The Anatomy of Deception (6 page)

“I tried everywhere,” she said, shaking her head in dismay.
I realized that she was far more attractive than I had first thought. “It’s just too hard for a girl like me … who doesn’t know anyone …”

“One more?” I looked up; the waitress was holding up an empty bottle.

There are two types of inebriation. With the first, one knows one is drunk and attempts to be on guard, albeit with varying degrees of success. With the second, far more dangerous, one has no idea that one’s decisions and behavior have been slurred and thus proceeds as if nothing at all were amiss. At that moment, as I peered at the blurred bottle in the waitress’s hand, I passed from one type to the other.

“Certainly,” I agreed. “Let us have another.”

The more Monique confided her travails in the world of dance, the closer she moved to me. She leaned forward, offering me her breasts. I could feel the heat come off her and she smelled of roses, yet slightly musky. Her lips shone and when they parted, I was aware of nothing else. I felt I would reach for her on the spot, when suddenly she leaned back with a smile.

“Suzette and I are going to the powder room for a moment, Ephie.”

I was watching them move through the tables toward the rear, Monique’s hips moving back and forth liquidly, when Turk interrupted my reverie in speech that seemed to slur. “I’ve been thinking, old boy, perhaps you were right about Osler. Why do you think he refused to autopsy that girl?”

I still retained just enough of my wits to remember that he was asking the same question I had put to him earlier. “You were probably right,” I said, with a wave of my hand. “He probably thought she was too pretty to cut up.”

“Yes,” agreed Turk. “That must have been it. Still, you must have seen him jump … say, you did see … you told me.”

“Did I?” I replied. “I don’t remember.”

“You did,” Turk said, and then he paused. “We’re friends now, right?”

“Absolutely.” I nodded for emphasis.

“You like Monique?”

“Absolutely,” I repeated. “She’s beautiful.”

“She likes you. I’m glad I got you two together.”

“Absolutely.”

“What did you see of her?”

“Who?”

“The girl in the morgue.”

“Oh.” I put a finger to my lip. “Roughly handled. Big bruise on her left arm.
Didn’ you
see?”

Turk shrugged. “Does he ever talk about me?”

“Who?”

“Osler.”

“Talk about you how?”

“C’mon, Carroll. Friends don’ lie to each other. Did he say anything about me?”

“Nope.”

“You sure? I know he talks to you.”

“Absolutely.”

Turk’s eyebrows turned down, as pondering some question, but then he shrugged as if to dismiss the question entirely.

The girls returned a few moments later. They seemed to glance at Turk before resuming their seats. Monique had renewed her scent and I started to lean toward her, when the man from the door, shorter muttonchops, appeared at our table and put his hand on Turk’s shoulder. “Someone to see you,” he said gravely.

“Can’t see anyone now, Haggens. Having far too good a time.” Turk waved in mock gaiety.

But Haggens did not leave. “Better see this one,” he said.

Instantly, Turk seemed to sober. He looked up at Haggens, their eyes held for a moment, and then Turk pushed back his chair. “Only take a minute, Carroll,” he told me. “Entertain the ladies for me.”

“I wonder what that could be about?” I asked, addressing
the question to the table after Turk had moved across the room.

“Oh, his fixing, no doubt,” replied Suzette hazily.

“His fixing?”

“Oh yes. Georgie’s a great fixer. If you need something you don’t have, he’ll get it for you …” She giggled. “And if you have something you don’t want, he’ll get rid of it.”

Before I could inquire further, I heard the sound of shouting, loud enough to pierce the din. I turned and saw a highly agitated man with a turned-up mustache and beard arguing with Turk. I could not tell what the squabble was about, but the older man grabbed Turk by the coat. Turk pushed him and then moved forward, wagging a finger under his chin. Haggens appeared, seized the older man by the arm, and said something in his ear. The older man drew back, still furious, but reluctantly turned for the door, Haggens close behind to make sure he arrived there.

As they reached the exit, another man was waiting, a small man wearing a bowler hat, but otherwise obscured by a post. He moved forward for just an instant to take the older man’s arm.

