White Noise - Don Delillo [77]
“What problem?”
“Memory lapse.”
“You would call a doctor at home to talk about memory lapse. If everyone with memory lapse called a doctor at home, what would we have? The ripple effect would be tremendous.”
I told him the lapses were frequent.
“Frequent. I know your wife. This is the wife who came to me one night with a crying child. ‘My child is crying.’ She would come to a medical doctor who is a private corporation and ask him to treat a child for crying. Now I pick up the phone and it’s the husband. You would call a doctor in his home after ten o‘clock at night. You would say to him, ‘Memory lapse.’ Why not tell me she has gas? Call me at home for gas?”
“Frequent and prolonged, doctor. It has to be the medication.”
“What medication?”
“Dylar.”
“Never heard of it.”
“A small white tablet. Comes in an amber bottle.”
“You would describe a tablet as small and white and expect a doctor to respond, at home, after ten at night. Why not tell me it is round? This is crucial to our case.”
“It’s an unlisted drug.”
“I never saw it. I certainly never prescribed it for your wife. She’s a very healthy woman so far as it’s within my ability to ascertain such things, being subject as I am to the same human failings as the next fellow.”
This sounded like a malpractice disclaimer. Maybe he was reading it from a printed card like a detective informing a suspect of his constitutional rights. I thanked him, hung up, called my own doctor at home. He answered on the seventh ring, said he thought Dylar was an island in the Persian Gulf, one of those oil terminals crucial to the survival of the West. A woman did the weather in the background.
I went upstairs and told Denise not to worry. I would take a tablet from the bottle and have it analyzed by someone in the chemistry department at the college. I waited for her to tell me she’d already done that. But she just nodded grimly and I headed down the hall, stopping in Heinrich’s room to say goodnight. He was doing chinning exercises in the closet, using a bar clamped to the doorway.
“Where did you get that?”
“It’s Mercator’s.”
“Who’s that?”
“He’s this senior I hang around with now. He’s almost nineteen and he’s still in high school. To give you some idea.”
“Some idea of what?”
“How big he is. He bench-presses these awesome amounts.”
“Why do you want to chin? What does chinning accomplish?”
“What does anything accomplish? Maybe I just want to build up my body to compensate for other things.”
“What other things?”
“My hairline’s getting worse, to name just one.”
“It’s not getting worse. Ask Baba if you don’t believe me. She has a sharp eye for things like that.”
“My mother told me to see a dermatologist.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary at this stage.”
“I already went.”
“What did he say?”
“It was a she. My mother told me to go to a woman.”
“What did she say?”
“She said I have a dense donor site.”
“What does that mean?”
“She can take hair from other parts of my head and surgically implant it where it’s needed. Not that it makes any difference. I’d just as soon be bald. I can easily see myself totally bald. There are kids my age with cancer. Their hair falls out from chemotherapy. Why should I be different?”
He was standing in the closet peering out at me. I decided to change the subject.
“If you really think chinning helps, why don’t you stand outside the closet and do your exercises facing in? Why stand in that dark musty space?”
“If you think this is strange, you ought to see what Mercator’s doing.”
“What’s he doing?”
“He’s training to break the world endurance record for sitting in a cage full of poisonous snakes, for the Guinness Book of Records. He goes to Glassboro three times a week where they have this exotic pet shop. The owner lets him feed the mamba and the puff adder. To get him accustomed. Totally forget your North