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                                                                       Los Angeles where are your angels ?

 

 

     "DRUGGY DOCTOR KILLS ADDICT PATIENT !" 
 

      Maria Santoro rolled her eyes at the tabloid type headline in that morning's paper.  "God, what crap!", she thought as she plunged into the text.  Ordinarily she wouldn't devote two seconds to that sort of sensationalism, but the line at the 7/11 was taking longer than usual, and a quick scan of the local news yielded nothing better.  But by the time she reached the second paragraph, the successful lawyer and activist's attention was riveted on the black on white print. 

            "Wednesday, February 5th, at five-thirty-seven PM, a 911 call notified the police of a serious emergency at the office of Dr. David Levi in West Hollywood.  Upon arrival, police could do nothing more than record the death of a female patient stretched out on the waiting room floor.  The woman was a young junky, well known to LAPD drug enforcement officials.  The hypothesis of accidental overdose was suggested first.  Yet one detail shocked investigators who noticed the state of extremeprostration of the doctor.  He was confused and incapable of answering questions as to the exact circumstances of the victim's death." 

      "David Levi? No way!  Not my  David Levi!" her thoughts raced while she forced herself to calmly finish the rest of the article. 

      "Enormous Pupils".  Contrary to Maria's expectations, this remark did not concern the eyes of the deceased.  

        "The emergency physician dispatched to the scene noticed his colleague's clearly dilated pupils as well as his significant disorientation in time and space.  Dr. Levi was convinced that he was in Israel, referring repeatedly to a trip to Jerusalem. 

            A more detailed examination would detect a recent injection of morphine combined with heavy use of barbiturates.  It would seem that Dr. David Levi, himself a drug addict, had inadvertently injected his patient with a lethal dose of drugs.  A recent family drama is said to explain the downfall of the practitioner who until then had been perceived by acquaintances and patients as a calm and well-balanced person. 

            Dr. Levi has been hospitalized and placed in a drug rehabilitation program.  He is currently charged with involuntary manslaughter.  The medical board has announced that it will rule on whether to revoke his lisence based on the results of the investigation." 

      Such heartbreaking banality.  Except that when Maria was growing up, her best friend had been a kid named David Levi.  David was chubby, and always laughing.  Maria, a real celery stalk, was a full head taller.  They were inseparable, everyone called them Laurel and Hardy.  Once, when they first knew each other, she gave him a dart game which his parents instantly threw out on the pretext that his baby sister might get hurt with it.  Years later he confessed that it was because Maria was a Gentile - and her family's minority blood surely didn't help.  In the sixties Jews and Mexicans didn't mix.  But that didn't make any difference to David and Maria.  They adored each other and shared everything; marbles, candy, notes from class.  Time sped by, she continued to grow, all in the legs; and David, with his curly brown mop of hair, stayed a kid, always coming up with some practical joke.  During junior high school they started to grow apart, and by tenth grade, she spent her Summers working for Cesar Chavez and he was president of the Science Club.  Two distinctly different paths to a better world.  College put a continent between them.  They stayed in contact a while, and tried to see each other during vacations, but after a couple of years they lost touch.  She never forgot him, though.

      When Maria saw the article, she had to find out if it was about the same person.  She finally dug up the phone number of one of David's cousins who confirmed that her friend had indeed become a doctor and was practicing in West Hollywood.  The cousin, however, knew nothing about the affair at hand.  And since several other Dr. David Levis were practicing in the area, Maria saw no other option than to call the reporter, a guy by the name of Fitzgerald.

      He told her to meet him around nine-thirty p.m. in a certain bar on Sunset.  That he was young she could see right away, and none too scrupulous she discovered soon afterwards when he offered to sell the contents of his file on the case.  She agreed, though, and in exchange got some blurry Xeroxed documents.  The indicted doctor was indeed her David, born in Los Angeles of Samuel and Myriam Levi, Hayworth Ave., both deceased.

      David had a spotless reputation; brilliant medical studies at UCLA, a quickly established, flourishing practice in West Hollywood, all the markings of success.  So how had things gone so wrong?   That's what she desperately wanted to know.

      "That's all?", she asked.

      "If you have the means," Fitzgerald informed her, "I am in a position to procure something much more interesting, some raw material retrieved from a Venice Beach bar." 

      She asked him his price.  Leaning back to better assess her, and to assess just how high she might go, he took a long drag on his Marlborough.  "Two thousand dollars," he let out in a sideways spew of smoke.  The way he stamped out his cigarette seemed to say that was his final offer.  She was in a hurry, and everything about him bothered her, but she had to take the chance.

      There was an ATM around the corner, and his car, it turned out, was parked right in front.  He handed her a large manila envelope from the front seat.  She watched him drive off, and that was that.  On the way back to her own car, she opened the envelope. Inside she found a spiral notebook filled with small handwriting:  David's journal. 

 

***

                           David Levi's journal 
 
 

Saturday, 10/09. 

      Today I

      Oh forget it, I'll start tomorrow. 
 

Sunday, 10/10. 

      Here I go.

      A journal.  Who would have believed it would come to this?  Mental masturbation for people obsessed with their own belly-buttons.  But right now, I can't think of a better way of keeping a grip - and that is getting more and more urgent.  My memory is breaking up into little, unrelated pieces. Words escape me.  I confuse my patients' names, mix up their prescriptions, and spend time I don't have double checking everything I do.   This can't go on.  But if I take notes from one day to the next, maybe the "exercise" will beef up my brain cells again. In any case, I think it's really time to take stock of my life.  
 

Monday 10/11. 

      I don't know if I'm going to be able to keep this up;  I really don't have the time. 

      Bad day.  "Money makes the world go 'round."  It certainly keeps me  running around after it!  If only I could have fun with some of it, but no.  It all goes for taxes. 
 

Monday night. 

      This is stupid.  Everything I write sounds ridiculous.

      I give up.

Wednesday 10/13. 

       It's perfectly clear - I've got all the symptoms of yuppie syndrome.  I'm too busy chasing money to pay attention to what I actually do to get it!  This morning I couldn't for-the-life-of-me remember the name of that asthma medicine I found for Mrs. Howitzer.  God, her name suits her!   Eight-thirty in the morning and already on the offensive.  She waddles into my office, pouring out her woes while gulping down the last bites of her egg mc muffin.  She spreads it on so thick with her "dear Dr. Levi, (chew chew)", and "if you please, doctor, (gulp)", routine.  I'll never understand why a woman who doesn't work has to come here to eat her breakfast. 

      We finally settled down to business.  Since she saw that quack Johnson yesterday, today she had to come wave his homeopathic potions under my nose.  That, too, is part of the routine.  I'd love to just send her packing.  Her whiny voiced prattle makes me sick.  But that's nothing next to the "fragrance" of old onion rings and sweat wafting from her 5'3", 200 lb. frame.  I hold my breath when I take her blood pressure.  The complicated part, though, is trying to read the dial while turning my face as far as possible in the other direction.   What a farce.

      Even with twenty patients a day, I still don't have the means to be choosy.  The infernal money game has just about got me.  At thirty-three I look forty.  I work, I pay, I work, I pay.  As regular as the hands of a clock ticking off seconds, minutes, hours from my life.  This morning I looked in the mirror a little too long.  Scary.  Little wrinkles digging in everywhere; on my forehead, between my eyebrows, at the corners of my lips.  I've lost my laugh lines and kept only the sad ones.  And the crowning glory?  Baldness setting in.  You can already see my scalp through the thinning hair.  And Lena doesn't even seem to notice.  Maybe in four years of marriage she's already looked me over enough to last a lifetime.  That's probably it:  she couldn't care less - so long as I bring home the bacon . . .  In any case, there won't be any bread on the table if I waste any more time with this idiodic scribbling.  It would be easier if I could just accept the inevitable:  I'll always be just a broke little medic chasing small change.  It's Kismet. 
 

Thursday 10/14. 

      My faulty memory is really just an excuse.  It worked fine when I was younger.  Cramming for exams burned up some of it, and cigarettes erased some more. I know if I just cool it a while, it'll come back.  So that isn't really the problem.  No, what I have to figure out where I get this feeling that something's missing.  Jeez, anyone else looking at my life would say I have it all; the practice is more or less profitable; Lena is gorgeous - and so far I think she's even been faithful.  Maggie will be three next month, precocious and beautiful as any father could wish.  So why do I feel like I have some internal San Andreas fault running down the middle of my soul?

      I used to have a mission.  But now that just seems ludicrous.  God's little foot-soldier has lost his general.  Night is gaining ground.  I look for answers, but the Torah is mute.  Doubt and Science are the land-mines of faith.  Sometimes I think that a Jew without faith is even worse off than a Palestinian without land. 
 

Friday 10/15 

      A hell of a joke, or a joke from Hell?  This morning, again, I was reminded just how much a good dose faith would help.  If I believed in it, I'd say that sly Providence sent me not one, but two messangers to rub it in.

      The day began well, as far as finances go:  three house calls between six and eight-fifteen - night rates.  Bingo!  I'd covered my costs before nine AM.  Happiness was just around the corner.  The weather was gorgeous so I opened the sun roof on the way back to the office.   The radio blared usual refrain about capitalism in China, the hole in the o-zone, the war.  All for the best in the worst possible world.  I shut it out, concentrating on the rays streaming across my arms and legs.

      This feeling of well-being stayed with me all morning.  Between consultations I counted the silhouettes rippling back and forth across the pale blue curtains which soften the hustle of Santa Monica Blvd.  Anonymous shadows on a milky screen.  The whole effect is rather aquatic, but that's not what I was thinking about at the time.  Potential patients.  One of the advantages of having the street-front office in this complex is that the patients don't have to go searching for you.  First door on the left is my waiting room.  They appreciate it, and I'm like the girls on Sunset; I take whoever comes by.

