Bob led him into a study stocked with bookshelves. There was a framed anatomy chart on one wall and a line of diplomas on another. Scott was staring at the paperweight between Ellis’s computer and his printer. Bob followed his gaze and laughed. He picked the skull up off the desk and tossed it to Scott.
“Plastic rather than bone, so don’t worry about dropping it. A gift from my eldest grandson. He’s thirteen, which I think of as the Age of Tasteless Gifts. Step over here, and let’s see what we’ve got.”
In the corner was a gantry-like scale upon which two weights, one big and one little, could be moved until the steel beam balanced. Ellis gave it a pat. “The only things I kept when I closed my office downtown were the anatomy chart on the wall and this. It’s a Seca, the finest medical scale ever made. A gift from my wife, many years ago, and believe me when I say no one ever accused her of being tasteless. Or cheap.”
“Is it accurate?”
“Let’s just say if I weighed a twenty-five-pound bag of flour on it, and the scale said it weighed twenty-four, I’d go back to Hannaford’s and demand a refund. You should take off your boots if you want something close to a true weight. And why did you bring your coat?”
“You’ll see.” Scott didn’t take off his boots but put the parka on instead, to the tune of more jingling from the pockets. Now not just fully dressed but dressed for the outside on a day much colder than this one, he stepped on the scale. “Let ’er rip.”
In order to allow for the boots and the coat, Bob ran the counterweight all the way to 250, then worked backward, first sliding the weight, then nudging it along. The needle of the balance bar remained grounded at 240, and 230, and 220, which Doctor Bob would have thought impossible. Never mind the coat and boots; Scott Carey simply looked heavier than that. He could have been off in his estimate by a few pounds, but he had weighed too many overweight men and women to be this far off.
The bar balanced at 212 pounds.
“I’ll be dipped in pitch,” Doctor Bob said. “I need to have this thing recalibrated.”
“Don’t think so,” Scott said. He stepped off the scale and put his hands in his coat pockets. From each, he took a fistful of quarters. “Been saving these in an antique chamber pot for years. By the time Nora left, it was almost full. I must have five pounds of metal in each pocket, maybe more.”
Ellis said nothing. He was speechless.
“Now do you see why I didn’t want to go to Dr. Adams?” Scott let the coins slide back into his coat pockets with another jolly jingle.
Ellis found his voice. “Let me be sure I have this right—you’re getting the same weight at home?”
“To the pound. My scale’s an Ozeri step-on, maybe not as good as this baby, but I’ve tested it and it’s accurate. Now watch this. I usually like a little bump-and-grind music when I strip, but since we’ve undressed together in the club locker room, I guess I can do without it.”
Scott took off his parka and hung it on the back of a chair. Then, balancing with first one hand and then the other on Doctor Bob’s desk, he took off his boots. Next came the flannel shirt. He unbuckled his belt, stepped out of his jeans, and stood there in his boxers, tee-shirt, and socks.
“I could shuck these as well,” he said, “but I think I’ve taken off enough to make the point. Because, see, this is what scared me. The thing about the clothes. It’s why I wanted to talk to a friend who could keep his mouth shut instead of my regular doc.” He pointed to the clothes and boots on the floor, then at the parka with its sagging pockets. “How much would you say all that stuff weighs?”
“With the coins? At least fourteen pounds. Possibly as much as eighteen. Do you want to weigh them?”
“No,” Scott said.
He got back on the scale. There was no need to move the weights. The beam balanced at 212 pounds.
Scott dressed and they went back to the living room. Doctor Bob poured them each a tiny knock of Woodford Reserve, and although it was only ten in the morning, Scott did not refuse. He took his down in a single swallow, and the whiskey lit a comforting fire in his stomach. Ellis took two delicate birdy sips, as if testing the quality, then tossed off the rest. “It’s impossible, you know,” he said as he put the empty glass on an endtable.
Scott nodded. “Another reason I didn’t want to talk to Dr. Adams.”
“Because it would be in the system,” Ellis said. “A matter of record. And yes, he’d have insisted you undergo tests in order to find out exactly what’s going on with you.”
Although he didn’t say so, Scott thought insisted was too mild. In Dr. Adams’s consulting room, the phrase that had popped into his head was taken into custody. That was when he’d decided to keep his mouth shut and talk to his retired medical friend instead.
“You look 240,” Ellis said. “Is that how you feel?”
“Not exactly. I felt a little… mmm… ploddy when I actually did weigh 240. I guess that’s not a real word, but it’s the best I can do.”
“I think it’s a good word,” Ellis said, “whether it’s in the dictionary or not.”
“It wasn’t just being overweight, although I knew I was. It was that, and age, and…”
“The divorce?” Ellis asked it gently, in his most Doctor Bobly way.
Scott sighed. “Sure, that too. It’s cast a shadow over my life. It’s better now, I’m better, but it’s still there. Can’t lie about that. Physically, though, I never felt bad, still worked out a little three times a week, never got out of breath until the third set, but just… you know, ploddy. Now I don’t, or at least not so much.”
“More energy.”
Scott considered, then shook his head. “Not exactly. It’s more like the energy I have goes further.”
“No lethargy? No fatigue?”
“No.”
“No loss of appetite?”
“I eat like a horse.”
“One more question, and you’ll pardon me, but I have to ask.”
“Ask away. Anything.”
“There’s no way this is a practical joke, right? Pulling the leg of the old retired sawbones?”
“Absolutely not,” Scott said. “I guess I don’t have to ask if you’ve ever seen a similar case, but have you ever read about one?”
Ellis shook his head. “Like you, it’s the clothes that I keep coming back to. And the quarters in your coat pockets.”
Join the club, Scott thought.
“No one weighs the same naked as they do dressed. It’s as much a given as gravity.”
“Are there medical websites you can go on to see if there are any other cases like mine? Even ones that are sort of similar?”
“I can and will, but I can tell you now there won’t be.” Ellis hesitated. “This isn’t just outside my experience, I’d say it’s outside human experience. Hell, I want to say it’s impossible. If, that is, your scale and mine weigh true, and I have no reason to believe otherwise. What happened to you, Scott? What was the genesis? Did you… I don’t know, get irradiated by something? Maybe get a lungful of some off-brand bug-spray? Think.”
“I have thought. So far as I can tell, there’s nothing. But one thing’s for sure, I feel better having talked to you. Not just sitting on it.” Scott stood up and grabbed his jacket.
“Where are you going?”
“Home. I’ve got those websites to work on. It’s a big deal. Although I have to tell you, it doesn’t seem quite as big as it did.”