The Day the Rabbi Resigned (14 page)

“Meat's pretty tough,” he murmured as he sawed away.

“You're using the wrong side of the knife,” said his neighbor.

“Oh, yeah.” And to relieve his embarrassment, he took a long swig of his whiskey. He cut off a large piece of meat and chewed away at it mechanically, stopping every now and then to take a sip of his drink to aid mastication. Then he spasmodically swallowed the portion, still unchewed, that was left in his mouth. He felt a lump in his gullet and took a long swallow of his drink to ease it down.

Finding his glass empty, he suspected the bartender had given him a short drink. He decided it was beneath his dignity to accuse the man, but that from now on he would watch him as he poured. He made his way to the bar. He did not weave, and his walk was not unsteady, but it was very careful as he planted one foot in front of the other with studied concentration.

To the bartender he said, “L'me have another drink.”

“I'm sorry, Professor, I'm afraid I can't serve you.”

“Why not? I got money.”

“I'm sorry, but the same rules apply like in a tavern.”

“You saying I'm drunk?”

“We've got to think of our license, Professor.”

“Well, ya know what you can do with your goddamn license, and your goddamn drink, too. I'm getting out of the goddamn place.” Abruptly, he turned away and crossed the lounge to the coatroom. To the coatroom attendant he said, “Getting out a here. Gimme m'coat.” He fished in his pocket for a coin to toss on the plate on the shelf of the coatroom door, and came up empty-handed.

“Yes sir, may I have the check?”

As he fished again, the attendant said, “Leaving early?”

Victor raised his left hand clenched in a fist and squinted carefully at the watch on the inside of his wrist. “Not so early,” he said. “Almost ten, quarter of. Gotta get home. Can't find the check.”

“Well, can you describe the coat?”

“Yeah. S'light brown, you know, beige. Got a belt. Nev'mind. 'Member now, left it in the car.” He turned with almost military precision and marched purposefully to the door.

21

Once a year the AFLINLMS—which stood for Association of Former Local Interns from Non-Local Medical Schools; the name kept expanding to more and more ridiculous lengths over the years—met in the Blue Room (“suitable for small parties of thirty or less”) of the Breverton Country Club for dinner and an evening of high jinks. It had started twenty years ago with a membership of eight who had come with their wives and girlfriends—the latter for the most part nurses at the hospitals where they were interning—and had increased to a maximum set at a dozen. Over the years some had dropped out or moved out of the area—one had died—and a few had been added. In the early days the talk at the dinner table had been largely of the politics in their respective hospitals, their working conditions, and the opportunities for advancement. Nowadays, all of them now successful, the talk was apt to be about their stock portfolios, their vacation homes in Vermont, and the high cost of insurance. The wives talked about their children, the difficulty of getting decent household help, and the clothes they had bought or were hunting for.

The evening always ended with a fun meeting with silly suggestions offered as formal motions to be debated at length mock seriously and finally voted on.

“Mr. Chairman, I wish to make an amendment to the amendment of Dr. Herman—”

“What was Dr. Herman's amendment?”

“I don't know, I wasn't listening, but any amendment that Dr. Herman makes I want to make an amendment to.”

The chairman, whose badge of office was a head mirror, called for order by tapping on a gong—kept by the club for their meetings—with a rubber patella hammer. “We'll now have a discussion of Dr. Larson's amendment, unstated, to Dr. Herman's amendment, unknown.”

That was the way their meetings usually went, but occasionally some things were offered seriously, and seriously debated and voted on. One, passed a good ten years before, had been to hold their dinners on Saturday nights instead of on Fridays, and to adjourn no later than ten o'clock since several of the members had early-morning hospital rounds the next day and a long way to travel home. Another, passed only a few years back, had been to make the occasion formal with the men in black tie and the women in long gowns. It added to the fun of the thing to dress up for an occasion of no significance whatsoever.

