Death of a Tall Man (2 page)

“You look—” she said.

“Like a dog worshipping a bone,” he said.

“Danny!” she said. “What a way to say it!” She reached out and took his wrists in her two hands. “Now, soldier,” she said. “I want you to listen—”

Miss Grace Spencer, R.N., let herself into the “back door” at nine five, thinking harshly of the New York subway system, which undermined punctuality. She hung her coat and hat in the closet beside Deborah's, took a clean uniform off a hanger, and went into the bathroom. She changed quickly and went back to hang her blue suit and white blouse in the same closet. Then she went through the bathroom to the storeroom beyond and at the lab sink, washed her apparently immaculate hands in antiseptic soap. It was an unforgiving soap; her hands were roughened from many washings in it. Grace Spencer regarded this fact, as she did each morning, with half her mind; she lamented it perfunctorily and went about her business. She checked supplies on the glass-protected shelves; she made notes of three items which, within five days, would need reordering. Then she went back through the bathroom and began her check of the examining rooms. It was, she thought—and this, too, she thought each morning with half her mind—rather a nuisance to have to pass through the bathroom to get to the examining room area. But it was, generally, an efficiently planned office. It would be worse if the bathroom were accessible only through the storage room. You couldn't have everything.

A number of people were, later, to find the planning of the office interesting. If they had followed Grace Spencer through it that morning as she ran her professional eye over the rooms which lay in her special country, they would have satisfied that interest—except that at nine fifteen that morning nothing had yet happened to arouse their interest.

When Grace Spencer entered the office, she came into a short, fairly thick, corridor which began with the “back door” and ended with the door to the bathroom. She went into the bathroom and out of it by a door in the opposite wall to the storeroom and laboratory. In the wall on her left as she entered the storeroom there was a door at the far end which, if she had opened it, would have let her into the waiting room at the end opposite to that in which Deborah Brooks's desk stood. But Grace Spencer did not use that door. After she had washed her hands, and checked the supplies, she went back the way she had come. When she closed the door as she left the bathroom, she stood at the intersection of two corridors—that through which she had entered and another which now, as she faced the “back door,” stretched toward her right. This was a much longer corridor. Six doors opened into it along the wall which, as she turned down it, was on her left. At her right, built into the wall, was a cabinet with a leaf which, when dropped, made a kind of desk. That was the center of Grace Spencer's activities; that was where, in the event she had nothing else to do, she sat. There was a telephone there.

The six doors along the wall of the corridor opened into small cubicles which were examining rooms. These rooms also opened directly into one another, in series. The room nearest the “back door”—six in the numbering which began at the far end of the corridor—opened into what they called the “back-door hall” as well as into the transverse corridor.

Grace Spencer went into Room 6, which was identical with the other five rooms. It had a window and beneath the window a counter; it had a low chair with a neck rest and a higher stool; it had a powerful, hooded light. The counter was covered with a white cloth. Grace whisked the white cloth off and spread a fresh one. She switched the light on and switched it off again; the big bulbs burned out quickly. She went on, satisfied, to Room 5, entering it without reentering the corridor outside. She repeated her operations there, and in the next four rooms. Room 1, like the others, had two doors—one into the corridor, and the other leading directly into a large private office. Grace did not enter the office from Room 1. She went instead into the corridor and back along it to her desk. She let down the leaf and moved a memo pad, a file of patients' cards and two pencils onto it. She had surveyed her country and all was well. It was nine twenty-five and she had five minutes. She went back down the transverse hall, which also ended in a door. That door was a second way into the private office. At the right there was a doorway with no door in it. She turned through that and stood in it, and now she was standing where Daniel Gordon had stood twenty minutes earlier. She looked at Deborah Brooks and smiled. People usually smiled when they looked at Deborah; in a world so filled with unsatisfying objects, and unsatisfying human objects in particular, she provided encouragement.

“Hello, baby,” Grace said. “How's the business girl?”

The business girl was sorting mail into two piles. She looked up. When she spoke her voice was unanimated. She said, “Hello, Grace.”

“You got a little burn,” Grace told her. “Too much weekend, baby?”

Deborah shook her head.

“Grace,” she said, “did you see Dan?”

Floor Plan of Dr. Andrew Gordon's Office

“No,” Grace said. “I didn't see Dan.”

“He was just here,” Deborah told her. “He wanted to—to talk to his father. About us. He's—he's upset.”

“Look, baby,” Grace said. “Of course he's upset. It's nothing to worry about. It won't last.”

The girl at the desk shook her head. She said she didn't mean that. It was more than that.

“He wants to have it out,” she said. “I told him he couldn't—not now, anyway. I told him there couldn't be a worse time. I don't know whether he paid any attention to what I said. Is—is he in the office?”

Her voice was anxious.

Grace Spencer was tall and slender and even in her unpadded white uniform, her shoulders were square. She raised her square shoulders, lowered them. She turned and disappeared for a moment and came back.

“He's not in the office,” she said. “And you'd better dust the desk, baby. Or shall I?”

“Then he went,” Deborah said. “I'm glad. He's—he's so strange, Grace. Sometimes I feel—”

She shouldn't, Grace Spencer told her. Grant that Dan Gordon was strange. But remember it was temporary; remember there was cause.

“Just ride it, baby,” Grace told her. “It'll all come out in the wash.”

