Luis stuck his head in, motioned to Jenny, Rooney and myself, and to the college students. The five of us got up and followed him through the door, around a corner, and into a large living room walled with sofas, chairs, an electric heater purring on the floor, and another, larger tv set, tuned to the same channel.
There was another couple sitting close together on one of the sofas. The guy looked more frightened than the chick, and she was comforting him.
“Seedohn,” Luis directed us, and vanished back into the hallway. I paced across the thick carpet to see where he had gone, but the hallway ended in another plain panel door. There was the door through which we had come from the anteroom, and a twin directly across from it. Three doors, the living room, and silence. It hung musty warm in the room, with the electric heater going, the spring sun outside but unseen in the windowless room, and the three table lamps trying to convince us there was neither day nor night.
I sat down on the sofa across from the tv set, and Jenny leaned across. “Are you nervous?”
“No,” I answered. “I’m not the one going inside.”
She sank back, looking morose. Rooney gave me another of those peculiar stares.
We waited three quarters of an hour, and Luis popped in and out like the changer on a record player. The boredom was starting to get to me. A rerun of The Lineup came and went on the tv screen under the name San Francisco Beat, and I wondered just how long Warner Anderson and Tom Tully had been in movies. Then a rerun of Yancy Derringer came on, and I had to sit through something about a Union officer who had it in for a New Orleans gentleman and had arranged for his early demise by firing squad. I was about to stick my thumb in my mouth, plug up my ears, and blow my brains out through my nose when a nurse in white came into the room. She motioned to the wild-looking blonde, and they went off together. Not a sound. The coward sat and watched the tv set with a whipped expression. Yancy Derringer faded into limbo and an early movie came on. It starred Tom Neal (without a moustache), Evelyn Keyes and Bruce Bennett, and had somethingorother to do with Officers’ Candidate School in World War Two. It was a drag, but Evelyn Keyes was nice. I yawned perhaps eighty times. Luis did his imitation of a jack-in-the-box several times, and finally, the nurse came back. “Mees…com plees…” She crooked a finger at Jenny.
Jenny got up reluctantly, clutching her purse with the four one-hundred-dollar bills in it. She gave us each a sickly smile, and we smiled back, rather more bored and struck witless by the heat and the waiting than through any concern. By now my feelings had been assuaged about the Good Doctor’s capabilities. A man doesn’t live that high from bad butchery. Word of mouth works just as much in D&C as in PR.
Jenny went away, and we settled down alone in the room to wait. After a while I shut off the heater. Tom Neal was better-looking with the moustache.
These are the mechanics of the nightmare:
Doctor’s office. Modern desk. Office chair. Straight chair in front of desk. Radio. Telephone with number disc removed. Very bare walls. Doctor Quintano: handsome, early thirties, middle thirties; gray eyes; very impersonal. “Is this the first time you’ve been pregnant?” Excellent English, no trace of accent. “What was the date of your most recent period? How do you feel?” Sit waiting, twenty minutes. He comes back. Takes some papers from the desk. Goes away. Twenty minutes waiting. See no one. Hear nothing. Sit straight in chair, feel clammy, hot, tired, headache. Nurse returns, asks, “Are you Nancy?” No answer. Nurse indicates without speaking, leave this room, go upstairs. Another nurse waits at head of stairs, march directly into bathroom. Extraordinarily lovely bathroom, gleaming brass fixtures cast in the shapes of lions with open mouths, dolphins, seagulls. Pull off clothes, put on hospital gown open in back, tied with two strings. Down hall to private operating room. Lie down on observation table, light above glowing, eyes hurt. Twenty minutes. Nurse back again, quietly efficient, dark, does not speak. Quintano comes in, asks for money. Give him four crisp bills. Takes money, goes away. Comes back. Takes off underpants, places hand on female stomach. “Your stomach muscles are too tight; go to the bathroom, urinate, relax them.” Goes, returns, tries again. “Now what you’re going to have is a ‘curettement,’ a very simple operation. It will take about ten minutes, and I’ll have to examine you before the operation, don’t be afraid.” Leaves room. Nurse comes in, follow her to other room. Halls empty, hear no sound. Lie down on another observation table. Quintano returns wearing rubber gloves. Internal pelvic