The Last Gentleman

change Monday from five to five thirty. How is that for you, bad, eh?”
    â€œNo, it’s not bad at all.”
    Dr. Gamow pricked up his ears. “Did you say mad?”
    â€œNo, I believe I said bad: it’s not bad at all.”
    â€œIt seemed to me that at first you said mad.”
    â€œIt’s possible,” said the agreeable patient.
    â€œI can’t help wondering,” said Dr. Gamow shyly, “who is mad at who.” Whenever he caught his patient in a slip, he had a way of slewing his eyes around as shyly as a young girl. “Now what might it be that you are mad about?”
    â€œI’m not really.”
    â€œI detected a little more m than b . I think maybe you are a little mad at me.”
    â€œI don’t—” began the other, casting back in his mind to the events of the last session, but as usual he could remember nothing. “You may well be right, but I don’t recall anything in particular.”
    â€œMaybe you think I’m a little mad at you.”
    â€œI honestly don’t know,” said the patient, pretending to rack his brain but in fact savoring the other’s words. Maybe, for example, was minted deliberately as a bright new common coin mebbe in conscious preference to perhaps.
    Dr. Gamow put his knees exactly together, put his head to one side, and sighted down into the kneehole of his desk. He might have been examining a bank of instruments. His nostril curved up exposing the septum of his nose and imparting to him a feral winged look which served to bear out his reputation of clinical skill. His double-breasted suit had wide lapels and it was easy to believe that, sitting as he did, hunched over and thick through the chest, his lapels bowed out like a cuirass, his lips pursed about the interesting reed of a tooth, that he served his patients best as artificer and shaper, receiving the raw stuff of their misery and handing it back in a public and acceptable form. “It does sound to me as if you’ve had a pr?tty bad time. Tell me about it.” And the unspeakable could be spoken of.
    He told Dr. Gamow he had reached a decision. It seemed plain to him that he had exhausted the resources of analysis—not that he had not benefited enormously—and in the future he thought he might change places with the analyst, making a little joke of it, heh-heh. After spending almost five years as an object of technique, however valuable, he thought maybe he’d go over to the other side, become one of them, the scientists. He might even have an idea or two about the “failure of communication” and the “loss of identity” in the modern world (at it again, throwing roses in the path, knowing these were favorite subjects of Dr. Gamow’s). Mebbe he should strike out on his own.
    For another thing, said he, he had run out of money.
    â€œI see that after all you are a little mad at me,” said Dr. Gamow.
    â€œHow’s that?” said the patient, appearing to look caught out
    â€œPerhaps it might be worthwhile to look into whatever it is you are mad about.”
    â€œAll right,” said the patient, who would as soon do one thing as another.
    â€œYesterday,” said the analyst, leafing back through his pad, “we were talking about your theory of environments. I believe you said that even under ideal conditions you felt somewhat—hollow was the word I think you used.”
    â€œYes.” He was genuinely surprised. He had forgotten that he had spoken of his new theory.
    â€œI wondered out loud at the time what you meant by hollow—whether it referred toyour body or perhaps an organ, and it seemed to me you were offended by the suggestion.”
    â€œYes.”
    He remembered now that he had been offended. He had known at the time that Dr. Gamow had thought he meant that he had felt actually hollowed out, brain or spleen emptied of its substance. It had offended him that Dr. Gamow had suggested that he might be crazy.
    â€œI then made the suggestion that mebbe that was your way of getting rid of people, literally ‘hollowing them out,’ so to speak. A pr?tty thoroughgoing method of execution.”
    â€œThat is possible.”
    â€œFinally, you may recall, you made a little slip at the end of the hour. You said you had to leave early—you had jumped up, you may recall—saying that you had to attend a meeting at the store, but you said