The Autograph Hound (20 page)

“Yes?…”

“It'd be Vince Lombardi.”

“I don't know him. What did he write?”

“He said—‘Quitters never win. And winners never quit.'”

“I'm sure the medical attendants will understand all this,” she says. “Have a seat.”

All around me are pictures called GREAT MOMENTS IN MEDICAL HISTORY. These are paintings with details so real they could be photographs. The people look as if they were alive now. “Benjamin Rush—Physician, Pedant, and Patriot.” “Suskruta—Surgeon of Old India.” “Hippocrates—Medicine Becomes a Science.” The patients who made history don't look as healthy as I do. They've got no color, no business to keep them interested in things. And the settings are very simple for such important moments. Everybody's lying on the floor. If they paint my picture, I'm having it in the contract that it's done in my apartment. I'll be surrounded by interesting photos of Marilyn, Bogie, the Babe. It's for them that I'm donating my body, and they should get some of the credit when the doctors discover the cure in me. My caption could read—“Modern Medicine Discovers Cure for the Big C.” “C” could stand for cancer, cardiac, cataract, or just common cold. Maybe Mom could be in the paintings, too. They'd paint her in her house, sitting in her chair holding the TV remote control switch. We'd be known as The Walshes—The Flying Wallendas of medicine. But our deaths wouldn't be entertainment. Our stories would be in textbooks. Our faces in paintings.

Donating your body's a great way to start the day. It gives a guy a boost. Our Lady of Victory should mention it in their advertising. What the doctors don't use of me, they could give to other people. I've seen headlines—BOY GETS KIDNEYS, MAN GETS GIRL'S HEART. I'll make a list. If they want my religious preferences, they'll take my personal preferences, too. The top ten. Joe gets my ligaments. They're strong from standing most of the day and making short sprints for autographs at night. Frankie can have my stomach, it's used to Italian-American cuisine. Dean Martin can have first dibs on my liver. I don't know who'd want my eyes. They're not much to look at or to see through. I'll leave that one up to the hospital. I'm as worried about my brain as Mom used to be. Zambrozzi could make it look beautiful. By then he'll have his new kitchen. He'd invent a special sauce with liqueurs that flame when you light them. I'll only allow it if Zambrozzi agrees to serve the dish to someone he considers famous. They say brains are the most nourishing food in the world. Wouldn't it be great if some part of Benny Walsh was swallowed by one of the greats? And then to be a recipe! Better than ashes to ashes.

“I didn't expect two doctors.”

“When you get Crane,” says Dr. Crane, “you get Farber.”

“And when you get Farber,” says Dr. Farber, “you get Crane.”

“You're a team?”

“We're a one-two combination,” says Dr. Crane, chuckling.

“When do I know if I pass?”

Dr. Farber tugs on his stethoscope. “That depends on how we feel.”

“How do you feel?”

“If we've had a bad breakfast and slept fitfully, we usually don't feel too good. If it's a nice day and nobody bugs us, then we're inclined to be happy.”

“I hope everything works out.”

“Dr. Farber's the gambler. He plays the long odds. He'd run on fourth and four, if you know what I mean,” says Dr. Crane. “In college, he did his thesis on probability and risk.”

“I'm no risk. You can count on me.”

“I'm more conservative. Three yards and a cloud of dust. I've been with Dr. Farber ever since he chose me from the graduating interns. Don't get me wrong. I'm no yes-man. I'm a choice, not an echo.”

Dr. Farber sits down beside me. “Any body marks? Scars? Tattoos? Skin diseases?”

“No.”

“That's good. The hospital doesn't accept anyone with external markings of any kind.”

“Mom used to say my skin was as soft as a duck's backside.”

“Your old lady doesn't have medical credentials.”

“Sure she does, Dr. Farber.” I hand him Mom's history. “If you take me, I'd like to donate her. Two for the price of one.”

“We only deal with the living.”

“Look how many doctors inspected her. There must be eight people who wrote her up. Long paragraphs. See how many categories she had—medulla, sacral nerve, skeletal muscles.”

“Let's punt, Dan,” says Dr. Crane.

“This is a donation center. What's crazy about donating a gift?”

