So when old Mr. Bingham fell out with the senior partner in the medical practice and Mrs. Bingham asked if Van Hooten would be interested in becoming Mr. Bingham’s personal physician, he leaped at the offer. One patient, even one as elderly and potentially infirm as Mr. Bingham, was just what this doctor ordered. Given Mr. Bingham’s disdain for doctors, Van Hooten figured that he would see his one patient for an annual physical and in between he would be left to a life of semi-luxury—and except for that one codicil in the contract, he would have done exactly that. Theatergoing, speakeasy-visiting, opera-loving, socialite-wooing—all that and more could have been his, if the Binghams had not insisted that he be available to them at any minute of the day or night. They made use of this privilege only rarely, and it was always the missus—only the missus—who called. But had he not been in the apartment when those calls came, the job would have been forfeited, and he would have found himself back at the old practice, examining the lugubrious bulge of an inguinal hernia, exploring the mungy contours of a gangrenous foot, or debriding the bedsores of some sodden-fleshed dowager.
He still dreamed of a steak dinner at Delmonico’s or a martini and a raft of littlenecks at the Oyster Bar, but the same thoughts left him in a bitter sweat. Even a trip down the elevator and into the lobby could spell doom. He was haunted by the sound of the phone ringing in the empty apartment.
In the past decade, he had left the apartment no more than a dozen times. Almost all of his excursions were for the Bingham père’s annual physical, which Mrs. Bingham insisted upon and which always led to the same conclusion: that Mr. Bingham was an unwilling patient with the constitution of a petrified tree stump. Time and Bingham’s own cussedness had abraded whatever soft tissue had once clung to his frame, leaving a sentient, rocky core.
During Van Hooten’s confinement, the big events of the day—the stock market crash, the election of FDR, the end of Prohibition, the rise of the New Deal—were little more than headlines to him. A woman named Foster arrived every morning to prepare his breakfast and tend to his laundry. She set the coffeepot, scrambled his eggs, buttered his toast. Dinners came delivered from a rotating cast of restaurants; the food would arrive in the lobby in folded paper cartons, which a doorman would then ferry to his door. Liquor and other essentials—books, record albums, stamps, typewriter ribbons—came by similar means. Every year a tailor visited to measure him for custom shirts and suits that almost no one would ever see, while a barber arrived every other week to trim his thinning hair.
His friendships had fallen away years ago—few, then none, wanted to spend hour after hour in Van Hooten’s apartment with never the prospect of a night on the town. He had long abandoned any thought of a wife and children. The demands of family life could only distract from his duties to the Binghams. His dealings with women, like all of his encounters, became transactions. He placed a call, a woman arrived, and the night ended with the payment of a fee. But in recent years, even sex had lost its appeal. The same squeamishness that had driven him from the medical profession had overwhelmed whatever lusts resided in his heart. His one remaining source of pleasure was chess. He was currently involved in more than a dozen games, all carried out by mail.
When the telephone rang that morning, Van Hooten had not set foot outside the apartment in nine months. The shock of the ringer jangling in the hallway almost sent his second cup of coffee into his lap. The telephone sat on a console table in a spot Van Hooten had calculated was the center-most in the apartment, equidistant from the bedroom (he slept with the door open), the bathroom (he had not had a satisfying bowel movement since 1927), and the living room (he listened to the phonograph only at very low volume). He raced to the receiver, a heavy black thing that he lifted with a mix of fear and gratitude. The call could only mean that Mr. Bingham had taken ill, and that Van Hooten must venture out to attend to him. O blessed day!
But no. Mrs. Bingham informed Van Hooten that he was to be visited that morning by a Scottish lord whose younger brother needed medical attention. He was to do everything in his power to assist the young man, who had suffered some grievous harm of uncertain diagnosis.
“He’s a medical mystery,” Mrs. Bingham said. “But we believe that you’re just the man for the case.”
The kind words from Mrs. Bingham did little to soothe his disappointment. He so badly wanted to go outside. He kept a freshly pressed suit, a clean shirt, and a new tie hanging in the wardrobe, ready for a venture into the city. He had already promised himself that the next time he was summoned by the Binghams, he would insist on walking back to his apartment, rather than being taken door to door by the Binghams’ driver. But that was for another day. Today, he would have visitors.
THE DOORMAN RANG him at ten sharp, and presently there were two gentlemen at his door—a strapping redhead and a dark-haired stripling. Van Hooten knew that his social graces had gone rusty, and after a quick exchange of greetings with the redhead, he guided his guests into the library. The bookcases were lined with medical journals—row upon row of bound volumes—but it had been years since he had kept current with the literature. Most of the articles dealt with conditions too boring or, more frequently, too horrid to contemplate. He was fond of reading the evening newspapers in his library, but he had made sure to tidy these up before his patient arrived. He wanted the report back to the Binghams—he knew there would be a report—to mention how serious and even scholarly Van Hooten could be.
“Now, how is it that I can help you?” Van Hooten said when his Scottish visitors were settled.
Francis explained that three weeks prior, his brother had suffered an injury that left him badly damaged: deaf, mute, and mentally… scattered. He smiled apologetically at Michael as he relayed his medical history. Damaged, scattered—these were terrible things to say about one’s own blood. When Van Hooten asked the cause of the injury, Francis hesitated. “I’m going to have to take you into my confidence,” Francis said. “The circumstances of his injury—they’re complicated.”
Francis had thought this through over his morning pot of tea. He needed a story that struck close to the truth if this doctor was to make an accurate diagnosis. He had told anyone on the Britannic who asked that his brother had been injured while foxhunting—trampled by a horse or some other plausibly aristocratic mishap. But would an actual doctor note the absence of a telltale hoofprint on the side of Michael’s head? Would he report his suspicions to the Binghams? Or simply misdiagnose Michael’s condition? If there was a way to sort out what was wrong with Michael, Francis did not want to scuttle it with the wrong sort of half-truths and outright lies. And so before he began, he asked the doctor if he knew anything of Ireland’s recent history.
“I confess I do not,” Van Hooten said. During the years he had spent in the apartment, the newspapers had been full of FDR and the WPA, Hitler and Chamberlain, the Lindbergh baby and the Dionne quintuplets. News of the quints had especially troubled him. He still shivered whenever he thought of the poor doctor who endured that delivery. More like the work of a veterinarian, if you asked him.
Freed by the doctor’s ignorance from any strict adherence to facts, Francis spun a tale of his brother’s recent visit to Ireland, where he had been the guest of wealthy landowners who, for the sake of discretion, Francis could not name. These friends had maintained their vast holdings despite the turbulence of the past two decades, but lately had drawn the ire of a splinter group of malcontents who advocated returning the land to the so-called common people.
“Bolsheviks?” Van Hooten said.
“Irish Bolsheviks.”