5. MEET BOB COMEAUX and Max in Bob’s splendid office in Fedville, the federal complex housing the qualitarian center, communicable diseases control, and the AIDS quarantine. He’s at the top now, director of something or other—Quality of Life Division, or something like—in the penthouse of the monolith with a splendid panoramic view of the river in its great sweep from the haze of Baton Rouge to the south to the wooded loess hills of St. Francisville to the north. Except for the cooling tower of Grand Mer looming directly opposite and flying its plume of steam like Mt. St. Helens, it could be the same quaint lordly river of Mark Twain, its foul waters all gold and rose in the sunset. There’s even a stern-wheeler, the new Robert E. Lee, huffing upstream, hauling tourists to the plantations.

Max and Bob are cordial and uneasy, having no stomach for this chore, riding herd on a colleague—what doctor would? Ordinarily we get along with standard medical jokes and doctors’ horsing around, but this business is official, legal, and awkward.

Accordingly, they go out of their way to be easy, yawn and stretch a lot, sit anywhere but in chairs. Bob is dressed for riding, in flared stretch pants, field boots, and suede jacket, as if he had dropped in from the stables. There’s a connection between us. We went to the same medical school in the East and so we talk about Murray’s Bar and Grill on upper Broadway and old Doc So-and-so at Columbia-Presbyterian, as if we were classmates. In fact, we didn’t even know each other. He was some years after me. He’s from Long Island, but is very much the Southern horseman now, as handsome as Blake Carrington, with his steel-gray eyes and steel-gray sideburns brushed straight back like the rest of his hair, and his easy way of half sitting on his desk, swinging one leg and leaning over, hands in pockets. There is not a single wrinkle on his smooth tanned face except for a fold of skin at the corner of each eye, which gives him a slightly Oriental look.

There is a manila file on the desk next to his thigh.

Max doesn’t do as good a job at acting casual. He’s dressed too carefully in suit and vest, like a local doctor summoned before a congressional committee. He’s concerned about me and seems at a loss—Max of all people—not knowing what to say except to express his concern. “You’re okay, Tom?” he asks softly, keeping hold of my hand after the handshake. “Sure.” “Are you sure?” he asks. “Sure.”

For some reason I become aware of my seedy suit. Ellen is not around much and I pay no attention to what I wear. I haven’t got around to buying clothes since my return. My cousin Lucy calls it my Bruno Hauptmann suit, a ten-year-old double-breasted broad-stripe seersucker, which I wasn’t even aware I was wearing until suddenly it feels dank and heavy.

“Let’s get this over with, guys,” says Bob Comeaux briskly, leaning over his hands and swinging his leg. “So we can have a drink or something. I got to muck out a stall.” This, we understand, is in a manner of speaking.

“Right,” says Max. Max and I are now sitting like patients in two chairs facing Bob Comeaux’s splendid desk.

“Oh, say, Tom,” says Bob Comeaux.

“Yes?”

“Thanks for looking in on Mrs. LaFaye this morning. I appreciate it.”

“Glad to. As a matter of fact, I’d like to speak to you, to both of you, about the clinical changes in her. I have an idea that—”

“Yeah, sure,” says Bob, looking at his watch. “We’ll do that.”

“I’m also a bit confused about the consultation. It was never made clear to me who requested it.”

“We’ll get into that too. Right now, what say if we do the boiler plate and get the official crud out of the way.”

“Fine,” I say.

“Yes,” says Max. “Here’s what I suggest—”

“Let’s do it by the book, guys,” says Bob Comeaux, removing his hands from his pockets and clapping one softly into the other. “What I’m proposing is that, at least for the time being, Tom come aboard here in my division. It’s not just a matter of my making room for him—hell, I’ve been after him for years and he can write his own ticket—and he won’t need a license.”

“Wait,” says Max. “Hold it, Doctor.” Max holds up a hand like the Tulane professor that he is, flagging down an errant intern on grand rounds. “Let’s just hold it a second.”

“Very well, Doctor,” says Bob Comeaux gravely. “What’s the problem?”

