The Unnamed - By Joshua Ferris Page 0,13

Bagdasarian told him, the sugar and the nicotine, and consult a naturopath. And so he did. Because nothing had shown up, repeatedly, on the MRIs, because he was on his third psychiatrist, because the specialist in Switzerland had thrown up his hands, he saw a Trinidadian in Chelsea with golden tubes and magic roots for seven days of colonics and grass-and-carrot smoothies. Jane drove and waited in the naturopath’s living room among primitive wood carvings and bright tropical art. They took the highway home, and for the first couple of days there was this breathless, anxious hopefulness. Then he walked right out of the house. Jane picked him up six hours later behind a Starbucks in New Canaan. Nothing came of the marmalade fast or the orange juice cleansings except another possibility to cross off the list, though he could move his bowels like a ten-year-old.

His office was calm and pleasant. The early winter sun brightened the window behind him. Yet as every minute he remained in place moved effortlessly into the next, that new minute came with the increased anxiety that it might be his last. The wonderful warmth, his comfortable chair, the lovely rigor and stasis of practicing law were growing, with time, increasingly impossible to enjoy. He almost believed Naterwaul could be right, that worry alone could cause the attacks. Of course Naterwaul was also the moron who suggested that SoCal yahoo who had him reenact his birth. Those were some dim, desperate days. He’d be goddamned if he was returning to that giant foam womb and working to cry during reentry.

DeWiess, the environmental psychologist with the desert retreat, blamed urban air, cell phone radiation, and a contaminated water table, and gave him a sheet of paper with the names of everyday toxins listed front and back.

At ten he rose to walk down to Peter’s office. Standing was hard. His legs were eighty years old again. His first steps were stiff and careful, an easing back into fluid motion that stunned the cantankerous joints. He limped down the hallway.

“Knock knock,” he said at Peter’s door.

“Hey hey,” said Peter.

He entered the office and sat down. Peter was the senior associate on the R. H. Hobbs case. Tim didn’t think much of him.

“Maybe I’m in and out these next couple of days, Peter. Maybe, maybe not.”

Peter demonstrated the lack of curiosity required of associates when something personal appeared to be driving a partner’s decision. His blank expression conveyed the theater of total understanding. He didn’t even lean back in his chair. “Sure, Tim.”

“We’re under the gun, yeah. This thing is pressing down on us. But you don’t make a move without me. Understand?”

“Tim, who—”

“Not one move.”

“Who am I?”

“You call me, understand? I don’t care what it is. I’m always on my cell.”

“Of course. Of course.”

“From this point forward I’m on my cell. No Kronish. No Wodica.”

“No, no way. What for?”

“They don’t know the case. You know the case better.”

“I’ll call you, not a problem.”

“And you, I mean this with all due respect.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re just not ready yet.”

“No,” said Peter. “No. I’m happy to call you, Tim.”

Tim nodded and stood. Halfway down the hall, he heard his name being called. He looked back at Peter, who stood in the doorway, but his body kept moving forward.

“Hobbs is due in today, right?”

“Today?”

“Just wondered if you’d be here for that.”

“He’s due in today?” He was getting farther and farther down the hall.

“I thought you said he was coming in.”

“I said that?”

They had to talk louder.

“Tim?”

“You call me, Peter! Understand? You don’t make a move without me!”

He turned the corner and disappeared.

“There is no laboratory examination to confirm the presence or absence of the condition,” he was told by a doctor named Regis, “so there is no reason to believe the disease has a defined physical cause or, I suppose, even exists at all.”

Janowitz of Johns Hopkins had concluded that some compulsion was driving him to walk and suggested group therapy.

Klum dubbed it “benign idiopathic perambulation.” He’d had to look up idiopathic in the dictionary. “Adj.—of unknown causes, as a disease.” He thought the word, divorced of meaning, would have nicely suited Klum and her associates. Idiopaths. He also took exception to the word benign. Strictly medically speaking perhaps, but if his perambulation kept up, his life was ruined. How benign was that?

The internists made referrals. The specialists ordered scans. The clinics assembled teams.

He saw his first psychiatrist reluctantly, convinced as he was that his problem was not a mental one. Dr. Ruefle began