“I agree to nothing.” Red lights danced in her black eyes. “If he patronizes me, a fellow physician, how do you imagine he treats his patients? You cannot practice medicine if—”
“Now it’s my turn to ask to be spared a lecture,” Max interrupted gently. “But if you feel so strongly about him, maybe you shouldn’t go to his party this afternoon.”
“And admit that he can beat me? Never.”
“Very well then.” Max got up and placed a heavily brocaded wool shawl over Lotty’s shoulders. “But you must promise me to behave.
This is a social function we are going to, remember, not a gladiator contest. Caudwell is trying to repay some hospitality this afternoon, not to belittle you.”
“I don’t need lessons in conduct from you: Herschels were attending the emperors of Austria while the Loewenthals were operating vegetable stalls on the Ring,” Lotty said haughtily.
Max laughed and kissed her hand. “Then remember these regal Herschels and act like them, Eure Hoheit.”
Caudwell had bought an apartment sight unseen when he moved to Chicago. A divorced man whose children are in college only has to consult with his own taste in these matters. He asked the Beth Israel board to recommend a realtor, sent his requirements to them — twenties construction, near Lake Michigan, good security, modern plumbing — and dropped seven hundred and fifty thousand for an eight-room condo facing the lake at Scott Street.
Since Beth Israel paid handsomely for the privilege of retaining Dr. Charlotte Herschel as their perinatologist, nothing required her to live in a five-room walkup on the fringes of Uptown, so it was a bit unfair of her to mutter “Parvenu” to Max when they walked into the lobby.
Max relinquished Lotty gratefully when they got off the elevator.
Being her lover was like trying to be companion to a Bengal tiger: you never knew when she’d take a lethal swipe at you. Still, if Caudwell were insulting her — and her judgment — maybe he needed to talk to the surgeon, explain how important Lotty was for the reputation of Beth Israel.
Caudwell’s two children were making the obligatory Christmas visit. They were a boy and a girl, Deborah and Steve, within a year of the same age, both tall, both blond and poised, with a hearty sophistication born of a childhood spent on expensive ski slopes.
Max wasn’t very big, and as one took his coat and the other performed brisk introductions, he felt himself shrinking, losing in self-assurance. He accepted a glass of special cuvée from one of them — was it the boy or the girl, he wondered in confusion — and fled into the melee.
He landed next to one of Beth Israel’s trustees, a woman in her sixties wearing a gray textured mini-dress whose black stripes were constructed of feathers. She commented brightly on Caudwell’s art collection, but Max sensed an undercurrent of hostility: wealthy trustees don’t like the idea that they can’t out-buy the staff.
While he was frowning and nodding at appropriate intervals, it dawned on Max that Caudwell did know how much the hospital needed Lotty. Heart surgeons do not have the world’s smallest egos: when you ask them to name the world’s three leading practitioners, they never can remember the names of the other two. Lotty was at the top of her field, and she, too, was used to having things her way.
Since her confrontational style was reminiscent more of the Battle of the Bulge than the Imperial Court of Vienna, he didn’t blame Caudwell for trying to force her out of the hospital.
Max moved away from Martha Gildersleeve to admire some of the paintings and figurines she’d been discussing. A collector himself of Chinese porcelains, Max raised his eyebrows and mouthed a soundless whistle at the pieces on display. A small Watteau and a Charles Demuth watercolor were worth as much as Beth Israel paid Caudwell in a year. No wonder Mrs. Gildersleeve had been so annoyed.
“Impressive, isn’t it.”
Max turned to see Arthur Gioia looming over him. Max was shorter than most of the Beth Israel staff, shorter than everyone but Lotty. But Gioia, a tall muscular immunologist, loomed over everyone. He had gone to the University of Arkansas on a football schol-arship and had even spent a season playing tackle for Houston before starting medical school. It had been twenty years since he last lifted weights, but his neck still looked like a redwood stump.
Gioia had led the opposition to Caudwell’s appointment. Max had suspected at the time that it was due more to a medicine man’s not wanting a surgeon as his nominal boss than from any other cause, but after Lotty’s outburst he wasn’t so sure. He was debating whether to ask the doctor how he felt about Caudwell now that he’d worked with him for six months when their host surged over to him and shook his hand.
“Sorry I didn’t see you when you came in, Loewenthal. You like the Watteau? It’s one of my favorite pieces. Although a collector shouldn’t play favorites any more than a father should, eh, sweetheart?” The last remark was addressed to the daughter, Deborah, who had come up behind Caudwell and slipped an arm around him.
Caudwell looked more like a Victorian seadog than a surgeon.
He had a round red face under a shock of yellow-white hair, a hearty Santa Claus laugh, and a bluff, direct manner. Despite Lotty’s vitu-perations, he was immensely popular with his patients. In the short time he’d been at the hospital, referrals to cardiac surgery had increased 15 percent.
His daughter squeezed his shoulder playfully. “I know you don’t play favorites with us, Dad, but you’re lying to Mr. Loewenthal about your collection; come on, you know you are.”
She turned to Max. “He has a piece he’s so proud of he doesn’t like to show it to people — he doesn’t want them to see he’s got vulnerable spots. But it’s Christmas, Dad, relax, let people see how you feel for a change.”
Max looked curiously at the surgeon, but Caudwell seemed pleased with his daughter’s familiarity. The son came up and added his own jocular cajoling.
“This really is Dad’s pride and joy. He stole it from Uncle Griffen when Grandfather died and kept Mother from getting her mitts on it when they split up.”
Caudwell did bark out a mild reproof at that. “You’ll be giving my colleagues the wrong impression of me, Steve. I didn’t steal it from Grif. Told him he could have the rest of the estate if he’d leave me the Watteau and the Pietro.”
“Of course he could’ve bought ten estates with what those two would fetch,” Steve muttered to his sister over Max’s head.
Deborah relinquished her father’s arm to lean over Max and whisper back, “Mom, too.”
Max moved away from the alarming pair to say to Caudwell, “A Pietro? You mean Pietro d’Alessandro? You have a model, or an actual sculpture?”
Caudwell gave his staccato admiral’s laugh. “The real McCoy, Loewenthal. The real McCoy. An alabaster.”
“An alabaster?” Max raised his eyebrows. “Surely not. I thought Pietro worked only in bronze and marble.”
“Yes, yes,” chuckled Caudwell, rubbing his hands together.
“Everyone thinks so, but there were a few alabasters in private collections. I’ve had this one authenticated by experts. Come take a look at it — it’ll knock your breath away. You come, too, Gioia,” he barked at the immunologist. “You’re Italian, you’ll like to see what your ancestors were up to.”
“A Pietro alabaster?” Lotty’s clipped tones made Max start — he hadn’t noticed her joining the little group. “I would very much like to see this piece.”