Hooked (12 page)

“I’m sorry,” said Gavin. “But I have to find out what’s causing you so much pain—”

“It hurts like hell and it gets worse all the time—”

“I’m being as gentle as I can, Mr. President,” Gavin said.

He continued his examination of the spine, sciatic-nerve impulses and located the neural terminus of the President’s pain. When Gavin was finished, he told the President he could get dressed.

“You’re not going to give me a shot?”

“I don’t want to treat you until the lab work is completed and I look at the X-rays—”

“Why not?”

“Because, Mr. President, if I’m right, the source of your pain is neurological,” said Gavin. “Local injections aren’t going to help—”

“The other doctors gave me locals—”

“All of them?” replied Gavin. He couldn’t believe that no other doctor had come to the conclusion that he had. This was the President of the United States. He would have had the best doctors in the world, wouldn’t he? On the other hand, thought Gavin, although other doctors may or may not have reached his diagnosis, the fact was that no other doctor had access to the sophisticated drug therapy he had spent years researching, creating and perfecting.

“When will you be finished with the lab work and the X-rays?” asked the President. He bent over slowly, clearly in great pain, to retrieve the clothes neatly piled on a wooden folding chair.

“You’ll have X-rays taken later today,” said Gavin. “I’ll have the lab process your tests and tissue samples right away—”

The President watched as Gavin opened the briefcase, cracked the cellophane wrapping on a fresh syringe and proceeded to add a mixture of liquids to the syringe.

“What’s in that?” asked the President.

“Dexedrine, hyaluronic acid, vitamins—”

“Dexie?” asked the President. “You mean greenies? I used to take them in college before exams so I could stay up all night and study—”

“If you took it, I’m glad you stopped,” Gavin said. “Dexedrine is not something to be taken casually—”

“Greenies never hurt me,” said the President, holding his arm out.

James Santana watched Carl find a vein and swab the surface skin with a wad of cotton. He didn’t take his eyes away as the needle punctured the thin skin and plunged into the bluish vein. He followed with his eyes as the fluid left the syringe and entered his bloodstream.

Gavin noticed how the patient was transfixed. His patient. A man just like any other that he treated. A man under his control, as all of them were.

As he withdrew the needle, the President slumped in relief. Then he sat up straight, stretching his spine, enjoying pain-free movement for the first time in years.

With a swift movement, the President got up, rolled down his sleeve, picked up the jacket hanging on back of the wooden chair and strode to the small elevator that connected the White House basement to the First Family’s apartment and the Oval Office. He jabbed the button impatiently and then abruptly turned around.

“You, Dr. Jenkins, you can go now,” he said absently, his mind already on important matters of state. It was almost as if he had forgotten Gavin’s existence.

Gavin responded with a thin smile. He knew that before long he would not be so dispensable.

The President accepted Carl’s status as a well-known doctor with a combination of wry amusement and indifference. He was too involved in matters of state to concern himself with Dr. Jenkins’ activities away from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

What James Santana did not anticipate was the emergence of Gavin Jenkins, Superstar. Gavin was initially dubbed “The Celebrity Doctor” because of all the famous people he treated and inevitably he became a celebrity himself. Neither Gavin nor Cleo were completely prepared.

It started when the television program
This Week
decided to film an eleven-minute segment with Gavin called “A New Kind of Doctor.” The interviewer spent three afternoons in Gavin’s office and another at his home conducting the interview. The questions were probing and, at times, almost impertinent, yet Gavin’s answers were forceful and convincing.

Even Cleo and Gavin were impressed when they saw the segments edited together at a private screening at the CBS Broadcast Center. Cleo hoped the attention would add to Gavin’s reputation. Gavin hoped he would create a small stir inside the medical world.

The stir was not small and it was not limited to his own profession.
This Week
received a record number of letters, the majority from women, who wanted to find out more about Gavin Jenkins. They made it clear that it was the man more than the treatment that intrigued them. Three weeks later,
This Week
ran a three-minute segment about the volume of mail with the host commenting that America had apparently found a new kind of sex symbol.

