Travels (14 page)

“Where is the other woman?” I said.

“Walking the dog.”

“Walking the dog? Does she know about Miss Jenkins?”

“Yes. She was the one who told me.”

“What did she tell you?”

“That Miss Jenkins fell off the commode.”

By now I had quickly checked Miss Jenkins, noting a thready pulse, shallow, intermittent respiration, dilated eyes, an open can of beer, and a half-empty bottle of sleeping pills.

The doorman said, “Is she dead?”

“No,” I said.

“No?” He seemed surprised.

“No,” I said. “She’s taken an overdose.”

“I was told,” he said, “that she fell off the commode.”

“Well, the problem is a drug overdose.”

“You can help her?”

“No,” I said.

“Aren’t you a doctor?”

“Yes, but I can’t do anything.” And indeed I could not. I was not licensed to practice medicine and I faced serious lawsuits if I did anything at all in this situation. “Call the police,” I said.

“I did,” he said. “Although at the time I was not sure if she was dead.”

“She’s not dead,” I said. “What did the police say?”

“They said to call the fire department.”

“Then call the fire department,” I said.

“Why should I call the fire department?” he said. In the end, I called the fire department and they said they would send an emergency vehicle.

Meanwhile, her roommate returned with a yapping Lhasa apso on a rhinestone leash. “What are you doing in my apartment?” she said suspiciously.

“This man is a doctor,” the doorman said.

“Why don’t you help her?”

“She’s taken a drug overdose,” I said.

“No, she fell off the commode,” the roommate said. She was a tall, slender woman of fifty, graying hair, a stern manner. She looked like a schoolteacher.

“Do you know what drugs she took?” I said.

“Are you really a doctor?” the woman said. “You look too young to be a doctor.”

By now the Lhasa was jumping on the comatose woman, licking her
face and barking at me. The dog was leaving muddy footprints on Miss Jenkins’s blouse. The scene was becoming chaotic.

The roommate turned to me, holding the beer can. “Did you drink this beer?”

“No,” I said.

“Are you
sure?
” She was very suspicious.

“I just got here.”

She turned to the doorman. “Did
you
drink this beer?”

“No,” the doorman said. “I came with him.”

“This beer can wasn’t here before,” she said.

“Maybe Miss Jenkins drank it.”

I checked Miss Jenkins’s pupils again and the Lhasa apso bit my hand, drawing blood. The roommate saw the blood and began to scream. “What have you done to Buffy?”

She grabbed the barking dog into her arms, and then she began to kick me, shrieking, “You bastard! You bastard! Hurting a poor, innocent dog!”

I was trying to avoid her kicks, and I looked at the doorman. “Can’t you do something about this?”

“Shit, man,” he said.

There was a loud knock on the door, but nobody could get to the door, because the roommate was kicking and fighting. Now she was shouting, “You robbed me, you robbed me!”

Then we heard a loudspeaker voice say, “All right! You people inside, stand clear of the door, we’re coming through!”

“Shit,” the doorman said. “Cops!”

“So?”

“I’m carrying!”

“Aha!” the roommate shouted. “I
knew
it!” She flung open the door, and there stood a fireman in a yellow slicker and pointed hat, standing with his ax upraised. He was ready to hack down the door, and he looked disappointed to have it opened instead. “What the hell’s going on in here?” he said.

“She fell off the commode,” the roommate said.

“Did you put it out already?” the fireman said.

“I was walking the dog, I don’t know what happened.”

“There isn’t any smoke,” the fireman said suspiciously. “What are you people up to?”

“This woman’s had a drug overdose,” I said, pointing to Miss Jenkins on the couch.

“Hell, then we need the paramedics,” the fireman said, looking at the woman. He called on a walkie-talkie. “There’s no damn fire here,” he said. “Who reported a fire?”

“Nobody reported a fire,” I said.

“Somebody sure as hell did,” the fireman said.

“This man is not a doctor,” the roommate said.

“Who are you?” the fireman said.

“I’m a doctor,” I said.

“Then I’d like to know what he is doing in my apartment,” the roommate said.

“You got some identification?”

“I called him,” the doorman said. “Because he’s a doctor.”

“He is not a doctor.”

“All I want to know is, who reported a fire? Because that’s against the law.”

“Coming through,” the paramedics said, arriving at the door with a stretcher.

“Never mind,” the fireman said. “We already got a doctor here.”

“No, come in,” I said to the paramedics.

“You don’t want to treat her?” the paramedics said.

“I’m not licensed,” I said.

“He’s no doctor. He cut Buffy.”

“You’re not what?”

“I’m not licensed.”

“But you’re a doctor, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

“I live in the building.”

“
And
he drank my beer.”

“You drank her beer?”

“No, I never drank any beer.”

“I think he took something, too.”

“You mean this beer here?”

Meanwhile, the paramedics were working on Miss Jenkins, getting ready to take her to the hospital. They asked what drugs she had taken, but the roommate would only say she had fallen off the commode. The fireman was giving me a hard time about being a doctor until Buffy leaned over and bit him viciously on the hand. “Son of a bitch!” the fireman said, reaching for his ax.

“Don’t you dare!” screamed the roommate, clutching her dog.

But all the fireman did was take his ax and head for the door. “Jesus, I hate Hollywood,” he said, and he slammed the door behind him.

I was out the door right after him. “Where are you going?” the fireman asked me.

“I have a date,” I said. “I’m late.”

“Yeah, right,” he said, “Only think of yourself. You guys. Shit.”

