“Mark? What’re you doing here at this hour?” the actor asked, holding his yoga position — or whatever it was.
“I was in the building for another patient. Thought I’d stop by and see how you’re doing.”
The doctor had lied to Nurses Ganguss and Woosten when he had said that the actor had phoned him, threatening to check out of the clinic in the morning. Ahriman’s real purpose was to be here when the midnight shift arrived, so he could program Skeet after the too-diligent Nurse Hernandez went home. The actor was his cover. After a couple hours in 246, the few minutes that he spent with Skeet would seem like an incidental matter, and any staff who noticed the visit would not find it remarkable.
The actor said, “I spend about an hour a day in this position. Good for brain circulation. It’d be nice to have a second, smaller TV that I could turn upside down when I needed to.”
Glancing at the sitcom on the screen, Ahriman said, “If that’s the stuff you watch, it's probably better upside down.”
“No one likes critics, Mark.”
“Don Adriano de Armado.”
“I’m listening,” said the actor, quivering briefly but able to maintain his headstand.
For the name to activate this subject, the doctor had chosen a character from
The upside-down actor, who collected twenty million dollars plus points for starring in a film, had accepted little education of any kind during his thirty-odd years, and had received no formal training in his profession. When he read a screenplay, he often didn’t read anything except his own lines, and frogs were likely to fly before he ever read Shakespeare. Unless the legitimate theater was one day turned over to the management of chimps and baboons, there was no chance whatsoever that he would be cast in anything by the Bard of Avon, and so no danger that he would hear the name
Ahriman put the actor through his personal, enabling haiku.
As Martie finished tying the laces of Skeet’s athletic shoes, Jasmine Hernandez said, “If you’re checking him out of here, I’ll need you to sign a release of liability.”
“We’re bringing him back tomorrow,” Martie said, rising to her feet and encouraging Skeet to stand up from the edge of the bed.
“Yeah,” Dusty said, still jamming clothes into the suitcase, “we just want to take him to see Mom, and then he’ll be back.”
“You’ll still have to sign a release,” Nurse Hernandez insisted.
“Dusty,” Skeet warned, “you better never let Claudette hear you call her
“He attempted suicide only yesterday,” Nurse Hernandez reminded them. “The clinic can’t take any responsibility for his discharge in this condition.”
“We absolve the clinic. We take full responsibility,” Martie assured her.
“Then I’ll get the release form.”
Martie stepped in front of the nurse, leaving Skeet to wobble on the uncertain support of his own two legs. “Why don’t you help us get him ready? Then the four of us can go up to the nurses’ station together and sign the release.”
Eyes narrowing, Jasmine Hernandez said, “What’s going on here?”
“We’re in a hurry, that’s all.”
“Yeah? Then I’ll get that release real quick,” Nurse Hernandez replied, pushing past Martie. At the door, she pointed at Skeet, and ordered: “Don’t you go anywhere until I come back,
“Sure, okay,” Skeet promised. “But could you hurry? Claudette’s really sick, and I don’t want to miss anything.”
The doctor instructed the actor to get off his head and then to sit on the sofa.
Ever the exhibitionist, the heartthrob was wearing only a pair of black bikini briefs. He was as fit as a sixteen-year-old, lean and well-muscled, in spite of his formidable list of self-destructive habits.
He crossed the room with the lithe grace of a ballet dancer. Indeed, although his personality was deeply repressed and although, in this state, he was hardly more self-aware than a turnip, he moved as if performing. Evidently, his conviction that he was at all times being watched and adored by admirers was not an attitude that he had acquired as fame had corrupted him; it was a conviction rooted in his very genes.
While the actor waited, Dr. Ahriman took off his suit coat and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He checked his reflection in a mirror above a sideboard. Perfect. His forearms were powerful, thatched with hair, manly without being Neanderthalian. When he left this room at midnight and strolled down the hall to Caulfield’s room, he would sling his coat over his shoulder, the very picture of a weary. hardworking, deeply committed, and sexy man of medicine.
Ahriman drew a chair to the sofa and sat facing the actor. “Be calm.”
“I am calm.”
Jiggle, jiggle, the blue eyes that made Nurse Ganguss weak.