      Around eleven the door bell brought me out of my reverie.  Normally, people ring once or twice - short notes which stop as soon as they release the button.  This time, Red Alert:  two or three hysterical, insistent rings, a short silence, then it started all over again.  Very irritating.  By the end of the ninth ring, I remembered that Jill had gone to the post office.  And of course, she'd forgotten to turn on the surveillance camera when she left.  I got up and rushed for the button which unlatches the outside door. My stethoscope seized the occasion to fall on the floor, right under my size ten, triple E's.  A hundred and thirty bucks crushed beyond repair.  Luckily I'd kept my old Lithman in case of emergency.

      I steeled myself for a bad surprise, and like always, cursed that damned architect who installed these reinforced doors with no peep-holes.  I should at least be able to check out the patients before they get their hooks in me.  But no use complaining now.  Remodelling is not in the budget.

      Hell.  Its one AM already.  I'm wiped out.  Lena's been asleep for the past two hours, and I have to get up at the crack of dawn.  Too bad.  The rest will have to wait for tomorrow.  I'll get through it, though, even in bits and pieces. 
 

Saturday 10/16 

      No time.  I worked all day and just found out that my in-laws are coming for dinner.  Maggie has been clamouring for me all week.  Still, I'll try to write after they leave. 
 

Sunday 

      Vestal:  priestess of Vesta, sworn to chastity and entrusted with maintaining the sacred fire.  Vestals who broke their vows were buried alive.  That's what the dictionary says, and it seems to me that we doctors have a similar sacred charge.  And if nothing else, Friday's providential messangers served to remind me of it.

      I opened my office door just a crack and peeked out at my first messanger.  She was parked in the big red armchair, keeping my anaemic rubber plant company.  The way that plant stretches its scrawny stems towards the blinds always reminds me of beggar children in Delhi.  If it were up to me I'd have thrown it out long ago, but Jill won't let me.  Every day before she closes up the office, she waters it, and turns the pot so that it won't grow completely out of kilter.  As if you could call that growing!

      In any case, there she sat.  She seemed calm.  Too calm.   If this was an emergency, it wasn't a bloody one.  She looked OK to me.  I motioned for her to come into my office.  No reaction.  Time stretched and yawned.  I gave her a good, long looking over.  She looked barely out of her teens; her flowery cotton dress was well suited to the warmth of the autumn day, but it was very childish.  More appropriate to an eight year-old than a twenty year-old.  She was wearing an old pair of Greek sandals, and her otherwise pale feet were more than a little black around the heels.  The hot-pink patent leather purse she convulsively clutched really clashed with the rest. 

      I said hello and took one step toward her on that awful yellow carpet I was stupid enough to buy on sale.  It's already piling and coming apart at the seams.  As for the stains, I could just cry.  I should have thought of it before; people drag in all kinds of things on their shoes; motor oil, mud, and if I'm really unluckily, dog shit.  Even professional cleaning didn't help.  The guy's excuse? "What do you expect with a YELLOW rug?"  But he still expected to be paid.  Money straight down the drain.  I put up a sign by the door, but still nobody thinks to wipe their feet on the mat.  Oh well, bad manners are a part of the age we live in, and detachment is part of my profession.

      I said hello again, but the girl didn't say anything.  She stood up like a robot and followed me into my office.  She was smiling, eyes glazed as if she'd just woken up.   Without even sitting down she blurted out, "I'm thirsty."  I said, "excuse me?"  She continued, "I need some water."  I handed her a glassful which she instantly spilled all over my desk.  Luckily the computer is on a separate stand to the side, but the new pile of prescription pads got soaked.  I didn't say anything, the labs give them to me free, but just the same, I almost became unpleasant.

      Time for a break - now I'm  thirsty. 
 

Later. 

      It's already two in the afternoon.  I skipped lunch and now Lena's pissed off.  I don't care, I'm actually starting to find this journal stuff fun.  I'll finish telling about Friday even if I have to stay up all night.  Maybe I should use a Dictaphone.  A quick summary after each appointment and then I could copy it out later.  We'll see.

      Back to Friday.  I threw away the top two prescription pads, then asked, "What brings you in?"

      More silence.  The girl continued to smile stupidly for two good minutes, and me, like a good doctor, I just sat and watched.  Behind her, the Santa Monica ghosts slid by on their curtains.  I suddenly had an almost irresistible urge to just leave her there and go play tourist with a glass of cold Fume Blanc on the terrace of that new place over on Melrose.  Then reality set in:  this month there's the pension fund, and the mal-practice insurance to pay.  There's always something.  And of course, the Hypocritical Oath requires a certain demeanour.  I stuck it out and finally my patience was rewarded.  After staring into space for a quarter of an hour, the little miss finally decided to tell me her troubles.  Nothing complicated:  she just believes she's a Forget-me-not.  A little flower lost in the  asphalt jungle.  A sweet little nutcase.  Her purse was empty except for the release papers from a psychiatric institution.  I jotted down the number and called.  While I was on hold, they treated me to Little Night Music, beautifully interpreted on the electronic piccolo. 

      The extension was busy for a long time.  I waited.  How lovely to think you're a Forget-me-not.  Lazarus.  No kidding, her name is Chloe Lazarus.  I ask if that's really her.  She answers sweetly,  "Chloe, yes, that's me, Chloe . . ."  Nineteen years old, a delicate child.  A very slender, slightly cracked porcelain, that's what she is.  Slightly cracked, but still superb.  Periwinkle blue eyes.   A wild strawberry mouth, inviting and sensual.  Wonderful hands, light, relaxed, then suddenly clenched together in fear, the next moment flitting about aimlessly like two startled birds in front of her face.

      Finally, I got through to the duty nurse, who barked out the regulation "hello", then arrogantly informed me that dealing with such matters wasn't in her job description.  It seemed that there was a difference of opinion about the case within the department.  She transferred me to the intern.  He had indeed signed her release - against the advice of the supervising physician.  He went on about a certain Marshall (whoever he is) who has brilliant theories but had been quickly fired on the grounds of an ideological rift with the boss.  The intern believes that Chloe really is schizo but can be rehabilitated.   He finds her charming. 

      So do I.

      Before returning her to society, he gave her a shot of time-release neuro-stim.  Its supposed to last one month.  Very clinical, he tells me that if she hasn't been eating she's probably on a slight overdose. 

      He was right.  She hadn't been eating.  I had a hungry flower-girl in my aquarium.  I knew the treatment:  cormine-glucose and a taxi straight back to the hospital.  That's what any competent doctor would do.  I give her two glucose tablets to suck slowly, I pick up the phone and at that point notice two troubling facts:   

      primo, I have left the radio on the entire length of the visit,

      secundo, I am falling in love with the patient.

      It's not the first time and generally things calm down after about an hour or so.  But this time, it isn't the normal feeling I've read about in Lena's magazines.  I raise my defences.  The obvious diagnosis:  the onset of a massive counter-transfer undoubtedly linked to the ambiguous relationship I had with my sister.

      We all have our crosses.

      Sweet Chloe, so lost, so fragile.  I didn't dare examine her.  I entered the address of the hospital in the computer and then said, "basta".  When the taxi came, I had some regrets.  I wondered if she had anybody who cared about her.  I hadn't offered her anything but glucose and water.  On the other hand, she didn't pay me.  She got in the taxi calmly.  The driver was a chubby, moustachioed grand-dad type.  She was in good hands.  Everything was just fine.  Before the taxi drove off, she thanked me with her angelic smile, her pretty petal arms dancing in the sunlight.  A beautiful image of madness.  If only it could always be like that!

      Time is a trap.  I notice that scenes go through my mind in a blink, but take pages and pages to tell.  There are so many images, so many sensations.  One instant flows into the next while our perceptions telescope from close-up to long shot views.  Its so hard to sort out, and words consume an enormous amount of energy.  I'm cold and hungry, and I haven't even gotten around to Providence's second messanger.  I hear the Movie of the Week theme music coming from the living room.  Dinner is ready.  If I don't actually go sit at the table with Lena and Maggie, all hell will break loose. 
 

Sunday, eleven PM 

      Time for the late show.  Tonight it's "Key Largo", but I've already seen it a hundred times.  Right now I prefer my own "re-runs".  Rolling:  Friday morning, messenger #2.

      There were two patients waiting, so I decided to just grab a sandwich  from shop across the street.  But as I opened the door she barged right in.  I barely had time to step out of her way as she swooped straight into that same red armchair.  Her bleached, spiked hair made her seem even taller than she was, and went perfectly with the sharp angles of her elbows and knees.  A spider folded up on itself, just waiting to pounce.  A frightenly undernourished spider.  Worn leather mini-dress and net stockings that hardly flattered the sinews and bones leading down to her stiletto-heeled boots.  Spider in the morning, doctor take warning!

      I softly closed the door and asked the lady to wait a couple of minutes.  I always need a breather between patients, and this one looked serious.  "Careful, David - she mainlines," I thought as I loaded the starter's pistol I keep in the upper drawer of my desk.  You couldn't possibly hurt anybody with it, unless you used it as a bludgeon, but it makes a hell of a noise.  The only problem is that in order to use it, I'd have to get it out of the drawer first.  Even an old cripple would have all the time in the world to bash my head in.  So what, it makes me feel better.

      To make a long story short:  at first the spider is well-behaved.  I invite her in, anticipating quite an interesting conversation.  She's in the early stages of withdrawal and starting to sweat. 

      "I have cancer," she squeezes out from between clenched teeth.  And me, watching carefully from behind my most professional persona,

      "What makes you say that?" 

      A standard visit.  Fifteen minutes, maybe less.  With cases like this, time seems to drag on.  Across the room, the shadow game continues on the curtains.  There goes the mail man.  That's another advantage to having the street side office:  if you call out for help, someone might just hear you!

      All of a sudden, my spider glances towards the wall and, all on edge, looks back at me. 

      "Whydja turn the cameras on?" 