examination. Gentle. Still wearing shoes. Quintano leaves again. Nurse: “Relax, he be right een.” Thirty-five minutes. Nurse goes, returns, ties ankles into operating table stirrups with bands of white cloth. Heels in stirrups, uncomfortable angle. Quintano looms above table. “I want to be asleep, please.” “That depends on you.” “How?” “If you keep your breathing normal and relax.” “I can’t relax unless you put me to sleep.” “Do you want this operation?” Pause, long pause, longest pause, fear, thinking, tottering at the decision’s tip, flight, running, trembling, I must do it! “Okay. Go ahead.” A great black creature coming down from the sky above. Black rubber inhalator mask. Over nose and mouth. Fear of gas, strong, smell to be avoided if encountered on a street, walk in opposite direction, don’t die don’t fight no sight out light might tight right if you close mouth breathe through nose hose slows goes rose…Conversation interchange can’t understand allwordsruntogetherlikejelly GO! In her, knowing, I’m not asleep, feel the first instrument, cry, make a sound, inhale gas and swoon in soft lather down gone deep right leap fight seeeeee thissss wayyyyyy they count in Spanish sweet anesthetist anesthesia anesthetic not sleeping words count in Spanish uno dos tres cuatro cinco seis siete ocho Ouch! Oh! Ah! there pain here pain know pain feel it up inside vaguest vaguely vagrant ain pain vain—nueve diez once doce dream great white square, huge insubstantial moving great square, cut in four parts, one section all black, the black moves first to one square, then another, then another, around and around and around as dr dr. dR DR. and nurse stand on right, as black square moves from one corner to the other to the other to the next to the next, all clocks stop all clocks silent, every room has a clock, every room in the place, every clock has no face just hands that move around and around teasingly teasing trece catorce…soft scraping down there inside my softness, small creature seeks warm warm warm…It’s over. Come back up from the world of white squares and black. Quintano and nurse on the right, staring, “How do you feel?” “Dizzy…” Pat on the arm. Sit up, naked body stretches out before, open, naked, moist. Cover with the hospital gown. Get off table. Walk out crookedly wobbling a tot on first feet. Into first examination room, lie down on table. Blanket over, warm. Light glowing overhead, “Can you turn that out?” “No.” Forty-five minutes go by, one minute, sleep. Nurse comes back. “Get dressed.” As door closes hear Quintano saying, “Word word wordword pain word wordword word.” What was he saying, pain? Me? Was there trouble? I feel fine, don’t I? Yes, a fine feeling. Empty. Nurse with two paper cups. One has water. The other has five pills: two big yellow ones, three small white ones. Take them with difficulty, need second cup of water. Wait again, ten minutes. Nurse and Quintano come back. “You were a fine patient. That damn blonde kept moving her hips, she was scared, nervous; but you were a good patient.” Go downstairs with nurse. Other nurse waits at bottom. Hello.
I had tried to break out for a while, to get some air, to think about something other than nothing. And to wonder why this whole thing with Jenny had come to be so compelling, so involving for me, when I was really not the responsible party. I thought I knew why, but I wanted to think about it somewhere other than in the abortionist’s front parlor.
I had tried to get out of the house, by the only door I knew for certain led outside, but Luis had been waiting in the outer passage, talking in Spanish with the rickets case. He motioned me back inside. I’d about had it with him. The operation Quintano ran was a clean one, but the scarred, oily appearance of Luis was bad policy. It made the trip to the doctor’s home seem mo
re suspicious than was necessary. He instilled no faith or security in the girls coming to get scraped. And his predilection for melodrama was a bit much.
“I want to take a walk,” I told him, coming on toward the fence and gate.
“No. You go on back. You wait till she done,” and he put his hand in his thigh-length car coat’s pocket. I had a feeling the most dangerous item in that pocket was dust, but I saw no sense in hassling with him. I went back inside.
It was only four hours, but it seemed like forever.
I’d gone through my own pack and a half of Philip Morris and was down to smoking Rooney’s goddamned Kents or Springs or Passion-flowers or whatever those hideous mentholated, perfumed excuses for a self-respecting coffin-nail are called. My mouth tasted like they’d marched the entire Chinese Nationalist Army through it barefoot, with the Dalai Lama in the lead, wearing nothing but a Dr. Scholl’s Zino-Pad.
