No One Rides For Free - Larry Beinhart (21 page)

"What possible difference does it make?"
Sandy said.

"To you? Probably none," Paul said.

"
You prefer to say 'fuck' when you're in pain? "
the doctor asked me.

"No, no, in the joke," I explained.

"Please, can't we stop this?" Sandy
pleaded.

"There. It's coming off," the doc said.
"OK. Fuck who?"

"No. Fuck whom," I said.

"That's not a very good joke," the doctor
said, "even for a knock-knock joke. Do you know any grape jokes
or elephant jokes?"

"No. It can't stop. Not when you bring your
filth into our home," Paul said. There were tears in Sandy's
eyes. "Have you been to bed with that man?"

"A long time ago," she said, beaten.
"Before I even knew you."

"Now I get it, " the doctor said. "Not
funny, but pungent indeed. "

"Fuck," I yelled as he yanked the cloth
from the wound.

"Not again," the doc said.

Paul stared at Sandy. He spoke slowly, deliberately,
and mean. "This is the apartment we moved into together. This is
not where you lived before you knew me. How did your lover know to
come here?"

"I must admit you're right," Bemstein said
to me, "it's just a flesh wound, didn't even touch much muscle."

"You really want to pick a fight," Sandy
said, losing.

"I guess I better look at the rib," the doc
said. "You get kicked around a lot, do you?"

"I hardly need to pick one," Paul
declaimed. Very deliberately he threw the remainder of his brandy in
her face.

"Ouuarrghhh," I said when Bemstein's
fingers felt for the break.

Sandy slapped Paul across the face. Paul marched out
of the room.

"Yup. It's broken."

He felt around some more. I winced and bit my tongue.
Sandy stood stockstill, dripping in the middle of the room. Paul came
marching back. He had exchanged slippers for shoes. He carried his
suit in one hand, his briefcase and socks in the other. He gave us
all, and the room, one last imperious gaze and marched out.

"Some Demerol and tape, X rays in the morning, "
I said.

"That's a pretty fair diagnosis and
prescription. I hate to agree with my patients, but that's what I
would have said," Bemstein said.

While he rummaged through his bag for a needle and
the pain sweetener, Sandy wandered over to the couch. It was
something to watch instead of the door that had just closed.

"Do you get beat up a lot?" Bemstein asked.

"
Not as often as I would like," I said
fluttering my lashes in an imitation of Alan Alda imitating Groucho
Marx.

"From the way you diagnose," the doctor
explained, "you seem to know your pain very well."

"We all know our pain well," I said as
sententiously as possible.

"You bastard," Sandy said.

"You just had to make your grand entrance. The
big dramatic gesture. And bleed all over my couch. " Then she
hic-cuped and said, "Oh God," starting to laugh with the
tears. I started laughing too. Of course that hurt like hell, and I
clutched my ribs to hold the pain in place.

"Good," Sandy said, "I hope every 'ha'
hurts like hell."

"We have to turn you over," the doctor
said.

"OK, if you help," I said. I opened my
pants before the turn.

In midroll the pain shot through my stomach and
washed up and down, but when I flattened out, it backed off. Once I
was over on my side, he yanked my pants down.

"Usually I let my nurse do this. She gets off on
it," he said, jabbing the needle in my ass. I was only a few
moments away from lovely and I knew it. "I love you, Doc."

"Are you sure you want to say that to a man who
just pulled your pants down?"

The pains were beginning to recede as I drifted into
the Demerol. I rolled over onto my back. All by myself!

"You
want a shot too?" Bemstein said to Sandy.

"No, thank you, Allan, I think I'll just do
inner resources."

"Sandy, do you think he's gone for good?"
he asked.

"Who knows?"

"Well, you know, I mean, what I'm trying to
say," Allan tried to say, "is that you know how I've always
felt about you . . . and in this time of loneliness and loss, I would
like to take advantage of your weakness."

"Allan, it would be unethical."

"The doctor-patient relationship is sacred,"
I put in, wanting to discourage this.

"That's not the problem," Allan said,
"she's not my patient."

"That's right," Sandy said, "I'm his
therapist."

"Sandy," Allan swore, "I swear it
would be all right with me. I would not feel victimized. "

"Allan, don't you think we should deal with your
dysfunction first?"

"A sexual dysfunction?" I asked.

"No," he replied, "medical."

I went out at that point, drifting away from Sandy
and the doctor with the medical dysfunction, wondering where Franco
had gone.

When my eyes opened, Bemstein was gone; I was alone
with Sandy. She was sitting on the couch beside me. I was thirsty as
hell and took a sip of the drink she was holding.

"I'm sorry I busted things up."

"No. He was just looking for an excuse."

"Do you have many lovers?"

"
It is a common thing to project your own faults
and guilts on other people. He does that."

"I'm sorry," I said again. She leaned over
and kissed me. Soft, clean and cool. I slid my good arm around her
and held her to it. It was a kiss that went with Demerol the way
strawberries go with cream, soda goes with whiskey, bicycles go with
spring.

"Do you want to do this in your condition?"
she said when it stopped.

"I'll manage," I bragged, "but only if
you're gentle with me."

"You don't have to brag," she said.
"Everyone knows you'd have to die before you admitted you
couldn't fuck. I was asking about your emotional condition."

"My emotional condition?"

"The last time I saw you, you were very serious
about maintaining a relationship. I'm reminding you, just in case
that hasn't changed."

"Wel1, the truth is, I'm in love."

"Oh," she said.

"With another woman; actually, with both of
them."

"You are a bastard," she said pleasantly,
"and I'm glad you're not my problem."

"
It's a real problem," I said defensively.
"It's a conflict."

