Dear Old Dead(46)

“If they’ve got a chance of getting money, though, they usually take it.”

“True.” And then they’re stuck with what I’ve always thought of as the fate worse than death.”

“What’s that?”

“Boredom.”

“Were you bored, in that partnership of yours, Dr. Pride?”

“Very. And I would have gone on being bored. I would have had regular hours and regular days and an apartment on the Upper West Side and a house on Martha’s Vineyard, and I would have lived for the two days every three years that a difficult case came up. What’s worse, I would have done heart surgery after heart surgery after heart surgery. That was my specialty. Heart surgery without end.”

“That kind of experience is necessary, isn’t it?” Gregor asked. “Specialists specialize because it makes them better at what they do.”

“Some of them specialize for that reason, yes. And the best ones do work they couldn’t have done any other way and that nobody else on earth can do. Maybe I would have been one of them. But my eyes glaze over even thinking about it. And thinking about the patients I would have had to put up with is worse.”

The wine steward came with the Chardonnay. He did indeed make a fuss, which Gregor endured with as much grace as possible. There were swishings and smellings Gregor didn’t understand at all. There were bowings and assurances that only made him feel ridiculous. Gregor drank Chardonnay because he liked the taste of Chardonnay. He didn’t know what it was supposed to go with and he couldn’t tell the good stuff from the bad, except at the extreme ends of the scale. Every time the wine steward raised his voice in a question, Gregor made indecipherable grunts he hoped would suit. They apparently did. The wine steward backed off and gave a final bow. Then he disappeared into that limbo where Four Seasons waiters went until the instant they were wanted by their tables, at which point they reappeared instantaneously, like genies out of lamps.

“Told you he’d make a fuss,” Michael said.

Gregor poured himself a new glass of wine. He had a new wineglass to pour it in. The Four Seasons would never have let him pour Chardonnay into a glass that had held Chablis.

“So,” Gregor said, “all this is very interesting, but none of it seems discreditable to me. I can’t believe this is what you meant when you said that people were deliberately withholding information about you from me.”

“It isn’t.” Michael Pride smiled. “I think I was just trying to head you off at the pass, stop you from doing what everybody else does. I was just trying to convince you that I’m not a saint.”

“With that résumé? With that résumé I could press your case in Rome, tomorrow.”

“Oh, no, you couldn’t. That’s my point here, Mr. Demarkian, and it’s a very important point. I’m not a crusader, I’m not Robin Hood, I’m not Mother Teresa—whom I’ve met, by the way. She came to tour our operation a couple of years ago. There’s a saint. No, Mr. Demarkian, I’m like anybody else. It’s just that I’m not afraid of the same things most people are. I’m afraid of other things.”

“Boredom.”

“Boredom. Waking up when I’m sixty-five years old and not being able to explain what I’ve done with my life, not being able to remember it. That’s what happened to my father, you know. He was a brilliant surgeon, too. But by and large saints are ascetics, Mr. Demarkian, and I am no ascetic. Just watch me with the shrimp tonight. And later at dessert with the chocolate. Just what do you know about me, Mr. Demarkian, aside from what I’ve told you?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Gregor said. “The Cardinal told me you were a homosexual.”

“Oh, homosexual.” Michael waved this away. “My brother Larry is a homosexual. He’d say gay. He’s living with the same lover he’s been living with for the past twenty years. They bought an apartment in the West Seventies and they’re more married than our parents were. Homosexual is not the point. Do you know what happened to me the night before Charles van Straadt was murdered?”

“No.”

“I got arrested.”

“For what?”

“I got arrested in a raid. On a gay porno theater in Times Square. It was not an upmarket porno theater. It took quarters and there were glory holes. When the police hit I was using one of the glory holes.”

What, Gregor wondered, did you say to a confession like this? Especially because Michael Pride didn’t look like he was confessing anything. He was using the tone of voice people use to describe minor irritating problems with their bosses or run-ins with their stepmothers.