of one… one you had to pay five hundred dollars an hour to show uppppAHGGAHHHhahahock hock hock!
This isn’t an ordinary morning, however. This morning she’s going to do it. She keeps telling herself that. Say no now! What possible good would it do to keep stringing it out? Do it, do it! Say no now!
On an ordinary morning, the two of them arrived at the office sitting next to each other in the front seat of his white Audi convertible, top down he insists, and the hell with a big girl’s hair… from his apartment with two basins in the bathroom he thinks are swell… where they would have taken a shower… then gotten dressed and eaten breakfast.
She hadn’t prepared exactly what to say, because there was no predicting which variety of tiresome and obnoxious he was going to be. She remembered Norman’s story of “the pissing monkey.” He had put the moral of that story to good use when it came time to deal with a pissing monkey named Ike Walsh of 60 Minutes. Stripped down to its essentials, the moral was: Immobilize the monkey so he can’t get on top. But was that the only strategy she had on her side, a fable about a monkey? Her heart sped up, and she despaired of any way to keep Norman from nailing her anytime he cared to. Norman was big and strong physically, and he had a temper… not that he ever handled her roughly… and the minutes were ticking by.
She had to calm down… and so she tried to stop thinking about Norman’s volatile, ego-swollen self. She tried to focus on the immediate surroundings… the examining table, white, clean, with a fitted sheet that fit the mattress so tightly, the surface was taut… the pale beigey-gray chair the patients usually sat in for their Lust-No-Mo injections, although some of the taller ones preferred to sit on the edge of the examining table when she gave them their shots… such as Maurice Fleischmann. ::::::Come on, Magdalena!:::::: She couldn’t very well put Norman out of her mind if she was going to let her thoughts stray to Maurice. Here you had one of the most powerful men in Miami. All sorts of people jumped when he came around… jumped to do anything to make him happy… jumped to make sure he had the best seat in the room… deferred to whatever he had to say… grinned all over him… laughed at anything he said that might possibly be construed as an intentional humorous affect…
… while Norman led him around like a dog. Norman had the Big Man convinced that only Norman Lewis, M.D., P.C., could do anything to lead him out of the darkness of the valley of the shadow of pornography. He even let Norman come along on his social rounds, which were among the mighty rich. Magdalena had suspected it from the beginning but by now knew it was true: Norman made sure that Maurice would never be free of his addiction to pornography… just think of the way he rubbed Maurice’s nose in it at Art Basel… Norman needed Maurice to remain in his wretched condition… Maurice opened all the doors that would be closed to any run-of-the-mill pornography addiction swami. She resolved at that moment to be strong… and tell Maurice in so many words exactly what was going on… once this—
—the lock of the outer door was opening… Sure enough, it was 7:40. ::::::Now, remember, you texted him in plenty of time to say you would be spending the night at home… and there is no reason he shouldn’t realize that “at home” means at my own apartment, the one I share with Amélia. What’s so wrong about going over and spending some time catching up on what Amélia’s been doing? I haven’t heard you suggest that we get married or anything like that, have I?… No, you mustn’t say that… You mustn’t even hint that you’ve been thinking about letting yourself get entangled any further with his perverted life—no!—and don’t even suggest that he’s a pervert, for God’s sake… Come on! Cut it out! There’s no way to plan anything you’re going to say to Norman… Just remember, you’re not going to let him piss on you::::::—
Another latch turns, meaning he’s in the office itself now. Magdalena’s heart is going at a runaway pace. She never knew you could hear footfalls in this place. The floor is nothing but a concrete slab covered with