"
You can tell me about it during office hours.
I'm off duty now. "

"Well, then," I said, "can I nibble
your lower lip?`I always had a thing for that lip. " She came
close and let me do it. It became one of those strawberry,
whiskey-soda, springday kisses. And her breasts felt ripe against my
chest.

"
So you re not worried about infidelity anymore,
" she murmured in my ear.

"I don't know. I mean since I already am, does
this make it twice as bad, or half as bad, or is it a geometric
progression?" She giggled. "Besides, I can always say I was
stoned. And out-of-town. Out-of-town doesn't count, does it?"

I was stoned. I was grateful to be alive. Sandy had
just gone through a confrontation and a trauma. She was an abandoned
woman. And I was out-of-town. None of those things were excuses. They
were the spices. It was a scene right out of The Late Shaw. It was
heaven.
 

21
THE
TODAY SHOW

THE ONLY NICE
thing about
the morning after was that there was no blood in my urine.

Sandy helped me get up. She loaned me a toothbrush.
She found some of her husband's clothes and helped me into them. She
called a cab and guided me into the backseat. "How about some
Demerol?" I said to Dr. Bemstein. Just as cheery and bright as
the night before, Bemstein said, "Let's do the examination
first."

He X-rayed the ribs. He pulled the bandage off the
wound, inspected it, antisepticed it, rebandaged it. I gave him a
urine sample. He stared at it with apparent satisfaction.

"Now are we ready for the Demerol?" I said.

"How about some Tylenol? Or aspirin?"

"Don't be cruel," I whimpered. "I'm in
pain. I can't sit by myself. I can't stand my myself. I need help."

"I'm sure you would enjoy the Demerol," he
said. "But you don't need it. The pain is not that severe, nor
is there shock, as there was last night. I hate to disappoint you,
but I believe doctors should be ultra-conservative in prescribing
substances open to abuse."

"Look, Doc. . ."

"No. No. Which will it be? Aspirin or Tylenol?"

“
Aspirin," I said. He gave me a free sample of
generic

It must have been worth all of $00.000015.

"Look, Doc, I'm sure you get people hustling you
for the fun drugs all the time, but just gimme a listen. You're
right. The pain is bearable, or would be bearable, if I did not have
to move. I'm in the middle . . ."

"Look, I'd like to help. . ."

"Just hear me out, " I said. "Number
one, I was following a guy, a killer, before this happened. I have to
find out if he's still around."

"I wouldn't recommend that," Bemstein said.
"The job he already did on you seems quite adequate to me."

"Number two, there was a guy who was supposed to
be backing me up. When I got in trouble he wasn't there. Maybe
something happened to him, maybe not. But I gotta find that out too.
Number three, I do have to talk to the police, the D.C. police, about
what happened last night, and the Virginia police about the man who
got away. He's the perp in a killing in Culpepper County. Number
four, I got to try to explain to Avis why their car is upside down on
a cliff in Rock Creek Park .... "

"Didn't you get the extra collision coverage?
You should always get the extra collision."

"I did. I did, but. . ."

"So you have nothing to worry about then."

"Goddammit, Allan, you're not listening to me.
It's not the fucking car. It's not the pain. I gotta get things done
.... "

"I would like to oblige. But not as a doctor."

"Allan, if I have to get down on my knees and
beg, I promise you that you are going to have to help me back up."

"
All I'm trying to say, Tony, is that I do
understand. I will do what I can to help. How about some coke? Will
that do it?"

"What?" I said.

"Some coke. "

"Sure, that should do it. "

"
The thing is, it has to be between you and me
personally. Not you and me as doctor and patient. And please don't
tell Sandy. As my therapist she'll be very angry with me."

"I understand," I said, thinking I might
figure it out at some later date.

"It's a buck seventy-five a gram, and I can let
you have one."

"Hey, hey, hey, Doc. I know this is D.C. and I'm
from out of town, but that is a little steep."

"Hardly. This is pharmaceutical."

"Sure, " I said. Pharmaceutical is one of
those things one hears about but never sees. Like water into wine,
levitation or a good garage mechanic.

"Really," he said with pride and sincerity.
"We have an optometrist in our little medical group here."

"Sounds good," I said. He went to his desk,
opened a locked drawer and brought out a premeasured bottle. I gave
him money, he gave me coke. I laid out four lines and we each snorted
two. The blood that had been trudging so sluggishly through my veins
began to surge for my arteries. The acceleration was smooth.

"I take my role as a doctor," the doctor
said, "very seriously. I will not overprescribe. I will not be a
drugstore. As a private person," he giggled, "of course, my
situation is a lot looser."

"What I will do," I said, "is continue
to be irritated at Dr. Bemstein because he wouldn't give me the
Demerol, but be grateful to my friend, Allan, for helping me out with
a little of this pharmaceutical, but nonprescription, pick-me-up
painkiller."

"That," he said seriously, "is
precisely the thing."

I called Franco's home. I was very eager to find out
precisely what he had been doing with himself while I was being shot
at and used as a football at field-goal practice. If he didn't have a
damn good excuse, I intended to say several offensive things to him.

He was not home. I called Gene, in the hopes that he
might know Franco's whereabouts. Gene wasn't in either.

But his secretary had a message for me. If I called,
she was instructed to ask me to meet him at St. Agnes, Mother of
Mercy Hospital, in or around room 510. I asked if there was something
wrong. She said no, he was there on some sort of business.
 
The cabbie the cab company sent was a polite little
cracker who moonlighted as an alcoholic on his off years. It had
taken a lot of his strength away. When I clung to him to climb into
the back of the cab, he fell against my ribs. After the color
returned to my face and I was able to shut off the flow of apologies,
I told him I would get in the front seat by myself. Thank you.