It turned out the manager had listed my name on the lobby board with an “M.D.” after it, because he thought it gave the building class. Whenever there was a suicide attempt, the doormen would look at the building directory and call the doctor. I was the only doctor. I got all the calls. It was a large building. There was a suicide attempt nearly every week.

The second time it happened, I told the doorman right away, “I don’t have a license, I don’t practice, there’s nothing I can do.”

“Would you just check him? I’m pretty sure he’s dead.”

“How do you know?”

“He jumped from the twelfth floor. Would you just check him, make sure he’s dead?”

“Okay. Where is he?”

“Out front.”

I went with him to the lobby. There was a woman crying. I recognized her as a girl from Atlanta who had come to Los Angeles to sell cosmetics but who hoped to get discovered for the movies while she was here. She was always heavily made up. Now she was sobbing, “Oh, Billy, Billy …”

I hadn’t been aware this girl had a boyfriend. I looked at the doorman.

He nodded sadly. “Billy jumped from her balcony.”

“Oh.”

We went out to the street.

“Did you call the police?” I said.

“Do I have to?”

“Of course,” I said. “If he’s dead.”

Out on the street, I didn’t see a body immediately. I was tense now, steeling myself against what I might see, wondering how bad it would be, how gruesome. We walked around the side of the apartment building. Then the doorman pointed to some low bushes that were planted near the building. “Billy’s in there.”

“In
there?
”

For an awful moment I thought Billy might be a child. I walked forward to the bushes and saw the body of a yellow cat.

“Billy’s a
cat?
” I said.

“Yeah.”

“You called me out here for a
cat?
”

“Sure. What’d you think?”

“I thought it was a person.”

“No, hell. Person jumps, we always call the police.”

Psychiatry
 

My wife called me in Los Angeles almost every day. She thought we should get back together, but I wasn’t so sure.

She suggested I see a psychiatrist. I refused. I didn’t think psychiatry did any good for people. It was just a lot of hand-holding.

One day she called to say she had gotten the name of a psychiatrist in Los Angeles for me. This man, Dr. Norton, had worked with a lot of writers and artists and he was very eminent, a professor at UCLA. She said I should go to see him.

I didn’t want to.

Then she said, “He probably won’t take you anyway, he’s so important and busy.”

I was immediately offended. Why wouldn’t he take me? Wasn’t I an interesting person? Wouldn’t he find my case interesting? I called his office immediately and scheduled an appointment.

Arthur Norton was a fit, tanned man nearing sixty. He explained he didn’t usually take new patients, but he would hear my problem and then refer me to someone else. I said okay.

I now found myself in a peculiar situation. I didn’t really believe in psychiatry, I didn’t want to see a psychiatrist, and I didn’t think there was anything wrong with me, but I was challenged to present myself to Dr. Norton in a fascinating way. For an hour, I revealed all my most unusual sides. I made jokes. I expressed provocative opinions. I really worked hard
to interest him in me. I kept glancing at him out of the corner of my eye, to see how I was doing; he appeared friendly but completely unreadable.

At the end of the hour, he said that he thought I had some life issues to consider, and that during this period I might benefit from talking about them. And he offered to serve as the person I talked to.

Aha! Success!

I left the office elated. I had talked him into it.

But I still wasn’t sure psychiatry did any good. And it was expensive, sixty dollars an hour. Anything that cost so much must surely be an indulgence. Rich lazy people went to psychiatrists.

I decided to keep track of how much it was costing me to see Dr. Norton, and I assessed each session when it was over to determine if it had been worth the sixty dollars.

I found Dr. Norton puzzling because he was so normal. I’d tell him my story and he’d say things like “Time will tell” or “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

I thought, Sixty dollars an hour to hear you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs? What good is this?

But I enjoyed going to him and complaining about my life, how I had managed to survive all the people who had abused me. I had a lot of energy for this sort of complaint. And he seemed sympathetic.

Then on the fifth session—three hundred dollars down the drain so far—he said, “Well, now, let’s see where we are.”

“Okay,” I said.

Dr. Norton said, “You’ve explained that as a child you didn’t get any approval from your parents.”

“Right.”

“If you got a ninety-eight on a test, they wanted to know why it wasn’t a hundred.”

“Right.”

“They never appreciated or complimented you.”

“Right.”

“They belittled your achievements.”

“Right.”

“And now, as an adult, when you write a book, you are fearful that you won’t be accepted, even though you always seem to be.”

“Right.”

“And you feel that you have to do whatever other people want; people call you up and ask you to give a speech or to do something, and you can’t say no to them.”

“Right. People won’t leave me alone.”

“In general you feel you have to please people or they won’t like you.”

“Right.”

“Okay,” he said. “What kind of a person are you describing?”

I suddenly went blank.

I couldn’t remember what we had been talking about. My mind was absolutely empty. I was enveloped in a confusing fog.

“I don’t understand what you’re asking me,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “you’re a doctor. If you were presented with a person who never received praise and encouragement, no matter how hard he worked, who felt that what he did was never enough, and who as an adult was very unsure of himself, and easily manipulated by total strangers, what kind of a person would you say that was?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

I had no idea at all. I could see Dr. Norton was driving at something—I just didn’t know what. I was still in a fog. I couldn’t seem to organize my thoughts, or to keep track of things. I was disoriented, dazed. I stared at him. He waited, calmly.

There was a long silence.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “What was the question again?”

Dr. Norton tried a few more times to get me to see it, but I couldn’t. And finally he said, “Aren’t you describing an insecure person?”

I was stunned. He had laid out all the evidence. I couldn’t deny the conclusion. And the very fact that I couldn’t see where the evidence pointed was itself significant. He was telling me I was insecure, and he was obviously right.