“No, I’ve never met him. I’m-”

“A new faculty member!” proclaimed the bearded man, as if uncovering a conspiracy.

I shook my head. “Recent grad. Ph.D. last June.”

“Congratulations.” The bearded man clapped his hands silently. A few of the others imitated him. I smiled, squatted, assumed a lotus position near the door. “What’s your usual procedure?”

“Case presentation,” said a black woman. “Unless someone’s got a crisis to bounce around.”

“Does anyone?”

Silence. Yawns.

“All right. Whose turn is it to present?”

“Mine,” said the black woman. She was stocky, with a hennaed Afro haloing a round, chocolate face. She wore a black poncho, blue jeans, and red vinyl boots. An oversized carpetbag lay across her lap. “Aurora Bogardus, second year. Last week I presented the case of a nine-year-old boy with multiple tics. Paul made suggestions. I’ve got some follow-up.”

“Go ahead.”

“For starters, nothing’s worked. The kid’s getting worse.” She removed a chart from the carpetbag, flipped through it and gave a brief case history for my benefit, then described her initial treatment plan, which seemed well thought-out, though unsuccessful.

“That brings us up to date,” she said. “Any questions, gang?”

Twenty minutes of discussion followed. The students’ suggestions emphasized social factors- the family’s poverty and frequent moves, the anxiety the child was probably experiencing due to lack of friends. Someone commented that the boy’s being black in a racist society was a major stressor.

Aurora Bogardus looked disgusted. “I believe I’m well aware of that. Meanwhile, I’ve still got to deal with the damned tics on a behavioral level. The more he twitches, the angrier everyone gets at him.”

“Then everyone needs to learn to deal with that anger,” said the bearded man.

“Fine and dandy, Julian,” said Aurora. “In the meantime, the kid’s being ostracized, I need action.”

“The operant conditioning system-”

“If you were paying attention, Julian, you would have just heard that your operant conditioning system didn’t work. Neither did the role manipulation Paul suggested last week.”

“What kind of role manipulation?” I asked.

“Change the programming. It’s part of his approach toward therapy- Communication Dynamics. Shake up the family structure, get them to change their power positions so that they’ll be open to new behaviors.”

“Get them to change in what way?”

She gave me a weary look. “Paul had me instruct the parents and siblings to start twitching and shaking too. Exaggeratedly. He said once the symptom became part of the family norm, it would cease to have rebellion value for the boy and would drop out of his behavioral repertoire.”

“Why’s that?”

She shook her head. “It’s his theory, not mine.”

I said nothing, maintained a look of curiosity.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “According to Paul, symptoms are communications. Because the tic communication wouldn’t be unique anymore, the kid would have to find some other way of working through his rebellion.”

It sounded ill-conceived, potentially cruel, and made me wonder about Dr. Paul Kruse. “I see.”

“Hey, I thought it was bullshit too,” said Aurora. “Going to tell Paul that, next week.”

“Sure you will,” said someone.

“Watch me.” She closed the chart and put it back in her bag. “Meanwhile, this poor little boy’s shaking and twitching and his self-esteem is going right down the tubes.”

“Have you thought of Tourette’s syndrome?” I asked.

She dismissed the question with a frown. “Of course. But he doesn’t swear.”

“Not all Tourette’s patients do.”

“Paul said the symptoms didn’t conform to a typical Tourette’s pattern.”

“In what way?”

Another weary look. Her answer took five minutes and was seriously flawed. My doubts about Kruse grew.

“I still think you should consider Tourette’s,” I said. “We don’t know enough about the syndrome to exclude atypical cases. My advice is, refer the boy to a pediatric neurologist. Haldol may be indicated.”

“Ye olde medical model,” said Julian. He tamped his pipe, relit it.

Aurora moved her jaws as if chewing.

“What are you feeling now?” one of the other men asked her. He was narrow-shouldered and thin, with rusty hair tied in a ponytail, and a drooping, ragged mustache. He wore a wrinkled brown corduroy suit, button-down shirt, extra-wide rep tie, and dirty sneakers, and spoke in a soft, musical voice saturated with empathy. But unctuous, like a confessor or kiddie-show host. “Share your feelings with us, Aurora.”

“Oh, Christ.” She turned to me: “Yeah, I’ll do what you say. If the medical model is what it takes, so be it.”

“You sound frustrated,” said the gray-haired woman.

Aurora turned on her. “Let’s cut the shit and move on, okay?”

Before Gray Hair could reply, the door opened. All eyes drifted upward. All eyes hardened.

A beautiful black-haired girl stood in the doorway, holding an armful of books. Girl, not woman- she looked girlish, could have been an undergrad, and for a moment I thought she’d come to the wrong place.

But she stepped into the room.

My first thought was time warp: She had a dark, wounded beauty, like an actress in one of those black-and-white late-show films noirs, where good and evil blur, visual images vie for control with a sinuous jazz score, and everything ends ambiguously.

She wore a clinging pink knit dress piped with white and bisected by a white leather belt, pink pumps with medium heels. Her hair had been rolled and set, every strand in place, gleaming. Her face was powdered, mascaraed, her lips glossed a wet-looking pink. The dress reached her knees. The leg that showed was shapely, encased in sheer nylon. Her jewelry was real gold, her nails long and polished- the hue of the polish identical to that of the dress but precisely one shade deeper.

And perfume- the fragrance cut through the staleness of the room: soap and water, fresh grass, and spring flowers.

All curves and swells, porcelain whiteness and dusty rose, flawlessly put together. Almost painfully out of place in that sea of denim and deliberate drabness.

“Suzy Creamcheese,” somebody muttered.

She heard it and winced, looked around for a place to sit. No empty spaces. No one moved. I shifted to one side, said, “Over here.”

She stared at me.

“He’s Dr. Delaware,” said Julian. “Alex. He’s endured the rites and rituals of this department and emerged seemingly unscathed.”

She gave a fleeting smile, sat down next to me, folded her legs under. A stretch of white thigh showed. She tugged the dress down over her knees. It caused the fabric to go tight over her breasts and accentuate their fullness. Her eyes were wide and bright, midnight-blue, so dark the pupils blended with the irises.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said. A sweet, creamy voice.

“So what else is new,” said Gray Hair.

“Any more follow-ups to present?” I asked.

No one answered.

“Then I guess we can move on to new material.”

“What about Sharon?” said Ponytail, grinning at the new arrival. “You haven’t shared a thing with us all semester, Sharon.”

The black-haired girl shook her head. “I really don’t have anything prepared, Walter.”

“What’s to prepare? Just pick a case, give us the benefit of your wisdom.”

“Or at least Paul’s wisdom,” said Julian.

Snickers, nods of assent.

She pulled at her earlobe, turned to me, seeking reprieve.

The crack about Kruse helped explain the tension that had accompanied her entrance. Whatever his therapeutic skills at manipulating roles, this supervisor had allowed his group to be poisoned by favoritism. But I was hired help, not the one to deal with it.

I asked her: “Have you presented at all this semester?”