Read Online Stone 588 by Gerald A Browne - Free Book Online

found the courses uninspiring. Time Management, Effective Supervision, and Marketing Plans were unrealistic and overcomplicated. He'd already been exposed, too influenced by the simpler honor-of-word no-cash-register 47th Street way of doing business. Nevertheless, he persevered, received his B.B.A. degree, and that was that. He went right to work full-time at Springer & Springer.
    Edwin was relieved. His shaping had paid off. Careful not to spoil, he started Phillip out with more responsibility than salary.
    Meanwhile, Phillip's older brother Norman was practicing medicine in Washington, DC. Norman had determined his direction early and never swerved from it. He had taken his premed at Cornell and graduated at a precocious eighteen; he also got his M.D. there with highest honors. He interned spectacularly at Mass. General, became a favored assistant to the Head of Cardiology. To add extra icing to his already impressive credentials he spent two years at the Center for Cardiac Care in Lyons, France, reputed to be the most advanced clinic of its kind in the world.
    Dr. Norman B. Springer.
    Washington was quick to take him to its most important hearts. Their anginas and hypertensions and infarcts became his charge. All the better that he was young: He was up-to-the-minute in knowledge. Good that his fees were high: It expressed self-confidence and kept him exclusive. A medium-high-up in the State Department was first to find him, and from then on he was a badly kept top secret.
    "The Ambassador just got back from two bad weeks in Cairo. He's feeling shaky and his eyes look like pissholes. We're worried. Can you fit him in this afternoon? Doesn't matter how late."
    Norman rarely got up to New York except for the big holidays, and he even had to miss some of those. He phoned often, talked to his parents and brother, asked about Janet, became more of a voice than a person. "If you need me for any reason I'm here," he would say long distance and Phillip would hold back from saying, "Exactly."
    One Christmas visit he and Phillip went out together for a drink. Phillip wanted to go to a casual neighborhood place where they could talk easily and recoup some of their relationship. Norman chose the Oak Bar at the Plaza.
    The Oak Bar was jammed with serious drinking well-offs. Cigar smoke and babble. Phillip suggested they go someplace else. Norman parried with the excuse that they'd already checked their coats. He seemed in his element, the way he apologized as he forged roughly through the crowd, aggressively wedged into and widened a space at the bar, demanded a pair of Dewar's on the rocks as though he'd been long slighted.
    They touched glasses.
    Norman said a perfunctory "cheers" and took a gulp.
    They had thought they'd have a lot to talk about, but now they didn't know where to start. Actually they didn't have much in common, not even in their looks. Norman was shorter, about five-eight. His upper body was too chunky for his legs. The gray in his hair and the natural slackness of his mouth added years to him. On the starting line of going to jowls, was the impression he gave. The one obvious resemblance between these brothers was their eyes, of an identical shape and slate-blue shade.
    "You look tired," Phillip said.
    "Thanks."

    "Been going with anyone?"
    "Not seriously. No time for it. You?"
    Phillip nodded. "You don't know her." He waved away a puff of cigar smoke that had floated into his face. "You know, you ought to at least be hving with someone, have her take care of you."
    "I've got a housekeeper," Norman said with a tinge of insinuation in case Phillip let it go at that.
    "I hope she's blond, Swedish, and grateful."
    "Gray, Irish, and dependable," Norman admitted.
    Phillip imagined what Norman's routine was like, thought he probably ate and fucked on the run, looked after everyone's heart but his own. Numerous times over the years he'd envied Norman's independence, Norman's having a profession that, no doubt, evoked more