Thomas McGuane - Driving on the Rim

“All right, well, I’ll wait to hear.”

“Sorry about this. I may have to turn to the Lamaze method.”

Odd how you adapt to things: I waved good-bye to the door, walked through the reception area where Maida stared past the birthday cake into the middle distance, out into the street, the sunshine, and the welcome faces of a few pedestrians, picturing freedom with Jocelyn. It wasn’t until the next day that I learned that Niles had been having a heart attack. A remarkable number of hard-driving Type A men die on the toilet. It’s almost traditional. Some seem to see it coming, as witness Elvis Presley clutching his Bible. Niles didn’t die, but he was never the same again, and I no longer had a lawyer. But while he was in the hospital, he insisted on having me as his physician, so by this peculiarity, I was employed.

I’m reluctant to admit this level of self-absorption, but standing next to Niles’s bed I was giddy to be back to work, almost hysterical. Alan Hirsch, an actual cardiologist, had briefed me about Niles’s condition, somewhat stablized with the current onboard levels of Coumadin. He grimaced when I told him all the vitamin K things he would need to limit or avoid — beef and alcohol being particularly painful subjects.

“Broccoli.”

“I hate broccoli.”

“Spinach.”

“Hate that too. “Parsley.”

“I throw it on the floor. If I avoid all of those, can I have the booze and beef back?”

“In moderation. This is warfarin. It’s like rat poison.”

“Why do doctors hate lawyers?”

“It’s one of nature’s laws. Now, if you have any sort of unusual bleeding, I want to know about it. I mean like when you’re flossing your teeth. Niles, I want you take this seriously so you can avoid surgery.”

“Berl, let me tell you how seriously I’m taking this: I’m retiring. And not just to avoid seeing Maida’s face or hearing her baleful screeches when a bit of work is required of her. The record shows that I took my job seriously but I never took myself seriously. That’s why I am not a judge like that ignoramus Lauderdale. A lawyer wishing to become a federal judge like slime king Lauderdale does not turn his own home into a notorious fornicatorium. I’m going to get off this rat poison if it’s the last thing I do. I’m going fishing. You and me, we started out as fishing boys, but we strayed. I’m going back. I may have sex occasionally, but I assure you it will be with a girl who if she moves at all moves very little.”

I acted as a go-between for Alan, whose patient Niles really was. It preserved the relationship Niles insisted on having with me and allowed him to conceal his terror of death with the familiar jocularities that had always marked our relationship. He would have felt emotionally naked with anyone else, a state Niles could hardly face. I never gave Niles bad medical advice, I gave him Alan Hirsch advice, which was meticulous, cutting-edge cardiological guidance, guidance which Niles declined to follow. The last time I ever saw him was the middle of the day; he was in his pajamas, mildly drunk; he held up a large can to my view, said, “With this I can glue anything.” He was dead in less than three months, enduring his last myocardial infarction at over eighty miles per hour in the big Audi, Gladys Knight on the sound system and a bottle of champagne on the passenger seat. The woman he must have been on his way to see never, as they say in the papers, came forward. Alan did not take this as a failure on his part, offering the opinion that Niles died not of heart disease but of priapism. Parenthetically, when I next saw Judge Lauderdale he seemed quite saddened by the death of Niles Throckmorton. “We always had such fun,” said Judge Lauderdale. “He’d say terrible things about me to my face and I’d try to do the same back. But I was never in Niles’s league. He was very creative. I bet he’s making them sweat up there.”

Lauderdale did not mention my case. Was it possible he’d forgotten that I was on his docket? Was he too polite? Did he think I was innocent? Did he not care? Did he think a nice guy like me was guilty as hell and it was all just too bad? It hardly mattered: Niles had handed me on to a smart young guy just out of Northwestern Law who “blew away the Montana Bar exam” and who Niles thought was his brand-new best friend. But the young lawyer, Donald Sanchez, looked at my situation and dryly remarked, “Throckmorton must have enjoyed your company,” adding, “Oh, well, this is where you should have been headed in the first place. I hope he didn’t charge you.”

I was about to send Counselor Sanchez on his way. “There wasn’t time for him to charge me. He died. And he was my friend. And he sent me to you with his highest recommendation.”

“I’m sorry, but if he was a friend he should have told you more about his relationship with the victim.”

I was stunned. “Was there one?” I asked.

“Two night owls in a small town? You need to get your head in the game.”

Sanchez prepared for the dismissal hearing with a fistful of affidavits, the gist of which was that my colleagues found me gifted but erratic, someone who, despite the quality of his work, created an atmosphere of possible malpractice. Sanchez said that Wilmot had gotten to every one of them except Alan Hirsch and Jinx Mayhall.

I spent a very long evening in my basement going through old papers and documents until I found what I was looking for, a large, yellowing envelope that I carried on my visit to Judge Lauderdale, who saw me in his office with a look of skeptical surprise. I sat down after handing him the envelope. Judge Lauderdale put on a pair of glasses and emptied the contents of the envelope onto his desk. “What is this?” he said after a short time. “A bunch of receipts for paint and supplies?”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

“For painting your cabin in Harlowton.”

Judge Lauderdale removed his glasses and placed them on the desk in front of him. “Was that you?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“My God.” He laughed. “You were just a green kid. Now look at you!”

“Time flies.”

“I have to admit, you didn’t do much of a job. Lots of overruns.”

“You never paid me.”

“Like I said, it wasn’t like Leonardo da Vinci.”

“Your secretary thought it was a big improvement.”

“Oh?”

Whatever change I may have induced in Judge Lauderdale was unclear to me until Sanchez called me in with his helplessly imperious manner. I didn’t know whether he had learned this at Northwestern or it was just his nature, but his no-nonsense style took some getting used to. His first words were, “Sit down.” His office had none of the upholstered quality of my late friend Niles Throckmorton’s ordered lair. In fact, it appeared that the vertical stacks of paper on the floor and against the wall were ongoing cases or some sort of filing system. I’d have bet that he scared the daylights out of blustering Judge Lauderdale.

He said, glancing at his watch with a look of suppressed fury, “Let me give you the boiled-down finding on the frivolity to which you have been subjected, which at this point, we hope, is little more than toxic residue. Judge Lauderdale is now apprised of the following: misleading representation by previous counsel resulting from said counsel’s undisclosed relationship with the deceased, Tessa Larionov. Complicity of clinic staff with the intentions of board chairman Wilmot, placing one and all in the line of culpability for a defamation of character suit. Putting the crosshairs on their wallets, I found the good doctors’ views softening abruptly. This won’t go away — and should you feel vindictive and wish to get rich, call me. Credit to you for softening up Lauderdale in your unauthorized private meeting. Not interested in the details. Long story short, all momentum from your adversaries has dissipated. I have nothing more for you. I’ve got to be in Helena in two hours. Should you wish to stay here and collect your thoughts, the coffee machine is in the john. Pull the door shut when you leave, it locks itself and I have a key. Congratulations, you’re innocent.”