He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on a swing. 50 years? He was never a daredevil like the other kids. In fact, swings scared him. No doubt those fears could be traced back to the days when his father installed a set in the backyard of their first house. Morris, a sadistic drunk, gave his son powerful push-offs and refused to stop, even when Bud screamed and cried and the swings shook, partially breaking free of their foundation — — — — — — — — — — — — — of an instant, he was on the asphalt. What? Confused. What happened… how silly! — the swing had broken. Well of course it did, it was old, and made for 100 lb kids. Bud fell hard on his ass and it hurt like hell. What a fool. Dad was probably laughing his ass off, or at least the rotting coccyx it was once attached to.
. .
Bud was invited to a Sunday brunch at Michael and Wendy’s.
The house in Hancock Park was beautifully done. He was a bit rusty on the social side so when Michael’s wife playfully chided him for being a wallflower, Bud forced himself to mix. He wound up talking to the writer Scott Berg and his partner Kevin. Bud hadn’t read any of Berg’s work but knew he’d gotten the Pulitzer for a bio having something to do with Scott Fitzgerald. He also knew that his brother Jeff was the bookish head of ICM.
Michael came over and asked Berg if he enjoyed teaching at Princeton. The conversation led to the great Dante scholar Robert Hollander, a professor emeritus there. Though in pain from his fall and higher on oxycodone than usual, Bud wanted to join in. He had more than a passing knowledge of the Italian poet. In the last few years, he’d pushed himself through a pastiche of different Infernos—Pinsky, Mandelbaum, Longfellow — and read most of the SparkNotes to Purgatorio and Paradiso.
The conversation was heady and he held his own.
“I’ve read the Hollander translation,” Bud lied. Though it probably was true he at least owned the volume. Whenever a new translation of La Commedia appeared, he OCD-one-clicked. “It’s always been a dream of mine to give a Dante lecture.”
Bud made it clear he was being wry, but not entirely. Why not? Why couldn’t he one day lecture on Dante? And why shouldn’t they take such an aspiration seriously? Michael was an esteemed novelist, Berg, an honored author of nonfiction. While not as celebrated, Bud was a working writer — a journeyman peer.
Berg twitched. It was only the discreet, gently admonitory touch of his partner that softened his scowl.
“You want to lecture on Dante?” said Berg. Already Bud felt like he’d been stung. “Really? Somehow, I don’t think so. Durante, maybe! You can lecture on Jimmy Durante. Maybe.”
. .
The soreness from the fall didn’t go away.
Bud didn’t have a doctor, so he went to Dolly’s internist, Dr. Fine. He’d have to ask her for money because his Writers Guild insurance wouldn’t kick in till next quarter.
He was back in the examination room putting on his shirt when the doc came in holding x-rays.
“Congratulations! You’ve got a break.”
“Really?”
“It’s classic.”
“What do we do?”
“You’re going to need surgery.”
“Jesus, you’re kidding.”
“See the break?” He held up the film. Bud was too perturbed to focus. “We don’t see it too much in people your age. It’s literally called an ‘Old Man’ fracture. You’re a little young — I’d expect to see it in your mom. The good news is, it’s eminently repairable. I’m sending you over to Moe Ravitz. He’s in the Cedars Towers. Great bone guy.”
“Moe Ravitz?”
“Best geriatric orthopedist on the Westside.”
CLEAN [Gwen]
High Resolution
Gwen’s
lawyer had already been given an inkling of “the number,” but wanted the other side to go ahead and present its case. There was of course no question of the hospital’s wrongdoing. A heretofore unbreakable chain of checks and balances had been torn asunder by human error, each link’s failure more improbable than the next. The day of reckoning had come.
The timing couldn’t have been worse for the plaintiff. St. Ambrose was compellingly forthright, telling Gwen and counsel that a philanthropist and longtime donor was about to make the largest gift to a private teaching hospital on record — a billion dollars. Bertram Brainard, whose name already graced one of their buildings, was deeply grateful that its doctors had discovered a rare, sesame seed-sized brain tumor in his son that had failed to be detected by the world-famous Houston clinic Biggie was initially brought to after exhibiting signs of memory loss. (There was no reason the hospital attorneys would have known that Biggie and her daughter had become fast friends, and no reason to enlighten them either.) Gwen got the sense they’d told her more than was needed — they could have just mentioned the billion-dollar gift and stopped there — because they wanted to state, almost for the record, that catastrophic mistakes can and do happen, and are not in the domain of any single institution; nor was it a conspiracy of negligence that brought them to this room, on this day, but rather the banality of events — lab reports read in haste and fatigue, faulty calibrations and equipment, malignant interpretations of benign processes — that accreted to provide an evil end.
The hospital was convinced that any public revelation of Telma’s case would do more than cause the sort of damage to an institution and its caregivers that takes at least a generation to heal; it would result in the catastrophic loss of the Brainard endowment. Attorneys for the plaintiff informed that because of the gift’s magnitude, the hospital board had approved putting a $35 million settlement on the table. The money could come monthly, quarterly or annually, in a formula to be determined by defendants’ design. (Compounding interest assured that the amount paid out over the girl’s lifetime would more than double the offer.) There were two caveats. St. Ambrose wanted the entire case sealed forever. Secondly, Gwen must agree to sign a document stipulating the settlement would be diminished by two-thirds should its details ever go public by virtue of memoir, interview, blog, et alia, traceable to the injured parties.
The men finished, leaving Gwen and her lawyer alone in the conference room.
“It’s blackmail, isn’t it?”
“A form thereof.”
“They don’t even want me telling her! It’s so smarmy. They’re dictating the choices I have in sharing with Telma what happened — what they did that changed her life.”
“What you say is true. Though I’m not sure I’d have quite put it that way.”
“And what if I say no? What if I say go fuck yourselves, we’re having a press conference. News at 11.”
“You’d still get a settlement. You’d still be rich — Telma would be rich. I can’t visualize a scenario where you’ll walk away with less than $25 million. There are always unknowns. Insurance companies can be tough. They’ll put forth the argument that she’s got an excellent quality of life.”