You see why I love my wife? Forget Margie. Forget Hannah, and even Meg Ryan. I don’t know what fled and Filbert had been doing under that desk, but I suspected what it was, and was getting similar ideas myself. I may be getting old, but I’m still not too old for that.
Then I remembered Dartmouth and Wang. Who knew what sort of devices they had set up in the bedroom? And were they looking in on Will and Hannah as well? “By the way,” I said. “I think Will may be having an affair.”
“With fled?”
I couldn’t tell whether she was joking or not. “No. With Hannah Rudqvist.”
She gave me the look that said: did you get off the mushroom wagon again? Then, to my great amazement, she asked, “Did you ever have an affair?”
“Yes,” I answered immediately. “A lifelong one. With you….”
She came over and kissed me. To hell with Dartmouth and Wang, I thought, as we headed for the bedroom.
* * *
Later that afternoon I took another look at fled’s website. HURRY, HURRY, HURRY! ONLY ONE MORE WEEK! it proclaimed. There were no other changes.
There was plenty of new mail as well. Many people asked: is this a joke? Others begged me to put in a good word for them—they had been waiting ten years to go to K-PAX and were afraid this might be their last chance.
Two letters came from scientists. I don’t know why they didn’t just call the hospital; perhaps they thought that communicating through my website would be more expedient. In any case, one of them, an otolaryngologist, wanted to examine fled’s vocal cords to compare them with those of both humans and chimpanzees. Doyourealizewhatitwouldmeanifwecouldfindawaytogetapestospeak? I forwarded it without comment to Tewksbury.
The other came from a biologist who wanted to teach fled sign language so she could communicate with the great apes. That one I deleted.
Karen came in to remind me that we had a bridge date with the Siegels. “I hope you aren’t going to spend the rest of your retirement sitting at that thing,” she said with an amused frown.
“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “After fled is gone, the mail will stop coming.” As usual where alien matters are concerned, however, I was wrong about that.
CHAPTER TEN
When I got to the hospital on Wednesday there were trailers all along Amsterdam Avenue. The lounge and lawn (the only places the network was allowed to film, except for the Ward Two cafeteria) were a mess. Cameras and cables were everywhere. I was concerned about possible lawsuits if any of the patients were to trip on something. But I needn’t have worried—Goldfarb had seen that the studio’s insurance policy covered every conceivable happenstance, and had advised the staff to help the inmates cope with the disruption and to keep an eye out for any sign of trouble.
To everyone’s surprise, the patients loved it. Most of them strutted around flaring their nostrils and looking like movie stars, some with scarves tied around their necks, or puffing unlit cigarettes in holders made from whatever was at hand—hollow sticks or straws or the like. And the poses! Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn could have learned a lot from them. Claire, for example, had retrieved her stethoscope, and strode here and there with it dangling from her neck, listening to hearts pound and lungs wheeze, jotting notes onto scraps of paper, while Rocky shadowboxed the world. Darryl, on the other hand, made no such pretenses. He was too busy frantically searching the building and grounds for his favorite star on the “movie set.” Howard, on the other hand, preferred to remain in the shadows.
The cameras themselves stayed put, for the most part. They weren’t attempting to follow every bit of action; they were merely watching whatever happened in front of them. But even the psychotic get used to cameras hanging around, and it wasn’t long before the patients returned to their normal activities. Which was, I suppose, what the director was looking for.
As part of the agreement between the studio and the hospital, fled would be formally interviewed as a “special guest,” during which time her thoughts on the afflictions of the inmates, as well as her opinion of the human race itself, would be ascertained. In addition to this, Virginia and I were scheduled for more informal discussions to be used as voiceovers throughout the program as deemed advisable by the editor or director.
Mine was to take place at 11:00 with the hostess, a woman called Priscilla, whom I had never heard of, after Goldfarb and before fled. A corner of the lounge had been reserved for the makeup man, a bouncy Greenwich Village hairdresser. In the meantime, a few would-be reporters were circulating among the patients, speaking off-camera to anyone they wished. Looking for interesting stories, I suppose, though they probably had no idea how compelling some of them really were. Mainly, I think, they wanted sound bites to fill in the “dead spaces” in the show—which, someone said, wouldn’t be aired until late the following fall.
As I was wandering around, taking it all in, there was a page for “Dr. Brewer.” I answered the call only to discover that it wasn’t me they were after, but my son Will. While I was feeling sorry for myself for being a generation older than I used to be, a second call came. This one I ignored, only to discover it was for me. The proofs for the magazine article had arrived with an urgent request that I check them and return the approval form immediately. I picked them up from Margie, who was excited about becoming a “TV star” (though the offices were off-limits to the cameras), and read them over in the lounge while waiting for Virginia to be interviewed. The only thing I found there that I didn’t already know was that the editors were initiating a contest to name fled’s child. The winner was to receive a hair of fled’s head (Smythe had asked for one during his visit) and a framed star map indicating the position of K-PAX in the sky. And, of course, a lifetime subscription to the magazine, LifeinGeneral. But there were no factual errors, so there was no compelling reason for me to hold up publication.
I approached Goldfarb and handed her the pages. She leafed through them and shrugged. “Should I sign the damn thing?” I nodded. She did so and I hauled it back up to her office, where I instructed Margie to go ahead and fax it to London.
“Thank you, Dr. Brewer,” she said breathlessly, leaning invitingly toward me in her open-top blouse—in case a crew member happened to be around, presumably. In any case, I hurried on back to the lounge.
Trying not to trip over anything, I stood off to the side to watch Virginia’s ten o’clock voiceover interview, much like Tiger Woods might observe a competitor’s putt before stepping up for his own.
She was still sitting in her director’s chair like a patient nervously waiting for the doctor, looking years younger with the professional makeup (she doesn’t usually wear any) and proper lighting, or perhaps it was because I had never seen her at rest before. It was her job to present an overview of the hospital’s rich history, its physical layout and philosophy, and its superlative staff, including the kitchen and janitorial personnel.
Priscilla (who insisted everyone call her “Prissy”) appeared, cheerful and smiling. She was practically emaciated—surely anorectic, I thought—and had obviously gone through several facelifts, to the point that she appeared to have been hanged. She and Virginia began to chat informally. At some point this became the actual interview, though Prissy didn’t indicate a transition as far as I could tell. There were questions about a few of the patients, but primarily she wanted to talk about fled—why she was here, when she was leaving, what she was planning to do in the meantime. Goldfarb didn’t know all the answers but, overall, she acquitted herself with grace and wit, and once again showed why it was she who was directing the Institute, particularly in the aplomb with which she deflected the difficult questions about fled to the hostess’s later discussion with me.