always did, apparently oblivious of how often they went through this same overture.
Often he would add a suggestive remark at that point, not egregiously suggestive… just to open the door a crack. This time he said, “Look, you’re young and beautiful. Tell me about your adventures since the last time I saw you.”
Magdalena always tried to deal with it as if this were all such witty fun. “Oh, I’m not sure you’d be able to take it, Mr. Fleischmann.”
He laughed. Oh, the badinage! “Try me,” he said. “You might be ver-rrry surprised!” Laughter, laughter.
Oh, the badinage! And oh, how queasy-making—since at that point she always stabbed his fat arm with the syringe and pumped a jolt of Deprovan, a “libido inhibitor,” into his bloodstream… to suppress his free-floating lust for every pretty girl and his sexual obsessions… pornography in his case.
It was in fact so unamusing that, as she did at least a half dozen times a day, Magdalena, without even knowing she was doing it, began totaling the pluses and minuses of this new “job” she had. After graduating from EGU, Everglades Global University, in nursing, she had worked for three years at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Last year she had been a nurse in pediatric surgery. But how could she resist when one of the best known physicians in this, one of the biggest and best known hospitals in the South—Dr. Norman Lewis, the famous psychiatrist—had gone out of his way to recruit her for his personal practice? She was bowled over by the glamour of it. He had taken her out of the Hialeah “ghetto,” as she now thought of it, and introduced her to the grandeur and excitement of the real world beyond. In less than half an hour, 60 Minutes—and not just 60 Minutes but the program’s star, Ike Walsh—would be here to interview him about… the Porn Plague.
No sooner had Maurice Fleischmann departed and the door out to the Lincoln Suites parking lot clicked behind him than Dr. Norman Lewis left his office and walked toward her, beaming the look of a man no longer able to contain his laughter. When he reached her—the explosion. He started laughing so hard, he could barely catch his breath long enough to gasp the words out to Magdalena.
“Maurice Fleischmann!” he exclaimed as he put his arm around her waist. “Moe the First!… the lordly Face of Miameeee ee ee ee eeaahhahAHHHH hock hock hock hock”—gasp—“ ’ssssgot on an eight-thousand-dollar silk suit lately made on Jermyn Street off Savile Row-oh-oh-oh-ohhahhhHHHH hock hock hock hock had to tell me that! had to show me the labellllllahhahhaHAHH hock hock hock hock hock”—gasp—and with each gasp he tightened his squeeze around Magdalena’s waist a little more. “He takes the fucking prize of the week ahhhHHHH hock hock hock hock”—gasp—a little tighter he squeezed her—“ ‘sssssso refined’ ahhHHHH hock hock hock hock”—gasp—and a little tighter—“Hunnunderneath that pretty suit is the biggest mess you ever saw aw aw aw awahhHHHH”—gasp—and tighter—“You gotta admit we got a zoooohhhhere wh wh whuh”—gasp—squeeze… and squeeze—and he broke into song, “Ohhhhh, we’re off to the Hamburg Zoo—to see the elephant and the wild kangarooooo hock hock hock hock!” He tried to catch his breath and bring his jollification under control… and failed. “You should see his groin!”—gasp—“His poor penis—it’s a little red thing, and it’s got so many herpes blisters all over it, it’s like looking down at a cluster of balloons! Only it’s a blister cluster of ballooning bliiiiIIIISTERSssssAHHHHH hock hock hock ahhhHHHH!”—gasping, panting—“What a magnificent specimen of humanity! He do beat all”—gasp—“He do beat alllllock hock hock hock hock hock I swear I didn’t mean to make a pun… I wasn’t trying to be funny.”
The eminent Dr. Lewis finally had himself under control, but he kept Magdalena’s body pulled tight against his, side to side. “Poor bastard… every time he masturbates, the herpes gets worse, and more blister clusters pop out—and if you think he has the willpower to get up from the internet and stop watching those boys and girls slogging away and sticking this and that and them and those into every orifice in the human body—and stop torturing his poor put-upon little penis, you’re dreaming… Wait a minute! I gotta show you! I took some pictures—”
He released her and practically dashed back to his office. Dr. Lewis’s laughter—at his own jokes or not—his high spirits, his boyishness, his energy, swelled up into a flash flood that swept Magdalena away helplessly… Should he really