How It Ended: New and Collected Stories - By Jay McInerney Page 0,75

they are, as we say, surgically enhanced. Last time he was in the dating pool, back in the Pleistocene era, he never encountered anything but natural mammary glands. Then he got married and, ten years later, he's suddenly back in circulation and every woman he meets has gorgeous tits, but whenever he reaches for them, he hears, “Maybe I should mention that, they're, you know …” And inevitably, later: “Listen, you're a doctor, do you think—I mean, there's been a lot of negative publicity and stuff.…” It got so he avoided saying he was a doctor, not knowing whether they were genuinely interested or just hoping to get an opinion on this weird lump under the arm: Right here, see? Despite all the years of medical school and all the sleepless hours of his internship, he never really believed he was a doctor; he felt like a pretender, although he eventually discovered that he felt like less of a pretender on one hundred milligrams of Seconal.

The weather, according to the radio, is hot and hotting up. Kevin has the windows up and the climate control at sixty-eight. High between ninety-five and ninety-eight. Which is about as predictable as “Stairway to Heaven” on Rock 101, the station that plays all “Stairway,” only “Stairway,” twenty-four hours a day—a song that one of the M.D. junkies in rehab insisted was about dope, but to a junkie, everything is about dope. Now the song makes McClarty think of Terri marching righteously on her StairMaster.

After a lifetime in Chicago, he likes the hot summers and temperate winters, and he likes the ur-American suburban sprawl of franchises and housing developments with an affection all the greater for being self-conscious. As a bright, fatherless child, he'd always felt alien and isolated. Later, as a doctor, he felt even further removed from the general populace—it was like being a cop—and that alienation was only enhanced when he also became a drug addict and de facto criminal. He wanted to be part of the stream, an unconscious member of the larger community, but all the morphine in the pharmacy couldn't produce the desired result. When he first came out of rehab, after years of escalating numbness, the sight of a Burger King or a familiar television show could bring him to tears, could make him feel, for the first time, like a real American.

He turns into the drive marked MIDSTATE CORRECTIONAL FACILITY. It's no accident that you can't see the buildings from the road. With homes worth half a million within a quarter of a mile, construction was discreet. No hearings, since the land belonged to the state, which was happy to skip the expense of a new prison and instead board its high-security criminals with the corporation that employs Dr. Kevin McClarty. He drives along the east flank of chain-link fence and triple-coiled concertina wire.

These guards, too, greet him by name and title when he signs in. Looking through the bulletproof Plexi, he sees the enlarged photo of an Air Jordan sneaker a visitor just happened to be wearing when he hit the metal detector, its sole sliced open to show a .25-caliber Beretta nesting snug as a fetus in the exposed cavity. Hey, it musta come from the factory that way, man, like those screws and syringes and shit that got inside the Pepsi cans. I ain't never seen that piece before. What is that shit, a twenty-five? I wouldn't be caught dead with no twenty-five, man. You can't stop a roach with that fuckin’ popgun.

Dr. McClarty is buzzed through the first door and, once it closes behind him, through the second. Inside, he can sense it, the malevolent funk of the prison air, the dread ambience of the dream. The varnished concrete floor of the long white hall is as shiny as ice.

Emma, the fat nurse, buzzes him into the medical ward.

“How many signed up today?” he asks.

“Twelve so far.”

McClarty retreats to his office, where Donnie, the head nurse, is talking on the phone. “I surely do appreciate that.… Thank you kindly.…” Donnie's perennially sunny manner stands out even in this region of pandemic cheerfulness. He says, “Good morning,” with the accent on the first word, then runs down coming attractions. “A kid beat up in D last night. He's waiting. And you know Peters from K block, the diabetic who's been bitching about the kitchen food? Saying the food's running his blood sugar up? Well, this morning they searched his cell and found three bags