Now, at ten o'clock, as they headed for their cars in the parking lot, Sam Johnson, who had been the chairman for that particular meeting—they changed for each meeting—called out, “Hey, you guys who are heading south on the state highway, the waiter said the State Troopers have set up a trap just below here, and they're pulling cars over. The bastards do it every time there's a big bash in the main dining room. If they smell liquor on your breath, they'll make you walk a straight line to prove you're not drunk, or maybe even make you blow into a breathalyzer.”

“So we'll go by way of Pine Grove Road,” said Mimi Gorfinkle to her ophthalmologist husband, Abner. The Gorfinkles lived in Barnard's Crossing.

“Why should we go Pine Grove Road?”

“Because you smell like a brewery. That's all you need is to have the State Troopers arrest you for drunk driving.”

“I only had one drink.”

“You had two. I was watching. And that glass of beer that you spilled on your shirt.”

“Only half a glass of beer. Half I spilled. Okay, we'll go Pine Grove.”

Dr. Gorfinkle, small, rabbit-faced, and bald, was a careful driver, and even on Pine Grove Road with no traffic in either direction, he drove at a very moderate rate of speed. Beside him, Mimi, tall, large-breasted, with carefully coiffed blond hair, had dozed off, replete with rich food and wine. Suddenly, Gorfinkle applied the brakes and she awoke with a start. “Whatsamatter?”

“Look—on the right.”

It was a car whose crumpled hood was wrapped almost halfway around the trunk of a tree as though clutching it in powerful jaws. “Let me have the flashlight in the glove compartment,” he said. “You wait here.”

He got out and swept the roadway with the light of his flashlight. “Must've skidded on that patch of mud,” he called out. By the light of his flashlight he saw that the driver behind the wheel had slid down so that his head rested on the back of the seat below the headrest. His right hand was flung back and lay on the passenger seat, the other hung limp, palm down, on the shattered glass of the side window. His mouth was open and the doctor saw that he was breathing. Gingerly, Gorfinkle reached in and turned off the ignition. The motor was dead, but he had heard it was a good idea. Before withdrawing his hand, he let his fingertips rest lightly on the pulse at the throat. It was rapid and thready, but not alarmingly so. He came back to the passenger side of his car and motioned to his wife to lower the window. “Let me have the box of tissues, will you.”

There were numerous cuts on the victim's face, and he wanted to make sure that none were serious. He dabbed the man's face and satisfied himself that they were superficial.

“Don't you dare do anything, Abner,” his wife called out. “Remember what happened to Bill Sawyer when he played Good Samaritan a couple of years ago. He was sued for malpractice.”

He got back into his car and told his wife, “He's unconscious, concussion.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I'll notify the police, of course. What else can I do? What does the trip gauge say?”

“Five and seven-tenth miles. Why?”

“I'm wondering if it's worth going back. I'm not sure, but I think we are about as near to Barnard's Crossing as we are to Breverton.”

“You'll leave him just like that?”

“Well, do you want to get out and wait here while I go for the police?”

“Couldn't we wait and flag down a car?”

“On this road, this time of night? It could be an hour or more before another car came along.”

“But to just leave him …”

“Look, there's nothing I can do for the guy.”

He drove even slower the rest of the way, his speedometer rarely registering above thirty-five miles an hour. Shortly after they finally left Pine Grove Road, they came to an outdoor pay phone and he stopped the car.

“Why are we stopping?” she asked.

“So I can phone the police, of course.”

“That's silly. We're almost home. You can call them from there.”

But when they got home and he reached for the phone, she said, “You get out of those clothes first.”

He looked at her in amazement. “Why do I have to get undressed to phone the police?”

“Because they might send someone down to question you about it, and if he smells the beer on your shirt and cummerbund, he might think you had something to do with the accident.”

He knew better than to argue with her, so he undressed and put on a robe. Then he called the police.

“Barnard's Crossing Police Department. Sergeant Pierce speaking.”

“This is Dr. Gorfinkle, 23 Laurel Road.”

“Yes, Doctor. What can I do for you?”

