His fellow students woke up screaming. More morons started dropping out, talking about pharmacy school, chiropractic.
None of that second-rate bullshit for him.
He floated above it, cracking the books. Filling his head with doctor-words, taking special pleasure in Gross Lab, spending extra time there. Alone in the basement.
He had little use for food or sleep, was preparing himself for his rightful role as prizewinning pathologist on the staff of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.
Then came the day they wheeled Gauguin Boy into the lab, brain-ravaged, but the body so beautiful.
The cadaver got assigned to another student. He bribed the moron, exchanged a disgusting, shriveled old man, plus cash, for the boy.
Came back late at night to study. And cut. Lit the lamp over his dissecting table, left the rest of the room dark. Opened the black leather case, took out a dancer and made a real science Y incision. Cracked the sternum, pinned back the skin flaps.
And saw the internal beauty.
He wanted to dive in, swim among the colors, unite with the cells, the structure, the primal soup of life.
Be as one.
And why not?
Moving automatically, without thinking, he was stripping off his clothes, his nakedness delicious and holy. The lab, hot and humid and reeking of formaldehyde and rot, crickets chirping inside and out. But he wasn't afraid, wasn't sweating, so cool with purpose, floating above it all.
Then descending. On top of the boy, the hole a window to beauty, welcoming him.
Merge.
Coolflesh.
A moment of indescribable ecstasy, then betrayal:
Pidgin curses. The lights sharp and blinding.
Professor Anton Bromet Van der Veering, M.D., D.Sc, standing in the doorway, pipe in hand, the naked-lady meerschaum resembling a tiny female victim struggling in his slimy yellow fingers.
Staring, the piggy-slant eyes so bugged out they'd become round.
Fucker expelled him that night, gave him three days to leave the island. Remained resolute, beyond the lure of more money.
The first time in St. Ignatius history. Hot death-shame took hold of him and made him tremble as he packed. He considered letting a dancer jitterbug along his own wrists, ending it all, then realized it was an honor to be expelled.
He was lucky: set free from a shitpile, separated from stink. Too clean and noble for this place. It was all part of a plan-of Schwann's plan.
Dieter-Daddy had better things in mind for him. Cleaner things.
He put aside failure-thoughts and gave himself a bon voyage party. Gauguin Girl down by the river, washing clothes. Exchange of smiles. Hi, I'm Dr. Terrific. The sweet bliss of real science, in the creamy green silence of the jungle.
He used her bucket and river water to wash her. Left her lying under an enormous mango tree-more bloody fruit to match the soft, festering ones that had fallen to the ground.
Bye-bye, stinkhole.
A stopover in Amsterdam, sluts in windows-he would have loved to play real science with them, but no time.
Back home, he went to see Doctor in his office at the hospital. Kikefuck said nothing, shot him I-told-you-so taunt-beams with his silence.
You'll find me another school. A real one.
Oh, sure, just like that.
Bet on it. Knowing he had the fucker's balls in his pocket.
But a week later the fucker was history. Keeled over in the operating room, dropped dead right on top of a patient.
First-class joke: Famous heart surgeon dies of heart attack. Raking in big bucks bypassing other people's arteries; meanwhile, his own were sludging up.
Funny, but not funny. In death, the fucker got in his last licks: left him out of the will. Everything signed over to Sarah.
As if she needed it, out of Harvard, Mass General, a psychiatrist with a brand-new Boston practice. And married to that fat little hook-nosed kikeshit, also a shrink; on top of everything else, his family was filthy rich. The two of them raking it in, with their Beacon Hill town house, summer home 'on the Cape,' Mercedes, good clothes, theater tickets.
He and Sarah barely noticed each other at the funeral. He stared at her tits, but kept to himself, talked to no one. She interpreted it as heavy-duty grief, wrote him a letter stinking of phony sympathy, signing over the deed to the pink Haus to him.
Throw a bone to stupid little brother.
