Sam Creer was on the line, the law school’s Native American activist, its expert on Treaty Law, practically its inventor, in fact; world famous, in fact, who had turned down an offer from Harvard because, as he said, he’d be damned if he’d teach school in a place that had been hacked out of pure aboriginal real estate. Sam wanted to know if Jack happened to have heard from Claire yet. No, Schiff told him, and said that as long as he had Sam on the line, he wondered, had Creer ever run across a dame called Flowers of the Field?
“Flowers of the Field,” Creer mused, “Flowers of the Field. Is she Penobscot?”
“There’s no telling,” Schiff said.
Others called wanting to know about Claire. Even folks with whom Schiff couldn’t recall having ever brought up the subject.
“You know,” he was saying to a colleague with whom he hardly ever had contact, “for a guy as protective of his dignity as I am, people seem to know a whole shitload about my affairs. Every Tom and Dick. Maybe I’m not half as dignified as I think I am.”
“No,” said the colleague, a man whose face Schiff couldn’t conjure and even whose voice was unfamiliar, “I don’t think that’s it. Why, your wheelchair alone earns you a certain amount of dignity, say thirty to thirty-eight percent. Then, anyone who ever saw you struggle on your walker into a men’s room or maneuver it into a stall would grant you at least another couple dozen dignity points. That’s, what, sixty-two? Dignity-wise, all you’d need for a gentleman’s C would be another ten or so points.”
“Just see to it my fly is shut when I come out of the stall, as it were.”
“As it were,” said the colleague.
He was in bed, absently fingering the S.O.S. collar about his throat and resting up for his assault on the shower, when the phone rang again.
“Hello?” Schiff said.
“Professor Schiff?”
Speak of the devil, it was S.O.S. itself. In the voice of Miss Simmons.
“Miss Simmons?”
“What happened? Are you all right? If it’s anywhere near you, see if you can pull the blanket off the bed and cover yourself with it. Try to stay warm. Try to keep calm. Now tell me what happened. I’m not so concerned with the extraneous details as I am with your precise location. Where are you right now? Does anything hurt? What hurts? Do you know where your wounds are? Do you know if you’re bleeding? If you’re not in a position to tell, can you say if there’s a sticky sensation that might be blood? Do you feel as if you’re going to faint? Does my voice sound muffled, does it sound like it’s coming from far away? On a scale of one to ten, mild to severe, what would you estimate the extent of your injuries to be? Do you have any chest pain, or pain radiating down your left arm? An ambulance has been dispatched to your house and should be arriving within seven minutes.”
“Well, gee,” said Schiff, “I think I may have the wrong number.”
“The wrong number? You haven’t fallen? You’re not exhibiting the classic symptoms of heart-attack discomfort?”
“As a matter of fact,” Schiff said, “for me, I’m feeling pretty darned relatively good.”
“You turned in a false alarm. There’s a two-hundred dollar fine for turning in a false alarm,” Miss Simmons said.
“A false alarm? Hey, no,” Schiff said.
“You were playing with your button, weren’t you?”
“Not consciously I wasn’t,” Schiff said.
“Unconsciously is just as bad. S.O.S. has three teams on call. One’s out on a job and the second’s on its way to 225 Westgate. If the third’s called away and we get a call and are left unprotected, do you know who’s responsible if there’s a disaster that results in a subsequent lawsuit?”
“Me, I bet you,” Schiff said.
“That’s right,” said Miss Simmons.
“How can this be?”
“You’re a consenting adult, you signed papers.”
“Ah, papers,” said Schiff.
“That’s right.”
“They aren’t here yet, call them back.”
“It’s too late, I’m not allowed. You’ll just have to absorb the two-hundred-dollar fine and pray there are no emergency complications.”
“Help me,” Schiff said. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
Then Schiff moved to the edge of the bed and, leaning over it as far as he could, as if he were stretching for something just beyond his reach, he put out his balled fists, sought reliable purchase on the rug, and maneuvered his stronger right hip, thigh, and leg scant inches out over the mattress, and dragged his left leg up with the right one, hovering there for a moment in a sort of crippled yoga levitation. Then, gently as he could, he lowered himself carefully down off the bed and onto the floor. Stretched out on the carpet, he turned on his back, pulled the blanket off the bed and covered himself. For good measure he reached up and managed to find a pillow, which he placed behind his head.
He was breathless, but he’d just saved himself two hundred dollars, more if you threw in lawsuits and emergencies.
“Professor Schiff?” Miss Simmons was saying. “Professor Schiff?”
He was on the floor in his bedroom, he explained, nothing hurt him, he didn’t think he was bleeding, he didn’t feel faint. She was coming in clear as a bell, and his heart, knock wood, felt sound as a dollar. He was no doctor, he told her, not that kind anyway, and couldn’t estimate the extent of his injuries.
But they’d know soon enough, he said, he thought he heard the ambulance now.
And he did, a crazed, mechanical Geschrei, somewhere between the regulation alarms of police and fire and the amok pitch of a child’s video game raised to its wildest power.
“I know what you’re doing,” Miss Simmons said. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”
When the S.O.S. men let themselves in with their key they found Schiff on the floor.
“I see you’ve got a pillow,” one of them said.
“Presence of mind,” Schiff said offhandedly.
Then the other examined him before both lifted him back onto the bed.
“Thanks a lot,” Schiff said.
“Hey,” the guy said who’d noted his pillow, “no problem.”
“I guess I was trying to do too much.”
“Yeah, how’s that?”
Schiff lowered his voice. “Well,” he said, embarrassed, “I was just getting out of bed to try to empty that when I fell.” He pointed to the nightstand.
“I’ll take care of that for you,” said the paramedic who’d examined him.
“Would you?” Schiff said.
“No problem.”
When the man brought it back, empty and odorless, Schiff wondered if he should tip them, then thought of the fines they’d have demanded of him, of all the ways he’d opened himself up to the possibility of bankruptcy by signing their papers. Not one cent for tribute, he decided; then, as they were leaving, called after them. “If you see Bill,” he said, “tell him hi for me.”
“I know what you’re doing,” Miss Simmons said, startling him. He’d forgotten they were still linked up.
“Do you know what I forgot?” Schiff said, realizing he had to pee again and taking advantage of the empty urinal.
“What?”
“To ask for my key back.”
“Gee,” she said, “I had it duplicated. I forgot to get it back to you.”