I bolted upright, the effects of the drink gone. Although it could not possibly be true, it appeared that the man in the bowler was Dr. Osler. I started to push out of my seat to get a better look, but the crowd had swallowed him up. No, I decided, after I was sure they were gone, I had been mistaken. Surely, this was a datum I had misread—Philadelphia is filled with small men in bowler hats.

My head swiveled back to Turk, who had remained at the other side of the crowded room, waiting for Haggens to return. They spoke, leaning close to each other. Haggens nodded, as if in grudging acceptance. Then he made his way across the room, vanishing somewhere against the far wall.

Turk returned to the table in a dark humor. His eyebrows were knotted together so acutely that he looked raptorish.
“Come, Carroll,” he said brusquely, without sitting. “We’re leaving. Sorry, ladies.”

“But it’s so early,” moaned Suzette.

“Stay,” said Monique, looking languorously at me. “Let’s have another drink.”

“It’s not that late, Turk,” I heard myself say. “Why must we leave?”

Turk grasped me under the arm and pulled me to my feet. His grip was extremely strong. “Carroll, when I say it’s time to leave, it’s time to leave. If you wish to get home with your health intact, I suggest you listen. Pay the bill and come with me.”

The bill was somehow already on the table, and my stomach roiled when I saw that it was ten dollars, as much as I made in a week. I barely had enough to cover the cost and as I fumbled for the coins, Monique grasped my wrist. Her hand was warm and slightly moist. “Don’t listen to him, Ephie. Stay. Have some fun.”

I wanted very much to do as she suggested but Turk still had me under the arm. “I’m very sorry, Monique. You are lovely, but I must go. Perhaps another time.”

Before she could respond, Turk had dragged me from the table. “Get a move on, Carroll. We have to leave now.”

All the way across the floor, Turk looked around, as if waiting for someone to appear. He did not relax until the carriage had put some considerable distance between us and The Fatted Calf.

I
DID NOT ARRIVE AT
the hospital until nine the next morning, at least one hour later than was customary. If not for my landlady, I might not have made it at all. It had taken her ten minutes of knocking on my door to rouse me and, after she had, it seemed as if the pounding had merely transferred itself to the inside of my skull. After I moaned that I was awake, Mrs. Mooney left me to struggle out of bed. When I finally made my appearance in the parlor, she peered at me over her spectacles in sympathetic reproach, as one would treat a favored pet that had uncharacteristically soiled the carpet. She insisted that I take coffee and a light breakfast, which I did only with Spartan will.

My memory of the previous night had taken on a preternatural aura. Although I was certain of the basic time line and some of the events remained clear, there were any number of particulars, especially in The Fatted Calf, that I could not be sure were actual occurrences or partially imagined. While I remembered with utter clarity the press of Monique’s breasts and thighs, my brief glimpse of the man in the bowler hat had evolved into phantasm. The notion that it had been Dr. Osler seemed preposterous, but I somehow could not expunge the vision of him from my mind.

The ride home remained a blur. Turk had spoken little, but rather had seemed weighed upon by a great burden. I had assured him that since we were now friends, he could confide in me, but he had merely glared and may have even called me
a moron. After he dropped me at my rooms, I had no memory of how I made my way upstairs and into bed. I vowed never to drink to excess again, a vow I had made a number of times in the past, but never since I had arrived in Philadelphia.

My disquiet, however, went deeper than memories clouded by cheap champagne. Had Turk not forced me to leave, there was no doubt that I would have committed an indiscretion with Monique. I had wanted to desperately and, had I succumbed, I would have engaged in a monumentally foolhardy act. Men of my generation could not take such risks. When desperation overcame reason, those who resorted to prostitutes—or dancers in Bonhomme’s Paris Revue—did so at great peril. Disease was rampant and the protection that did exist, disgusting devices called condoms—thick, galvanized rubber monstrosities with a seam running down one side—were so unpleasant and unwieldy that few employed them. My one sexual experience had come during my tenure in Chicago and I had been lucky to escape unscathed.