Crane whispers loud enough to hear. They're not as polite as Dr. Kildare.

“What's wrong with me? I'm an American. The report's for real. I thought you'd be interested … sir.”

“We need bodies for medical research, Mr. Walsh. Not bits and pieces. Now drink this barium solution.”

“I'm in good shape.”

“We'll be the judge of that,” says Dr. Crane, tapping his clipboard with a pencil.

I don't like taking my shirt off in public, even for the fluoroscope. On other people, skin looks all right. It's a pleasure to see people like Harry Belafonte without their undershirt. Their skin stretches tight as plastic. Light bounces off them. Their bodies shine. My skin sags. In the summer when I took my vacation from the composing room, Mom used to beg me to take off my shirt and go outside. “Be a man, Ben,” she'd say, rapping her cane at my feet, trying to shoo me out on the porch. “Let the skin breathe. Skin is God's undershirt.” Mom liked my chest, and to keep her happy I'd take off my shirt and walk around. Sometimes she made me walk to the mailbox with nothing up top. I tried to act casual and take my time. If I rushed, she'd make me do it again. I'd flex my muscles like Charles Atlas. “Look at that. Look at my big Benny, Mr. Universe. Some tits you got.” Mom used to poke my body with her cane the way the medics are doing with their fingers now. Mom said I looked the same at eight as I did at twenty-eight. She said she had pictures to prove it. But we never found any.

Since I left home for New York, my stomach has puffed out. My chest has dropped. I tried jogging when it first came out.When I run, I can feel my body just behind me. My skin's flopping up and down, but I'm always ahead of it, going forward. I can't control the bouncing. Autograph collecting's better exercise than the jog. I run in sprints. My mind's always on the personality I'm trying to get. Then I'm sweating without even trying. I have that pain in my side. I can feel my heart beating in my throat. I head back toward Horn & Hardart. I walk a few yards, then jog a few so my muscles don't get tight. That's what the professionals do. Mom always worried about my health. She sent me clippings about football leagues in Central Park where you joined and worked out every day to get tough. She never understood. Autographs are a contact sport.

Dr. Farber and Dr. Crane are pressing a black window up against my chest. The glass is cold. My skin goes bumpy like a plucked turkey.

“All right, Mr. Walsh, breathe regularly when the lights go out.”

“What's going to happen? You're not leaving me here in the dark alone?”

“It's a very simple process, Mr. Walsh. We do it to hundreds of people. Essentially, we'll be taking a look at your insides.”

“It won't hurt, will it? If I get hurt you won't want my body.”

“How do we know we want you until we get a good look at your insides?”

“Can't you take my word? I'm healthy.”

“That wouldn't be scientific.”

“Can you keep the lights on?”

“No.”

“Can I have the negative? I mean, if things look good, will you send me a copy?”

“It's a fluoroscope. There's no photograph.”

“When the Rockefellers give a building or Jerry Lewis writes a check for cerebral palsy, there's always a picture.”

The light from the fluoroscope shines on Dr. Farber and Dr. Crane.

“Valve orifices competent.”

“Check.” Crane makes a note on his clipboard.

“Pyloric channel is patent. No calcification on wall or plaque formations.”

“I want you guys to know I'm turning over all my bodily patents to you.”

“Keep quiet, Mr. Walsh.”

I try and peek over the top of the picture. Farber pushes me back in place.

“It's touch and go, Mr. Walsh. Now keep still.”

“I live a clean life. No smoking. Three baths a week. Never touch the stuff. I'm not insulted if you find a few faults. I don't need five hundred dollars.”

“Stomach. Evidence of ulceration.” Crane makes a note.

“We've got a borderline on our hands,” says Dr. Farber.

“I'll take three hundred and fifty. That's fair for a borderline body.”

I passed! After dressing and sitting in the Great Moments lobby under a picture of “Galen—Famous Healer of the Middle Ages,” Dr. Farber walks out of the conference room and hands me some forms.

“Sign the first line. After Benstedt in room seven fifty-six puts ‘Property of Our Lady of Victory Hospital' on your foot, come back here with the signed document. The nurse will take care of you.”

“Does it hurt?”

“The tattoo? Some find it excruciating.”