Gavin and Cleo joked about it but
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magazine reacted not with amusement but heightened interest. Their “Medicine” section had been working on a cover story about scientists of the future: the James Watsons, William Masterses, Christiaan Barnards, and Jonas Salks.
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had been planning a composite cover featuring sixteen doctors who were the bright hopes of tomorrow. The cover was an accurate reflection of the story but when the editors heard about
This Week
’s mail, they decided that Gavin Jenkins had “animal appeal” and put him on the cover all by himself.

For the first time, Gavin was recognized on the street. People approached him and asked for autographs. Requests came into his office for speaking appearances around the country. Women’s clubs wanted him to talk and New York’s two largest lecture bureaus both wanted to sign him. Newspapers around the country had their New York correspondents call and arrange interviews. Cleo discovered that she didn’t have to phone the papers anymore to suggest stories. Now the papers called them.

Gavin was being talked about but he was still not major news as Ames Bostwick discovered when he tried to persuade an important talk show to accept Gavin as a guest. Ames had booked Adriana Partos for a ninety-minute interview to initiate publicity for her comeback tour. Three days before the taping, Adriana changed her mind. She was just too busy preparing for the concert to take time for a television interview.

Ames suggested Gavin as a substitute guest but the staff of the show felt that he was not a strong-enough name to carry a ninety-minute show all by himself. Ames persisted and gave the same hard sell about Gavin that he had been delivering privately to his friends. The show, persuaded by Ames’s enthusiasm and unable to book another headliner at the last minute, finally agreed to have Gavin on the program.

The taping itself went fine. The host spent most of the time talking about Gavin’s famous patients — the ones who didn’t mind being identified publicly, which of course did not include President Santana. Gavin knew he was there to help promote the tour and he talked about Adriana with so much warmth and affection that viewers were convinced they were close friends.

Waiting outside the stage door were a dozen teenage girls who had read about the taping in a story that Cleo had placed in the
Daily News
. They were looking for autographs and Cleo, who was waiting for him in the back seat of their Mercedes, and could see them crowd around him.

“One at a time, please,” Gavin said as he stepped out onto the sidewalk.

“Isn’t he cute?” one of the girls asked as the others giggled and moved in closer.

“I can’t write with all of you on top of me,” he protested, scribbling in their autograph books.

“I would love for you to be on top of me,” one of the girls said coldly to Gavin.

The others tittered and one of them said, “Me, too—”

In an almost predatory flock, they moved closer.

“Hey, wait a minute,” said Gavin, holding up his hand. “If you want me to sign autographs, you’ve got to give me some room—”

“I’m a Virgo and I need to touch you,” came another voice.

The phrase alarmed Cleo. Every day Gavin had been receiving a new letter addressed to him in care of
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magazine and forwarded to him. “I’m a Virgo, and I need to fuck you,” said each letter. The letters, which never had return addresses, were filled with gutter-level obscenities. After the first few, Gavin had thrown them into the wastebasket unopened. Now Cleo searched the crowd and tried to spot the unbalanced pen pal.

“I’ve got his shirt,” one of the girls shrieked and ripped a piece of it from his body.

Cleo, watching from the car, saw one girl who looked to be about five-feet-eight and one hundred and fifty pounds lurch up against Gavin. He staggered backwards for a moment.

“That’s enough,” he shouted and began pushing through the group to the car. Pieces of his shirt were now hanging from his neck and his chest was exposed.

“We’re not going to let him get away, are we?” shouted a high-pitched voice.

The knot of girl erupted in a chorus of
No’s
and then surged forward, surrounding him. Cleo gasped when she saw that one girl had a razor blade and was attempting to cut off part of his shirt cuff.

Looking pale and frightened, Gavin pushed his way through the crowd, almost knocking down one of the girls. Cleo opened the door for him and he jumped inside. A moment later they were speeding away into downtown traffic.

