He was a rubbery, darting, bouncing little man, pink and scrubbed and starched. He had an Einstein shock of gray hair, eyes a-goggle behind thick corrective lenses, a wide range of explosive conversational tricks, expressions, gestures—puffing his cheeks, smacking his lips, rolling his eyes, slapping, patting, thumping himself for all the world, Stanial thought, like a little kid who has to go, and translates discomfort into random energy. As a new floor covering was being put down in Nile’s office, they met in one of his treatment rooms, and during the first few minutes Stanial found himself making continual reappraisals of the little man. At first he thought him a clown striving for laughs. Then he wondered if perhaps Rufus Nile was a totally humorless man. His final appraisal was that this was a complex and, quite possibly, a shy man who had manufactured a public image to hide behind. The humor was there, but it was of a cold variety directed more subtly than any clown motions could be.
