“I work too much, you see,” Michael said, when the drinks had come and he had a menu in his hands. Gregor was interested to see that Michael wasn’t much interested in the menu. He flipped through it quickly, seemed to check something he expected to be there, and put it down. “With the clinic, it’s not possible to say that I’m actually off duty. If I’m around and somebody needs me, I’m on. Once every four years, I declare myself on vacation and rent a motel room on the Island for a night. Then I watch the returns from the presidential elections and get dead drunk.”
“I know somebody else who drinks for presidential elections,” Gregor said.
“It’s necessary. Republican, Democrat. Reagan, Carter, Bush, Clinton. Nixon, for God’s sake. Where do they get these guys?”
“Do you vote?”
“Absolutely. I write in James Madison.”
“My friend who also drinks for elections writes in Snoopy.”
“Snoopy couldn’t hurt.”
The waiter came with the drinks, but not with his order pad—did the waiters carry order pads in here? Gregor couldn’t remember. He did remember that there were a lot of waiters, in the way that there were a lot of people on Broadway stage crews. Each waiter did one thing and no other. It was rather nice. Michael Pride took a sip of his Perrier water and looked around.
“Funny,” he said. “My brother took me to this place once, right after I’d opened up uptown, trying to talk me out of it. I had a wonderful time, stuck him with a six-hundred-dollar bill, and went right back to doing what I was doing. Larry was furious.”
“This was right after you opened the clinic?”
Michael shook his head. “No clinic. I never intended to open a clinic. In the beginning there was just me and a rented office suite about five blocks north of where we are now, with a sign hung out saying I’d do doctoring for anyone who wanted it for free. Believe it or not, it took a while before anybody showed up at my door. I realized later they all thought I’d had my license revoked. It wasn’t until I got friendly with one of the African Methodist ministers that I got any business.”
“Do you have family money?” Gregor wondered. “You must have income from someplace, to work for free. That is, if you do work for free. I’m afraid I didn’t ask the Cardinal about the arrangements at the clinic. Possibly they pay you a salary.”
“They quite definitely pay me a salary,” Michael said. “Fifty dollars a month. And I’ve got my room, of course, and I can take anything I want from the cafeteria without paying for it. And no, I don’t have family money. When I first went uptown, I had about twenty-two thousand dollars that I’d put away from three years as part of a medical partnership with offices off Central Park West. If I’d stuck with the partnership, I’d be a millionaire several times over by now. All the men I used to work with are into real estate.”
“What did you intend to do for money after the twenty-two thousand dollars ran out?”
“I didn’t let myself think about it.”
“New York is full of people who didn’t let themselves think about it, Dr. Pride. Bag ladies. People sleeping on the street.”
“That’s not how people end up sleeping on the street, Mr. Demarkian, you should know that. And it’s not the same thing. People like me do not end up on park benches, not unless we take to liquor and refuse to do anything about it. People like me have something to give. If we give it, the world gives back. Which isn’t to say it gives back very well. I’ve slept with my share of bedbugs.”
The waiter was back, except that it was a different waiter. Maybe. Gregor gave his order and then sat back to listen to Michael Pride order enough shrimp to populate an ocean. Gregor hadn’t realized there were that many different kinds of shrimp on the menu. Gregor’s wine was gone. He asked for a bottle of Chardonnay and the waiter disappeared.
“The wine waiter will be back to create a fuss,” Michael warned him. “Where were we? Oh. At the beginning of my brilliant career.”
“I think the question is why you didn’t continue with your brilliant career,” Gregor said. “Your credentials are very impressive. In fact, they’re spectacular. You had started out with what sounds like a lucrative partnership. You’re probably right, you probably could have been a millionaire several times over if you’d stuck with it. Why didn’t you stick with it?”
“Why should I bother?”
“Money,” Gregor suggested.
Michael Pride nodded. “I like money as well as anybody else, that’s true. I like lots of shrimp in the Four Seasons and a dozen other luxuries I could name. I’ve had this jacket for fifteen years. I’ve never replaced it because I couldn’t afford to replace it with anything this well made. But everybody likes money, Mr. Demarkian. Most people don’t have it. As long as they’re not destitute, they survive well enough. They’re even happy.”