Glancing around the room, he noticed equivalent expressions of boredom on the faces of the men as their eyes reflexively followed the progress of the dancer up and down the runway. Jason sipped his beer from the bottle. There was no way he’d allow his lips to touch a glass in that place.
When the rock-and-roll piece ended, the dancer acted as if she’d been momentarily stranded. Self-consciously, she shifted her weight from one four-inch heel to the other, waiting for the next number. Jason noticed a tattooed heart on her right thigh.
Heralded by the heavy beat of drums, the next number began, and the blonde immediately recommenced her gyrations. As she did so, she slipped off her brief top. Now all she had on was a G-string and her shoes. Still, the men at the bar appeared carved in stone. The only movements were those necessary to bring their drinks or cigarettes to their lips. At least until the dancer began moving along the runway. Then a few customers would hold out dollar bills.
Jason watched for a while, then scanned the room again. About twenty feet away was a booth occupied by a man in a dark suit with a cigar, studying a ledger through dark glasses. Jason had no idea how the man could see anything at all, but decided he was management. Several body-builder types with eighteen-inch necks, wearing white T-shirts, stood on either side of the booth, their beefy arms crossed and their heads constantly turning to survey the room.
As the music ended, the blond stripper picked up her things and ran up the stairs. There was scattered applause. When the music began again, a new dancer descended the stairs and whirled about the runway. Dressed in a flashy, voluminous gypsy costume, she could have been the first dancer’s sister — her older sister.
Very quickly, Jason got the hang of the program. A girl would appear in some wild costume and dance, taking off more of her clothes as the number progressed. Forty-five minutes passed and Jason wondered if Carol Donner was scheduled to appear that night. He asked one of the waitresses.
“She should be next. Want another round, mister?”
Jason shook his head. He was content to nurse his first beer for the entire visit. Looking around, he noticed that several of the strippers had come back down to the floor. They would stop and talk to the man in the dark glasses and then wander around the room, chatting up the customers. Jason tried to imagine Hayes, the famous molecular biologist, there at the bar. Try as he might, he couldn’t.
There was a pause in the music and the runway lights dimmed. A PA system crackled to life for the first time and announced the next performer: the famous Carol Donner. The bored patrons propped up on the bar suddenly seemed to wake up. There were a few catcalls.
The music changed to a softer rock and a figure appeared on the runway. As the lights came up, Jason was stunned. To his amazement, Carol Donner was a beautiful young woman. Her skin had a healthy glow and her eyes sparkled. She was dressed in a body suit, headband, and leg warmers as though she were in an aerobics class. Her feet were bare. She moved down the runway with effortless grace, and Jason noticed that her smile held genuine enjoyment.
As her number progressed, she removed her leg warmers, a silk sash around her waist, and then the body suit. The sodden audience actually cheered as she danced topless back up the stairs. As soon as she disappeared, the customers sank back into their torpor. Jason kept waiting for Carol to appear on the floor like the other girls, but after twenty minutes he decided she might not. He pushed off his stool and walked back to the man in the sunglasses. One of the body-builders noticed his approach and unfolded his arms. “Excuse me,” Jason said to the man with the ledger. “Would it be possible to talk with Carol Donner?”
The man removed his cigar. “Who the hell are you?” Jason was reluctant to give his real name, and while he hesitated, the man in the dark glasses motioned to one of the body-builders. Jason felt large hands take hold of his arm and urge him toward the door. “I only want…” But he didn’t get to say any more. He was grabbed by his jacket and hastily escorted the length of the bar and through the dark curtain, his feet barely touching the floor. With a good deal of humiliation, he found himself propelled out into the street.
CHAPTER 5
After the radio alarm had awakened him, Jason had to stand under the shower for several minutes to feel capable of facing the day. The night before, after he’d returned from the unpleasant visit to the Club Cabaret, he’d been called back to the hospital. One of his AIDS patients, a man named Harvey Rachman, had arrested. When Jason had arrived, the staff had been giving CPR for fifteen minutes. They’d kept it up for two hours before conceding defeat. The head nurse’s comment that at least the man didn’t have to suffer anymore was not much consolation to a stricken Jason. For Jason it seemed that death was winning the competition.
The only positive side of inpatient rounds later that morning was the discharge of one of his hepatitis cases. Jason was sorry to see the girl go. Now he had only a single patient who was doing well.
In the CCU, Matthew Cowen was no better. In addition to his other complaints, he was now having trouble seeing. The symptom bothered Jason. Harring and Lennox had also complained of impaired vision in the weeks before their deaths, and again the possibility of some new multisystem illness crossed Jason’s mind. He ordered an ophthalmology consult. After finishing rounds, Jason headed to pathology to see if the slides from Hayes’s autopsy were done. Maybe they would help explain why so many seemingly healthy people were suffering cardiovascular catastrophe.
He had to wait while Jackson called a report on a frozen section down to the OR. It was a breast biopsy and it was positive.
“That always makes me feel terrible,” Jackson said, hanging up the phone. Then, in a more cheerful voice, he added, “I bet you want to see the Hayes slides.” He searched around on his desk until he found the right folder. Opening it up, he took out a slide and focused it for Jason. “Wait until you see this.
“That’s Alvin Hayes’s aorta,” Jackson explained as Jason looked in. The cellular death and disorganization were evident even to his unpracticed eye. “It’s no wonder it blew,” Jackson continued. “I’ve never seen such deterioration in anyone under seventy except with established aortic disease. And let me show you something else.” He replaced the slide with another. “That’s Hayes’s heart. Look at the coronary vessel. It’s like Cedric Harring’s. All the coronary vessels are almost closed. If Hayes’s aorta hadn’t blown, he’d have died of a heart attack. The man was a walking time bomb. And not only that, he had inflammation in the thyroid, again like Harring. In fact, there were so many parallels that I went back and looked at Harring’s aorta. And guess what? Harring’s aorta was on the verge of blowing too.”
“What exactly are you saying?” Jason asked.
Jackson spread his hands. “I don’t know. There are strong similarities between these two cases. The widespread inflammation — but I don’t think it’s infectious. It has more the look of autoimmunity, as if their immune system had started attacking their own organs.”
“You mean like lupus?”
“Yeah, something like that. Anyway, Alvin Hayes was in terrible shape. Just about every organ was in a state of deterioration. He was falling apart at the seams.”
“He said he wasn’t feeling too well,” Jason said.
“Ha!” Jackson exclaimed. “That’s the understatement of the year.”