“No problem. Possibly a misunderstanding. My understanding is that Dr. More wants to return to private practice. Has, in fact. Isn’t that so, Tom?”

“That’s so,” I say, thinking for some reason about an expression in Mickey LaFaye’s eyes, in Donna’s eyes. There was something about her, them—There was something like—

“I understand! I read you, Doctor! And believe me, there is nothing I admire more about us old-time clinicians, ha, than our concern for the traditional one-on-one doctor-patient relationship. But we got a little problem here.”

“What’s the problem?” says Max in his old ironic style. Max is upset about something. I am noting that for some reason Bob Comeaux is striving for standard medical heartiness and not succeeding; is, in fact, doing very badly.

“The problem, fellows,” says Bob Comeaux, looking up for the first time and smiling his rueful attractive smile, “is that Tom’s license to practice is in bureaucratic limbo. Theoretically he has a probationary license, but that leaves him open to malpractice suits and any cop who wants to lean on him. What I’m saying is that I can take him aboard here and he can do what he pleases, licensed or not.”

“That’s ridiculous,” says Max to me. “That’s wrong!”

“What’s ridiculous?” asks Bob Comeaux, puzzled.

“That he has to report to us on his practice.”

Bob Comeaux leans forward over his pocketed hands, frowning but not unpleasantly. “I’m not clear, Max. Do you mean that we both agree that Tom should be practicing any kind of medicine he pleases? Or do you mean that he was wrongfully deprived of his license?”

“I mean it’s wrong! The whole damn thing.”

We fall silent. Max’s defense of me is loud and lame.

I am thinking that I should be experiencing a sinking of heart at Max’s lame defense of me, but that I’m not. Instead, I find myself watching Bob Comeaux curiously. There is a new assurance about him. I observe that when he leans over, and now when he takes his hands out of his pockets and folds them across his chest, grasping his suede-clad arms, at the same time sitting-leaning gracefully, one haunch on the desk, he is doing so consciously and well. There is a space between what he is and what he is doing. He is graceful and conscious of his gracefulness, like an actor.

Max is nothing of the sort. He is upset and at a loss. Max suddenly looks tired and old. No longer the bright young Jesus among the elders, planes of his temples flashing light, amazing the older staff physicians with his knowledge, he sounds more like a Jewish mother. He moralizes: This is wrong, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.

But Max revives, perks up, sits erect. “Excuse me, Bob, but this is all a lot of humbug. The fact is that is why we are here: to review Dr. More’s competence and integrity, which I’m assuming is not in question here, and as members of the ethics committee of the medical society to recommend to the state board that his license be reinstated in full, which will then occur as a matter of course, right?”

“Right. Except for one annoying little glitch like I told you,” says Bob Comeaux patiently. He looks both genial and doleful.

“What glitch?”—Max, cocking his head.

“You know as well as I do, Max,” says Bob Comeaux wearily. “In the case of a felony count, even with our recommendation, a license can only be reinstated after a year’s probationary service under our supervision—which is exactly what I’m offering him, except that he’ll be free and won’t have to report to us.”

“Felony?” Max spreads his hands, beseeches the four walls, the Mississippi River. “What felony?”

“Oh boy,” says Bob Comeaux softly, shaking his head. He flips open the file next to his thigh on the desk where he’s still lounging at ease, reads in a neutral clerk’s voice, sighting past his folded arms. “These are the minutes of the first hearing before the State Medical Board. Dr. Thomas More charged by Agent Marcus Harris of the ATFA—let me see, blah blah—with the sale of one hundred prescriptions of Desoxyn tablets and two hundred prescriptions of Dalmane capsules at one dollar per dose for the purpose of resale at the Union 76 truck stop of I-12 near Hammond, Louisiana—blah, blah—look, guys, there is no need to go back over this stuff.” He closes the file.

“That’s entrapment!” Max cries, again to the world at large. “That narc guy was posing as a trucker.”

“Right,” says Bob Comeaux glumly. “A sting operation. Could I ask you something, Tom—something I’ve never understood?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve never understood why you didn’t just charge those guys a medical fee. Why sell the damn prescriptions wholesale through a goddamn truck stop?”

