1. Mabel Stuart Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Mineralwater Medical School loomed over the Mineralwater Navigation, Irrigation, and Drainage Canal like a nauseated vulture. The school was born into corrugated shacks nine months after a premature ejaculation by the state legislature on the day after the Pacific fleet went down at Pearl Harbor. The state university had wanted a medical school and lobbied intensively for one. They made the mistake of launching their campaign in the legislative session that began after their football team went three and eight. Mineralwater, which had wanted a new VD clinic, was given the medical school on condition that it never be affiliated with any university. The legislature failed to appropriate any money for the school, so the shacks which housed the superannuated VD clinic became the medical school campus. The shacks, temporary naval reserve buildings from the first world war, had disappeared 10 years before Richard Grollman arrived to be a nephrology fellow, but their scavenging glower persisted like a literary smirk. A new research building, a new hospital, and a new library could not soften the ominous air that the medical school exhaled as an anamnestic vestige of its jerry rigged beginning. Grollman thought for a twitch that he was in Transylvania instead of where he was as he entered the research building which was alleged to be the domain of the nephrology section.

No one on the building’s first floor admitted to any knowledge of the nephrology section’s whereabouts. After a half an hour of going in a square Grollman came to an elevator that was next to a sign that said “This elevator does not go to nephrology.” Since it was the only one he had found that was working he got in it in defiance of the sign. Next to the buttons was another sign that said

“Nephrology is not on the fourth floor.” He pressed four. When he got off he faced his last nephrology sign of the day; it said, “Nephrology is not here.”

He went to his right down a stygian corridor that was clogged with chairs, tables, books, filing cabinets, typewriters, a large centrifuge, a gamma counter, three tennis rackets, and a king-sized white porcelain commode above which was a sign that read “Milton’s Throne.” He passed two laboratories as he reached the end of the corridor which turned south at a right angle. The first office after he made the turn was on his left; it had a black shingle hanging over it which said “Medicine.” Since nephrology was part of Medicine Grollman decided to go in, besides he could think of nothing else to do.
A middle aged lady was sitting behind a desk filling her nails with sandpaper. She didn’t look up when he entered. To the secretary’s left was a closed door that had yet another sign on it. This one said:

KEEP OUT
THIS MEANS YOU
TRESPASSERS WILL BECOME ORGAN DONORS

Grollman stood in front of the woman’s desk expecting to be recognized. When it was plain that he wasn’t going to be, he cleared his throat. She pulled a sheet of tissue paper from its cardboard box and handed it to him.

“That’s very kind of you,” he said, “but I was hoping for some additional assistance. I think I’m lost.”

Her eyelids fluttered mysteriously and then she looked up and searched his face like he was the missing link. “This is the Department of Medicine Office. It is not the lost and found.” She went back to her nails

Grollman bent over and twisted his face like a propeller. “Is this really the Department of Medicine Office? Is that why the sign that says “Medicine” is over the door? I’m one of the new renal fellows,” he assumed there would be more than one, “and I need to know where I’m supposed to go.”

“You’re not supposed to be here until tomorrow.”

When he was sure she wasn’t going to say anything more he said, “Well if it were tomorrow where would I go?”

“You’d see Milt.”

“Milt?”

“Dr Lance.”

Milton Lance was the name that Grollman had seen on all of Dr Walker’s papers. He guessed that if he was going to work for Walker that he would come in contact with Lance as well.

“Dr Walker wants all the fellows to meet with Milt; he’ll decide what you should do.”

“Where’s Dr Walker?” Wade Walker was the chairman of the department of medicine and the chief of its section of nephrology. He had hired Grollman in a moment of caprice.

“He’s in Tibet, not that it’s any of your business.”

“Is Dr Lance around now?”

“Who?”

“Milt.”

“Oh yeah, right. He’s usually not here this early.” It was almost 10:30.

“What do you suggest that I do?”

“Come back tomorrow.”

“Is the renal lab nearby?”

“You just passed them on your way here. All the labs to the right belong to nephrology.” She resumed sandpapering her nails.

Grollman left the office and retraced his route until he reached the turn to the east. Instead of making it he entered a very large lab that was so filled with scientific junk that all the windows were obscured, at least they would have been had there been any. The place was a gloomy as the waiting room of a bus station in Amarillo. A man about Grollman’s age, but with only a border of hair above his ears was seated at a desk looking at a rack of test tubes as intently as if they were tea leaves. Grollman could not tell through the gloom if anyone else was in the room.

Grollman was sluggishly trying to think of a gambit when the bald man with the test tubes said, “You a new fellow?”