Gavin was safe and Cleo was shaking.

“Vicious little monsters,” she said.

“They meant well,” Gavin said.

“They didn’t mean well,” said Cleo. “They were dangerous and one of them had a razor blade—”

Gavin was unconcerned. “They were just star struck—”

Cleo could barely believe him. She looked over at him and saw that he was sitting there, his clothing in shreds, smiling. He had liked it.

There was something about anonymous sex that appealed to Gavin. When he had been in medical school, he had picked up street walkers now and then but he resented paying for sex. Still, he found it exciting to climb into bed with a woman he had never seen before and would never see again. Not knowing anything about her — who she was, what she thought and felt — gave him license to do whatever he wanted. What specifically he did or didn’t do was insignificant. The important thing was knowing that he could.

The first time he had sex with a fan was a week after the talk show. She had been standing in front of his office every evening and at first he wondered if she were there to meet someone, because she didn’t say anything and she didn’t approach him. But his instincts told him something different.

For five days Gavin pretended not to notice her. He walked straight ahead to his waiting car, climbed inside and drove away. On the sixth night, he nodded at her very slightly. He climbed into the car and left the door open. She got in after him and sat next to him. Gavin reached across her to close the door and at that moment she began to caress his groin.

Gavin drew the shades that covered the windows and the chauffeur drove off. He would know to go around the park until Gavin gave him other instructions. The girl raised her knees and pulled up her skirt. She was not wearing panties.

Gavin noted her blond thatch, and without bothering to take his trousers off, unzipped his fly and plunged inside. She licked the inside of his ear, nibbled the lobe, and began whispering. She repeated the same sentence over and over, as if it were a mantra that would intensify reality and convince herself of her good fortune: “I’m fucking Gavin Jenkins. I’m fucking Gavin Jenkins. I’m fucking Gavin Jenkins.”

She came after a few minutes, slumped back and looked up at him.

“You’re the seventh guest on that show I’ve fucked,” she announced. “I can’t get to the host,” she continued. “Will you speak to him about me? You’d be doing me a big favor.”

Gavin had had enough. “Where would you like me to drop you off?”

For a moment she gave him a beseeching look. Then, resigned, she said, “The corner will be fine.”

When the car stopped, she opened the door and stepped out without a word.

Gavin never saw her again.

But there were other fans he did see. In the back seat of the Mercedes, in the dressing room of a television studio, and once in a dark alley off Sheridan Square. They came into his life suddenly and disappeared just as quickly. They were like the medical school whores except he didn’t have to pay. Giving them Gavin Jenkins was reimbursement enough.

Yet most of the sex was with his patients. As he became more famous, they were more aggressive.

“What made you so sure I wouldn’t be offended?” Gavin asked one of them.

“Because you telegraph that you’re available,” she said. “It’s not what you say, it’s the way you look at me. The way you touch me—”

Gavin resented that. It was true that he was available to his patients, but only secondarily did that availability have anything to do with sex. His attitude was that he was there not to satisfy himself but to see that other people were fulfilled. He was dedicated to helping them realize their potential and to do that he used all of himself. His intelligence, his personality, his sex and his syringe — all were simply extensions of himself. He believed he made other people come alive because of who he was and what he did for them. Sex was their therapy and his payment.

There were large breasts that bounced up and down and small boyish ones. There was thick, full pubic hair and sparse hair — blonde and black and red and gray. Sometimes he could see himself moving in and out, his round, hard prick disappearing inside their holes as he gave himself to them, and then emerging again, thick and whole, as he took himself back. Sometimes he watched the movement in a small mirror over the examining table.

What he liked best of all was their faces. The eyes filled with apprehension and pleasure. The lips, which they bit until blood formed. The hungry throats that gasped for breath.

He existed only to give people a vision of themselves bolder and more daring than any they would have without him. He enabled them to become themselves. He never doubted himself and certainly never thought that it could be all obscenely self-righteous.