      I play along to see how far she'll go, "Is someone after you?" 

      She leans across the desk with a mysterious whisper, "Yes, friend.  They're looking for me." 

      She calls me "friend" but she still hasn't introduced herself.  I ask her name.  She points to the tattoo on her arm.  A wolf's head labeled Tania.  I ask if that's her.  She laughs.  I note in passing a case of gingivitis and a fungal infection.  If she's on heroine, it won't be long before she loses her kidneys. 

      She keeps beating around the bush but in fact she wants morphine to "comfort" her, as she puts it.  I refuse.  And that's where things stick for the next half hour.  I look at my watch:  it's twenty to one.  Two raving lunatics in one morning - between them they've screwed up my schedule for the rest of the day.  Even a saint would lose his cool!  While the spider spits her paranoid shpeel, I count how many times the doorbell rings.  Three.  I have three patients in the waiting room, not counting the two who were already there when I took her.  I'm sure that at least one of them was glad to let her have cuts.  Poor guy, he looked terrified at the idea of sharing his wait with her. 

      Another fifteen minutes, and she wasn't about to give up. 

      "I know you've got some!"

      Sure I do.  Morphine, Dolosal, barbiturates and uppers.  I have a whole panoply.  But if I say "yes" even once, tomorrow the line will stretch from here to the Chinese Theatre.  When the sun sets on the postcard image of palm trees and stars, Hollywood's streets grind their teeth.  So I repeat, one last time,

      "No, I don't have anything here.  Now that's enough.  There are people waiting.  Tina be reasonable."

      She bursts out in raucous laughter and lights up a Camel. Looking straight in my eyes, she tosses the match on the yellow carpet.

      "Tania, not Tina.  My name is Tania."

      "Fine."

      "So, you're giving me the shove-off.  You seem nice, young Dr. Cool.  You dress like my cousin."

      "Yeah?  And what does he do?"

      "He deals, honey.  Stop hypnotising me with your eyes!  I know you're trying to read my thoughts."

      After that I switch off.  I stand up.  She does too, and her chair tips over.  In that instant everything spins out of control.  I take hold of her arm.  She stiffens.  I push one way, she pushes the other.  She's much stronger than she looks.  I pull.  She lets go and boom!  Both of us on our asses.  I lose a blazer button in the scuffle.  Ripped right off, and a nice piece of fabric with it.  Two hundred and fifty bucks on sale.  Brand new. 

      I take a deep breath.  We get up.  She's pale, full of hate.  She starts rifling through her bag, and my imagination goes wild.  "God, if it's a knife, you'll wind up like Jesus; nailed at thirty-three."  Grotesque.  The thought had barely flashed through my mind when Tania flicks out one of those switch-blade combs, right under my nose.  Smiling like a hyena, she jeers,

      "Scaredja, didn't I?"

      And with that, she begins ratting her hair like nothing has happened.  A good little democrat doctor, cornered by his contradictions, that's who she's dealing with, and she knows it.  Since I didn't have anything else to lose, I played the nasty card.

      "Get out of here or I'm calling the cops!"

      "Go ahead, asshole," she snaps back, "you can call in the cavalry and the marines, too, while you're at it!"

      "You have reached the Los Angeles Police Department, La Cienega Station.  All of our lines are busy.  Please hold . . ."  Its always the same, but when you've got a bomb ticking away in your hands, somehow the gag doesn't seem so funny.  I held, like a good little boy, while my spider paced and ranted.  Black madness, nocturnal delirium.  She'd run out of hope, and I wasn't going to give her a refill.

      Her name is Tania Angeli, she's been on the stuff for seven years.  This fallen Angeli must have been pretty, but at twenty-eight she looks fifty.  She's been in and out of the can for the last two years.  That's what the cops told me.  Now I've thrown her out, too.  Tania, age twenty-eight, flipped out spider.

      But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

      The cops came screaming up the street but since the light at the end of the block was out, I had three minutes of siren filled suspense.  Who knows why she stuck around, but that whole three minutes Tania's eyes never left me.  She shrugged and called me an asshole again when the cops finally hammered on the door.  I opened, and good humanist that I am, suggested they go easy.  For a cop, "easy" is about as gentle as Monday Night Football.  They're trained that way.

      The sergeant rolled his eyes, "So what'dja call us for?", and the whole team jumped on Tania who was waiting for them with arms outstretched.  She knew the drill.  They put her in a hammer lock, and that's when Tania finished me off.  She yelled,

      "Gotcha,  Doc!  See your pals?  You're just like them."

      And so on, until they packed her into the squad car.  There was nothing I could say.  I watched from the sidewalk.  The car door was still open, Tania hemmed in by one of the officers while the sergeant radio'd in his report.  She asked for a light, he obliged.  The peace had been kept, for him things were cool.  She took a puff, gazing at me with a ironic smile.  Then I knew what she meant.  She got me all right - infected me with the most insidious virus:  a guilty conscience.  I felt as old as Death.  I seem to be following the footsteps of Louis-Ferdinand Céline; stumbling around somewhere near the End of Night.  If I reach that point will I turn Nazi, too? 
 
 

Saturday, 10/25 

      I didn't write at all this week, as if my efforts from last Sunday had sapped all my energy.  I have to learn to pace myself and to make writing a habit.  If I don't, I'll feel even more like a failure.  There's an entire column of Doctor Levis in the phone book.  And probably even several David's in the bunch.  Today is Shabbat; if I called them, half would refuse to answer because of the spark in the phone.  The other half would at least ask how I'm doing, but then my answer wouldn't be fit for a holy day.  Nevertheless, I have to talk to somebody.  Lena would never understand so I guess that leaves this little notebook. 

      Those two crazies from last week really got me down.  Old people, poor people, jerks I can handle; sick bodies I can help.  They make me feel more or less like I'm practising an honorable profession.  But what can I do for nut cases who stick me with the role of the Gestapo?  Avoid them, what else?

      All week I drank like a fish.  Lena isn't speaking to me.  Maggie crinkles up her nose and squirms to get down when I pick her up.  OK, when I drink I smell bad, and the uppers only make it worse.  I know I shouldn't touch that crap, but where else am I going to find the courage to go on?  With the pills, I'm strong, I see things clearly and I don't give a shit about anything.

      That night after work, I drove around aimlessly for about forty-five minutes then wound up at this club I know on Wilshire.  A hip no-man's mix of transvestite, punk and grunge.  They don't say I smell.  We toasted to life, then we toasted to death.  I laughed.  I don't know why I was laughing, but slumming did me good.  Sometimes I need to drag myself through the dirt - as if the way I'd spent my morning wasn't degrading enough!  But I guess the decadence of the place somehow made it all even out, helped me get my head back on straight again.

      The decor: very dark, except near the bar where everything is aluminum and neon.  Between the bar and the dance floor, tall cones of light encircle a few tables and stools where the "ladies" prop their hidden assets.  Colored lights flash as they cross and recross their long, latex dipped thighs.  Further away, the shadows are soothing, just dim enough to make you forget the time.  Janna, the bar tender, writes spy novels.  They say she's found a publisher.  I hope so, would be fun to read something by someone I know.  She's a strange, dreamy girl, secret and calm, a kind of behind-the-times type with long blond hair and cowboy boots. 

      We were doing tequila shots.  In no time at all, I'd knocked back enough of them to plaster over all the dings and dents the day had made in my soul.  They all know I'm the doctor on Santa Monica, but they think its funny.  I don't have to justify myself to them.  Justify what, anyway?  The fact that I can't look myself in the face anymore since I've started filling out the prescription forms in advance?  Last Tuesday, when old lady Jacobs came in, I saw right away that she was going to cost me some time. I saved ten minutes by filling out her prescription while she undressed.  Otherwise, if she sees me writing, she makes comments, she suggests.  Once she even went so far as to dictate!  This time I bluffed.  I told her I'd been thinking about her case, "Call me next week to let me know how my little recipe is working".  Yeah, right!   I prescribed what I always prescribe for her, just switching to different brands and product names.  Is that good?  Is it bad?  I don't have a clue.  In any case, she fell for it, and called yesterday to say that she's feeling much better.

      I went for a drink at Manuel and Lyne's place.  They just got back from Rio so we hadn't seen each other in a while.  These days Manny is playing at being a pirate, he looks like a mutineer from the Bounty.  Lyne cross-dresses, and is beautiful like only beautiful transvestites know how to be. 

      I told them the whole story about the forget-me-not.  Manny nodded sympathetically and Lyne said,

      "Hey man, I know what you mean, once I was in an elevator with this little asshole night watchman; he made a crack about my pantyhose and for a minute there I seriously thought I was going to kill him.  When I told my shrink about it, I almost wound up in the nuthouse."  Then she laughed before adding, "Next time I'll keep my homicidal impulses to myself!"

      She's right.  When you feel like you're losing it, discretion is the key to survival.  But their distrust still hurts me.  I'm a doctor, not a cop.

      That night, Lyne had violet eyes.  They change often.  I know because when she's in town I see her almost every evening.  She works the block between Detroit and La Brea, right by the bar where I sometimes stop on the way home.  With her mane of red hair, her nice ass and round hips, she rakes it in.  I've never tried it with her, but some nights, when Lena pulls that headache crap, I start to go crazy.  I'm really tempted, but so far I've resisted.  If I break down some day, I'll have to dare to write about it. 

      At one point Manuel asked if I wanted to do some poppers.  Amyl Nitrate, perfectly legal over the counter.  I don't know why I said yes, its always the same:  I had fun for five minutes, and then I got a headache.  I don't know what happened next.  Yes, I do.  I looked at my watch, it was almost five in the morning. 

