The Müller-Fokker Effect (8 page)

‘Are you sure you don’t want to come along for a check-up?’ an intern asked Billy, who was helping clear the crowd.

‘No thanks, Doctor. A Greater Physician has already checked me out and found me fit.’

He hailed a cab and returned to Crusade Headquarters. An hour later, while he was going over the plans for Bibleland with his architect, Bill began scratching the bandage on his forehead.

‘I think,’ he said in sonorous, crowd-thrilling tones, ‘I think the doggie want a dink a gaga.’

‘Dr Fellstus! I am here to answer the phone and take care of your appointments. And that’s all!’

‘Gee whiz, Marge.’ The vet’s forehead twitched, snapping his dark elastic brows. It was one of Fellstus’s chief ways of showing emotion. ‘You’re a damned attractive woman. And you’re single now…so am I. To me, you’re…’

‘A receptionist,’ she said. ‘By the way, it’s almost time for Mr Hines and Toto.’ She batted away his hand with a fistful of patients’ files. ‘I’m a receptionist, you are a
veterinarian
, remember?’

‘In your mouth, it sounds—dishonest.’

‘Just you forget about my mouth, and all the rest. Or I’ll quit. So help me.’

Fellstus tried a smile, but the brows went on jerking. ‘If you quit, how will you keep that boy of yours at that expensive military school? Be reasonable, kid. It’s a good job.

‘And if could be even better. You could have anything you wanted. I’d set you up with a nice little place…’

The door opened and Mr MacCormick Hines led in a gloomy collie. Fellstus improvised a professional face.

‘Mr Hines! And Toto! Let’s go right into my office, shall we?’

Hines beamed recognition on Marge. ‘My dear, you’re looking radiant.
Radiant
. Dr Fellstus, you’re a lucky vet.’ He nudged Fellstus in the stomach with his gold-headed cane.

‘Oh, don’t I know it, sir.’ His huge flat fingers closed over the old man’s shoulder and he propelled him into the inner office.

When their session was finished, Mr Hines stopped by Marge’s desk. ‘I—ah—meant to ask you something, my dear. Have I seen—I know this sounds awkward, but have I seen your face before? On television, perhaps?’

‘No, I’m afraid not.’ Seeing that he made no move to leave, she changed the subject. ‘How’s Toto getting along?’

‘Depressed, Mrs Shairp. Depressed.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Really, you ought to think of trying TV work. If you don’t mind my saying so, yours is a unique face: Young, yet old, pure, yet motherly, a face touched by suffering, yet—I see I’m embarrassing you, so let me come to the point.

‘A certain food company I know of is looking for a woman to do television commercials. I have an idea you’d be perfect for the the part. Why not give them a try?’

She half-smiled. ‘No, really, I don’t think…’

‘I have their card here.’ He extracted a card and laid it before her. ‘That’s the man to see—Mr Bradd. The director of the Marketing Division.’

Marge did not look at the card. What was this one after? What were they all after? She was thirty, hardly more than plain, anything but sexy. Yet the insurance man—and then Dr Fellstus—and now a rich old man wanted to ‘get her on television’. It was all too absurd!

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘But let me assure you, I have no interest in you personally. Indeed, you may never see me again—Toto is breaking off therapy—but I do feel this isn’t your line of work. And you’d be doing Bradd and his division a favor if you’ll go talk to them. Goodbye.’

Marge still did not look at the card, but sat daydreaming while Dr Fellstus ushered in the next patient. Through the closed door came the sounds of therapy:

‘Shake hands, boy. Come on, Snuffy, shake hands.’

‘Wrowf!’

‘Seems a little upset today, Mrs Grebe. Did you give him the tranquilizers I prescribed?’

‘Oh yes, Doctor. And I did like you said—shook hands with the paper boy to show that he wasn’t our enemy.’

‘Yes?’

‘Well you see, our paper boy isn’t too bright. I guess he thought I was inviting him to make a pass or something. Anyway, he did, and I had to slap him. Poor Snuffy went berserk!’

There was a pause.

‘I see. Well now, we’ll just have to try something else, won’t we?’

Marge picked up the card.
National Arsenamtd. O God
. She tore it up and threw it in the wastebasket.

No favors were going to be done for that company. First they’d used Bob, then made a medical guinea pig out of him. Destroyed him.

On the other hand, she was tempted. The image of herself as a TV personality appealed to her (and wouldn’t she be, somehow, closer to Bob?) though she damned her vanity (Two featureless electronic blips, suspended in the void…).

She felt like laughing at the whole mess, herself included.

Fellstus showed his patient and patient’s owner out and then turned to Marge, his mustache at an angle of concern.

‘You’ve been crying, poor kid. What’s wrong? And what are you looking for in that wastebasket?’

Mr Bradd wore a pair of heavy-rimmed glasses shaped like little TV screens. He was tanned, athletic, good-looking and (judging by the way he stood too close and talked too loud) homosexual.

