Chase: Roman

not. Cauvel put his arm around his shoulder and walked him to the door.
        ‘Friday at three,’ the doctor said. ‘Let's see how far out of your hole you've come by then. I think you're going to make it, Ben. Don't despair.’
        Miss Pringle escorted him to the outer door of the waiting room and closed it after him, leaving him alone in the hallway.
        ‘Judge is real,’ Chase said to no one at all. ‘Isn't he?’
        

    Four
        
        Chase was sitting on the edge of his bed by the nightstand where the telephone stood, sipping at his second glass of Jack Daniel's, when six o'clock rolled around. He put the drink down and wiped his sweaty hands on his slacks, cleared his throat so that his voice would not catch when he tried to speak.
        At 6:05 he began to feel uneasy. He thought of going downstairs to ask Mrs Fiedling what time her clocks read, in the event that his own was not functioning properly. He refrained from that only because he was afraid of missing the call if it should come while he was down there.
        At 6:15 he picked up his drink again and sipped at it steadily, watching the phone as if it might try to move. His hands were damp again; beads of perspiration had appeared on his forehead.
        At 6:30 he went to the cupboard, took down his whisky bottle of the day - which had barely been touched - and poured his third glass. He did not put it away again, but left it out on the waist-high cupboard counter where he could easily reach it. He read the label, which he had studied a hundred times before, then carried his drink back to the bed.
        By seven o'clock he was feeling all the liquor in him. Everything had become softened, his movements lethargic. He settled back against the headboard and finally faced the truth: Cauvel had been correct. There was no Judge. Judge had been an illusion, a psychological mechanism for rationalization of his slowly lessening guilt complex. He tried to think about that, to study the meaning of it, but he could not be sure if this was a good or a bad development.
        In the bathroom, he drew a tub of warm water and tested it with his hand until it was just right. He folded a damp washcloth over the wide porcelain rim of the tub and placed his drink on that, stripped, stepped into the tub and settled down until, seated, the water came partway up his chest. It was very nice, comforting. The whisky and the water and the steam rising around him had all conspired to make him feel as if he were floating, falling up into a stream of soft clouds. He leaned back until his head touched the wall, closed his eyes and tried not to think about anything -especially about Judge and the Medal of Honor and the nine months he had spent on active duty in Nam.
        Unfortunately, he began to think of Louise Allenby, the girl whose life he had saved, and his mind was filled with a vision of her small, trembling, bare breasts which had looked so inviting in the weak light of the car in lover's lane. The thought, though pleasant enough, was unfortunate because it contributed to his first erection in nearly a year. That development, while desirable, was both startling and familiar enough to make him recall all the barren months when he had harboured no desire. It also brought back the reasons for his previous inability to function as a man, and those reasons were still so huge and formidable that he could not face them alone. The erection was short-lived, and when it was gone altogether, he could not be certain if it indicated an end to his psychological impotency or whether it had stemmed only from the warm water, a reaction of dumb nerves rather than sensitive emotions.
        He only got out of the water when there was no more whisky in his glass, and he was drying himself when the telephone rang.
        The electric clock read 8:00.
        Naked, he sat down and picked up the phone.
        ‘Sorry I'm late,’ Judge said.
        Dr Cauvel had been wrong.
        ‘I thought you weren't going to call,’ Chase said.
        ‘Would I let you down?’ Judge asked, mock hurt in his tone. ‘It was just that I required a little more time to locate some information on you.’
        ‘What information?’
        Judge ignored the question, intent on proceeding in his own fashion. ‘So you see a psychiatrist once a week, do you? That alone is fairly good proof that the accusation I made yesterday is true - that your disability