Grace Spencer grinned as she spoke; it was a pleasant, wide-mouthed grin in a pleasant, rather narrow face. It was not the face that Grace would have chosen, but, after thirty-two years, she was used to it. She looked like Hepburn, only not enough like Hepburn, as she now and then explained. It was the way things were; it worried her only occasionally. There was nothing in her face to show that this was one of the times it was worrying her a little; that it had been worrying her a little for, now, almost a year. Grace grinned at Deborah and, as she grinned, pushed at her short, curling, sandy hair, changing its appearance not at all. Deb smiled at her.

“I know,” Deb said. “But—”

She did not finish because a door at the far end of the long waiting room opened and Dr. Andrew Gordon came in. He came in through the “front door,” which was unusual. Almost never did any of them use the front door; that was for patients.

Dr. Andrew Gordon was in tweeds. He was of medium height and rather heavy, but he moved quickly, with a kind of crispness. His hair was graying; his eyes were sharp and comprehending behind rimless glasses. His mouth formed a straight line, but now the line broke. He smiled. He came, smiling, down the room toward Deborah and Grace and said, “Morning, ladies,” as he came.

Deb Brooks stood up and came around the desk, holding out half a dozen letters.

“And,” she said, “some very nice checks, Doctor.”

“Good,” Dr. Gordon said, and took the letters. “You got sunburned, Debbie. See it, Grace?”

“Grace saw it,” Deborah told him. “Apparently it's the first thing you see—anybody sees.”

“Oh no,” Dr. Gordon said. “I shouldn't think that, Debbie. Not the first thing.”

The smile held but the voice now was casual; it was running out a conversation after the mind had gone on to something else. He went past Grace in the doorway, shuffling the letters in his hands as he went. Grace followed him. The telephone on Deborah's desk rang and she said, “Dr. Gordon's office,” into it. Then she said, “Oh, yes, Mrs. Overall, I'm sure he can.” Then she listened.

“Not this morning,” she said. “The doctor is tied up all morning. It will have to be after lunch—the regular time.”

She listened again.

“Any time between three and five,” she said. “Of course, the earlier the better. I don't think you'll have to wait too long.” She listened again. “I'm glad,” she said. “I'll tell the doctor. Goodbye.” She put the telephone back in its cradle and it rang again. She lifted it. She said, “Dan!” and her voice had a different texture. She listened momentarily.

“Of course I will,” she said. “It'll have to be a drugstore, you know. I've only got half an hour.”

She listened again. She said, “You don't need to.” She said, “All right, maybe it would be better.” She listened again and said, “You know I do, darling.” Her voice was very soft when she said that.

She put the telephone back in its cradle and sat for a moment looking across the room, seeing nothing—nothing except a kind of brightness which was the way things were going to be.

During the next ten minutes—from nine thirty-five to about nine forty-five—five men came in. They were compensation cases, referred by insurance company physicians; such men came on two days a week, mornings and afternoons, usually five at a time, more rarely in groups of six. Today's first group was typically varied in appearance and attitude. They were tall and short, thick and thin. Some of them were aggressive; some were uncertain, hesitant. Compensation cases were usually like that, Deborah had discovered; their varying attitudes were intended to disguise an uneasiness which was common to all of them. Deborah greeted them and recorded their referral cards; she returned the cards to the men. When they were all in, Grace Spencer took the cards and guided the men to the examining cubicles, one man to each, from Room 1 to Room 5. She left each man's identifying card handy beside him. And, from Room 1 to Room 5, the doctor examined them. He was quick that morning; he had finished by a quarter after ten.

Nurse Spencer collected the cards, which the men left behind in the cubicles. She slipped the cards into the file on her desk in the corridor and went to the doctor's private office. The doctor was sitting at his desk and looked up at her.

“Ralph Tober may call,” Dr. Gordon told his nurse. “Tell him to keep on with the drops and see me tomorrow.” He shook his head. “I wish we could tell him something better.”

“It isn't going to work?” Grace said, only half as a question. Dr. Gordon shook his head.

“I'm not God,” he said. He was looking at a card on his desk as he spoke, not at Grace Spencer. If he had looked at her, her face might have told him she found his last remark unconvincing. But probably it would have told him nothing of the kind; it was a pleasant face he was used to, with good, clear brown eyes. Normal vision, no evidence of undue strain. The undue strain which was sometimes elsewhere in Grace Spencer when she looked at Dr. Gordon was not apparent, even to an outstanding specialist. It occurred to Grace Spencer, sometimes, that Andrew Gordon was excessively interested in what people could see out of their eyes, and insufficiently concerned with what other people could see by looking into them. Not that, as things stood, it would make any difference to her; it was fortunate, indeed, that he never saw anything in her eyes except their physical efficiency.

“If Mrs. Fleming calls; as she undoubtedly will,” Dr. Gordon said, “tell her yes, she's got to keep on wearing dark glasses, and I'm very sorry if she thinks they are unbecoming. Tell her a white cane would be even less becoming.”

“All right,” Grace said. “Actually, it would be fun to tell her just that.”

Dr. Gordon smiled fleetingly. He agreed it would be fun.

“However,” he said, and let it go at that.

He looked at more cards and stood up.

“In short,” he said, “continue treatment as before. If the roof falls in, I'll be at the hospital.” He smiled at her. “And,” he said, “unavailable.” He stood for a moment, looking abstractedly out of the window. Abstractedly, he took a full package of cigarettes from a pocket and his precise fingers found the opener tab of the cellophane wrapping. He flicked it off and his fingers, which seemed so much more deft than most fingers, felt for the package opening.

“You're operating, Doctor,” Grace said. It was something she said three times a week; something she said on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays at, approximately, ten twenty-two
A.M.