      People think that doctors are so full of noble thoughts.  The profession is overflowing with smart people. Unfortunately, the ones I know are really into percentages.  'You send me Mrs. Smith for a frontal x-ray, I'll send you ten percent in return.  Systematically order the two side-views, I'll add another five.'  Ten percent on appendixes makes the payments on the Mercedes; ten more for blood work comes in handy for week-end ski trips.  Its done every day.  Its clean.  Its legal.  I don't have the stomach for it yet.  But I'll never forget the way Lena looked at me when we met Philips at the last charity dinner.  He went on and on about his Wellness Center in Manhattan Beach.  They're making a killing on diet pills.  And to think he's only a chiropracter!

      "Ah David, you should have listened when I offered you that partnership.  You'd have been in on the ground floor. It wouldn't have stopped you from keeping your own practice.  That's what Mark and Tony do.  But we're planning to open another branch in a couple of months.  And we'll need more MD's to fill out those prescriptions. . ."

      If only I could get a grip on my mood swings!  But I guess its just the way I am.  The house is empty.  Lena took Maggie out shopping.  I'm drunk, the sky is grey.  Another Winter in the Hollywood Hills.  I would love to live in some tiny, sun bleached middle eastern village.  LA's great weather without the all cars and the all the lost souls.  I dream about it often; me, a Jew born and bred in California, as if "Orient" was some computer program ticking away in my genetic wiring.  But that's crazy, and anyway, everywhere there's sun and Orient together, there are also bombs.  Conclusion:  Paradise is something you just have to keep wrapped up, nice and warm, right inside yourself.  Strange.  The speed is still working, I just realised that this hellish noise inside my head was me grating my teeth.  I promise, I promise, I won't ever touch those pills again.   Right.  Promises as empty as a drunk's bottle.

      Maybe it will rain today.  The sky is definitely getting darker, an almost anthracite background to show off the Hollywood sign.   The dead grass on the hills completes the exaggeratedly ominous effect.  Any second now, lightning will flash and thunder will roar, and I'll find myself with the starring role in some B-series Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde.  Funny, I used to like the rain.  When I was a teenager I went to visit a cousin at his boarding school in the Bay Area.  The school sat nestled on the side of a mountain, and when it rained, the footpaths absolutely oozed.  After classes the kids would drag cardboard boxes to the top of the hill above one of the dorms and toboggan down.  After a few runs, the boxes disintegrated, but we continued without, until our jeans, our sweatshirts, our hair were caked black.   Just the kind of thing I'd catch hell for at home.  For years afterwards I couldn't watch the rain fall without smelling the freedom of that day. 
 

Sunday 

      I'm dying to call the hospital to find out how Chloe's doing.  My little flower in her cracked pot.   I can't stop thinking about her.  It's getting so I can't sleep.  I have to see her again.  I hold back, playing the scene over and over again in my head.  Just write about it.  Too late, I've got them on the phone: 

      "Hello.  You've reached the Maxwell Institute.  How may I help you?" 

      "I'd like to speak to Miss Chloe . . .  just a second . . ."

      Black hole.

      I make a tremendous effort to bring her name back.  Lazarus. 

      "Miss Chloe Lazarus."

      I guess my memory is still pretty much intact, its just the locks that need oiling.  The receptionist brightly invited me to "please hold". I held for three interminable minutes with their damned muzak Little Night Music, then the voice came back in the same key.

      "Chloe Lazarus, yes, Psychiatry Seven, she is doing well but I can't connect you."

      "Why not?"

      "That's the rule.  Visits are allowed though."

      I hung up before she could recite the hours.  I know what they're doing; they're trying to break my little doll.  Those assholes want to shrink her head.  She won't hear any more voices, but my little flower will be a vegetable.  Believe me, when those guys get their mitts on you, you come out with pot roast for brains.  No way I'm going to let them do it. When I was a kid I heard voices, too; lots!  Once I tried shutting them up one after the other and I counted how many there were.  First, there was the one on top, the loudest, the one that chattered all the time.  Just below was another, quieter, only piping up with random odds and ends; and then a few more, and all the way at the bottom, there was the baby screaming at the top of his lungs.

      That last layer was scary.  I talked to my math teacher about it.  He was great.  He gave me a nice little lecture ending with,  "Whatever you do, don't tell anyone about this, you'll understand later." 

      Who knows where it begins and where it ends?

      A little music?  Good idea.  Bartok or Bowie?  Doesn't really matter as long as I get out of this armchair before it sucks me any deeper into its padded depths.  Maybe I should go down to Hamed's to check in on the cousins.  A little break with the A-rabs.  Nothing better to cheer you up.  Yeah, that's just the thing. 

      As I skirt past the couch, Lena unglues her eyes from the TV long enough to ask where I'm going.  Maggie wraps herself around my legs as if I were leaving for a month and I make a note.  Its getting to be quite a habit, sometimes I even write while I'm walking.  One last quick glance around home-sweet-home; so sanitised, so empty.  Lena likes the functional, minimalist look. Everything is white, red or black.  Chic like an ad for a German loft.  I guess she's homesick.  The view is as marvellous as the mortgage.  We dominate all LA, Lena tells her friends, we dominate.  She likes to dominate; with the Von Dorstens it's a tradition.  She spends her time comparing me to her father, but I'm just a little dark-skinned guy.  I can't help that.  I'm not a count, or tall, or blond.  She knew it when she married me.  I'm just a shabby saw-bones, a Jew with no money.  We have nothing in common and I guess that's why we love each other, although sometimes I'm not so sure its love.

      The grass is always greener . . . but once you're on the other side, you still have to find a place to sit and relax.  I made the usual trek down the hill and along Hollywood.  The boulevard was full of tourists.  The stars in their eyes blind them to anything but the stars on the ground.  Completely oblivious to the sex shops and the misery.  Winos scrounged in garbage cans and a young homeless girl vomited in the bushes next to Frederick's.  If my tourists strolled two blocks down to Sunset what would they see instead of the girls turning tricks? 

      This line of speculation tempted me to take a stroll myself, but then I remembered an ugly scene the last time I was in the 7/11 on the corner of Curson.  Two of the girls had stopped in for a coffee to go.  They were chatting with the checkout clerk when their pimp came tearing in spewing four letter explicatives.  It seemed their break had overshot the regulation ten minutes and the boss escorted his ladies back to their strip, left fist full of black hair, and the right full of blond.  Nothing too violent in such a public place, but still the memory gave me the blues.  I spun around, staring at my thumbnail which was just begging to be bitten.  I knew if I went on like this, I was done for.  I am well on my way to driving the practice into the ground.  A couple of weeks ago, I decided to close shop on Saturday afternoons even though it is one of the busiest days.  Fifteen patients minimum, big money down the drain in exchange for the pleasures of anxious indolence.  I have to crack down on myself.

      I bit into the thumbnail and the next thing I knew I was walking through Hamed's door.  I'm a regular there.  Mint tea and falafel, along with the usual hamburgers and fries, and all of it dirt cheap.  Fifty cents for a pastry if the owner knows you.  A couple of music students are perched at the counter.  Two of the four tables are occupied by some of the local Syrians; Farid from the liquor store on Sunset, and a couple of respected elders, hadjis who have been to Mecca.  I feel right at home.  When we went to Casablanca for our honeymoon, it was the same.  I fit right in, I'm as dark as everyone else.  And now, with my receding hairline and big, round belly I really look like a Mozabite baker.  I'm packing on the weight; six pounds in two weeks.  Its those damned diet pills.  Every time I take them, I fast for two days, and then I compensate by stuffing myself the rest of the week.  I have to start a real diet, and exercise, too.  Maybe I could start playing golf.

      To impress whom?

      Where did I get this crazy need to be alone?  What does it matter?  To hell with everything, here goes my third baklava.  That's the story of my life; up front, The Good Little Doctor strives to make the world a better place.  Behind the scenes lurks The Saboteur, plotting to demolish everything.  I have this compulsive need to wipe out, to destroy.  When things are going too well, it eats me alive.  I should have been a surgeon, at least then I could cut to the heart of the problem.

      This young guy's been nervously scrutinising me for the last five minutes.  He watches me write.  Maybe he thinks I'm a journalist.  Or a cop.  I smile.  Cops never smile, they don't have to be nice to aliens.  OK, now he's reassured.  Not too much familiarity, though, I don't feel like having him here at my table.

      I just can't stand other people anymore.  Maybe its because I can't stand myself.  Maybe a loony like Chloe would understand.  Lena sure can't.  Life's too easy for her.  She's beautiful, she's young.  It would never even occur to her that a doctor could be insecure.  To her, I'm the one who knows.  When I go home, she'll still be in front of the TV, busy touching up her nails.  Maggie will be huddled up next to her, indifferent, and without saying a thing, I'll water the plants while they pretend not to notice how late it is.

      It's awful.  Sometimes I can't stand them.  Just the same, the house is always spotless and Lena does fabulous Eastern European cooking.  What more could I ask for?

      My mother mastered all those kinds of dishes, but that's about the extent of my cultural heritage.  Dad was a dirty communist rat, only squeaked into America by the skin of his teeth when he got out of Treblinka.  Mom worshipped Dad.  Everything he said, did or thought was gospel.  As a result I was twenty-two the first time I set foot in a synagogue.  Just the same, what possessed me to marry a German, and a Prussian to boot?  Always so at ease, so superb, my Helena Von Dorsten.  She's way too good for me, and a full three inches taller than I am.  I never had any luck with a girl like her before.  I guess the beer-belly and dazed, myopic look don't exactly make the grade with model types.  But she's different.  Maybe she just missed her teddy bear.  And there's Maggie, our beautiful little girl.  With her, I forget everything else.  Yesterday she asked me how far the sky went.  That sure blew the cobwebs out of my brain.  If only I knew!

