Private Practices (9 page)

Naomi moved further away. “That's ridiculous. We hardly know each other.”

“I'm in love with you. Really I am.”

Naomi began to giggle. “Me? Why me?”

He had asked himself the same question repeatedly ever since the thought of marrying her had first occurred to him. And he had been unable to answer it. Except to tell himself that he had sensed that she was available. He hated that explanation. “Because you're adventurous and independent,” he offered, hoping to persuade both her and himself that he had sound reasons for his courtship. “A risk taker,” he added flatteringly.

Naomi was dubious. “You don't know me well enough to make such a statement.” Turning away again, she opened the refrigerator to wrestle out an ice tray. “I could be anyone. Anyone at all.” She sounded indignant and, when she snapped the tray open, ice cubes skidded along the kitchen counter and down onto the floor.

Embarrassed and feeling his cause hopeless, he hid the disappointment in his face by bending to pick up some of the scattered cubes. Then he decided to try his luck one more time. “I'm not always potent,” he said softly, his eyes on the linoleum. “And I'm terribly lonely.” Admitting to neediness was not a form of communication with which he felt comfortable. Sidney was always trying to provoke him into revealing vulnerability and afterwards he would mock him for it. But he had noticed that when he had spoken to Naomi on the telephone this afternoon, she, unlike Sidney, had seemed to respond favorably to his direct expression of need. “I'm afraid that if I don't have someone to be with, I'm not going to be able to fight the pills.”

When he stood up, ice numbing his fingers, she said appreciatively, “Well, at least you sound honest now.”

He felt encouraged. “I'm trying. It isn't easy.” But dropping the cubes back into the tray, he still avoided her gaze.

“Why not? Who isn't lonely? I've been so lonely lately that I've been sleeping with my boss. Even though I know his wife.”

A small surge of confidence arose in him and at last he faced her once again. “You can't feel good about yourself for that,” he commented. “Do you see him often?”

“Matinees,” she said belittlingly.

His spirits soared. “I'm glad. I was hoping you might have some time on your hands. You see, I need you to help me.”

“Help you how?” She ran a worrying hand through her springy curls.

“Be with me. Spend time with me.”

Naomi stared at him. “Getting involved with you seems crazy to me,” she said, shaking her head. “After what you've told me about yourself.” Then she remembered that she had still not poured their drinks and did so now, Scotch splashing over the rim of the glasses onto the table.

Half-standing, he forced himself to reach across the two feet of linoleum that separated them, and, grasping her arm, drew her to him, sinking into a chair and holding her firmly in front of him so that she could no longer avoid him with chores. “Why? What have I told you? That I was taking drugs? Look at it another way. I've told you that I've been strong enough to stop taking them and to start myself on a new path. And I can stay on it, if you'll help me.”

Her legs began to tremble slightly against his bent knees and he lifted her skirt ever so slightly and caressed the backs of her thighs. “There are so many things you and I could do together. Do you like the theater? Restaurants?” She had, despite herself, nodded her head. “Traveling? There are medical conferences all over the world that I never attend because everyone else goes with his wife or his lover and I've never had anyone I wanted to take. But I'd take you. We could go to France, to Scandinavia, even to China, if you want. Listen to me, Naomi, it's not really so crazy and you know it.”

He wasn't sure if it was his words or the insistence of his palms on her thighs that was reducing her resistance to him. Slipping his hands farther up her legs, he continued both efforts. His palms sliding under her nylon panties to squeeze her buttocks, he said, “Come away with me this weekend. We could go to Vermont. My nurse told me about a great place there, where she goes skiing all the time. And afterward, next weekend or whenever, we can plan on something better. Bermuda.”

Naomi quivered under his hands. “Do you feel anything now?” she asked. “Anything sexual, I mean?”

“Not just yet. Sometimes it takes me time. That's why I want to go away with you. So we'll have time. You've read Masters and Johnson haven't you?”

She nodded, bending toward him slightly, her legs unsteady. “Were you always impotent?”

