She was halfway through the methodology section when a hand alit on her shoulder.
That was the way she thought of it. Alighting. Like a bird- no, an even flimsier creature- an insect. A mayfly.
Such a delicate touch, those spidery fingers.
Proximity added a new fragrance to the squeaky-clean aroma. A nice cologne, something herbaceous, masculine, applied sparingly.
She could hear her own breathing but not his.
He kept talking. His words blurred, and all she could feel was the touch of his fingers.
Drumming her shoulder, slowly. Moving to the nape of her neck, warm and dry.
Confident. It was that- his confidence, realizing how smug he felt- that froze her.
She shrugged him off- violently, she thought. But he didn’t react except to lift the mayfly fingers.
She told herself to forget it, keep reading for an obligatory interval, then make some excuse and get out of there.
She heard him sigh. Regretful, she hoped. No harm, no foul.
Then the hand- both hands- returned. Got busy immediately. Before she realized what was happening, one had slid down the front of her blouse, wormed under her bra, cupped her breast, grabbed hold of a nipple, and pinched it gently to erection. The other stroked the nearly invisible down along her jawline. As if sketching the contour. As if drawing a preincision line.
She jumped up, faced him.
He stood there, hands at his side. Bent a knee because no gesture could be more casual than that.
“I can make you very happy,” he said.
She’d prepared an outraged retort; her words died.
He smirked.
She croaked out: “How… could you!”
He said, “Is that an objection? Or an inquiry about technique. If it’s the latter, I’d be happy to show you how I could.”
He touched his crotch. Massaged himself, showed off the obvious enthusiasm that tented his trousers.
She fled. Heard him laughing as she slammed his door.
“Report the bastard,” said Jeremy, squeezing the words out between clenched jaws. Fighting to keep his voice even.
She flew into his arms, freed herself, began circling the office. Stopping at the window, she stared out at the air shaft, threw up her hands.
“Oh, shit,” she moaned. “I left my coat there. And my scope. I’m going to have to go back there.”
“No way. I’ll get them for you.”
“No- please. I don’t want a scene. Let’s just forget it. I’ll figure something out.”
Jeremy didn’t answer.
Angela said, “What? Why are you so quiet?”
“Are you really able to forget it?”
“I don’t know.”
“He should be reported, Angela.”
“What happens, then? His word against mine? An R-II against a tenured professor? It could never be proved. Copping a feel? I’ll be drawn into a huge mess. Things will never be the same for me, here.”
She pounded the windowsill with her fist. “Damn him! Fuck him!” A sickly smile spread across her lips. “Poor choice of words… God, Jeremy, how could I be so dumb!”
She hurried to his patient chair and slumped down heavily. “My coat and my scope. That’s all I care about, I just want never to see him again. I’m off Thoracic in two days, anyway. There’ll be no reason to see him. What was I thinking? I’m not going to be a cutter. What possessed me to want to waste my time with him?”
“This isn’t about you being dumb. You wanted to be a better doctor. You believed he wanted to teach you.”
“Yes. That’s true.” Her chest heaved. “But you knew better, didn’t you?”
“No,” he said. “I was just jealous.”
She managed a half smile. “Oh, Jer, how could I have been so gullible? Would I have hung out with him if he looked like a troll? If he hadn’t paid attention to me- singled me out from the other residents? I’d like to think I would’ve. I just wish I could be sure.”
She doubled over in the chair. When she looked up her eyes were heavy with… guilt.
She’d been attracted to Dirgrove.
My jealousy wasn’t baseless. Maybe my intuition’s coming back.
He said, “It really doesn’t matter what you thought or felt. He’s the offender. He brought you in under false pretenses, touched you abusively, and when you let him know you weren’t interested, he compounded the insult by grabbing his dick.”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s what it was. Gross. And the way he smirked. ‘I can make you happy.’ What macho bravado b.s. The idiot’s watched too many porno movies. He was letting me know I was nothing to him. That he was in charge… but jeez, how could I be so stupid!”
“You were caught off guard,” said Jeremy. “It happens to all of us.”
“Not to you, I’ll bet. You’re so… composed. You think everything out. Choose your words before you speak. Your training- all the people you’ve worked with- you probably never get caught off guard.”
A knock sounded on the door, and Angela jumped.
Jeremy opened it.
A young man in orderly’s yellows stood there holding a white coat and a stethoscope.
“Is there a Dr. Rios, here?”
“I’ll take those,” said Jeremy.
“Sure, Doc. Dr. Dirgrove says you left them in his office. He says to tell you hi.”
Jeremy closed the door.
Angela said, “He knew exactly where I’d go.”
Jeremy said, “I guess it’s no secret.”
Thinking: That’s the point. Dirgrove had gotten a kick out of letting the two of them know he had them pegged. This was all about power. Telling them who was in charge.
An errant memory flashed in his head. Last week, leaving Angela’s house late at night, he’d believed someone had followed him in a car.
When the vehicle quickly went its own way, he’d dismissed it as paranoia. Now, he wondered.
Shortly after that, Dirgrove had asked for his help with Merilee Saunders.
Dr. Sensitive, worried about his patient’s anxiety. Or something else?
Not bothering to inform the patient about the consult- setting Jeremy up for failure.
Then the patient dies. Just one of those things.
Informing Jeremy via Angela that he’d done a great job when he’d accomplished nothing.
Playing with him? One way or the other, he sensed he’d be dealing with Dr. Theodore Dirgrove.
37
He walked a very subdued Angela back to the wards and told her he’d stay late, they’d have dinner in the cafeteria.
“Not the doctors’ dining room,” she said.
“Not tonight, but eventually we’ll go there, too. To hell with him.”
“If I get phobic, will you do therapy with me?”
“Rapid therapy,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”
She kissed him full on the lips. “Despite all you went through as a kid, you grew into a prince.”
“C’mon up to my place, got a glass slipper for you.”
“I mean it. I’m serious.”
Jeremy returned to his office remembering boarding school bunks hard and flat as slate, the crispness of early-morning reveille, institutional food, the knowing smiles of those who fit in.
Back to the computer. There’d been nothing on Norbert Levy in the Clarion archive so it was time to expand to the Internet.
The first few citations Jeremy found for the retired professor had to do with his scientific work. Levy had been instrumental in the development of ultrahigh-reliability capacitors for use in spacecraft, ship gyroscopes, and weapons systems.
But the hit that held Jeremy’s attention longest was something else completely: an account of an East Coast symposium on the Holocaust, convened by a survivors’ group.
The rubric of the gathering was the complicity of non-German Europe: Swiss bankers hoarding stolen billions, Spanish and Italian and Scandinavian diplomats purchasing plundered artwork on the cheap, French politicians claiming to have resisted the Nazis when the facts revealed them to have been easy collaborators.