The Diagnosis Read online

  “Everyone, please return to your seats for the cash booth,” the announcer shouted with futility into his microphone. There was more screaming and applause. “Please return to your seats.” “The cash booth,” someone cried. “Give her her money.” “She deserves her money.” “Would everyone please return to their seats,” shouted the announcer. He turned up the volume of his amplifier, causing all of the loudspeakers to begin screeching in a torrent of electronic feedback. “Everyone please return to your seats,” he shouted. “It’s time for the cash booth.” Chalmers could see a couple of men at the side of the stage, struggling with what looked like a glass telephone booth. Wires and tubes trailed along behind it. As soon as the men had placed the cash booth out on the stage, there was a new round of screaming and shouting, and people fumbled to get back into their seats. “It’s the cash booth!” someone yelled.

  All at once the lights went off, leaving a single spotlight beamed at the cash booth onstage. In the near darkness, the great stained-glass windows suddenly burst out of the night, demanding attention, throbbing on and off with the neon lights of the nail-care salon next door. Leaning over a disciple was a pulsating Jesus, exhausted and bored.

  Onstage, the winner had entered the cash booth. The crowd began screaming with fresh energy. “Quiet,” someone shouted. “We love you, Susan,” someone else hollered. Susan, from her spotlighted position within the cash booth, made the V-for-victory sign with both hands.

  “Quiet,” yelled the announcer. The crowd’s intensity diminished slightly. “Five thousand bucks, ladies and gentlemen. Two hundred and fifty twenty-dollar bills, each engraved with a picture of the honorable Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States of America. The lady keeps as many as she can hold on to.” “Shut up,” someone hollered, “and give her the money.”

  Twenty-dollar bills began fluttering down from the ceiling of the cash booth. The audience screamed in ecstasy. Completely visible through the glass walls of the booth, with the spotlight pounding upon her, the woman twisted this way and that, stabbing at the air, trying to grab bills and stuff them into her pockets. Most of the bills slipped around her hands to the bottom of the booth, where they were sucked up by a vacuum cleaner-like hose. Some of the woman’s supporters, against the announcer’s protests, had come to the edge of the stage to coach her. “Lower, Susan.” “No, higher.” “There.” “There, got that one.” “Don’t move so fast, wait for them.”

  Chalmers’s head began pounding. What kind of place was this? Everyone was out of control. He wanted to lie down, but he continued to stare at the woman in the glass booth. He was repelled and attracted at the same time.

  By now the entire audience was on its feet, egging the winner on. “Go, Susan.” “Grab them.” “You can do it.” The pockets of her blue jeans were bulging with captured bills, her shirtsleeve had become ripped and it flapped at each turn, her cheeks flushed red with the heat and the anxiety and the fury. She spun, she swiped, she slammed into the glass. When the bills finally stopped dropping, she was led from the stage in a daze, amid shouts and screams from the spectators.

  “Where have you been?” said the lady in the blue satin dress. She stood in the aisle glowering at Chalmers. “I’ve been looking for you. How do you expect me to win without my good luck charm? Wasn’t she sensational, that woman? And so attractive. I won’t ask you where you’ve been, just come back and sit beside me. I’ve bought a new card, and I feel lucky. Oh, I feel lucky.”

  Chalmers felt too weary to argue. He followed her back to her seat and laid his head down, oblivious to everyone around him, oblivious even to Mr. Appleson, wherever he might be. Let him come. Let him jeer. Let him say what he wanted. Chalmers wanted only to rest. His eyes closed. Gradually, the laughter and shouting trailed off to distant movements of air. He dreamed that he was walking through the narrow halls of his high school, on his way to an examination. Looking down, he saw the black and white squares of the linoleum floor, scuffed with the marks of ten thousand shoes. The dark hallways were illuminated only by light coming through windows at the far ends, so that as he turned each corner he had the sensation of entering a long tilted tube. Down hallway after hallway in the dim light, other faceless students glided past him like mannequins on a conveyor belt. A big clock on the wall informed him that he was late. The hallways had emptied. Now he was alone. He began running, flying past the grim metal lockers on both sides of the corridor. The tilted tubes went on and on, twisting and rotating. At last, just at the door of the room where he was to take his exam, he realized with horror that he had forgotten to study. So diligently had he taken notes during the classes, but somehow he’d forgotten to read through them the previous night. He could imagine his pages of notes, the ink marks and words. With a sickening feeling, he peered through the glass window of the closed door and saw the other students sitting at their desks, filling in the answers to the exam. Quickly, he had to study. Another clock on the wall announced that he had already missed twenty minutes. Throwing his hands in the air, he ran back down the hallways toward the library, where he might find what he needed to know. Through half-open doors he saw other students grinning at him in mockery. Now he’d forgotten where the library was. Did anyone know where the library was? People were shouting. What did they want? His teacher was yelling at him to come to class, come to class, then she was laughing.