“No. Yes. Most of the time. Enough of the time so that when I started taking the pills it was a way of not having to worry about sex again. Among other things I didn't want to worry about.”

“I don't know. I don't know,” she said wistfully. “I feel sorry for you. And I like you. Despite myself, I like you. But you scare me too.”

“Don't be scared.” His hands continued to press her round buttocks. “I won't hurt you again.” Then pressing his lips to her dark-toned belly he whispered, “You and I have a history. Not much of one, I'll admit. But somehow it makes it easier for me to talk to you. And I need someone to talk to or else I'll go back on the pills again. You can see that, can't you?”

She was no longer pulling away. He brushed his lips repeatedly across her belly, his hands preventing her skirt from falling. When he let go of her, she had agreed to go to Vermont with him.

He had learned something about Naomi, he thought. Behind her defensiveness, she was a woman who needed to be needed. It was a handy thing to know, but then perhaps he had known this about her all along. Perhaps it was her very desire to be needed that had made him think of her. Leaving her loft, his long legs hurtling down the stairs, he felt uncharacteristically optimistic and powerful.

The next day, he had to tell Sidney his plans. Sidney had taken the morning off in order to prepare a lecture he was delivering at the medical school later in the day and he had no patients. It was a better time than most to approach him with details. Knocking on his door, Ben slipped inside, hoping that he would be in an agreeable mood. But he couldn't tell. He was making notes in longhand on index cards and said, “What is it?” without looking up.

“It's about the weekend,” Ben began uneasily, and wished that Sidney would look at him when he talked.

“Yeah?” Sidney's ballpoint made a scratching sound.

Trying to encourage himself, Ben reminded himself that Sidney owed him a wealth of weekends. He was forever covering the office while Sidney attended conventions and conferences or traveled to the Caribbean to supervise the research on his pill. He forced himself to go ahead. “I'd like the weekend off. I'm thinking of going skiing. In Vermont.”

Sidney put down his pen. “Skiing? Since when do you ski?”

Having captured Sidney's attention, he grew more confident. “I thought I might take lessons.”

Laughing, Sidney picked up his pen again. “There's no snow in Vermont this week.”

“Well, it might snow.”

Sidney shook his head from side to side as if he found Ben amusing. “That's funny. You're kidding aren't you?” When Ben too shook his head, Sidney grumbled, “You might have mentioned it sooner. Claudia and I were thinking of possibly flying up to Boston this weekend to see her mother.”

Disappointed, Ben said, “Oh. I'm sorry. I was hoping you had no plans.”

“They're not definite,” Sidney admitted.

“Then couldn't you postpone? You see, I've already talked to a woman I know about going with me. If I'm going.”

“No kidding? Who?” Sidney looked surprised and more than a little annoyed.

“Naomi Golden.”

Sidney spoke condescendingly. “You're joking. What do you see in her?” Then he smiled. “I know what she sees in you. Dollar signs.”

Ben felt his resolve begin to weaken. “You think so?” he asked hesitantly and thought of explaining to Sidney exactly why he badly needed companionship these days, no matter its source. But somehow he couldn't bring himself to do it. If he told Sidney now that he had given up the barbiturates, before he himself was certain his reformation would last, Sidney would be skeptical at best. But if he waited and surprised him with the information once his withdrawal was permanent and well established, Sidney would be impressed. “Well, maybe you're right about Naomi,” he said. “But still, I'd like to go. I haven't had a weekend out of the city for ages.”

“All right,” Sidney said at last begrudgingly. “But don't expect me to cover for you. Ask Burt Herron. Or Sam Schwartz. That way I can still get away myself if I want to.”

Harry Mulenberg was sitting in his wheelchair in the front row of the amphitheater in which Sidney Zauber was lecturing. The room was packed, jammed principally with students but with a goodly scattering of attending doctors and hospital personnel as well. It was rare for the Wednesday guest lecture to draw such a crowd, Mulenberg thought, but then Sidney's research had been mentioned on television and in the newspapers and doctors were no different from everyone else in the way they responded to celebrity. Because Sidney was becoming famous, they wanted to be able to say they'd heard him speak, and most of them would approve his speech no matter what he said. It was what the psychiatrists at the hospital called the “Yea Phenomenon,” Mulenberg mused; people tended to say yes, to nod and grant agreement to anyone who seemed already to have garnered public esteem.