Monday 

      Six o'clock and night is falling already.  Only three more patients, so I'm treating myself to a longer break.  All things considered, I've got to save that girl.  I know, its a serious decision.  If I screw up, they can revoke my licence, but I have to risk it.  I have to do something big, something real, or I'll lose faith in everything.  Its either that or head down to Equador.  I could set up a little practice in some tiny indian village.  Right.  Until you see your first tarantula!  And you don't even speak spanish.  No, my boy, if they kick you out, you'll be treating the dregs.  You'll deal drugs, or even worse, you'll wind up in some clandestine lab.  Now there's a promising future, a great way to put your daughter through college.  You declare war on the system and you liberate Hyde.  Or you save Chloe.

      But for now, nothing rash.  Tomorrow I'll just go see how she's doing.  As referring physician, its my right.  She's magic.  I'm  falling in love with her.  Right over the deep end, I know it.  Stop it.  In any case, I won't sleep with her, they say its fatal for psychotics. 
 

Tuesday, eight PM. 

      Today my ladies had a girls' day out.  Maggie came home with a new dress and shoes, and Lena came home without her hair.  Actually its looks good short like that, but she knew I loved it long.  I guess its just another way of asserting her independence.

      Without a word to me as they walked through the door, they went straight to the stereo.  Now Mick Jagger is belting out "Satisfaction" at the top of his lungs and the neighbors for five or six houses up and down the block get to share in the fun.  I don't care.  I stick in some earplugs and watch as they dance around, making dinner.  Maggie shoots a worried look my way then back at her mother when Lena hands her two place settings.

      "Its OK darling, Daddy has work to do."  I get the message, but if she's going to take things like that, she'll only push me further away.  Anyway, she's right.  I do have work to do.  I head back to the room I use as an office, turn on the computor and plunge into my pixilated world.  Just as I'm warming up though, my little girl comes in with a tray.  Lena's sending out the heavy artillery.

      "Daddy, what are you doing?"

      "Just making notes for work, angel."

      How to explain to a three year old how much more this has become for to me?  Its like a drug.  I open my notebook and the ideas come rushing in.  No sooner do they cross my mind than they're on their way to the limbo of the immediate past.  I have only so long to force them through the pen before they're gone.  It goes very fast, but Time is just another wave to surf. 
 

Wednesday 

      Welcome to the Maxwell Institute.  A slow travelling shot reveals long rows of iron bars then rises over a grey wall topped with vert-de-gris and rusted spikes.  Pan across the leafless trees in the otherwise bare cement yard to the drab olive complex.  The paint is peeling but a window shines in the sun, like Las Vegas in the middle of the shadowy desert of the wards.  And in this microcosmos oozing care, nurture and normality, the crazies are supposed to get better.  It's sinister, but MediCal payments go farther in places like this.

      Chloe Lazarus.  Under the care of Dr. Robert Hamilton, third wing on the left, second floor.  The reception clerk functions; there is no other word to describe the activity of the invertebrate behind the desk.  He suckled, he wailed, he grew up, he got older still, and now he's slowly fading away in his vivarium.  God forbid that should happen to me.  I want life full time.  The truth, always the truth.  And I write while I walk.  Completely nuts!

      I'll bring Chloe for a walk out here beneath these poor cemented in chestnuts.  We'll build a labyrinth loaded with shrink-traps.  If we make it through, we'll find freedom, the real kind; the kind that prisoners invent for themselves.

      And on your left, ladies and gentlemen we have the neurological pavilion.  Mandatory electroshocks.  Two hundred twenty volts on the temples and one big bang in the memory.  I did it too, like all interns.  They made us, and I was such a coward, I wanted that diploma so badly, I went along with it.  'Morning, m'am. . . hello, sir, step right this way' ('though we can't guarantee you'll step back out again on your own two feet.)  Like Ben. 

      I really liked Ben, he was a jew-boy like me.  He was the wild one of the gang, the one who had come down in the world.  Offshoot of a big, important family, so big that he was lost at the foot of the family tree.  He was amazing.  He'd done it all:  Katmandu, East Berlin and Goa - at an especially unfortunate time for the veins.  The wheel turns, the band plays on.  Without Ben.  Unlucky, or . . .  Hard to say, but I don't think you can ever get enough love.

      "I'm here to see Chloe Lazarus."

      I've had it with tea-spoon stories, addicts bore me to death.  I don't even feel like helping them anymore.  But Ben was something else.  He was a legend.  I think about him still. 

      Too often.

      "Room seven.  You a family member?"

      "I'm her referring physician."

      "Oh.  In that case . . ."

      It speaks.  I run my eyes up six feet four of muscle and bone, topped off by a binocular periscope with vocal variability.  Robocop in a ratty lab coat, and blocking the staircase.  I excuse myself as I squeeze past, one false move from him would send you flying.  He looks like a "Bob" or a "Joe".  Basically a good guy, just a little edgy when the patients act up on full-moon nights.  A little slap, or a light tap on the ribs never killed anybody.  And it sure makes you feel better.

      I've seen guys like this before.  When I was an intern, we had two fractures in the same week.  The attendant was really sorry, he hadn't realised his own strength.  He'd be a normal man in the cardiac wing.  Unfortunately, his job was taking care of crazy people. 

      Second floor.  It smells like urine, disinfectant, and chicken noodle soup.  Chloe, where are you?  These ugly green walls would make a drill sergeant puke.  Oh Ben, if you could only see me!  The big bubbles in the paint pop when I stick my thumb in them, and I think about Alice, an angel of Swedish steel who stood up to the worst.  Ben was crazy about her.  She prepared his syringes because he never managed to keep things straight.  He mixed up opiates and barbiturates.  He said he'd stop when he got his diploma, but he had to do his fifth year over three times.  That was it.  Alice had dark grey eyes, I remember that.  Cold eyes, indifferent to everything but Ben.   You could see she loved him.

      He had grey eyes, too, but his were almost transparent, with terrible depths of irony that made me feel like giving up on everything.  The whole shebang; stethoscopes, tongue depressors and especially the pretence of being a Man Of Science.  I was sick of it, even then.  Ben, of course, just had to be smarter than the everybody else. The internship in heavy psychiatry was his idea.  And heavy it was.

      And here we are:  her door has a window in it.  Safety glass, but they put her in a double room and that's a good sign.  I guess they decided she wasn't dangerous.  On the right-hand bed sits my diaphonous flower, my forget-me-not.  She's making the most of the timid shaft of light sifting through the bars on the window. 

      The occupant of the other bed, however, looks pretty worked up to me.  She tosses and turns then flips over onto her belly.  Her bushy red curls are flattened up the back of her head.  If I had to put a label on the case I'd say -- absolutely nothing!  What good is it having a head full of drawers if you've lost the key?  No words, no knowledge; just me, David, one point of view.  I knock very softly.  The carrot top rolls over and sits up.  In the middle of a pudgy face-full of make-up; her lips look like two big, bloody slugs.  She smiles.   

      "Hey, George!  How you doin'?"  She can call me George all she likes.  I say hello to them both.  Chloe hasn't budged.  She's as stiff as a board,  still facing the window.  I tip-toe around her bed and ask stupidly:

      "Chloe Lazarus?"

      "Yes, that's her, want some cake?"  Slug Lips takes a crumbly graham cracker out from under her pillow.  I feel like an ethnologist holding a bowl of milk spiked with pee.  If I don't drink it, I'll have the whole tribe on my back.  So I take it, thanks a lot -- and I drop the iron curtain.

      Silence and nibbling.  The room is small.  The tiled walls, like everything else, are that nauseating pea green color.  I feel too big for this space, and abnormally normal.

      "You've noticed, I'm not like the others.  I'm just fine.  You'll tell them, won't you, Mr. Edison?"

      My friend the red-head is not easily put off.  I listen politely, standing in the middle of the room; the chairs have been converted into bedside tables.  She, too, finds herself abnormally normal for the place.  We understand each other.

      "I'm in the hospital because of this tumor.  See it there?"  She shows me her belly.   There's nothing to see.  She's fat and out of shape, but the abdomen is smooth.

      "Uhum . . . does it hurt?"

      "Only when it changes color.  When it's blue, like now, that's good.  When it gets green it means its time for them to come and give me a shot."

      "Miss Lazarus?"

      Obviously, I have a stupid "rise and walk" on the tip of my tongue, but I let it go with a simple "how are you?"  No luck.  I'm patient, I wait.  Chloe's head pivots slowly, her body doesn't move.  The word "catatonic" blips into my brain.  I press delete.  Her blue night shirt is hardly wrinkled.  I'm sure she hasn't moved for hours.  They've pumped her so full of I don't know what -- no wonder they think she's harmless.  After a very long time, as if from very far away, a quavering voice starts mumbling long run-on sentences,

       "Its you, I know who you are, you're not my daddy, you're the doctor from the other morning, in the taxi, you're the taxi.  Is it night?  Are we leaving?" 

      I answer:  "Not right away," just to play for time.  Its a miracle that she recognises me.  I try a test, I still have to play the doctor.  I ask if she knows where she is;  I make myself sick.  This is not at all what I want to ask her, but it makes me feel better.  She doesn't know. 

      "I can't tell you today, they took all the names out of my head, no more names, no more. . ."  Just as I think I've lost her, the sentence continues, she only knows that she lives in Hollywood, with Michelle, its in her bag, over there.  I see it; a big bag, blue like her night shirt, blue like her eyes.  I don't resist the temptation of rumaging through it, I want to know her.  Inventory:  the bag is full of junk including a harlequin romance and a creased ID card.  Chloe says, "thank you" as I pass her the bag.  She's coming to life, there's hope.

      Knock, knock.  Watch out, it's the nurse. 

      "Hello,  ladies, its time for your pills.  Open wide, Chloe."

      Straight down the hatch with an obligatory swallow of water to rule out cheating.  Nighty-night girls!  This little lady is alert.  She knows how to deal with her nut-cases.  I watch from the sidelines.  A cloud swallows the timid sun beam, and the green of the walls slips into grey.  Two forget-me-not eyes stare up at the ceiling.  Chloe is too far away, she doesn't see me.  Any second, she's going to raise her arms up to the sky.  It's a classic symptom.  But no, she pulls herself back together and opens her bag. 