“I needed the money. I knew the owner of the truck stop and had confidence in him, that he would only deal with truckers who needed them. You will note that the dosages were minimal, twenty-five milligrams of Desoxyn and thirty milligrams of Dalmane, just enough to get them up enough to keep awake and then down so they could sleep. You know those guys push those big double and triple tandems over crumbling interstates for up to eighteen hours a day. Then they’re so tired they can’t sleep.”

“Oh boy,” says Bob Comeaux.

Max opens his hands again but says nothing. Doesn’t have to. Tom, that was dumb, was what he would say.

“Okay,” says Bob gently. “Here’s our little problem. Desoxyn is an amphetamine, isn’t it, Tom?”

“Yes.”

“Dalmane is a hypnotic, right?”

“Yes.”

“We’re talking controlled substances, fellows, schedule three. We’re talking a felony count under new state and federal statutes.”

“So what’s the big deal?” asks Max, asking the space between me and Bob Comeaux. “So it was a dumb thing to do. Not dangerous, but dumb. As a matter of fact, he probably saved lives by keeping those poor bastards awake. Dumb, yes. But he’s paid for his mistake. The feds are not interested in him. As far as we are concerned, the ethics committee, I don’t see the problem. I’m sure Tom doesn’t mind my saying that he was not at all himself at the time. I know because I was treating him.”

“No, Max,” I say. “You were not treating me at the time. That was earlier.” For some reason I am having difficulty concentrating.

“Tom is a very creative person,” says Max, “as we all know. Like all creative people he has periods of lying fallow.”

“I wasn’t lying fallow, Max. I was mostly lying drunk. My practice went to pot. I needed the money.”

“But for a good cause!” exclaims Max, raising a finger. “You were thinking of your family. And what a lovely family!”

Bob Comeaux is shaking his hand, but tolerantly, even smiling. “Okay, how’s this?” he asks briskly, again setting one hand softly into the other. “Let’s just put this business on hold for a couple of weeks. I think there may be a way to beat this bum rap.” He rises, stretches. Max rises.

“Let me just say one thing,” says Max, not moving toward the door.

“Sure, Max,” says Bob Comeaux, smiling. He is no longer ironic.

“I don’t have to remind you of what Tom here has accomplished, by his breakthrough in the field of cortical scanning, for which he received national recognition. Furthermore—”

“No, Doctor, you don’t have to remind me.” Bob Comeaux is holding out both arms to us in a kind of herding gesture in the direction of the door. “What is more, I feel certain we can work something out. We’re not about to lose Dr. More’s services. Two things, Tom. One, Mrs. LaFaye. I’m going to need your help with her, okay?”

“Sure. As a matter of fact I have an idea—”

“Sure sure. I’ll get back to you, there’s plenty of time. The other is frankly a favor you could do me and also an old friend of yours.”

“Sure. Who?”

One arm falls. Bob Comeaux’s hand touches my shoulder. “Your old friend, Father Simon.”

“Father Simon?”

“Father Simon Smith.”

“Oh. Rinaldo.”

“Yes. Father Simon Rinaldo Smith.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Well, he’s not doing well.” He moves closer, hand still on my shoulder. “It’s a long story, but I was sure you’d be concerned. I’ll call you in a day or so. Will you talk to his assistant, Father Placide?”

“Placide? Sure.” What is Comeaux up to with the clergy? Whatever it is, I sense only that he wants me to talk them into something or other, probably something to do with Rinaldo’s hospice, and I don’t particularly want to. Don’t want to talk to them, let alone talk them into something.

“Okay, Doctors,” says Bob Comeaux, opening his arms again. “Meeting’s adjourned—unless you have a question. Dr. Gottlieb?”

Max sighs and shakes his head.

“Dr. More?”

“Yes?” I can’t stop thinking about Donna and Mickey,

“Any questions?” asks Bob Comeaux patiently.

“Well, we’re here to review my present practice, aren’t we?”

“Sure, fella, but we’re not worried about—”

“As a matter of fact I’d like to discuss a couple of cases, one a patient of yours, Bob, Mickey LaFaye. There is something interesting—”

“Very!” cries Bob Comeaux, looking at his watch. He claps his hands softly. “Why don’t we have lunch? I’ll give you a buzz. Any further questions? Max? Tom?”