“Well, I was just coming home from Breverton on the Pine Grove Road, and there was an accident. I don't mean that I was in it, but I saw this car. It had slammed into a tree. The driver was unconscious behind the wheel.”

“Passengers?”

“I didn't see any. I mean there were none in the car. Of course, there might have been and they could have gone off for help.”

“Just where on Pine Grove Road was this, Doctor?”

“Where? Just off the road.”

“I mean, was it before or after the boundary marker coming from Breverton?”

“Boundary marker?”

“Yeah, you know, the sign that says You Are Now Entering Barnard's Crossing.”

“I didn't notice any sign. I mean it would be on the side of the road, wouldn't it? And I was keeping my eyes straight ahead of me on the road. Is it important?”

“Well, sure, if it's on the Breverton side of the line, they've got to handle it and—”

“Well, I can tell you how far it is from the Breverton Country Club. It was five and seven-tenths miles.”

“How do you know that?”

“I've got one of those trip things on my odometer. You just press a button and these three numbers all go back to zero. I got into the habit of pressing the button every time I get into the car. That way, I always know just how far I've driven. So I looked at the trip gauge when I stopped and it was five-point-seven miles.”

“Five point seven. Just a minute.”

The doctor waited, his fingers drumming nervously on the telephone table. Finally, the sergeant came back on the line, “Hello, Doctor? By our measurements on the map, I think the accident occurred in Breverton.”

“You mean, I've got to call them?”

“No, we'll call them. Now, can you give me an idea of how seriously he was hurt.”

“I didn't examine him. I'm an ophthalmologist, an eye doctor. I didn't want to touch anything. There might be broken bones or—you know, it's dangerous to move a man in that condition unless you know exactly what you're doing. I didn't touch anything except that I took his pulse and that seemed all right, a little thready perhaps. I reached in and turned off the ignition. The motor was dead but I read somewhere that it's a good idea to turn off the ignition.”

“I see. All right, we'll take care of it.”

Professor Mordecai Jacobs shook his head at the waitress who had stopped to refill coffee cups, and said to Alice Saxon, a hint of irritation in his voice, “How long do these things last anyway? Do you have any idea?”

“Oh, there are always speeches,” she said, “and usually resolutions are offered which are discussed and voted on. An hour or more, I'd say. But you can go now, if you like. Victor Joyce left some time ago.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, I saw him go over to the coatroom and then go out the front door. That was a good fifteen minutes ago and he hasn't come back, so I guess he left for good.”

“Then I think I'll be going along.”

“To the Bar Mitzvah? Well, have fun.”

He nodded, and then he rose and sidled through the tables to the lounge. He looked back for a moment to see if perhaps Professor Sugrue was looking in his direction, and then strode purposefully to the front door. He paused momentarily on the veranda at the head of the stairs leading down to the parking lot. Hearing footsteps behind him, he turned. It was the young man who had been attending the coatroom.

“You leaving early, too, Professor?”

“Oh, hello—Aherne, isn't it?”

“That's right.”

“I have another engagement—in Barnard's Crossing. You taking a breather?”

“No, I'm through for the night. I work only until ten.”

“Then who's minding the store?”

“Oh, Mary Ellen, one of the regular waitresses.”

“Then she gets the tips?”

“No, the waitresses pool the tips, both what's left on the tables and what's left in the dish at the coatroom. I guess they figure a woman in the coatroom will draw more tips than a man. I just get paid by the hour.”

“That's very interesting. You live in Breverton?”

“No, in Swampscott, just beyond Barnard's Crossing, the next town. Ah, there's my jalopy.” He got out his keys. As Jacobs was about to walk on, he said, “Oh, Professor, I've been meaning to ask you.”

“Yes?”

“The Survey course. All sections cover the same ground and take the same final. Right?”

“That's right. Each instructor emphasizes those aspects that interest him, but we cover the same ground, and we get together and make up one exam for all sections.”

“Well, this girl I used to go with, she was in Professor Joyce's section. After the exam, she thought she'd flubbed it. Two questions she didn't answer at all, and then there were a couple she was sure she got wrong—”