‘That explains it, then,’ he said.
‘Explains what?’
‘All doctors work for the Quine Organization. Sooner or later he would have brought you in. That’s how Hatcher was brought in. But he couldn’t persevere. He couldn’t take the fact that we were short-handed and that we would always be short-handed. And when he found out about the indefinite hours… well, he exploded right in the office.’
‘He had a breakdown?’ I said.
‘I suppose you could call it that. One day he just jumped up from his desk and started ranting about how we were always short-handed… and the indefinite hours. Then he became violent, turning over several of the empty desks in the office and shouting, “We won’t be needing these.” He also pulled out some file drawers, throwing their contents all over the place. Finally he started tearing up the forms, ones that hadn’t yet been processed. That’s when Pilsen intervened.’
‘Which one is he?’
‘The large man with the mustache who sits at the back of the office. Pilsen grabbed Hatcher and tossed him into the street. That was it for Hatcher. Within a few days he was officially dismissed from the company. I processed the form myself. There was no going back for him. He was completely ruined,’ said Ribello as he took a sip of coffee and then lit another cigarette.
‘I don’t understand. How was he ruined?’ I said.
‘It didn’t happen all at once,’ explained Ribello. ‘These things never do. I told you that Hatcher was a cigarette smoker. Very mild cigarettes that he special-ordered. Well, one day he went to the store where he purchased his cigarettes and was told that the particular brand he used, which was the only brand he could tolerate, was no longer available.’
‘Not exactly the end of the world,’ I said.
‘No, not in itself,’ said Ribello. ‘But that was just the beginning. The same thing that happened with his cigarettes was repeated when he tried to acquire certain foods he needed for his special diet. Those were also no longer available. Worst of all, none of his medications were in stock anywhere in town, or so he was told. Hatcher required a whole shelf of pharmaceuticals to keep him going, far more than anyone else I’ve ever known. Most important to him were the medications he took to control his phobias. He especially suffered from a severe case of arachnophobia. I remember one day in the office when he noticed a spider making its way across the ceiling. He was always on the lookout for even the tiniest of spiders. He practically became hysterical, insisting that one of us exterminate the spider or he would stop processing forms. He had us crawling around on top of the filing cabinets trying to get at the little creature. After Pilsen finally caught the thing and killed it, Hatcher demanded to see its dead body and to have it thrown out into the street. We even had to call in exterminators, at the company’s expense, before Hatcher would return to work. But after he was dismissed from the company, Hatcher was unable to procure any of the old medications that had allowed him to keep his phobias relatively in check. Of course the doctor was no help to him, since all doctors are also employees of Q. Org.’
‘What about doctors on the other side of the border?’ I said. ‘Do they also work for the company?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Ribello. ‘It could be. In any case, I saw Hatcher while I was on my way to the office one day. I asked him how he was getting along, even though he was obviously a complete wreck, almost totally ruined. He did say that he was receiving some kind of treatment for his phobias from an old woman who lived at the edge of town. He didn’t specify the nature of this treatment, and since I was in a hurry to get to the office I didn’t inquire about it. Later I heard that the old woman, who was known to make concoctions out of various herbs and plants, was treating Hatcher’s arachnophobia with a medicine of sorts which she distilled from spider venom.’
‘A homeopathic remedy of sorts,’ I said.
‘Perhaps,’ said Ribello in a distant tone of voice.
At this point the unshaven man came over to the table and told us that he was closing for the day. Since Ribello had invited me to lunch, such as it was, I assumed that he would pay for the coffee, especially since I hadn’t taken a sip of mine. But I noted that he put down on the table only enough money for himself, and so I was forced to do the same. Then, just before we turned to leave, he reached for my untouched cup and quickly gulped down its contents. ‘No sense in it going to waste,’ he said.
Walking back to the office through the narrow, fog-strewn alley, I prompted Ribello for whatever else he could tell me about the man whose position in the storefront office I had been hired to fill. His response, however, was less than enlightening and seemed to wander into realms of hearsay and rumor. Ribello himself never saw Hatcher again after their meeting in the street. In fact, it was around this time that Hatcher seemed to disappear entirely — the culmination, in Ribello’s view, of the man’s ruin. Afterward a number of stories circulated around town that seemed relevant to Hatcher’s case, however bizarre they may have been. No doubt others aside from Ribello were aware of the treatments Hatcher had been taking from the old woman living on the edge of town. This seemed to provide the basis for the strange anecdotes which were being spread about, most of them originating among children and given little credence by the average citizen. Prevalent among these anecdotes were sightings of a ‘spider thing’ about the size of a cat. This fabulous creature was purportedly seen by numerous children as they played in the streets and back alleys of the town. They called it the ‘nobby monster,’ the source of this childish phrase being that, added to the creature’s resemblance to a monstrous spider, it also displayed a knob-like protrusion from its body that looked very much like a human head. This aspect of the story was confirmed by a few older persons whose testimony was invariably dismissed as the product of the medications that had been prescribed for them, even though practically everyone in town could be discredited for the same reason, since they were all — that is, we were all — taking one kind of drug or another in order to keep functioning in a normal manner. There came a time, however, when sightings of the so-called nobby monster ceased altogether, both among children and older, heavily medicated persons. Nor was Hatcher ever again seen around town.