Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

"Krotkey's not a definite," he said modestly, "Krotkey's a

maybe."

"Quite an honor, though," Solini said, "even to be on the

same brochure?"

"Have you seen it?"

"Hey no, babe. Do you have one?"

"Do I ever." And did he ever. He rose and with that legs-shooting-out-from-hips stride crossed the office to a stack of full-color brochures. With pride he handed us each one, then two. Machu Picchu was on the cover, and in fake Mayan script was the title: "Borderline Pre-Columbians; Psychopathology

Among the Peruvian Indians." Heiler's photo and endless C.V. were inside.

"Nice photo," I said admiringly, "isn't it, Henry?"

"I never saw a photo like that!" he said with awe, as if at a sighting of a life-sized photo of the Virgin Mary hovering somewhere over North Dakota.

"Has to be. In the borderline field, appearance is everything. I went all out on that photo. Professional photographer. Cost a grand."

"That's all?" Henry said. Blair nodded. "Well worth it."

I noted that, while Heiler's photo was underneath Renaldo Krotkey's-Krotkey's bowling ball head covered with shocking red hair, his big bent nose, pendant lower lip, warped white collar, and severe bow tie making him look like nothing so much as a waiter in a kosher deli-it was not directly underneath. In fact, directly below Krotkey, directly above Blair, were the McLean borderline experts. With sick delight I employed Heiler cruelty:

"I didn't know that the Harvard experts would be there too?"

"Those fuckers. I'm going to blow them away with my drug work."

"You're presenting it?" I asked.

"Presenting the preliminary."

"But no one knows which patient is on what drug," Henry said.

"/ do. I broke the code, for the preliminary. I call the paper, 'Being "Nice" to Borderlines: Random Blind Trials of Placedon and Zephyrill.' " He smiled. We smiled back. "I made you guys fourth and fifth authors."

"Thanks, big fella," I said, knowing how much he valued his height, which, he had informed me, was one inch greater than the tallest other borderline researcher in the world, the seemingly kind, and yet, for all the seeming, dreaded Shneero.

"Big fella, thanks!" Henry said. "I never heard of being an author like that."

"/ wanted to," Heiler said. "My students' careers reflect on me."

The rest of the session was spent on his research and his SELF. Attuned to the word "I," we were amazed at how often Blair used it. I's popped up like little flags to stand tall in front

of us, one after the other until the stuff in between got lost, as when, on Memorial Day in a cemetery, you get distracted from the graves by the flags and the flowers.

Many of the Emersonians got better, and Heiler either never noticed or figured that better was worse. It was amazing to Solini and me how, even on a matter as concrete as Zoe's gaining weight, Blair could be so blind: He never saw it. Whenever we were with Heiler, we'd massage his ego and he would fall into a narcissistic narcolepsy, a SELF-stupor, and forget about us or the patients. Occasionally we'd have to use heavier weapons. Upon his return from Peru, his SELF seemed a little damaged. We went right for it.

"No Krotkey?" Tasked.

"No Krotkey. He sent another paper."

"Bet you got almost forty percent this time," Henry said,

"eh, big guy?"

"At least forty percent, yeah." But then he attacked. "Solini. You were on call last night and you refused to admit a borderline? Great INSURANCE? A charismatic leader of a Satanic cult? Ritual sacrificed Publishable! Why?"

"I don't do body parts, Blair."

"You do gay little dicks just fine. And you just hung up on her?"

"Nope, I turfed her to an Angelic cult. Down the street from

McLean."

"McLean" hit Heiler hard, and he attacked me: "And you, Basch. You turfed out a borderline too? It says here she was three hundred fifty pounds. At least three fifty! Violent and hypersexed? Came in overdosed on Prozac?" He was almost drooling at this, the Mother of all borderlines. "Why?"

"I cured her."

"Bullshit. How?"

"Sent her home on a low-Prozac diet. Cured."

"Bulls/iif!" he cried, and picked up the census sheet. Enraged, waving it at us, he screamed, "Empty beds on my unit? Why?"

"These darn borderlines!" I sneered angrily. "They terminate too soon!"

"Way too soon!" Henry said. "Never saw soonness of termination like tha-"

"What's the matter with you jokers?" Heiler said suspiciously. "Solini?"

Heiler stared hard down at Solini, as if accusing him of conduct unbecoming an Armenian or something. Solini fidgeted silently. We were going under.

"INSURANCE!" I cried out. "Those INSURANCE fuckers stopped paying!"

"I never heard INSURANCE like that!" Solini cried. "Don't give me that shit-I taught you guys how to do INSURANCE-"

"But when you left," I said, "they changed the payment protocols."

"What?" Heiler asked. "WhatWHATWMr?" He was screaming.

It was true. INSURANCE was fighting back. I hesitated, deliciously, letting him twist in the breeze. "Changed the protocols. Payment for borderlines is down. Payment for disso-ciatives is up."

"They can't do that!" Blair cried out, apoplectic. "Life's full of little surprises," I said. "Little surprises, yeah," Henry echoed, "and this is one." "Get out of here, you idiots, I'll straighten those assholes out mySELF."

'That's cool," Henry said, and we left. After that, Solini and I got more and more bold. Playing Blair like an instrument, time and again we were amazed at how sightless those blue eyes could be when focused in on himSELF. Whenever he seemed to come out of his stuporous nod and hone his razor eyes in on us, one or the other of us would play the trump card, the NPT-Nobel Prize Technique. After mentioning that we'd heard his work was Nobel Prize quality, we'd watch as he tuned out for at least five minutes and talked totally about himSELF while Henry and I floated, as nearly invisible to his mind's eye as those tiny flecks that come out in summer on the beach, coalescences in the vitreous humor, unseen but in the brightest light.

Many Emersonians were discharged. Lloyal made sure that Heiler's beds refilled quickly, so that Henry and I would be presented right away with yet another poor person labeled BPO with SOO, Something Or Other, or DD (Dissociative Disorder) with SOO. But such was our freed-up excitement,

our rebelliousness, and our daring, and such was the support we felt from each other and from the spirit of Malik and from the just plain good feel we had with our patients, that we actually found ourselves looking forward to new admissions. Working like crazy, we learned to encounter a person in emotional pain, all of our senses and mainly our "sixth" on alert for what Malik had called "a mutual encounter with the psychological facts." This, according to him, might in some cases bring a "click" of understanding, that understanding prompting further understanding which would prompt still further until-like a skier leaning out over the tips of the skis-moving through and toward our understanding would generate a momentum which he called healing. Of course, a lot of our patients were out of reach of this healing-Malik had a healthy respect for how crazy, and unreachable, some people were, and for them he suggested that "if you can't help 'em, at least don't hurt 'em. Don't spread more suffering around." But with many of the others, as long as we were open to something happening and free of thought and not too focused on chasing that "click," sooner or later the "click" would be there. Then we would see that what a person in the solitude of terror had always thought of as his or her secret and unique sickness-what psychiatry labels "psychopathology"-is in fact, when opened up to plain view, not such a terrifying sickness at all and not even all that unique, but more or less commonly held, and just a part of being human. These people might tap into their childish yearning for life, might even start moving toward vitality. Then we would see that better is better, yeah.