He turned and looked around querulously at the audience. Sidney had read from notes, had rarely raised his head, had erased diagrams as fast as he had drawn them. Yet still the audience was listening approvingly, and many people were nodding admiringly. A moment later Sidney finished speaking and applause broke out. Before it subsided, a man from the hospital's public relations staff snapped pictures of Sidney and the enthusiastic audience both.

“Dr. Zauber will take questions now,” the young resident who had introduced Sidney said as soon as the room was quiet again. He stepped to the podium and Sidney moved a few feet away from it.

A number of hands shot up and the resident began calling on people. Whenever he did, and a question was asked, Sidney would saunter to the podium to deliver his answer and afterward would modestly retreat to the side of the platform again, letting the young resident take charge.

“How many women did you say you had already studied?” one student asked. “How much longer will you be doing your follow-up studies before you publish?” asked another. So far the questions were simply requests for restatements of information Sidney had already given. Mulenberg raised his hand. He would give Sidney a hard one, he thought. A question Sidney would have to ponder before answering.

There were other hands fluttering in the audience but he knew the resident would call upon him next; it was customary to recognize elder staff members before the younger doctors and students. He waited, his arm in the air, framing his question while Sidney gave a lengthy answer to the previous query. But when Sidney had finished speaking, he didn't step away from the podium. He remained there and himself nodded to a questioner at the side of the room, another student, and then to one in the back, an intern. Mulenberg kept his hand up during both answers.

The resident, his eyes on Mulenberg, whispered something to Sidney. Sidney looked at his watch and whispered something back. And then the resident said, his voice conciliatory, “I'm afraid Dr. Zauber won't be able to take any further questions. He has an emergency consultation at Midstate at five.”

There were groans of disappointment from the audience, but Sidney hunched up his shoulders in an apologetic shrug, and, arms raised, palms upward, said, “Well, maybe you can learn something from this too. The fun and the glamour are in research. But patients always come first.”

The students liked it. Again, there was applause and immediately afterward a handful of young men and women rose and moved eagerly toward Sidney, who was already packing up his notes.

Just then he seemed finally to see Mulenberg, although the students were closing ranks around him, buzzing with interest and admiration. He stepped outside their white-jacketed circle for a moment, and looking at Mulenberg with a smile, waved at him, a large, elongated opal gleaming on his right hand. “Harry! Nice to see you! Didn't know you were here!”

Mulenberg didn't wave back. Putting both hands on the wheels of his chair, he began maneuvering his way out through the crowded front aisle of the amphitheater. He was furious with Sidney for not acknowledging him, and as he pushed his way toward the elevator he had the nagging thought that his former protégé was trying to hide something. He couldn't think what it might be, but he made up his mind to try to find out. He knew one of Sidney's Caribbean researchers. Had heard some vague but negative gossip about the pill from him. Instead of taking the elevator down to the Founders' Lounge, where he was supposed to meet Thomas Alithorn for a drink after the lecture, he asked the operator to let him off on the fifth floor. Then, tediously, he made his way to his office.

It was dusty, he noted pettishly as he pushed through the door. Sidney Zauber looked through him as if age and illness had made him invisible as well as ineffectual, and even the maintenance staff seemed to believe he would never get back to work again. But he would show them. It was just a matter of time. Already, his leg was growing stronger. He could even, he noticed, place some weight on it now as he leaned down to open his bottom desk drawer and pull out his old Rolodex.

He found the name he was looking for and placed his call. But when the long distance operator connected him with Keith Neville's clinic, a nurse reported that Neville couldn't be reached today at all. “He gone to St. Lucy,” the woman said in a lyrical West Indian accent. “He reach home tomorrow.”