Back from the cemetery, Dr. Quinndell has been sitting at his desk for more than an hour, tapping his long fingers, feeling oddly at a loss now that his enemy is dead, her grave defiled. The doctor is in the mood for … something. He could of course summon Mary from bed again and harass her, but Quinndell has grown weary of those games. He has one final torment in store for Mary, all in due time.
Quinndell picks up the telephone and punches in the number for the county jail. Carl, the deputy, is on duty.
“Hey, Doc, what can I do you for?”
“Mr. Gigli is lonely for a new friend, Carl.”
The deputy chuckles. “Good old Mr. Gigli.”
“I seem to remember that you mentioned you might have a likely candidate.”
“Sure do, Doc. Henry Robarts, forty-three, white male, no fixed address, no family that he admits to. I been holding him for you.”
“Interesting.”
“I didn’t run a sheet on him so nobody knows we got him, but he’s a yardbird all right, right down to the jailhouse tattoos.”
“But the question is, is he disposable?”
“Say what?”
“Is he wanted by any law enforcement agency, is an ex-wife after him for child support, does he have an elderly mother who’s waiting for her precious Henry to visit?”
“Not that I know of. Got him talking just like you always said, Doc, and he didn’t mention any family or friends. Far as I can tell he’s drifter, shit bum, white trash — through and through.”
“A perfect friend for Mr. Gigli.”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me again how Henry came to your attention.”
“Caught him stealing tools from Martin’s barn out there by the highway. Says he’s looking for work, they all say that, but you know how it is, he was just passing through, stealing stuff small enough to fit in his pockets, then he sells it at some filling station down the road, gets enough money for a meal. Strictly smalltime.”
“Does he wear glasses?”
“Nope.”
“Well then by all means do bring Henry over for a visit. You know the routine, Deputy.”
“Sure do, Doc.”
Forty-five minutes later Henry Robarts is on an examining table in a small windowless room in the back of Dr. Quinndell’s house. Henry’s wrists and ankles are strapped to the table; a rope is around his neck and knotted under the table to keep his head down. Henry allowed the deputy to secure him in this fashion because the deputy told him there’d be forty bucks in it for him: forty dollars to allow some local doctor to examine him.
Henry figures the doctor is queer. He’s had shit like this happen to him before. In prison of course, but also in his travels. He’ll be hitching a ride and some cheap-suited businessman will pick him up and they’ll get talking and the guy will give him a look, embarrassment and lust all mixed up together, and the guy will mention how he’s going to be stopping for the night soon and maybe Henry — you said your name was Henry, right? — would like a bed for the night too. Then in exchange for a room and a meal and maybe twenty bucks or whatever Henry can hit him up for, the guy gets to suck Henry’s dick. That’s the weird part. It’s not like prison. On the outside, they want to suck your dick — and pay you for it too.
So what Henry figures is, the deputy brings men to this queer doctor who also has a kink about tying you to his examining table. A good deal for Henry on two counts: first, he gets forty dollars and, second, after all this they ain’t going to charge him with anything and take the chance of Henry saying something to a judge about being delivered to a local doctor for some dick sucking.
Henry lies on the examining table wishing the doctor would hurry up and get here. The deputy left fifteen, twenty minutes ago and Henry is dying for a cigarette and though he wouldn’t want to admit it to anyone, he’s getting kind of horny for what this doctor is going to do to him too.
Then finally the door to the examining room opens and in steps this nicely dressed man, suit and tie and a shirt that is very white.
“Hello,” the doctor says in a deep voice like what you might expect to hear on one of them classical stations on the radio.
“Hiya,” Henry replies, raising his head slightly, straining his neck against the rope to get a better look at the guy. Handsome.
“I understand your name is Henry Robarts. I’m Doctor Mason Quinndell.”
“Nice meeting you, Doc.” Henry wonders why the doctor gave his name, they usually don’t do that.