“Does that mean good or bad?”

“It depends on what you like.” Dr. Farber smiles at me.

“I like things to be painless.”

The tattooist doesn't hear me. He's standing by the radio, humming “The Trolley Song” and holding his electric needle. He's a little man. Bald. Sixtyish. He has two colorful arms—one mostly blue, the other a rainbow of black, blue, and red. He's touching up the blue one. He turns around with a start.

“I've come for a tattoo, Mr. Benstedt.”

“You know me from the Boardwalk?”

“Leo Benstedt—Death before Dishonor.”

“Did I do you before, kid?”

“Your shirt's open. I can read your chest.”

He looks down and laughs. “My first tattoo. Amsterdam, 1920. I was a kid. Those were the days. Clipperships for three guilders. Snakes. Mermaids. There was an old man on the docks who did dragons as good as Chyo of Japan. He used ivory needles. It was an art then. Look at my schooner. The cut of the jib, the luff of the sail. You don't see that around these days.”

“The hospital just bought me. I've come for the tattoo …”

“I just showed you my arm, kid. Don't say ‘tattoo.'”

“But that's what …”

“I know what
they
say. It's body engraving.”

“Mine has to last a lifetime.”

“There's nothing to it. No stencil, no three-tone work. All I do is spitball for fifteen minutes, and you're through. Forty-eight years behind the needle, thirty-five of them on Atlantic City's busiest pier, and now I'm stuck in room seven fifty-six with my radio and my memories.”

“Why aren't you still on the Boardwalk?”

“Hospital is the only place you can work in this state since we was outlawed. I'm too old to be a renegade. What else could I do? Not one of my clients got the yellows. I got thank-you letters from all over the world. I was famous. Now, it's nine to five, one hundred and thirty-five dollars a week plus benefits. I was full of the piss and the vinegar in those days. ‘Death before Dishonor.' I meant it. I say to myself now, ‘Leo, erase it.' But I don't. I want to remember. I'd do five full designs in a day. I was fast, maybe the fastest. I had a flair for colors. Even as an apprentice, I made designs that had never been worn. An art professor came to take pictures.”

“I collect autographs. They're memories, too.”

“Chickenshit. It don't count unless there's pain. Then it means something.”

“What makes you happy can't hurt. You should have a system like me. My collection's famous, too.”

“Yeah?”

“They didn't pay me full price for nothing. My body's going to the people in my collection. It's only fair. They've asked for me.”

“Did you ever get your picture in
The New York Times?
”

“No.”

“Did people come to the city to find you?”

“No.”

“Do they ask you to sign your work?”

“No.”

“Do you turn people down?”

“No.”

“Then don't stand there and tell me you're famous!”

Benstedt pounds the palm of his left hand with his fist. He shakes his head. “What's got into me? I snap at everybody. People come in, sit down. I bathe their foot. They don't even look at me. I'm not even allowed to put my designs on the wall. Nobody knows.”

“You were really famous?”

“Ever hear of Great Omi, the zebra man? That job took five hundred and fifteen million pinpricks. Covered him from head to toe with a black stripe design. One hundred and fifty hours. My longest job. Omi made headlines all over Europe. Look at these hands. Straight as a board. No shaking. I've got great designs still in me. But who can I work on? In the old days, I got calls from plutocrats. I had a card with my name on it. Women begged for a king cobra like Lady Churchill's. Men offered stock for a gremlin like King Frederick's of Denmark.”

“You mean you spent time with your people?”

“You're the first one I've ever told this. I'd sit with them for two days, and they'd talk to me. Their most secret secrets. I wouldn't do it unless they told me the truth. Loneliness, Love, Adventure, Violence—the whole thing. I got a feeling for them. The first day I'd work on atmosphere. The second, on color. The third, I'd begin. When I finished, their memory—whatever and wherever they wanted—was alive! I didn't even know the power in these hands.”

“Could I have your autograph for my collection?”

“Kid, if it was legal I'd write my name on your shoulder. Today, your hippies and models—they walk around with their faces and legs painted. I hate it. It's all throwaway. That's what they call modern. Not for me, mister. I did tableaux. I worked from art books. They didn't call me Benstedt the Beautifier for nothing!”