of the first car he had ever owned, a 1957 Pontiac. He laughed a little, and then felt the sting of tears. All of his days were like that now. Upsy-downsy, weather unsettled, chance of showers.
I'd kill him very slowly, he heard Hopley saying. I will spare you the details.
Why? Billy thought, lying sleepless in his clinic bed with the raised invalid sides. You didn't spare me anything else.
During his three-day stay at Glassman, Halleck lost seven pounds. Not much, he thought with his own brand of gallows joviality. Not much, less than the weight of a medium-sized bag of sugar. At this rate I won't fade away to nothing until ... gee! Almost October!
172, his mind chanted. 172 now, if you were a boxer you'd be out of the heavyweight class and into the middleweight ... would you care to try for welterweight, Billy? Lightweight? Bantamweight? How about flyweight?
Flowers came: from Heidi, from the firm. A small nosegay came from Linda - written on the card in her flat, sprawling hand was Please get well soon, Daddy - Love you, Lin. Billy Halleck cried over that.
On the third day, dressed again, he met with the three doctors in charge of his case. He felt much less vulnerable in jeans and a MEET ME IN FAIRVIEW T-shirt; it was really amazing how much it meant to be out of one of the goddamn hospital johnnies. He listened to them, thought of Leda Rossington, and suppressed a grim smile.
They knew exactly what was wrong with him; they were not mystified at all. Au contraire, they were so excited they were damned near making weewee in their pants. Well ... maybe a note of caution was in order. Maybe they didn't know exactly what was wrong with him yet, but it was surely one of two things (or possibly three). One of them was a rare wasting disease that had never been seen outside of Micronesia. One was a rare metabolic disease that had never been completely described. The third - just a possibility, mind you! - was a psychological form of anorexia nervosa, this last so rare that it had long been suspected but never actually proven. Billy could see from the hot light in their eyes that they were pulling for that one; they would get their names in the medical books. But in any case, Billy Halleck was definitely a rara avis, and his doctors were like kids on Christmas morning.
The upshot was that they wanted him to hang in at Glassman for another week or two (or possibly three). They were going to whip what was wrong with him. They were going to whip it good. They contemplated a series of megavitamins to start with (certainly!), plus protein injections (of course!), and a great many more tests (without a doubt!).
There was the professional equivalent of dismayed howls -and they were almost literally howls - when Billy told them quietly that he thanked them, but he would have to leave. They remonstrated with him; they expostulated; they lectured. And to Billy, who felt more and more often lately that he must be losing his mind, the trio of doctors began to look eerily like the Three Stooges. He halfexpected them to begin bopping and boinking each other, staggering around the richly appointed office with their white coats flapping, breaking things and shouting in Brooklyn accents.
'You undoubtedly feel quite well now, Mr Halleck,' one of them said. 'You were, after all, quite seriously overweight to begin with, according to your records. But I need to warn you that what you feel now may be spurious. If you continue to lose weight, you can expect to develop mouth sores, skin problems . . .'
If you want to see some real skin problems, you ought to check out Fairview's chief of police, Halleck thought. Excuse me, ex-chief.
He decided, on the spur of the moment and apropos of nothing, to take up smoking again.
'. . . diseases similar to scurvy or beriberi,' the doctor was continuing sternly. 'You're going to become extremely susceptible to infections - everything from colds and bronchitis to tuberculosis. Tuberculosis, Mr Halleck,' he said impressively. 'Now if you stay here -'
'No,' Billy said. 'Please understand that it's not even an option.'
One of the others put his fingers gently to his temples as if he had just developed a splitting headache. For all Billy knew, he had - he was the doctor who had advanced the idea of psychological anorexia