“Do you notice anything unusual about me, Henry?”
Henry keeps watching him as he crosses the room and leans against a counter. “Nice suit.”
Quinndell smiles. He steps to the examining table. “What color are my eyes?”
“Blue.” Henry figures the guy is vain about his eyes so why not blow him a little smoke. “About the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, make Paul Newman jealous, really.” He watches the doctor’s eyes a moment longer. “Jeez, you’re blind.”
Quinndell takes out a linen handkerchief and dabs at the tears collecting around his glass eyes. “I was blinded, yes, that’s true, Henry. What do you think of that?”
“How can you be a doctor?”
“Well, Henry, once a doctor, always a doctor. I believe what you mean to ask is how can I practice medicine. And the answer of course is that I can’t. Are you curious about why you were brought here, why you’re strapped to the table?”
“The deputy said something about some money.”
Quinndell smiles. “Of course.” Standing there at the examining table he takes some folded bills from the pocket of his pants. When the doctor unfolds the bills, Henry notices that there’s a twenty on the top of the stack and a hundred on the bottom. “Forty dollars, correct?” Quinndell asks.
“Yeah,” Henry replies, watching the doctor’s fine hands as they manipulate the bills. He starts to pull the twenty off the top but then hesitates, turns the stack over, pauses again — and pulls out the hundred-dollar bill, then a second one.
Henry watches with wide eyes.
Quinndell holds the two hundreds in one hand, folding the rest of the bills and slipping them back in his pocket. “Two twenties,” he says, extending the hundreds toward Henry. “Right?”
“Right.” Henry can’t believe his good luck. “Just tuck them there in my shirt pocket, Doc.”
Quinndell does. “And why do you suppose I’m paying you forty dollars, Henry.”
“Different strokes for different folks, Doc.”
“How about Doctor Quinndell?”
“Okay.”
“And you’re under the impression that I gave you those two twenty-dollar bills in exchange for some kind of sexual contact, is that a correct assessment?”
Henry has run across this before, the way some guys got to talk around it and talk around it, trying to talk themselves into it or hoping you’ll make the first move, grab their hand and put it on your dick and get the show on the road. Except the way he’s strapped down, Henry isn’t going to be doing any grabbing, is he?
“Henry? Is my assessment correct, you’re under the impression that I have some sort of sexual interest in you?”
“I don’t know, Doc. Doctor. The deputy said you wanted to examine me, so I guess I’m here to be examined. Go ahead, examine me any way you want.”
“But why do you think you’re in restraints?”
Jesus, how long is this going to take? “Uh, I don’t exactly know that either, Dr. Quinndell. Maybe you like guys who are tied up. Or maybe ’cause you’re blind you didn’t want to take the chance with somebody being brought here from jail.”
“Take the chance that you might steal my money and flee and I couldn’t do anything about it because I’m defenseless — having been blinded has rendered me defenseless, is that what you’re saying?”
“Something like that. Except I wouldn’t take advantage of you.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“Not me, Doc. Doctor. Some guys, yeah, but me, I always treat people straight and expect to be treated the same way myself.”
“An honest man.”
“Yeah, I am.” Then Henry begins a rambling story about this time he stopped at some woman’s house and agreed to do a little yardwork in exchange for a few dollars but then when he found out the woman’s husband had been killed a few months before in a trucking accident and she had three kids, Henry went around and fixed up all the stuff that was wrong with her house, a leaking roof and replacing a broken window — he bought the new pane of glass with his own money — and twelve hours later he settles for a home-cooked meal, won’t take any of the woman’s money. In fact, before he leaves he puts a dollar bill in each of the kids’ hands, his last three bucks. “Lot of guys would think I’m a chump for doing something like that but me, I figure —”
He’s interrupted when the doctor throws back his head, opens his mouth to reveal tiny yellow teeth, and begins heaving his shoulders up and down: it would be laughter except for its eerie silence.