and went up the stone steps to the heavy paneled door. In the foyer she blew on her blue fingers while walking in place to encourage circulation in her feet. She always had cold feet and hands from November to March.
While she blew and stamped she scanned the names next to the buzzer.
Bellows was number five. She pushed the button hard, and was rewarded with a raucous buzz.
In a minor panic she reached for the doorknob, scraping her knuckle on the metallic guard on the door frame as the door swung open. A small amount of blood oozed from her knuckle, and she lifted her hand to her mouth. In front of her was a staircase twisting up to the left. A shining brass chandelier hovered above, and a gilded frame mirror served to make the hall seem more spacious. By reflex she checked her hair in the mirror, pressing it down at her temples. As she climbed she noticed attractively framed Brueghel prints on every landing.
Exaggerating her exhaustion, she reached the top flight and paused, gripping the banister. Down the stairwell she could see to the tiled floor of the foyer, five storeys below. Bellows opened his door before Susan knocked.
“There’s an oxygen bottle in here if you need it, Grandma,” he said, smiling.
“God, the air is thin up here. Maybe I should sit here on the steps and.
recuperate for a few moments.”
“A glass of Bordeaux will fix you up perfectly. Give me your hand.”
Susan allowed Mark to help her into his apartment. Then she took off her coat, her eyes wandering around the room. Mark disappeared into the kitchen, returning with two glasses of ruby red wine.
Susan threw her coat over a straight-back chair near the door and pulled oft her high boots. Distracted, she took the wine and sipped it.
Her attention had been captured by the room she found herself in.
“Pretty tastefully decorated for a surgeon,” said Susan, walking into the center of the room.
It was about twenty by forty feet. At each end was a large old-fashioned fireplace, and in each glowed a cheerful fire. The beamed cathedral ceiling was very high, perhaps twenty feet at the peak, slanting down toward both fireplaces. The far wall was an enormous complex of geometric shapes, some housing bookshelves, others with objets d’art and a large stereo, TV, and tape system. The near wall was of exposed brick and covered with paintings, lithographs, and medieval sheet music, attractively framed. An antique Howard clock ticked unobtrusively over the fireplace to the right, a ship model adorned the mantelpiece to the left. Through the windows, on either side of both fireplaces, a myriad of crooked chimneys was silhouetted against the night sky.
The furnishings were of a minimum; Bellows had relied on a collection of thick scatter rugs, dominated by a blue and cream Bukhara in the center of the room. On it was a low onyx coffee table, surrounded by a large number of sizable pillows covered in shocking shades of corduroy.
“This is beautiful,” said Susan twisting around in the center of the room and then collapsing on an armful of cushions. “I never expected anything like this.”
“What did you expect?” Mark sat down on the other side of the low table.
“An apartment. You know, tables, chairs, couch, the usual.”
They both laughed, aware that they really did not know each other very well. Conversation remained on a frivolous level as they enjoyed the wine.
Susan hopefully pointed her stocking feet toward the fire, to warm her toes.
“More wine, Susan?”
“For sure. It tastes wonderful.”
Mark disappeared into the kitchen for the bottle. He poured each of them another glass.
“No one would ever believe the day I’ve had today, incredible,” said Susan, holding the glass of wine between her eye and the fire and appreciating its deep luscious red glow.
“If you haven’t abandoned your suicidal crusade, I believe anything. Did you go and see Stark?”
“You bet your ass, and contrary to your fears, he was very reasonable ...
more than I can say about Harris or even Nelson, for that matter.”
“Be careful, that’s all I can say. Stark is like an emotional chameleon. I usually get along with him extremely well. Yet today, out of the blue, I found out he’s furious at me because of some nut putting half-used medicine in a locker that I had used for a while. He doesn’t come to me and ask me about it the way a normal human being would. Instead he sics poor old Chandler, the chief resident, onto me, and Chandler cancels a case of mine to ask me about it Then later he calls me out of rounds to tell me Stark wants me to get to the bottom of it. You’d think I had nothing to do.”
“What’s this about drugs in a locker?” Susan remembered the doctor talking to Nelson.
“I’m not sure I have the whole story. Something about one of the surgeons coming across a whole bunch of drugs in an OR locker which old friggin’ Walters still had assigned to me. Apparently there were narcotics, curare, antibiotics—a whole pharmacy.”
“And they don’t know who put them there or why?”
“I guess not. It’s my idea that somebody’s been saving the stuff to ship off to Biafra or Bangladesh. There’s always a couple of people around with some cause like that. But why they’ve been storing them in a locker in the lounge is beyond me.”
“Curare is a nerve blocker, isn’t it, Mark?”
“Yup, a competitive nerve blocker. A great drug. Oh, in case you haven’t guessed-, we’re dining here tonight. I got some steaks, and the hibachi is all set on the fire escape outside the kitchen window.”
“Couldn’t be better, Mark. I’m exhausted. But I’m also hungry.”
“I’ll put the steaks on.” Mark walked into the kitchen with his wineglass.
“Does curare depress respiration?” asked Susan.
“Nope. It just paralyzes all the muscles. The person wants to breathe but can’t. They suffocate.”
Susan stared into the fireplace, resting the edge of her glass against her lower lip. The dancing flames hypnotized her and she thought about curare, about Greenly, about Berman. The fire crackled suddenly and angrily spat a red-hot coal against the screen. A piece of the coal ricocheted off the screen, landing in the rug to the side of the fireplace.
Susan jumped up, flicked it off the rug and pushed it harmlessly onto the slate hearth. She then walked over to the kitchen door, watching Mark season the steaks.
“Stark actually was interested in what I had found out and has already tried to help. I had asked him to help me get the charts of the patients on my list. When I called back later this afternoon, he said he had tried to get them for me but had been told that they were all signed out to one of the professors of neurology, a Dr. Donald McLeary. Do you know him?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean anything. I don’t know very many of the nonsurgical types.”
“To my way of thinking, it makes McLeary look rather suspicious.”
“Oh oh, here we go again, imagination plus! Dr. Donald McLeary mysteriously destroys the cerebrum of six patients ...”
“Twelve ...”
“OK, twelve, and then he signs all their charts out to eliminate any chance of suspicion. I can just picture all this in the headlines of the Boston Globe.”
Mark laughed as he put the steaks on the hibachi through the open window, then drew it down against the cold.
“Go ahead and laugh, but at the same time come up with an explanation for McLeary. Everyone else so far has expressed surprise at the idea of relating all these cases together. Everyone except this Dr. McLeary. He has all the charts. I just think it’s worth looking into. Maybe he’s been investigating this thing for some time and he’s far ahead of me. That would be nice to believe and if so, maybe I could help him.”
Mark didn’t answer. He was wondering exactly how he was going to try to talk Susan out of the whole business. He was also concentrating on the salad dressing, his culinary specialty. When he reopened the kitchen window, the cold wind brought in the sizzling aroma of the cooking steaks. Susan leaned against the door frame, watching him. She thought about how marvelous it would be to have a wife, to be able to come home and have a wife keeping the house in order, the meals on the table. At the same time it seemed ridiculously unfair that she could never have a wife. It was a mental game that Susan played with herself, always to the same impasse, as