      "There, that's where I live . . ."  She shows me a blurry photo of an kitchen.  Her apartment, I imagine.  She runs on vivaciously; everything's just fine, she's fine, she just can't understand why "they" are keeping her here, do I know why "they" are keeping her here?  "They", the hundred-headed hydra haunting the halls.  I can't breath.  Everything seems fuzzy, playing all speeded up.  Chloe bugs me.  I like her better delirious.  I barely listen as she reels off precisely the kind of prefabricated speech will get her out of here.  Social discourse.  She laughs.  I sit down on the bed.  She goes all quiet; her light's gone out again.

      Where's the switch?

      I look at the sheets, some crumbs on those sheets, a little hole in the bedspread.  The red-head never stops staring at us.  Its getting on my nerves.  The sun chooses that precise moment to disappear behind another cloud, drowning everything in melancholy.  I have to find that light switch.  The photo.  Chloe seems to be sleeping.  I show her a cat drinking water from the tap.  What's his name?  Silence.  She blinks -- it's coming.

      "Rudolf."

      "Chloe, where are you?"

      She says that a voice tells her about me; she knows me very well, I'm that sweet doctor from over on Santa Monica.  Her tone changes, more tender, more subtle.  With that, she throws her arms around my neck and kisses me passionately.  I know it doesn't mean anything.  Carrot-top snickers behind my back.  I move away.

      "Where does that voice come from?"

      Chloe is very pale.  She hesitates; I'm at the door of the inner sanctum.  If she opens up, I'm in.

      "You can't understand.  Everything is ordained.  You see these zigzags here on the bedspread?  Its a secret message.  They leave them everywhere.  Its part of a trap to lock up my brain.  I have to read them all, its very tiring."

      "You're talking nonsense."

      "No, no, you see?  Right here it says 'Chloe'."

      I draw her attention to the fact that her roommate has exactly the same bedspread, but she doesn't seem to hear me.  This story about zigzag codes is dangerous.  If she blabs that kind of stuff when the boss makes his rounds, she's had it.

      Then, nothing.  It was late.  I didn't insist.  I promised to come back, but I don't know if I will. 
 

Thursday 

      I didn't go.  I didn't have the guts.  Maggie has measles so I sat all night next to her bed.  But that's just an excuse not to go out.  It's freezing outside.  An ugly drizzle blows straight from the North Pole, pelting ice cubes at my heart.  I'm holding on. 
 

Friday 

      I went back.

      Ben performed shock treatment.  We all did.  Sometimes there were broken molars, or other little fractures.  When he chose that damned rotation, Benny knew what he was in for.  But he hadn't counted on a patient making him take a dive.  A nurse, with a pronounced affection for alcohol and barb's, had confused glucose with insulin in an intravenous during a recent night shift.  The patient didn't hold a grudge -- he never woke up.  And the nurse found herself in the detox wing where Ben worked.  Rotten luck; he was her supplier.   Naturally she couldn't wait to squeal this sickening detail to the head shrink who went on a rampage.  Very nasty.  Summoned up the guilty party and without any kind of hearing, ordered him to trade in his lab coat for a pair of regulation pyjamas.  As reversals of fortunes go, this one went right through the looking glass.  Ben reacted like an idiot:  he jumped through the window, and since the bitch's office was on the ground floor, made it home without incident.  But now he was caught in the gears of this fatal cycle.  He found an efficient solution, though, without looking too far.  That very night he sent Alice out for groceries then emptied a can of gas on his head and lit his last cigarette.  But why am I telling that story?

      And what does Chloe think about it?  She hangs on my words.  I'm certainly giving her the shock she needs, but less toxic than alternating current.  She saw One Flew Over the Coocoo's Nest.  She knows what I'm talking about and she's scared stiff.  A good thing if it makes her feel like fighting.

      "They wouldn't do that to me," she says doubtfully.

      I drive the nail in:  "Are you kidding?  They'd jump on the chance.  They'll do it as much as they can!"  Actually, I don't know the first thing about it, but I don't have any choice.

      "If you want, I can help you.   But you've got to do exactly what I tell you."

      Blackmail.

      We look at each other in silence.  She's one hundred percent there, really paying attention, and God is she beautiful.  I want to know more about them; what do they know about her, what have they been doing to her?  "Tell me all about it, I'm listening."   

      She was sent into a small, very bright room.  They all wore white coats, and spoke quickly, on purpose so she couldn't understand.  There was a chair in the middle of the room, she found herself all alone in front of the mob.  She didn't really use the  word "mob", but I can just see that pack of wolves.  I know them by heart.

      The Department Head has cold eyes and a gracious smile.  The rest nod approvingly at everything he says.  She spilled her guts about the forget-me-not that dies.  They really liked that image.  Then came the zigzag messages on the bedspread.  They didn't say anything about that one, but they scribbled furiously in their notebooks.  I start with Lesson Number One,

      "You can't ever tell them that kind of thing." 

      "But how do you know?  You're not a head doctor." 

      We are going in circles.

      "Don't you believe me?"

      A question of confidence.  She stares at me for a long time.  I'm afraid she'll slip away into her fantasy world.  I put all my cards on the table.  I don't know how else to pull her back. 

      She smiled.  Luckily, her survival instinct is intact.  At least we've got that going for us.

      "I believe you.  And what do you want me to say?"

      Just the simple truth.  Talk about your work, your cat, your apartment.  Tell them that you absolutely have to repaint before Christmas, and especially that you live with a girl who likes you a lot.  That's true, right?  Michelle likes you, doesn't she?

      She makes a face.   We'll have to work on that one.  I promise that I'll come back every night on my way home.  We'll rehearse our script like actors.  We'll whisper.  The plot is hatched.  If I stick to it, if I come every day, I know it will work. 
 

Sunday, December 3rd 

      She's already calling me her savior.  I've got to be careful, she tried to kiss me on the mouth again.  She's so different, so pure.  Jet black tendrils frame her face, then tumble to her waist.  God forbid those morons should get any brilliant ideas like shaving her head.  You could die for hair like that -- and it follows that you could also hang yourself with it. 

      Those shits!  I hate them so much I'm getting back my will to live.  Its six o'clock, night has just about fallen.  Across from Chloe's hospital there's a huge Christmas tree, all lit up.  In spite of the rain, I spent a good ten minutes watching it twinkle.  I almost believed in Santa Claus again!  And now I walk along the high walls, laughing out loud alone.

      Yesterday, I read over my notes again.  It was shocking.  I really had the impression that someone else is telling his story.  Who is he? 
 
 

Sunday, night 

      This blank page reminds me that the Grapevine is covered in snow and I'm buried in an avalanche of anguish.  I try to cheer up, telling myself that every cloud has a silver lining.  But its only words, and clichés never fix anything. 

      Lena is incredible, she seems to understand.  She didn't ask a single question when I came home.  All the same, I volunteered that I'd gone to visit a patient in the hospital.  She just poured me a glass of wine and asked if the girl was pretty.  I rolled my eyes.  Maggie was her usual irresistible self.  Tonight we tackled a few serious questions, like about the bearded guy in the red suit who's coming soon.  She asked him for a doll that walks, but she's a little worried because if the doll can walk, who'll keep her from running away?  Am I doing that to her?   

      Everytime I look in her beautiful eyes I lose myself in this incredible love.  She sizes me up almost like an adult, and when our two souls brush against each other, it makes sparks.  We laughed, and then it was time for bedtime stories.  Now, the house is silent.  I thought of Simmias and Socrates on the subject of harmony.  But sometimes even harmony is grating.  I feel as blue as night-time snow and the thermostat is dropping. 

                                    * * * 

      When Lena wears high heels, she's at least a head taller than me.  I hate it.  When we first got married, we balanced things out; she wore flat shoes and I hiked myself up on boots with little heels.  That's all changed.  I can't keep up with her so I'll just stick with the comfort of English shoes.  But I see right through her;  while she saunters along on top of her stilettos, its all the better to poke holes in my ego.  She knows I have a complex.  Deep down, I think she's disappointed.  She's starting to admire doctors a lot less.  A fifteen hour a day work load for the salary of a junior executive.  And the patients don't respect you, either.  Just last week the mechanic from the shop down the street set me straight with a little, "keep the change".  To them I might as well be a cab driver.  After all, a real shaman is a lot more expensive.

      I feel more and more like a stranger in my own home.  When we first bought this place, I had no more money for all the decorating Lena wanted to do.  That was OK.  She loved me and smiled away her disappointment.  When her parents saw the hodge-podge we called furniture, they offered to pay for "at least the basics . . ."  Injured pride, and loyalty to me, got the better of Lena's in-born snobbery and the hodge-podge stayed.  Since then, though, she has striven, piece by piece, to create a world she can be truly proud of.  Slowly the colors bled away, leaving white walls, white couch, and now white floor.  Thin black accents only reinforce the frigid Northern perfection.  You'd never guess we have a little kid.  No chocolate finger prints on the glass and iron table.  No crayon marks on the chairs.  And its the same from room to room.  The only relief is the paintings she picks out.  But those geometric polychromes make me feel like I'm living in an art gallery.  Glossy, clean and brilliant.  Unlike me.  I'm not any of those things.  I'm just a Jew from LA, but I could be from anywhere.  Cosmopolitan, and easy prey for the pogrom.  What I like, for instance, is hanging around the Mexican market downtown, or going over to Soong's for kimchee and rice.  I'm a half-breed.  Even among Jews I'm not kosher.  My mother came from one of those old American Sephardic families.  Dad was a Polish communist.  The sort of anomaly that drives statisticians crazy, and to top it off, it even claims to have been born here . . .