“Yeah, how could you tell?”

“The glazed look is diagnostic. Morris Lewis.” He held out his hand. “You’re here early.”

“I thought extra effort counted. Besides, it’s just one day. You’re here.”

My last day. Tomorrow I go back to Chicago.”

“Really? I just left.” Grollman recounted his residency at Midwestern and then Lewis related that he was going to join the faculty at Northwestern where he had been a student, a medical student, and a resident before venturing from his academic womb to Mineralwater for a fellowship.

“Why do you suppose Chicago institutions of higher learning have such a nomenclatural fascination with the west when the city is east of the Mississippi?” said Grollman.

Lewis raised an eyebrow which was the hirsute summit of his cranium. “You’ll fit right in here. Have you met Milt yet?” Grollman shook his head no. “You know Dr Walker?” A yes nod. “Well Milt is just as smart, at least about the kidney, and just as weird. Milt’ll probably be here tomorrow.”

“What do you mean probably? I thought he was going to orient the new fellows tomorrow.”

“He’s supposed to, but it’s not high on his priority list. He doesn’t like to work when the temperature is above 85 or may soon be above 85.” Mineralwater was three and a half months in either direction of the calendar from less than 85.

“Do you think that it won’t be 85 tomorrow?”

“No,” said Lewis.

“Then why will Milt,” he figured that he could call Milt Milt since everyone else seemed to do it, “be here?

“Because he wants to screw Bubbles.”

“Who’s Bubbles?”

Lewis pointed to a stocky woman of about 30 who working in the back corner of the lab and whom Grollman had not noticed when he entered the place.

“She only consents to carnal contact on July 1?” said Grollman.

“Oh no. She says she ready anytime.”

“Then what’s so special about tomorrow that Milt will brave the heat?”

“Ty Mentin is gonna be here.”

“Okay, I’ll bite.”

He’s a third year Gyn resident.” Grollman did not appear enlightened. “He’s gonna examine Bubbles.” Grollman’s face was as blank as the sun. “To find out whether she’s a virgin or not.”

“Milt only screws virgins?”

“No, just the opposite. He says he won’t screw Bubbles, even though he says he yearns to, if she’s a virgin – which she categorically denies. He says it’s unethical to screw virgins.

Grollman was seized with the evolutionary implications of such a code. “Why does he think Bubbles is a virgin?”

“She’s too earthy. He says that anyone who talks about sex as much as Bubbles must be hiding some terrible copulatory curse. He says everything adds up to Bubble’s never going down.”

“You think he’ll fit the new fellows into his schedule?”

“Maybe. You might as well show up in case he does. In any event I’ll be gone.” He began to putter with his test tubes as if playing Three Card Monte.

“What are you working on?” It was a question Lewis was dying for him to ask.

“This is the last experiment that finishes two year’s work. I’ve shown for the first time that red blood cell sodium-potassium ATPase responds stochiometrically to alterations in temperature dependent manipulations of potassium-induced fibrinolysis especially under conditions of increased carnitine degradation following the conjunction of Saturn and Mars.”

Grollman nodded pretending he understood what Lewis was telling him. “That’s important?”

Lewis smiled modestly as if to say “You fucking moron, it’ll probably win the Nobel prize.”

“What’s that got to do with the kidney?” Grollman asked in response to a blink of inspiration.

Lewis looked at him as if he were the president of the fucking morons. “You and Milt are really going to get along great.” He then went back to ostentatiously shuffling his test tubes.

“I guess I’ll call it a day;” said Grollman, “it’s been exhausting. I’ll see you tomorrow; no, I guess I won’t see you tomorrow.” He left the lab.

Just before leaving Chicago Grollman had been inducted into the US Army. Dr Walker had arranged for him to be assigned to the nephrology section at Mineralwater for the next two years. Grollman had originally been scheduled to enter the army anyway, so this scenario was fine with him even if he did have to give the army an extra year when he finished his fellowship. Because new doctors served as captains Grollman’s salary was more than twice that of all the other fellows he had yet to meet. His high salary suited Dr Walker fine because he didn’t have to pay it.

Thus Grollman for the first time in his life had the prospect of more money than his need for food, shelter, and clothing required. So he rented a two bedroom apartment on Lizard Creek. He had to take out a signature loan to raise the first and last month’s rent. Then he realized he would need furniture. He had never owned furniture; he didn’t know from whence it came nor how it was obtained. His first night in his new apartment was spent on the floor which was too much like camping out and thus prevented him from sleeping.