“Bob, where is Hammond?”

“What?” says Bob quickly.

“You mentioned Hammond, Louisiana. Where is it?”

“Where is Hammond,” Bob repeats, looking at me. His eyes stray toward Max. “Okay, I give up. What’s the gag?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

Now Max is doing the herding, smiling and herding me. He’s like a guest trying to get a drunk friend out the front door before he throws up on the rug.

We’re both anxious to leave. But first I’d better fix things up with Bob Comeaux. He’s up to something, wants something, wants me to do something. What’s he cooking up with this business about my license and with his smooth invitation—threat?—to hire me on here at Fedville? I don’t know, but there is no need for me to look nuttier than I am.

“Thanks, Bob, for everything,” I say warmly, shaking hands, matching his handshake for strength, his keen gray-eyed expression for its easy comradeliness—two proper Louisiana gents we are. “I’ll let you in on a little secret.”

“Yeah?”

“I just used you as a control.”

“No kidding.”

“Yeah. I’ve had a couple of patients who may show an interesting cortical deficit at Brodmann 39 and 40, you know, the Wernicke speech area. They answer questions out of context—and I’m thinking of using it as an informal clinical test. I needed a couple of normal controls. You wouldn’t answer the Hammond question out of context. You’re a control. Max is next.”

“Gee thanks.” But Bob Comeaux cocks a shrewd eye at me. “But who—Never mind.”

“Max,” I say, “where is Hammond?”

“I can’t say I care,” says Max. Max looks relieved.

“You guys get out of here,” says Bob Comeaux. “Jesus, shrinks.”

We’re in the hall. Max is padding along faster than usual, but in his usual odd, duck-footed walk. Max waits until we hear Bob Comeaux’s door close behind us. He moves nearer and speaks softly.

“You okay, Tom?”

“Sure.”

“What was that stuff about Hammond?”

“I wasn’t kidding. I really have picked up a couple of odd things lately, Max. And I wanted to check Comeaux out. Have you noticed anything unusual in your practice lately?” “Unusual?” Max is attentive but still guarded. “Such as?”

“Oh, changes in sexual behavior in women patients—”

“Such as?”

“Oh, loss of inhibition and affect. Downright absence of superego. Loss of anxiety—”

Max laughs. “Well, don’t forget my practice is not here but in New Orleans, the city that care forgot. It has never been noted for either its anxiety or its sexual inhibitions.” Max is eyeing me. It is not his or my patients he’s thinking about. “Tell me something, Tom.”

“What?”

“What is Comeaux up to?”

“You noticed. I thought you might tell me.”

“That business about your license was uncalled for. This so-called probation is pro forma, purely routine and up to us. There is no reason to have any trouble.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Dr. Comeaux wants something,” says Max thoughtfully.

“I know. Do you know what it is?”

“No, but it was interesting that Mrs. LaFaye, your wealthy patient, was mentioned.”

“Why is that interesting?”

“The word is, he’s got something going with her.”

“Such as?”

“My wife, who knows everything around here because she is a realtor like your wife, says he has been very helpful to Mrs. LaFaye, his neighbor and fellow horseperson, rancher, whatever, and that he or Mrs. LaFaye or both are trying to buy up the adjoining land.”

“That’s the hospice he was talking about.”

“Oh, you mean out at—”

“Yes.”

We’re standing at the elevators. I notice that Max is still preoccupied.

“Max, I’d like to talk to you about a couple of cases.”

“Sure. Come on over to my place now. Sophie would be delighted to see you—and Ellen.”

Max is always embarrassed to mention Ellen. Why? Because my first wife ran off with a fruity Englishman. No, two fruity Englishmen.

“I can’t. I have to get home.”

“I understand. How’s Ellen and the kids?” he asks too casually. We’re standing side by side gazing at the bronze elevator doors.

“They’re fine.”

“Is Ellen home?”

“Well, you know she went back to Georgia to stay with her mother when I was convicted and sent to—”

“I know, I know. But she’s back now.”