  People were shouting. Sadie was laughing. When Chalmers opened his eyes, half of her card shone with red. It seemed that every number of the new round had landed on her card, the red buttons had proliferated and multiplied. She clapped, she sang, she ordered more food and beer. She stood up and sat down and kissed Chalmers on his head. He dozed off again, this time a shallow, half-waking sleep. A seashore, green ocean, the flickering of light. There was more shouting. Then, in one last throttle of excitement and palpitation, she screamed “Bingo!” “She’s got bingo,” someone beside her shouted. “Another woman has bingo.” The man in the ragged sweater stared with incomprehension at his impotent cards and buttons.

  “I can’t stand it,” gushed Sadie. “I knew I was going to win.” Chalmers looked at her groggily. People were screaming all around them. A man whisked away her card and flew down to the stage. “You must go into the cash booth for me,” she said to Chalmers.

  “No, no, I couldn’t do that,” he muttered.

  “Yes you can, yes you can,” she shouted. “You’re young, you can catch far more than I can. You’re my good luck charm. Sadie will give you a hundred dollars, how about that? Oh, I can’t stand it. I knew I was lucky tonight.” “The cash booth,” someone screamed. “Bring out the cash booth.”

  By this point, Chalmers and the woman were both on their feet, and others had joined in the discussion. “Go take the money,” someone yelled at him, “help the old lady out.” “Doesn’t he want the money?” another person shouted. “Put that guy in the cash booth.”

  Chalmers felt hands pushing him along like oars through the smoky sea of the room, against his wishes, down to the front and up on the stage. People clapped and shouted. “There he is, the guy who didn’t want the money.” “Look at his shoes, look at his shoes.” There were roars of laughter. “Give him a chance.”

  The lights went out and Chalmers found himself standing inside the cash booth, squinting in the hot floodlights. The floodlights stormed and boiled in his face. His body was on fire. He stared out into the vast room but could see nothing. “You’re blinding him,” someone yelled, and the spotlight lowered its hot beam. Now he could see the stained-glass windows on the side of the room, the leaning Jesus beating on and off. The announcer made his little speech while the spectators screamed and cheered.

  Chalmers was trapped. He began banging his fists against the glass walls. He wanted to break them into thousands of pieces. The glass was thick, it felt smooth and cool against his forehead, like rock underwater. He kicked, but his shoes were too soft. He spun around looking for something to swing with, something to smash wit
h, he wanted to murder the announcer.

  Then the bills started to fall. The bills plunged without warning into his tiny glass world, droppings of green from the church and the hot greed of voyeurs whose screams he could no longer hear. He dodged the bills. He spit at them. They were green and crisp. They were immaculate. They fluttered down, flashing like leaves from a prematurely aging tree, and were sucked away by the earth god below. Some swirled as if caught by a breeze. How many had fallen? They twirled and they floated. It was a leaf-fall of money. One fell on his head. Another lightly touched his cheek, like the brush of a dead leaf, then like the fingertips of a woman. He could hear the breathy sucking of the vacuum cleaner near his feet, almost gurgling. Then it too became silent. Now there was no sound at all. Only the money. The money was fresh, even beautiful. In the spotlight, in the silence, he could see the filigree script in the corners of each bill, the delicate lines like veins in a leaf, all tumbling in light. Silk. It was a flood of green silk. And as the bills continued to fall, so thin and so perfect, he realized that he wanted them. It was he who should have the money, not to spend, but just because he should have it. Now he wanted the money more than anything in the world. But he would not flail like the woman before him. With a twist of his body, he turned away from the voyeurs so that all they could see was his back, and he began snatching the bills with small, hidden movements. He was much better at it than the woman before him. She had panicked. He would not panic. Everything seemed like it was moving in slow motion. The bills floated. His hands floated. One inch at a time, each bill sank through the shining white air. He grabbed with one hand and stuffed with the other, all in short, controlled movements, invisible movements. The bills came to him. He wanted them all. Now he was going well, he was getting every single bill that dropped, he was getting every one, every one, every one, he would have a hundred in his pockets before it was over, two hundred, two or three thousand dollars.