‘I’ll give you the straight poop on this, baby. As Bette Cooke, you’ll have a hell of a responsibility. It’s not just froodge, you know.’
Froodge
. The word was new to her, probably some coined media term—though for all she knew, everyone was using it. Marge felt as though she were coming out of a convent. ‘It’s something,’ he went on, ‘to live up to. A big, big image.’

He limbered up his pitching arm and fired an imaginary fast ball at his desk. The desk was a giant replica of a cereal package. ‘That’s our old package design for
Weethearts
. The new one, the exciting one, will have a picture of Bette Cooke herself on it.’

He tested his punch against the palm of his other hand. ‘We’ll do a week of camera tests, keed. If you make it—and you have every chance, Mr Hines seldom fouls out as a talent scout—your face will become better known than Miss Liberty’s. We’ll have you on the soup, the cake mix, the hair drier, the freeze-dried banana-pimento pizza, everything. And on every network time-slot we can grab.

‘So you see, you’ll be a very big package. You’ll be out there, all by yourself, carrying the ball for National Arse. What do you say, kid? Any questions?’

There were no questions. He toed an invisible bag, stretched, and looked at her as if she were the runner on first. ‘Test tomorrow, check with Scheduling for the time. All set, babe?’

Mac Hines rubbed his hands with anticipation, a gesture he’d picked up from television.

‘So Bradd likes her. Well well well well
well
! This is perfect. She never should have been stuck in that dreary soap opera in the first place. Now she’ll appreciate my help—she’ll be grateful—and when I ask her over for dinner…’

Feinwelt fiddled with the gadget on the mantel. By its left breast, it was 3:30. In the right, the glass was falling, signaling rain. ‘Go on, Glen.’

‘There’s nothing more to tell. I didn’t make it, that’s all. I
never
make it.’

‘Hmm. Why do you think that is?’

‘There’s always something. Norma Jean had her period. Zelda was thinking it over when the phone rang. Jessina was afraid of her husband—I guess he
examines
her or something. Jully really wanted to, but she said she had this infection. Glinda was afraid I’d lose respect for her. Pippy was too tired. Heidi said she was just plain afraid.’ He sighed. ‘It’s always something.’

Sighing, he took off the straw boater and sailed it across the room. After a few moments he went to the hat closet, took down a bullfighter’s hat and put it on.

‘Anyway, tonight it’ll be different. I can feel it. I’ve got this hot little number named Lornette all lined up, see. Hank fixed it up. He says she…’

‘Glen, let’s cut out the crap. This isn’t going to be any different from any other night, and you know it. Face facts, you’re no winner. There’s no point in blaming the girls every time, is there? What about all the genuine opportunities you’ve had?’

Glen hung his head.

‘Until you decide what it is you’re really looking for, you won’t find it, believe me. Anyway, what’s important isn’t whether you get laid or not—is it?’

The torero hat fell to the carpet.

‘Visited your mother lately, Glen?’

‘Do you, indeed?’

Feinwelt’s psychoanalytic method was like three-card monte. The victim was tricked into a wrong choice and then it was explained to him how he came to be so stupid. The explanation itself meant nothing—it was but a further piece of misdirection—for there was no ‘right’ choice. Feinwelt believed that whatever a person believed about himself was, by definition, a lie.

‘You think I don’t like my mother, don’t you?’

Feinwelt played a game of church-and-steeple with his fingers.

‘Well, maybe I don’t like her. Maybe I feel she didn’t give me enough love, so—yes, that’s it, of course. I reject her now for her rejection of me in the past!’

‘Indeed? But wasn’t it really your
father
who rejected you? Didn’t you feel he was paying too much attention to Mom and too little to you?’

‘Of course! That explains everything! I’m so afraid my father will hate me for it, that I can’t make out…’

‘Not so fast. Does it really “explain” everything? Or are you just grabbing at explanations to avoid…’

‘To avoid realizing that I hated
both
my parents!’

‘Hated? No, what you bottled up for so many years couldn’t have been hate, Glen. Rather, let us say, lust.’

‘Ah? Maybe so. You’re right, Doctor.’

‘And
you
are too willing to agree with me. So willing that…’

‘I don’t know about
that
. I hope I know my own mind.’

‘Then why am I here? You don’t mean that. You’re only disagreeing to please me…’

‘No I’m not!’

‘…as you feel you never pleased your dad. Yet on a deeper level, you’d like to kill me.’

‘Wrong again, you officious bastard!’

‘Not at all.’ Feinwelt lit a cigarette with Glen’s table lighter, a jade mermaid that contained a tiny, glassed-in roulette wheel. ‘Not at all. I can see you’ve been squeezing blackheads in your nose just now, both to make yourself “presentable” to me and to inflict upon yourself a mild punishment for not killing me. A punishment you feel you’d really like to direct at your father.’