“Yes—though I haven’t seen much of her. She just got back from a bridge tournament.”

“Yes. I heard from—I heard she was some sort of prodigy at it.”

“She just got back from Trinidad. The big annual Caribbean tournament. She and her partner, Dr. Van Dorn, won it.”

“I see. Well, I know she’s way out of our class, that is, mine and Sophie’s. But do you think the two of you might come over one evening—”

“Sure. I’ll ask her.” We gaze at the bronze door one foot from our noses.

“How about next week?”

“She won’t be in town.”

“No?”

“No. She’s been invited to the North American championships.”

“I see. How long does it last?”

“I think about a week. It is being held at the Ramada Inn West in Fresno, California.”

“I see.”

The elevator doors open.

“John Van Dorn thinks she can compile a sufficient number of red points to become a master, I think they call it, in less than two years’ time, starting from scratch, something of a record.”

“Remarkable,” says Max, concentrating on the arrow. Something—Ellen?—is making him uneasy again. He wants to get out of the elevator and go about his business. But then his worrying gets the better of him. “Look. Who’s been watching Tommy and—ah—”

“Margaret. Well, we still have old Hudeen, you will remember—”

“Oh yes. Hudeen. Fine old woman.”

“Yes. And a live-in person, Hudeen’s granddaughter, who stays with the kids at night.”

“Good. Very good. Very good,” says Max absently. Max is torn, I notice, torn between his desire to welcome me back and his Jewish-mother disapproval. He worries about me. But as soon as we’re out of the Fedville high-rise and into the parking lot, Max seems to recover his old briskness. He eyes my Caprice with mild interest, takes hold of my arm. “Now, Tom—”

“Yes?”

“I am concerned about—concerned that you get going again with your practice and back with your—ah—family.”

“I know you are, Max.”

“I think we can straighten out this license business. I’ll take care of Comeaux.”

“Good.”

Max is examining his car keys intently. “You don’t seem much interested.”

“I’m interested.”

“You’re not depressed, are you?”

“No.”

“Well, I do wish you would check in with me. You were, after all, my patient once, and I need all the patients I can get, ha.” This is as close as Max ever comes to making a joke. “Just a little checkup.”

“Sure. And I do want to discuss a couple of bizarre cases with you. I wasn’t kidding about some sort of cortical deficit. But it’s more radical than that.”

“More radical?”

“There’s not only a loss of cortical inhibitions, superego, anxiety which was once present. There’s something else, a loss of—self—”

“Of self,” Max repeats solemnly, concentrating on his ignition key. He looks worried again. He’s thinking. There are worse things than depression, for example, paranoia, imagining a conspiracy, a stealing of people’s selves, an invasion of body- snatchers.

“So you give me a call,” says Max, frowning, eyes casting into the future.

“Right, Max.”

“You need more cases, Tom,” he says carefully.

“I know, Max.”

“Two cases are not exactly a series.”

“I know, Max.”

He doesn’t look up from his car keys. “What’s this business about Father Smith?”

“Have you seen him since you got back?”

“Father Smith? No. Only a phone call.”

“What did he want?” Max asks quickly.

I look at him. This quick, direct question is not like him.

“I’m not sure what he wanted. As a matter of fact, it was a very odd conversation.”

What was odd was that Father Smith sounded as if he was calling from an outside phone, perhaps a booth in a windy place. I remember thinking at the time that he reminded me of those fellows who listen to radio talk shows in a car, decide to call in a nutty idea, stop at the first booth. The priest said he wanted to welcome me home. Thanks, Father. He also wanted to discuss something with me. Okay, Father. Did I know he had been to Germany? No, I didn’t. Recently? No, when I was a boy. I see, Father. So he gets going on the Germans for a good half hour, in a rapid, distant voice blowing in the wind.

“What did he talk about?” asks Max, eyeing me curiously.

“The Germans.”

“The Germans?”

“Yes.”

“I see. By the way, Tom. Don’t argue with Comeaux. It’s a waste of time. And stop worrying about this. It’s going to work out.”

“I’m not worried.” I’m not. Max is worried.