  The slow leaf-fall stopped. “Bill Chalmers!” a man shouted. Chalmers found himself on the main floor, at the edge of the stage, surrounded by people, the woman in the blue satin dress, the announcer, someone else shoving closer to meet him.

  “That was quite a performance, Mr. Chalmers,” said a man who laughed and held out his hand. “Quite an excellent performance. You’re a crowd pleaser. And that outfit.” He laughed again. “Riley Appleson, from Stokes International. We’re on the fifteenth floor of the Marbleworth. You’re on the forty-second, aren’t you? Never seen you here before. Let me buy you a drink. Or maybe you should be buying.”

  HOMECOMING

  Bill ran, ran from the church, ran into the street, remembering everything in an avalanche, his head pounding, remembering too much. A strange sensation of awareness went through him, as if that moment were the first moment of his life, the feeling of the air on his skin, the precise placement of cars in the street, lampposts, the hum of a neon sign. With a sudden rush of new consciousness, he could feel the difference between life and death, he could feel the long nothingness of death, and beside it this tingle of awareness as if he had been born at this moment, an unpleasant sinking sensation, the slender closeness of death one inch away, and the nothingness.

  Remembering everything. No, remembering nothing. Details had shifted imperceptibly. After Appleson dropped him off at the Alewife Station, Bill recalled having programmed his son’s birthday to unlock the door of his car, but after several minutes of running through all the meaningful numbers in his life, all remembered with frightening veracity, he discovered that the door was opened by his personal computer password at Plymouth. Did the former world still exist in this new razor consciousness of his mind? Getting into his car, he found himself obsessed with tiny details. The precise curve of the dashboard, the elliptical bevel of the turn-signal lever, the scratch on the right side of the ignition switch. His blue slacks, dry cleaned and packaged in plastic, were draped over the backseat, as he remembered. Or had they been hung from the coat hook? He put the pants on, breathed in and out gauging the fit. In the glove compartment, the extra key.

  The road out of the station swung around to the right, as he recalled, becoming instantly entangled in the absurd convergence of eight streets at the corner. As he squinted through his headlights to confirm this last recollection, a heavy rain began to fall. The rain hammered the roof of his car and lifted great clouds of steam from the pavement. Driving felt uncomfortable, odd. Both of his hands were completely numb, so that the steering wheel seemed to float in midair, unattached to his body, moving this way and that by pure thought. He watched the traffic light silently change colors. Then, with a swish of his tires and an uneasy dread of the world, he started up Route 2 toward Lexington. It was 2:15 a.m., according to the digital clock on his dashboard. By 2:40 he would be home.

  His mind was back. He was in control now. His hands trembled on the wheel. The smell of the car was familiar, a remembered faint odor of carbolic acid. That was good, every car had its own smell. That was good. He was on his way home to see Alex and Melissa. He felt them in his body, a warmth came over him and spread from his face to his chest to his legs. The night that he and Alex had stayed up pumping air into Alex’s fish tank with a bicycle pump because the electricity had gone off, whispering to each other for hours in the dark. Alex’s fish tank and his wall covered with matchbook covers and the shy way that he expressed affection to Bill, looking away with his dark, dewy eyes. Alex would be devastated to learn that his father had gone cuckoo on the subway. No, Bill could not possibly tell him that. He would tell Alex that he’d been mugged.

