He unlocked his door and went inside. Jolene had never visited his place. The last two women he’d dated-a lawyer and an investment banker-had given him the impression that his living quarters were too small. He’d already forgotten the personal details of both of them. He did remember that they were compulsively skinny, and the main difference between them was that the lawyer took Zoloft and the banker took Prozac.
Allen could imagine Jolene getting drunk in her past life and fucking her whole high school football team. He could not imagine her taking Prozac.
His town house had originally been chosen for its convenient location, a mile from the hospital and clinic. When he’d moved in two years ago, his deck overlooked wetlands and a woods. Now a golf course provided a deeper shade of sizzling chemical green.
He cared about the environment. He was not a flashy person, he reminded himself, as he walked through the comfortable two-bedroom unit. His furnishings were sparse and functional, well made but not extravagant.
He was not a bad person.
He was not shallow.
He’d made only one mistake in his life.
One.
And he was doing his best to learn from it.
He put a bag of popcorn in the microwave and set the timer. Cub Scout popcorn, sold door-to-door. Sure, here kid.
Not a bad person.
Not.
He left the kitchen, went into the bedroom, and selected a pair of freshly laundered blue scrubs from his dresser. Clothing kept turning up in his exercise bag and he kept forgetting to return it. When he was home alone and didn’t expect guests, like now, he wore them as lounging pajamas.
He put on the soft shirt and loose trousers, went back to the kitchen, transferred the popcorn from the microwave to a bowl, and went into the living room. The movie Garf had given him lay on the coffee table. Allen shook out the tape, inserted it in the VCR, and tapped the play button. While the leader played out, he turned
Hmmm. He’d give it a try, to see if there was a point to Garf’s insolence. He settled back on the couch and began to eat his popcorn.
The movie was an early talky that creaked across the screen in seventy-year-old black and white. Dr. Immannuel Rath, a portly professor, fuddled his way through the pranks of his students and wound up following some of them to a seedy nightclub where Lola Lola, the Dietrich character, strutted her stuff.
Allen squirmed a little and licked the greasy popcorn residue from his fingers. Very funny.
But the character that stuck in his imagination was not the professor or the entertainer. As the doomed romance developed backstage in the nightclub, a clown wandered through the scenes with wistful eyebrows and a sad smile painted on his face. The clown’s purpose was to underscore Professor Rath’s folly. In fact, the professor, ruined by his love for the singer, joined the vagabond traveling troupe and wound up donning the clown costume himself.
The clown was the only character who knew what was going on.
The movie ended with a melodramatic death scene. Disgraced, Rath made his way back to the schoolhouse and collapsed on his old headmaster’s desk.
As the film rewound, Allen considered Garf’s intent; was it an ironic caution or a threat? Either way, it was a clue that more intelligence was cooking behind Garf’s blue eyes than Allen had previously assumed.
Garf had to go, of course. Milt was leery about underwriting Jolene as long as Garf was living under her roof.
And now it appeared that Garf was suggesting that Allen had to go. Allen smiled a tight little smile, got up, and experimented with a six-part silver box tango step. Garf underestimated him, of course. As had Hank.
Allen slid the movie back in its jacket, took the popcorn bowl to the kitchen, washed it, and put it in the cupboard. Then he spent half an hour going over his notes on tomorrow’s surgery schedule. Satisfied, he filed the notes back in his briefcase, brushed his teeth, flossed, washed his hands, and went to bed. As always, he fell immediately into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Allen woke punctually at 6:00 A.M., rolled out of bed, donned a wind suit and Nikes, stretched, drank a tall glass of water, and went on a five-mile run.
On his way back, at about mile four as he jogged past a long stand of fiery staghorn sumac, he had his revelation. It started with an awareness about the unself-conscious way his body was moving. For the first time in his life, outside of surgery, he felt fluid, as if his work brain had finally melted and now dripped warm and active down into the rest of his body.
The new perception was simple: the accidently-on-purpose-snuffing of Hank Sommer had not so much liberated Jolene as it had freed him. He, not Jolene, was more alive. Almost as if he sucked Hank’s ferocious life force out with a straw and digested it.
He’d finally made a mistake and the disaster had set him free. He didn’t need to possess Jolene. He didn’t need to
The red line had been erased.
Allen ran home, showered, and then, standing with a towel wrapped around his waist, razor held aloft, his lathered face centered in the steamy bathroom mirror-he thought,
On the damp tile bathroom floor Allen took a few stylized steps and bent over an imaginary tango partner. He dressed, ate cereal in a warm blur, and drove to the hospital.
It was Friday, which was his favorite day because he spent all day in surgery. As he parked and entered the building he mentally put on his work cap to begin to focus on the day’s procedures.
But he was not so intense that he forgot to take the time to smile at the nurses, to say good morning to a janitor. And the staff locker room didn’t feel like a decompression chamber this morning. Just a changing room.
Capped, wearing blue booties over his shoes, with a mask loose around his neck, he sipped a cup of black coffee in the staff lounge. A small audience had gathered at a table around Lenny Merman.
“So what does it mean if you find a lawyer buried up to his neck in cement?” Merman asked
“Groan,” Allen said.
“Shortage of cement,” Merman said. More groans.
Merman was a burly ortho guy, so passionate about his work that colleagues joked he’d probably tear his way into a body with his bare hands if the surgical tech was late with his instruments.
“Okay, here’s another one. Why are lawyers buried at twenty-six feet instead of at six feet?” Merman would not be deterred.
“Boo, hiss,” Allen said.
“Way down deep they’re really good people,” Merman said.
Allen rubbed the stubble on his cheek and smiled when he caught his reflection in the mirror next to the bulletin board. They wouldn’t approve at the Mayo Clinic.
The charge nurse came in and posted the room schedule, and the blue pack of surgeons went off to the surgery suites. Allen walked down the corridor not even paying attention to the red line, went to a sink, and meticulously scrubbed his fingers, hands, and forearms with antibacterial soap.
Allen was a belly man. His domain was the region located between the crotch and the diaphragm, the area in which lay the liver, the spleen, the pancreas, the colon, the small intestines, and the reproductive plumbing. The internal structure, shape, and color of these organs were more clearly visualized in his mind than the faces of the people they belonged to.
He walked into the surgery and held out his hands like a matador to be draped and gloved by the circulating nurse. The team assembled. Allen greeted them-first his resident, Durga Prasad from Bombay, the surgical tech, a