      Me, me, me.  Always me.  How do I get out of this prison?  I think about the old neighborhood off Fairfax.  I think about my father.  In '39, he was supposed to start college, and I love Germany just the same.  I could do without the Krauts, though.  When I traveled through the Tyrol I used to watch them pour out of their Mercedes, pudgy faces poking from down jacket bundles, minds rotted away from too much Coke and wieners.  Then I think about Wenders, Nina Hagen or how much I love Berlin.  I feel sick and I laugh.  I have the same feeling when I look at my wife, my prolitarized duchess doping herself on advice to the lovelorn and daytime TV.  She sleeps standing up.  She thinks she's on top of it, but she gets everything mixed up.  For her, Austria is a province of Bavaria.  But when I try to set her straight, she just says, "So what?".  She was born in the Bahamas, she wants to be modern.  Its true she's only twenty-six years old.  God, I must seem all shrivelled up to her.  My poor David, you read like a tabloid for sale on the dead end streets of your desperation.  Its not good.

      For a Monday morning, the patients are few and far between.  They're making me pay for my Saturdays off.  I've been sitting here with nothing to do for two hours already.  At nine o'clock there was an emergency, though:  some fool who got it into his head to dunk his cocker spaniel into a bubble bath.  The spaniel bristled at the idea, so the guy got five stitches in the left hand and haemoglobin all over my carpet.  I sprayed on some rug shampoo right away, but its a pretty hopeless case.  People don't even imagine the worries we doctors have.  The whole time I was suturing, all I could think about was the stains in the waiting room.  How on earth am I going to get them out?  And my six-foot-four adonis never stops whimpering,

      "I can't stand the sight of blood, doctor, I'm going to faint!"   Just the kind to ask "Where am I?" when he comes to.  A real beef-cake.  All muscle, hairy chest and mustache.  Sex appeal personified, and proud of it.  Viruses don't worry him, he sleeps with everybody he wants.  His horoscope says he has nothing to fear.  What is it that bugs me so much about him?  The stains on my rug?  Not really.  Its more that he glorifies the flesh and I despise it.  That's what separates us.  I didn't wear gloves for the stitches, and given the state of my fingernails, if he's got AIDS, there's a good chance I'm next in line.

      Shouldn't bite my nails, shouldn't use drugs, shouldn't stuff myself.  Shouldn't, shouldn't.  Shouldn't?  Who cares.  The day I die, no one will know the difference.

      Eleven-twenty.  Almost time for house calls.  I know nobody does house calls anymore, but they've always been one of my favorite parts of practicing medecine.  Beyond the fact that they pay better and leave more time to think between patients, there's also the insight factor.  Often a person's home environment tells you a lot more about their pathology than they do.

      On today's agenda:  Granny Simon.  She lives over by the freeway, in a fifty-seven foot add-on perched on the corner of a small, one story house.  A young couple occupies the ground floor.  They both work two jobs and dream of leaving that dump.   I hate to think what will happen to Granny Simon when they do.  Kate makes sure she eats.  Which in these days, in this town, is saying a lot, because Granny is no relative of theirs.

      In the meantime, my patient spends most of her time with three mice and a hamster.  She doesn't get out of bed anymore, and she's starting to smell like a corps -- especially since she's developed bed-sores on her buttocks.  She'll want to pay me with her last ten dollar bill again, and I'll accept without saying anything.  The last part of the routine is that I put it back under her bed-side lamp before I leave.  She's so out of it she never notices.  Poor Granny Simon.  At eighty-seven, I'll probably be just the same.

      After that, I'll drop by to check on Mia.  That'll cheer me up.  She's been running a fever of 102 for two days, but she's one of my favorite patients.  She's a make-up artist, about my age.  I always dreamed about working in film.  I know its stupid, but you always want someone else's life.  And to think that there are plenty of guys who would trade theirs for mine!  It certainly looks good from the outside.

      I have to get my act together.  Every time I go out on calls, I worry that one of these days I'm going to find myself in a real jam.    On my birthday, I had a real close shave.   Quarter to midnight, the phone rings.  Its Mrs. Wakefield.  Her husband was having chest pains.  We'd polished off I don't know how many bottles of champagne, and to top it off, the neighbors brought the cake, a lovely pot-laced spice cake.  Not too strong, but we were having a good time just the same.  I went out on auto pilot, calling 911 on the way there.  Of course, it was serious.  Heart failure and no ambulance in sight.   I could barely make sense of anything, except that it was a real mess.  At one point I found myself kneeling next to Mr. Wakefield with an empty bottle of digitalis in my hand, and no memory of having injected it.  He came through it just fine, but I could have just as easily screwed up the bottles.  My cell phone rang just when the worst was over.  911 calling to verify the address.  It turned out I'd inversed the street numbers.  The ambulance arrived a second later, but I feel sick when I think of being so irresponsible.  People trust me with their lives! 
 

Monday evening. 

      Until today, I thought Mia and Nadir had a story-book romance.  And I feel even worse because I'm the one who encouraged them to have the baby.  Nadir is still a kid - ten years younger than Mia, and from time to time he loses it.  A sweet boy, from a long line of Kashmiri rug weavers.  When the war started, his family fled across the border to Pakistan and settled in Islamabad.  Nadir fell in with some Afghani mujadhin, brothers in arms, whose country, like his own homeland, was "occupied" by corrupt, outside forces.    He was about to sign up with them, when his father got wind of it and packed him off to study architecture at UCLA.  To me, the Jew, he explains that the islamists are the last defence against decadence.  No point in contradicting him; he's perfectly capable of reciting the Koran one minute and quoting Marx the next.  But then again, he drinks beer and lives with a Christian.  Hardly fanatic material.

      But that's none of my business; I've already done too much for them.  Three months ago, Mia asked me if I knew of a studio to rent.  I found her a two-bedroom, with a balcony and low rent.  A real lucky break; right across the street from a day-care center.  It seemed like a sign that these two lovebirds needed a nest so I loaned them the deposit.  Lena doesn't know about that.  If she did I'd be in for the "throwing money out the window" routine.  I don't want to hear it, especially now, when it looks like she may be right.  When they first moved in, Mia was in seventh heaven.  In the morning she wakes up to the squeals of kids playing by the pool, which helps drown out the sound of traffic from Fountain.  Too bad love has flown the coop; they had everything going for them.

      In any case, it turns out Mia has a throat infection.  I gave her some ampicillin.  With friends I usually avoid it, but she's in really bad shape.  As for the rest, I didn't even take any notes.  Didn't need to, I still can't get it out of my head.

      I ring the doorbell.  No answer.  I wait.  I look at my watch:  five past noon.  Slippers flap towards the door.  She ushers me in, starts to shoot the breeze in a cracked whisper.  I hadn't seen the place since they moved in, so she wants to give me the grand tour.  Their room is charming.  Very oriental, full of venial odors; love, musk and hash mingle to form a heavy fragrance which makes you want to stretch out like a cat on the fat, embroidered cushions which constitute most of the furniture.  There are wall hangings everywhere, and the round bed is nestled in an alcove they made by draping velvet from the ceiling.  Most of this stuff looks like it came from the set of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves.  Its absolutely wonderful -- or very kitsch, depending on your point of view.  Bordeaux, dark green and mauve predominate.  Colors of the imagination.  The exact opposite of my house.  The baby's asleep in the next room.  We keep our voices low.  Mia is very pale.  She gets back into bed while I get the stethoscope and tongue depressor. 

      "So the throat is up to its old tricks?"

      "Yeah, but that's not why I asked you to come over."  Sibylline exchanges.  Something's up.

      "Problems with the baby?"

      She hesitates.  "I guess you could say that."  I press her.  After all, Kamal feels a little bit like my child, too.

      One rainy day in February last year, I happened to spot Mia at a bus stop.  Her car was in the shop.  I had a little time to kill so I offered to drop her off at work.  We got to chatting, and she confided that she was pregnant.  At the clinic, they'd gotten right down to business:  her insurance policy wasn't up to date.  The putative father was a "delicate case".  According to the OB-Gyn, an abortion would be cheaper than delivery expenses, "but don't say I told you so." 

      That got me thinking about the rumors one always hears about haphazard eugenic experiments and I missed the exit.  Mia started to whimper, though she's not one to pour her heart out.  I consoled her with pretty words.  Love conquers, and all that.  I believed it absolutely.  Today I'm not so sure.

      "What do you mean, 'I guess you could say that'?"

      I don't understand what she's getting at.  She watches me with big, pleading eyes.  With her short hair, she looks like a frightened little boy.

      "Did you take your temperature, honey?"

      I didn't mean to be so familiar, it just slipped out.   She shot me a quizzical look so I decided to stand by it.  After all, being friendly with your patients doesn't mean that you less good care of them.

      She hadn't taken her temperature.  She admitted that she was probably running a fever, but she really needed someone to talk to.  Everyone thinks there's nothing to listening.  In fact, there's no heavier burden.  Still, I tell her OK, go ahead.  I'm all ears, I make no judgements.  I'm as neutral as a Jew with an Oedipus complex can be.  I didn't have to say it twice.

      "Last Summer Nadir wanted me and the baby to meet his parents.  We went to Pakistan.  Did you get my postcard?"

      I don't know what I said, but she went on as if she hadn't heard a thing.  I was sure she was going to announce a second pregnancy, and was all ready to go with my little speech.  She cut me short:

      "Nothing's been right since that trip.  I don't love Nadir anymore."

      Her absolute indifference made me shiver. However, since I was the good doctor who doesn't judge, and she the patient, I didn't say a thing.  To tell the truth, I just sat there like a lump.  After searching my black bag for my jar of impassivity, I finally managed a weak, "Excuse me?  What did you say?"  She repeated herself in the same cold, factual voice.  "I don't love Nadir anymore.  I can't even stand to sleep next to him.  It's over."

      "But you're still living together."

      "Where do you want him to go with his messenger-boy salary?  And anyway, he's only got a student visa, he couldn't find a sponsor, he doesn't even have any legal right to the child."

      "Unless you marry him."