  The rain had diminished to a smooth hiss, practically merging with the stillness of woods on both sides of the road. It was a silence that Bill had rarely experienced and that now amplified his anxiety. He turned on the radio loud, loud enough so that he could see his stale morning coffee vibrating in its cup on the dashboard. That was better. Is love so fragile, and the heart so hard, to shatter with words?

  His mind was beginning to settle, he was feeling better. He was on his way home, driving his car on Route 2. It now struck him that he had panicked excessively. First thing in the morning, he would be back at his office. In actuality, he would have lost only a single day of work, almost as if he had taken a day of vacation. Jenkins could reschedule B&B for a lunch meeting, not at the office but at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. That should compensate even the aloof Christine Johnson. Some of tomorrow’s originally scheduled business, which pertained to a 20-gigabyte review of the Trague Group, could be moved to the weekend. All of these items were in his head in the most minute detail. Nothing had been lost, nothing had been lost. Now is the time to stock up on all of those summer items you need. Call the king of walking beams, R. L. Davis and Company, 1-800-101-3748. Get your truck in by 8 in the morning and you’ll be back on the road and making money by noon.

  He pictured Melissa lying on the sofa downstairs, where she went when she couldn’t sleep, letting the television play all night. How he wanted to put his arms around her and kiss her. In his mind, he was brushing her hair as she liked him to do. He imagined her closing her eyes while he brushed up and down. But she would have suffered terribly not knowing his whereabouts. She would be weeping and sleepless. He wanted to talk to her, to tell her what was going through his mind. But how could he tell her about all that had happened, especially his humiliating behavior on the subway, without causing her more pain? Maybe he would tell her some now, some later. He wanted to tell her, he needed to tell her, but he could not hear the words coming from his mouth.

  Then he thought of his mother, pacing by her bedroom window, wearing her monogrammed driving gloves and scarf even though she was not allowed to go out. He wanted to tell her, too, about the terrible events of this day. And then have her hold him. But she would not remember, she would barely know who he was. Tears came to his eyes.

  Suddenly, a car with a disabled windshield wiper whooshed by, dangerously close, possibly at seventy-five miles per hour or more. Bill honked his horn
. In reply, the other car slammed its own horn and accelerated, its trailing red lights vanishing in the rain. Tufts of fog hung over the highway. Bill began worrying again about what to say to Melissa. Sometimes he couldn’t understand her reactions to things. Sometimes her emotions would flare up when he was being so calm and reasonable and responsible. What should he say to her now, without upsetting her more? What should he say?

  While Bill was pondering these disturbing questions and uncertainties, his automobile, almost with a mind of its own, traveled Route 2, found its way along Waltham Street into Lexington, and made a right onto Kendall, sleeping and dark. Bill glided slowly past Max Pedersky’s crumbling Victorian, an embarrassment to the neighborhood even in the dark; the Allison house, with a tiny light in the upstairs window, perhaps Jane’s bedroom. Jane’s BMW in the driveway. In the Terris driveway Bill could see a Toyota Camry, out-of-state plates. That meant Marty, Sam and Gloria’s married son, must be visiting. From Pennsylvania. Bill nodded in satisfaction at each of these confirmed recollections. Bob and Silvia Tournaby’s house and garden. The Cotters. Then he pulled into his own driveway. Clicked off the radio. For a moment, he remained in his car, calming himself and verifying the placement of small things. The outside lamp glowed familiarly on its tall cedar post. Three steps up to the front door. The brass letter box just below the doorbell, the recent gash on the right side of the garage. The rain had slackened to a fine silvery mist and shone on the leaves of the rhododendron, precisely where it should be. He let out a small sigh of gratitude and eased himself out of his car, walking quietly up the steps. As he crouched before the front door, searching with numb fingers for the spare key under the ledge, a dog suddenly exploded in wild yips and squeals. It was Philippe, a raw nerve of a little dog belonging to Melissa’s sister, and the creature’s presence in his house meant that Virginia and her two young children and dog had come for the night. Now Philippe’s little claws were frantically scratching the other side of the door. Lights went on.