Jenny came in, being helped by a nurse in white, the one we’d seen before, the one who wouldn’t talk. I could tell at once something was wrong. Her face looked like a charcoal drawing on papyrus. I got up and moved to help her. She sat down on the sofa beside Rooney and ran her hand up across her temple and into her hair, in that characteristic gesture that meant she was out of it. “How do you feel?” I asked.
“Oh, okay, I guess. I’m glad it’s over.”
Rooney moved over beside her. “You look a little peaked, are you sure you feel all right?”
She nodded silently, almost numbly.
There was something wrong.
“Was there trouble in the operation?” I directed my question at the nurse. Her face froze over; she was a hard, cold bitch. I asked her again. She didn’t answer.
“You feel be’er eef you put a li’l lisstick on,” the Medusa said. Jenny mumbled something vague at that. I wanted to do something, but didn’t know what.
The decision was taken over by Luis, who appeared magically from the anteroom. “Time to go,” he said. The nurse disappeared back into one of the other doorways, and we stood up, helping Jenny between us. We moved out into the anteroom, and there was a waiting line of five new girls. I was amazed and staggered at the amount of business Quintano had accumulated. If he wasn’t a millionaire, tax-free, he certainly needed a good business manager. The college kids were there, and the blonde looked just fine, just fine.
We left the house and got back in the car and the gate was raised and we drove away, in exact reverse order of the way we had made our entrance. And even though HotRock Luis twisted and turned and drove us back to town by a different route, it didn’t matter: I knew the way to Quintano’s little do-it-yourselfery cold.
Luis left us off at the Woolworth’s lot, and burned rubber getting away. The five of us stood there staring at each other and the cars. “How much was yours?” the college boy asked. “Four,” I replied. He nodded. “Ours, too.” It seemed to make him feel better.
“Can we go?” Jenny said, very softly, beside me. She was feeling weak and strange, I knew it, and so did Rooney. We got into the car and tooled out of Tijuana, heading for the border.
We never made it across.
That part of it happened so fast, it can be told fast. We drove down through the town, getting a noseful and a soulful of dirt and signed testaments to just how miserable the human condition can get to be. We pulled into the long line of cars heading for the check-out point at the border, and watched Jenny from the corner of our eyes. She was shaking slightly, and feeling worse. All I wanted to do was make the trip back to L.A. and get her to her own doctor.
Cars were being passed through one after another.
They stopped us, and the inspector leaned in, asked if I had anything to declare. I figured we were a shoo-in. “Not a thing, sir,” I said. “We were just down looking around, didn’t buy a thing.”
He started to pass us through, when his eye caught the steel-rim bongos I’d bought. He looked from them to me. I looked into the back seat and saw them there. My laugh was as phony as a work of Art by Joseph E. Levine.
“Oh, except those, of course ha ha.”
That was our undoing. He asked to see inside the trunk. I opened it and it was empty. Then he tried the glove compartment, under the back seats, and then the girls’ handbags. Nothing. Just a bottle of painkiller pills Jenny had had in her purse for weeks, labeled in Beverly Hills and signed with the name of her family doctor.
The inspector took the bottle, put it under my left windshield wiper, and directed me to pull out of line, into an inspection slot. I was hacked. Jenny was about to fall out. But I did as I was told.
I could hear a guy somewhere playing a soft lick on a guitar. It struck me how strange it was: all day in a land where music is supposed to be second nature, I hadn’t heard any live music made by the people. A few bastardized notes out of a car radio, some organ background for a quiz show emanating from New York, and silence from the happy, smiling natives of this warm Valhalla. Now, as we were about to leave, a sound of reality from the other world. It was odd.
The inspector came out of his cubicle and examined us. He examined the bottle. Then he asked whose it was. Jenny said it was hers. He asked her to come into the station for a moment to talk to the head man. She looked at me. “I’ll come with you,” I said.
We followed him across the concrete walkway to the big glass-fronted office. I had to support Jenny very surreptitiously. She was white as the sun at midday.
It went fast. The inspector knew what was happening. One look at her, and you could tell she had been aborted. She was sweating like a shower, hard and hot. He took her in to talk to her. I waited. After half an hour, I got worried. They told me I had to wait.
Rooney came in; she wanted to ask if there was trouble, but I motioned her to wait, I’d tell her later. An hour went by, and suddenly we heard a crash from the next room. The head man came out, panic on his stupid face, and yelled at his aide. “Call the hospital. Miguel Aleman. Have them send an ambulance. Quick!”