      She looked away, bitter.

      "That's exactly the problem, without me he's nothing."

      That said it all.  Her handsome Kashmiri warrior is just another rootless bum.  She's got her child, now the father can go screw himself.  Me and my big mouth, spouting off about love overcoming all obstacles.  Sure.

      I asked for the details.  I shouldn't have, it would have spared me the nightmare that's just waiting for my head to hit the pillow.  She confessed that she'd done something stupid.  Really stupid.  She looked away, then went on, "I slept with his brother."  That got me.  I was shouting before I even knew it, "Are you out of your mind?!"  So much for neutrality.  But how do you remain neutral in a case like this?

      "You did that to a Muslim?!  Under his own roof?!!"  She answered with a tiny nod, then defiance got the better of her,

      "Yes, yes, but he'll never find out." 

      I started to choke.  I stammered.  I was crushed.  She went to get me a glass of orange juice.  I drank it mechanically, but my throat stayed dry.  It still is.  When I pointed out she is sitting on a powder keg, she shot back candidly:  "I know, but I want him to get out.  I can't stand his hangdog look."

      Hard to be more concise.  Out of arguments, I said thanks for the juice, and wrapped myself in what was left of my tattered dignity.

      "How much do I owe you?"  She sugar coated the question with a creamy smile and a friendly wink.  A stab right in the heart.  In such cases, it seems, it's the unconscious acting up.  I swallowed the insult.  It tasted bitter and greasy.  Nauseating.  Hearing the confidences of a friend is one thing, granting absolution for a measly thirty bucks is another.  Fortunately, I'd paid the premium on my stock answers.  I asked if she'd paid her insurance.  It worked.  We slipped into paperwork mode and pretended to forget the rest.  I filled in the forms.  We avoided looking each other in the eyes.  It reminded me of that bad taste you get in your mouth when you feel cheated by a whore.  It makes you want to drag yourself even deeper throught the slime.  I didn't say good-bye.  I was too riled up, and even now, hours later, it still sticks in my throat.  They were my proof that love exists. 
 

Tuesday. 

      Thank God there's Chloe.  Only innocents and animals can restore your faith in something.  I'm exhausted.  I have to get some sleep.  I'll tell all tomorrow. 
 

Friday. 

      You jerk!

      When you keep a journal, the hardest part is sticking to it.  Since Tuesday, nothing.  Nada.  Not one line until now, Friday night on the lamb, hiding out in a bar in Venice.  For company I've got a glass of stale beer, and my notebook glued to the sticky red formica table.  Panic attack.  I'm on the edge of a nervous breakdown.  If I don't get back on an even keel, brain rot will cut me down in the prime of life.  Chloe.  I saw Chloe.  Chloe, Chloe; she's all I think about.  My brain sucks up the barflies' buzz and consigns it to a vast pit of silence.  Is that one of the first symptoms?  Am I going off the deep end?

      Laughter.  Now there's a concept.  I'd love to get back that absolute hilarity of adolescence.  Where did it go?  I used to laugh all the time.  Used to?  When was that?  Yesterday.  A long time ago.  Time slipped into vary-speed mode when I opened my practice.  Sometimes it's as slow as a death march.  Other moments careen around corners like the Indie 500.  I never know what time it is.  My life is slipping by like a bar of soap, that's all I know.  Chloe is all consuming.  Tuesday evening, she wasn't in her room.  I looked everywhere on her floor, but they had carted her off to central x-ray.  Front and profile shots of her head to check for tumors; the whole procedure in that filthy basement. Luckily, my rage kept me going.

      Tonight, I just gave up my consultations at five o'clock.  I couldn't stand it any more.  There were another eight patients in the waiting room; three little old men, the bird lady and four others I'd never seen before.  I sent them all to Bartoli down the hall.  She'll say I'm crazy, that I'm throwing my practice out the window.  And she's right.  Eight at once!  When I saw them, I thought, "Who the hell cares?  Let 'em die."  It takes more strength than I have right now to even listen to their fixed-price lamentations, and the thought of touching them disgusts me beyond words.  The only problem is that the quarter's rent on the office is due.  Who's going to pay it?  That question kept running through my mind while I ran through the hallways of the hospital, hunting for my little cracked china doll.  In that world of sick people, the sickest aren't always the ones you think.  What cretin could have had the idea of building anything so obscene?  Central x-ray:  six hundred yards of blockhouse passage ways,  incessant comings and goings of patients through the drafty halls.  Its like Grand Central Station for all the bacilli in the hospital.  The pink walls with their little white flowers, look like a coat of paint on the barbed wire at Auschwitz.  "Makes it more human"  The decorator was probably snickering up his sleeve.  I wandered around that ant-hill for an hour or so, and even if I never saw Chloe, at least I was as nearby as possible.  Coming back home that night I was happy, dead tired, but happy.  Have I stumbled onto some secret (and very strange) formula for happiness?

      Wednesday I was back again, more truculent than ever.  She was in her room, but the red-head had been replaced by an anaemic vegetable who swayed back and forth on her bed.  A mephitic slap knocked my breath out as I came through the door.  The poor artichoke surely suffers from incontinence.  I took a couple short, quick breaths through the mouth, then Chloe smiled at me.  I felt as big as God.  There on the formica, against a background of flat beer, I see her now, radiant and beautiful.  She's my light, my hope.  Even if I lose myself with her, I'm saved.  What a mess.  One moment I'm in seventh heaven, and the next I think, "you're in for it now.  You're in love with a schizophrenic."

      Contradictions.

      My angel hid her wings under a perfectly sublime sky-blue robe.  Definitely in my honor -- or so I like to think.  This time, I almost kissed her, but one last ethical reflex saved me.  Since then I've been seriously working on the alternative self destruction scheme:  turning alcoholic.  We worked on our act.  Lesson Number One:  Socialisation.  "Yes sir, I have to leave here.  Otherwise I'll lose my job."

      "What job?"

      "If I'm not there, nothing will get done."

      "What do you do?"

      "I fill orders in the candy warehouse on Washington."

      She really did work there.  Only they fired her a year ago for absenteeism.  The social worker knows it, everything is right there in her file.  But that doesn't matter as long as we convince the shrinks.  We went over it so many times she wound up finding a few polished phrases which would come to her easily.  She should do just fine.

      Eight PM.  Ambience like a shipwreck in this place.  Filled to overflowing, and like Gericault's Raft of the Medusa, everyone is going under.  The last five minutes I've been watching a lonely blond on her bar stool crow's nest, looking for any sign of land.  Her eyes sweep the horizon.  Long red nails of her left hand hang on for dear life to the mast of her cocktail glass.  Her voice, filtered by too many Camels, orders one more of the same.  "Chin up, honey", I almost want to tell her, but she doesn't really need it.  She's got guts enough for two.  Tonight however, guts or no, the fish aren't biting.  She probably still gets her fair share of tricks - but no longer her choice.  Drunks, working stiffs, illegals even more exhausted that she is, but otherwise its over, and she knows it.

      Across the bar, Madame the proprietress holds court.  Wide as a barrel of merlot, she chain smokes cigarillos and loves cats.  There's a whole flea-bitten bunch of them tacked to the walls, under the ropes of the marine motif decor.  Persians, siamese, calicos.  An angora stares at me through glossy paper eyes.  And, while we're on the subject of cats, Madame just happens to have one that needs a home.  Guess who's going to fall into that trap?  The most broken down, worst off of any of the girls in the joint, Loren the street-walker.  Pure putty in the hands of that big sweet-talker.  Bastards!  Even at the bottom of the line, when you can't get any lower, they're all trying to rip each other off.

      Let me palm off my damaged junk on you.  That's right, for you, my dear, a special price.  Just one little bill for this handsome pure-bred with almost all his shots.  And I sit there feeling guilty for non-assistance of a person in danger.  Its an occupational hazard, nothing really to worry about.  Loren has tears in her eyes,   "Oh Monique, he's so cy-ute!" 

      I yawn.

      Spot lights filter through billows of smoke down to the bar.  The juke box coughs up misty twangs and Loren repeats between two snaps of her gum, 

      "Oh my God he's adorable.  I hope they'll take him at the hotel."  And out she goes, cat under arm.  The bar tender, a tall black guy with a waxy complexion, shrugs his shoulders.  His sense of fatalistism is probably what got him the job, after all, this place is called The Unexpected.  Even I just wandered in by accident.  Its not a very tempting place. 

      There's a real character over at the bar, slurping his beer behind a huge pile of fried chicken.  He's about average height, slender, and very well dressed.  Too well dressed for this dump. He keeps glancing my way while holding forth to the boss.  This guy is quick.  In less than five minutes, he's managed to get the attention of the whole crowd.  The theme is psychology - right up my alley.  He says that he wants to drop his analyst, a "Jungian", he specifies.  Madame drags on her cigarillo with a dubitive look.  She really has no idea what a psy-Jungama-trist might be, probably something special for Bel Air nut cases.  And our chatty friend regails us with his adventures, amazing and amusing one and all.  I take notes.

      At one point, he was really rolling so I asked if I could turn on my tape recorder.

      "So?" prompted a house painter ensconced between two glasses of wine.

      "So he said yes.  He knows that I'm writing and I need material."  That makes an impact.  Everyone is in rapt attention and the braggart dispatches his beer with a peremptory gesture.

      And what do you write," I inquire, pinching myself hard so as not to burst out laughing.

      "Popular romances.  And I rake it in, if you want to know!"

      "Go on, Ivan, knock it off.  That's enough of your bull - you'll drive us all crazy!"  Madame is fidgeting behind her counter.  She knows the tune, she avoids group dynamics that might degenerate.  Everyone turns back to their drinks, and the brouhaha settles back into harmless murmurs.  Respite.  Ivan the Terrible seems to need to confide in someone, and he's already spotted me.  I let it happen.  At this point, his megalomania can't do me any harm.  I invite