hilly countryside, rolling lawn and a three-story brick colonial with four white pillars across the front. Elaine had always thought the pillars a bit pretentious, but Jack had loved them, probably more than he’d ever loved Elaine, from the first time he’d gazed on them, bringing her home after their first date.

Elaine thumbed the garage opener on the visor, drove in, walked on into the house with one sack of groceries, and was barely in the kitchen when the front doorbell rang. She wasn’t expecting anybody, so let Rosita get it; opening doors to salesmen was a job for the maid, not the mistress of the house.

“Mrs. Langen.”

“Yes, Rosita?”

“Man here. Says you know him from the highway.”

“From the highway?” They weren’t going to tear up the road again, were they? Let them not start until I’m safely in France, she thought, but said to Rosita, “I’ll take care of it,” and walked to the front door to see one of the bank robbers standing there. In her good cop, bad cop image of them, this was the bad cop, the one who never