Her name was Wanda. She was a Polish girl of eighteen, with blond braids and woeful eyes, the daughter of a patient. Our association began innocently enough—we visited the local arcade or took a streetcar to the lakefront and strolled under the stars. After about a month, she suggested that we return to my rooms. I was twenty-three years old; I allowed desire to overwhelm reason. Afterward, as we lay in bed together, I felt both an enormous feeling of well-being and a crippling rush of guilt.

I continued to see her, our time together consisting almost entirely of lovemaking. When I was with her, I could not restrain myself and as much as the release was ecstatic, it always left me wanting more. I didn’t love her, however, and when I was not with her, I was inflamed with remorse.

Then, one night, she said that we should be married.

Wanda had every right to expect that our love affair would culminate in a proposal and it was the honorable action to take. But at the mere consideration of such a prospect, I was
seized with dread. Marriage to her meant that I would pass my remaining days on the West Side of Chicago, growing old and beaten down by the poverty and despair around me. I realized too that Wanda had all of this planned. For her, marriage to a physician, regardless of circumstances, was a great step up, as it had been a great step up for me to have become a physician.

I told her I could not marry her.

I expected tears but, instead, Wanda flew into a rage. She shrilly inquired whether or not I intended to abandon her now that I had rendered her unfit for other men. I retorted that I was not a fool and was therefore well aware that I had hardly been the first man who had ruined her for others. At that, she softened her tone. She informed me that she was with child. I replied that I did not believe her, that I was, after all, a doctor, and if she wished, she could accompany me to the hospital where we could find out whether she was expecting or not. She leapt out of bed, gathered up her clothes, dressed, and departed, informing me on her way out that if I ever encountered her father, uncles, brothers, or myriad other relatives, I would be the worse for it. I left Chicago not a month later.

The episode caused me to realize what a complete fool I had been. How close I had come to precipitating my own downfall. Since then, when I could stand the strain no longer, I resorted, like most, to self-abuse. Yet, with all of that, the one feeling from last night that had not passed with the coming of the new day was an immense lust to be coupled with Monique, feeling her body thrusting against mine.

Once at the hospital, my headache still murderous, I called on the Professor in his office. I was reassured to find that he could not have been more open or in better spirits.

“My word, Carroll,” he said, taking immediate note of my condition, “if I did not know you better, I would say that you had been gallivanting. Since I do know you, however, I
assume that you simply stretched out in the middle of Broad Street last night and allowed the traffic to run over you.”

I tried miserably to manage a small smile in reply, which the Professor laughed off as he bade me accompany him on rounds. He was so buoyant and lighthearted that the memory of the previous day and night began to seem more and more illusory. It was, after all, completely possible that what Turk had put forward as a gibe was actually true—that in the Dead House, the Professor had simply been shocked by the unfortunate woman’s youth and beauty and found himself unable to cut into her flesh. As we headed for the wards, I felt foolish for my suspicions.

Going on rounds with the Professor was an opportunity to experience medicine at its apex. He had introduced an entirely new manner of training even first-year medical students to deal not only more effectively with illness but more humanely with the afflicted. He began, as was his wont, in the children’s ward. The Professor adored children, and the sentiments were heartily reciprocated. (Years later, long after he had fled America for Great Britain, upon hearing that he was to be knighted, one of his young patients exclaimed, “Too bad. They should have made him
king.”)
This day, we had been joined by, among others, Corrigan, Farnshaw, and Simpson—in fact, everyone who had been at yesterday’s session in the Dead House, save one.

“Dr. Turk will not be joining us this morning,” the Professor informed us. “He sent word that he has been laid low with a gastrointestinal ailment. I know how much we will all miss him, but we have no choice but to soldier on, eh?”

I took brief comfort in the thought that Turk had weathered the evening even less well than I until Simpson sidled up next to me. “You look positively dreadful,” she observed quietly, with what I could not be sure was reproach or amusement.

“Thank you,” I mumbled. “I was hoping someone would notice.”

“Raw egg and Worcestershire sauce,” she whispered. “Best thing.”

“I believe I’d rather be sick,” I replied, wondering how she had come by the information.

“At least you did better than poor Farnshaw,” she continued.

“Farnshaw?” Had Farnshaw been there last night? I was confused, but then remembered that Turk had befriended Farnshaw for a time.