Repairman Jack [04]-All the Rage Read Online Free PDF

clipboard against the door, and headed for the exit.
    Jack and Robert B. Butler, graduate of St. Barnabas Prep, had been living just a short walk away from each other for who knew how long. About time they got acquainted.

THURSDAY

1
    Jack was up early and on his way downtown, enjoying the mild May weather. Too nice a morning to ponder his as yet unscheduled confrontation with the porky prep. Jack hadn't yet figured on the right approach to Mr. Butler, but it would come. Right now he was headed for a meeting with a new customer. Because she was a referral, and because he trusted the referrer, he'd agreed to meet Dr. Nadia Radzminsky on her turf. At this hour her turf was a storefront diabetes clinic on Seventeenth Street, between Union Square and Irving Place, next to a laundromat.
    Jack stepped inside and found the front area filled with a jumble of races and sexes, all shabbily dressed. The young mocha-skinned, white-uniformed nurse at the desk took one look at him and seemed to know he didn't belong. Not that he was all that well dressed, but his faded flannel shirt, worn jeans, and scuffed tan work boots were still a few cuts above what everyone else here was wearing.
    "Can I help you?"
    "I'm looking for Dr. Radzminsky. She's expecting me."
    The nurse sifted through the papers on her desk and came up with a yellow sticky note. "Yes. You're Jack? She said to take you right in."
    She led him through a curtained doorway, past a pair of curtained examining rooms—he caught a whiff of rubbing alcohol from the one on the right—to a tiny office in the rear. A young woman with straight dark hair cut in a bob sat behind the desk. She glanced up and smiled as they entered. She looked very young—couldn't be a day over twenty. Too young to be a doctor.
    "You must be Jack," she said, rising and extending her hand. She stood about five-four and had a compact frame, a stocky build—solid without being overweight.
    "And you must be Dr. Radzminsky."
    "Nadia, please," she said, pronouncing it "Nahd-ja." "Only my patients call me Doctor." She had a big open face, a welcoming smile, and bright dark eyes. Jack liked her immediately. "Thanks, Jasmine," she said to the nurse.
    Jasmine closed the door behind her.
    Nadia pointed to one of the chart-laden chairs. "Just put those on the floor and have a seat."
    She offered coffee and poured him a Styrofoam cupful from a Mr. Coffee on a shelf.
    "We've got sugar and Cremora."
    "Two sugars'll do."
    "My only vice," she said, sipping from an oversize black ceramic mug with nadj printed in big white letters along the side. "An indispensable habit you pick up in residency."
    "Can I ask you something straight off?" Jack said.
    "Sure."
    "No offense, but are you old enough to be a doctor?"
    She gave him a tolerant smile. "Everyone asks me that. Yes. I'm cursed with a baby face. A blessing if you're a model or an actress, but not when you're a doctor, especially a woman doctor trying to inspire respect and confidence. But trust me, I'm a fellowship-trained, board-eligible endocrinologist."
    "That's hormones, right?"
    "Right. I do glands—thyroid, parathyroid, adrenal, pituitary, pancreas, and so on. Diabetes is one of the mainstays of endocrinology, which is why I'm here, but my special interest is in steroids."
    "Muscle juice?"
    Another smile. "Anabolic steroids are just one kind. Cortisone is another; so is estrogen. Remember what that guy whispered to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate!"
    "Sure. 'Plastics'."
    "Right. One of my professors did the same thing for me once. He said, 'Steroids… the future is steroids.' And over the years I became convinced he was right. Even got to contribute some original research to the field. But enough about me, what about you? Whatever did you do for Alicia Clayton to make her recommend you so highly?"
    Jack wasn't going to answer that. "How do you know Alicia?"
    "High school. We weren't really friends, but we were both A students so we had advanced classes together.