His second day in the apartment coincided with his first trip to the medical school; all leases mysteriously began on the 29th in Mineralwater. When he left Morris Lewis to his test tubes it was still morning. At his return to his naked apartment he was just in time to meet a telephone serviceman who planned to install a telephone.

“How’d you know I need a telephone?” He had just realized that he did and that he needed to arrange for one to be installed.

“Mabel Stuart live here?” said the phone man who wore a heavy tan cotton shirt that had a large blue ear sewn to its back.

Grollman found the quick thinking that had carried him farther than his initial performances in medicine might have suggested and said yes.

“Okay, where do you want it?”

Grollman let him into the apartment and gestured to the center of its living room.

“It’s got to be near a wall.”

Grollman shrugged and the man installed the phone where he pleased.
“Sign here.” The man stuck an order sheet enclosed in a open face heavy metal dispenser in front of Grollman.

“Got a pencil?”

He gave Grollman a pencil. He took it and signed “Mabel Stuart” and then put the pencil in his pocket.

“Pencil”. Grollman gave it back.

“You wouldn’t know where I could get a bed?”

The man looked at him like he was a fucking moron. Grollman was afraid he was going to tell him to ask Mabel, but he turned and left the apartment. In a minute he returned a handed Grollman a phone book.

“Try the yellow pages.”

When the man had left Grollman still was in the center of his empty living room holding the phone book. He thought the yellow pages, which he had never had occasion to use, was a separate book. The one he held was the white pages. The he realized that Mineralwater was not big enough to have two phone books; the yellow pages were at the back of the white ones.

He looked under furniture and to his total astonishment several pages of listings for furniture of all sorts appeared. There was lawn furniture, furniture for camping out, furniture for making out, and even furniture for rent. He thought about it for a moment, but decided his improved means required purchase not lease. But he had to have it right away, so his eye was struck by an quarter page ad for “Melvin’s Cut Rate Genuine Imitation Plastic-Wood Furniture. Same Day Delivery Sometimes Available.”

The ad had hit Grollman’s sole criterion for spending his money, or more accurately the money he expected to have. He didn’t want to sleep on the floor again. He dialed the number printed in large red numbers. A woman answered.

“May I speak to Melvin, please,” he said in the most serious tone he could muster.

“Who?” said a woman with a heavy Mineralwater accent.

“Is this 967-0789?” he said reading the red number, his tone returning to Brooklyn.

“Yeah.”

“Melvin’s Cut Rate etc?”

“Sure.”

“Can I speak to Melvin?”

“Oh Melvin.”

“Yeah Melvin.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He’s dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, he was a schmuck; besides he’d been dead for 37 years.”

“You do still sell furniture?”

“Is this a joke?”

“No I want to buy some furniture.”

“Well you can’t do it over the phone.

“Do you deliver?”

“Where do you live?”

“Wait a minute, I’ll check.” He had forgotten his address, which didn’t mean a whole lot to him anyway. He told her the number.

“We go there for cash.”

“Will you take a post-dated check?”

“How many days post-dated?”

It turned out that Grollman could get his furniture over the phone. He told the furniture lady, who was willing to take any kind of a check when she understood what a fish she had on the line, to pick out some nice stuff sufficient to fill a two bedroom apartment on Lizard Creek. In two hours he had a green and red sofa bed, a glass table with an umbrella in its center, two canvas director chairs, an army surplus cot, two red plastic chairs that had “Texas A&M” on their backs, a Naugahyde ottoman with baby alligators festooned on its side, and a stand-up desk like that used by Johann Strauss only made of cardboard and painted mustard. Grollman was delighted that he had gotten so much good stuff and for only $1400. He had had to write seven $200 post-dated checks for the stuff, but slept the sleep of the boob on the sofa-bed until his new phone rang for the first time at 3:30. It was on its seventh ring by the time he was conscious and had found it.

“Dr Grollman,” he said from the habit of five years of night call.

“Who the fuck are you?” said a virulent male voice. Grollman was paralyzed with shock, fear, and lingering sleep. “Tell Mabel I’ll be over there in five minutes and that I’m going to shoot you both.

“Who?” he said at owl level.

“You know who you asshole, Mabel Stuart.”

“Mabel Stuart doesn’t live here.”

“Is this 565-2391?”

Grollman looked at the phone, elevated to parrot class. “Yes.”

“Then I’m gonna kill you.” The virulent caller hung up.

Grollman, now human, was seized with a panic attack even though it was not yet fashionable. Some madman is going to kill me, he thought. He started to trot around his Naugahyde ottoman until it hit him. Mabel Stuart didn’t live here anymore.