DAVID Cohen as a teaching colleague since for many years we were both on the staff at Columbia. And of course his wife was my patient, but that had very little to do with him.” Dr. Irving Calendar was a pompous jerk. He had shaved the remaining hair on his head to make it appear that his state of baldness was his option rather than nature’s. As he spoke, reacting to a pre-set inner time clock, he periodically reached his right hand behind his head and slowly, lovingly brushed his fingers along the shaved edge of his neck. “I used to be a Freudian,” he told us. “But I realized a few years ago that the therapy of the future was preventive medication. Instead of seeing maybe six, seven patients a day for the famous fifty-minute hour, I can now deal with four, maybe five patients an hour. That’s twenty-four, thirty patients a day. At fifty to sixty bucks a throw.” “That is remarkable, Dr. Calendar. How many patients does that multiply up to per week?” He shrugged at me and pulled his wide lips into a smile, then gave his neck the old feel.