I was screaming at him, and was halfway over the counter, my hand tangled in his tie. “You bastard, you stupid fucking bastard! You could see she was sick, you had to pump her, you had to use her all up, didn’t you? You bastard!”
He wasn’t young, he sure as hell wasn’t smart, or decent, or likeable; but he was strong. He whipped his hands up between mine, breaking my hold, and gave me a fast one in the mouth. I went down, and he rushed back into the interrogation room to help Jenny. I crawled off the floor and Rooney helped me up. Through the open door, we could see Jenny’s legs kicking as she lay on the floor.
The ambulance came and we rode along to Miguel Aleman Hospital. The waiting room was very clean and very white and Jenny died about four hours later. Blood loss. And it had been on its way to peritonitis.
I stood in the center of the waiting room when they came and told us, and suddenly all the memories I’d wanted to bury in the mud of my subconscious came back. Fran and the baby, sending my wife to the abortionist because I’d been “ill-equipped to handle a child right now, honey.” The operation, the fear, and Fran growing to hate me, leaving me, the divorce. It all came back, and I knew then what Jenny had meant to me. Blackness pressed into my eyes.
I ran shrieking out of the hospital, a madman whose passage was unimpeded. They leaped out of my way. I may have been frothing at the mouth, I don’t remember.
Then I was back in a dusty Tijuana street, and finding a taxi, and pointing up the hill toward Caliente track, saying, “¡Vamonos, vamonos!” I was waving bills under his nose and pointing, and he went…
Fast…
I directed him through a haze that was thick and red and whining with a high-pitched keen. When I saw the construction of steel and concrete, shaped like a geodesic dome, one of the landmarks I’d carefully noted on my first trip to Dr. Quintano’s home, I made the cabbie pull over. Cab fare from any point to any other point in Tijuana is a flat fifty cents. I gave him four dollars, all the bills I had in my hand.
r /> He sped away and I stood looking at the dome, at the sky, at my hands, and for the first time in my life I came to know sin.
I ran down the road, and down a side street, as unerringly as a hound on scent. I found Quintano’s home without difficulty. It was one of the most formidable in that neighborhood, and the high fence surrounding it meant nothing to me. I don’t know why I was there, what I wanted. Perhaps to hit him, or to get the money back for Jenny at the hospital—but she was gone, she was dead now, wasn’t she? I didn’t know.
I scaled the fence and hung at the top for a long moment, watching. The rickets case was down the line, near the gate. The door to the house opened and a man came out; he was tall with salt-and-pepper hair, and I thought he was Quintano. I climbed to the top, poised there, let myself go and caught the top of the fence with both hands. I hung for a second, then dropped. The two men saw me, and there was consternation on their faces.
“She died! She died! She and the baby died!” I yelled, and charged them. The older man stepped back, as though to flee into the house, but I went at him in a long flat dive and caught him around the ankles. He went face-forward into the side of the building, and slid sidewise, with my arms still locked around his calves. He was screaming in Spanish, and the rickets case wasn’t about to help. He ran past us where we tumbled together on the ground, and into the house. The door was still open and I could hear him yelling for someone, but I was too busy trying to get at the older man’s throat. I slid up his body, and locked one hand under his chin. He tried to fight me off and I pummeled him with my free fist. I was choking him, but not very well: his eyes were glazing over, but he kept trying to fight free. I hit him as hard as I could on the side of the head, but he rolled with it, and then he dug his hand into my mouth, catching the soft flesh of my check, and he literally pried my head back. I lost my hold on his throat, and he jacked his knee up into my stomach. All the air went out of me and I flopped back, gasping like a heart case. Then, before I could defend myself, Luis was running through the anteroom, out the door, and was kicking me. His feet were big, and I saw each ripple-soled shoe descend, first right, then left, and he was stomping on my face as if I were a bug. I tried to grab his leg, and caught one pants cuff. I pulled him across and tumbled him, and managed to crawl up his front and hit him once before someone grabbed me from behind, locked his hands around my face and yanked me forcibly back against a knee. My back cracked like an arthritic knuckle and everything bobbled, weaved, swam, dipped in front of me. I started to gray out, and stayed with it just long enough to see Luis and the older man and the rickets case bending down to work me over good.