None of that second-rate bullshit for him.
He floated above it, cracking the books. Filling his head with doctor-words, taking special pleasure in Gross Lab, spending extra time there. Alone in the basement.
He had little use for food or sleep, was preparing himself for his rightful role as prizewinning pathologist on the staff of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.
Then came the day they wheeled Gauguin Boy into the lab, brain-ravaged, but the body so beautiful.
The cadaver got assigned to another student. He bribed the moron, exchanged a disgusting, shriveled old man, plus cash, for the boy.
Came back late at night to study. And cut. Lit the lamp over his dissecting table, left the rest of the room dark. Opened the black leather case, took out a dancer and made a real science Y incision. Cracked the sternum, pinned back the skin flaps.
And saw the internal beauty.
He wanted to dive in, swim among the colors, unite with the cells, the structure, the primal soup of life.
Be as one.
And why not?
Moving automatically, without thinking, he was stripping off his clothes, his nakedness delicious and holy. The lab, hot and humid and reeking of formaldehyde and rot, crickets chirping inside and out. But he wasn't afraid, wasn't sweating, so cool with purpose, floating above it all.
Then descending. On top of the boy, the hole a window to beauty, welcoming him.
Merge.
Coolflesh.
A moment of indescribable ecstasy, then betrayaclass="underline"
Pidgin curses. The lights sharp and blinding.
Professor Anton Bromet Van der Veering, M.D., D.Sc, standing in the doorway, pipe in hand, the naked-lady meerschaum resembling a tiny female victim struggling in his slimy yellow fingers.
Staring, the piggy-slant eyes so bugged out they'd become round.
Fucker expelled him that night, gave him three days to leave the island. Remained resolute, beyond the lure of more money.
The first time in St. Ignatius history. Hot death-shame took hold of him and made him tremble as he packed. He considered letting a dancer jitterbug along his own wrists, ending it all, then realized it was an honor to be expelled.
He was lucky: set free from a shitpile, separated from stink. Too clean and noble for this place. It was all part of a plan-of Schwann's plan.
Dieter-Daddy had better things in mind for him. Cleaner things.
He put aside failure-thoughts and gave himself a bon voyage party. Gauguin Girl down by the river, washing clothes. Exchange of smiles. Hi, I'm Dr. Terrific. The sweet bliss of real science, in the creamy green silence of the jungle.
He used her bucket and river water to wash her. Left her lying under an enormous mango tree-more bloody fruit to match the soft, festering ones that had fallen to the ground.
Bye-bye, stinkhole.
A stopover in Amsterdam, sluts in windows-he would have loved to play real science with them, but no time.
Back home, he went to see Doctor in his office at the hospital. Kikefuck said nothing, shot him I-told-you-so taunt-beams with his silence.
You'll find me another school. A real one.
Oh, sure, just like that.
Bet on it. Knowing he had the fucker's balls in his pocket.
But a week later the fucker was history. Keeled over in the operating room, dropped dead right on top of a patient.
First-class joke: Famous heart surgeon dies of heart attack. Raking in big bucks bypassing other people's arteries; meanwhile, his own were sludging up.
Funny, but not funny. In death, the fucker got in his last licks: left him out of the will. Everything signed over to Sarah.
As if she needed it, out of Harvard, Mass General, a psychiatrist with a brand-new Boston practice. And married to that fat little hook-nosed kikeshit, also a shrink; on top of everything else, his family was filthy rich. The two of them raking it in, with their Beacon Hill town house, summer home "on the Cape," Mercedes, good clothes, theater tickets.
He and Sarah barely noticed each other at the funeral. He stared at her tits, but kept to himself, talked to no one. She interpreted it as heavy-duty grief, wrote him a letter stinking of phony sympathy, signing over the deed to the pink Haus to him.
Throw a bone to stupid little brother.
One day he'd kill her for it.
Deprived of his ball-hold on Doctor, he took time to reassess his situation: He owned his cars. The portfolio was doing nicely-couple of hundred thou. The savings account had forty-two thou-money he'd saved up over the years from his hospital job, pill profits. His clothes, his costumes. The books in the library. The big green book. The Schwann bible. The dancers in their velvet leather crib.
He sold the pink house cheap and fast, took in another four hundred thousand. After taxes and commission, two hundred thirty thou was left.
He put it all in the bank. Boxed the books, stashed them in the Plymouth, drove around looking for a place to live, and found an apartment near Nasty: two bedrooms, two baths, clean and cheap. Twenty bucks a month extra for two parking spaces.
He spent two days scrubbing the place from floorboard to ceiling, set up bedroom number two as a lab. Went back to the hospital and got his mail-delivery job back, stole more pills than ever, and sold them for higher profit margins. Added to his fortune, spent his free time in the library.
His vacation time was set aside for travel. Medical conventions, pleasure trips, using interesting identities, becoming new people.
Travel was fun. Trapping and hunting.
Now, he'd really expanded his vistas, was an international hunter.
Back in Europe: nightwork in Amsterdam. After all those years, he'd gotten back there, found a slant window-slut, took her down to the docks, and initiated her into the world of real science.
Bought H from a diamond-eared nigger on Kalverstraat near the Dam Square, packed it without worry-U.N. luggage got V.I.P. treatment. Besides, who would think of bringing the stuff into the Middle East?
Then on to Kikeland.
A German Haus in Kikeland.
So real, so right.
While drawing up his safari plan in New York, he'd known he wanted a second place, his own place, away from the others. There was an all-night newsstand on Broadway, near Times Square. He went to it one Friday night and bought The Jerusalem Post, U.S. edition. Took it home and checked the classifieds under Dwellings, Jerusalem-rentals and read magic words:
VILLA, GERMAN COLONY, 3 RMS. AMENITIES, FURN, 1 YR. MIN.
A phone number in New York.
The German Colony. He looked it up at the main branch of the New York Public Library, in the Encyclopedia Judaica. Old southern Jerusalem neighborhood named after the German Templar sect that had lived there from the 1870's until the Fuhrer's Holy War, when they were kicked out by the British for distributing Nazi literature.
Aryans in Kikeland, brothers in spirit! So real, so right!