silliness, he was sensitive enough to identify with her. It also put him on the right track to
making her feel better.
"OK, I know your secret so now I'll tell you mine," he said. "You always ask me what
I'm doing in this town, one of the youngest and most brilliant surgeons in the East." He
was mocking some newspaper reports about himself. "The truth is that I'm an
abortionist, which in itself is not so bad, so is half the medical profession; but I got
caught. I had a friend, a doctor named Kennedy, we interned (intern – студент
медицинского колледжа или молодой врач, работающий в больнице и живущий
при ней) together, and he's a really straight guy but he said he'd help me. I understand
Tom Hagen had told him if he ever needed help on anything the Corleone Family was
indebted to him. So he spoke to Hagen. The next thing I know the charges were
dropped, but the Medical Association and the Eastern establishment had me black-
listed. So the Corleone Family got me this job out here. I make a good living. I do a job
that has to be done. These show girls are always getting knocked up and aborting them
is the easiest thing in the world if they come to me right away. I curette (кюретка /хир./;
выскабливать кюреткой [kju∂'ret]) 'em like you scrape a frying pan. Freddie Corleone
is a real terror. By my count he's knocked up fifteen girls while I've been here. I've
seriously considered giving him a father-to-son talk about sex. Especially since I've had
to treat him three times for clap (триппер) and once for syphilis. Freddie is the original
bareback (без седла, на неоседланной лошади) rider."
Jules stopped talking. He had been deliberately indiscreet, something he never did, so
that Lucy would know that other people, including someone she knew and feared a little
like Freddie Corleone, also had shameful secrets.
"Think of it as a piece of elastic in your body that has lost its elasticity," Jules said. "By
cutting out a piece, you make it tighter, snappier."
"I'll think about it," Lucy said, but she was sure she was going to go through with it,
she trusted Jules absolutely. Then she thought of something else. "How much will it
cost?"
Jules frowned. "I haven't the facilities here for surgery like that and I'm not the expert
at it. But I have a friend in Los Angeles who's the best in the field and has facilities at
the best hospital. In fact he tightens up all the movie stars, when those dames find out
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that getting their faces and breasts lifted isn't the whole answer to making a man love
them. He owes me a few favors so it won't cost anything. I do his abortions for him.
Listen, if it weren't unethical I'd tell you the names of some of the movie sex queens
who have had the operation."
She was immediately curious. "Oh, come on, tell me," she said. "Come on." It would
be a delicious piece of gossip and one of the things about Jules was that she could
show her feminine love of gossip without him making fun of it.
"I'll tell you if you have dinner with me and spend the night with me," Jules said. "We
have a lot of lost time to make up for because of your silliness."
Lucy felt an overwhelming affection to him for being so kind and she was able to say,
"You don't have to sleep with me, you know you won't enjoy it the way I am now."
Jules burst out laughing. "You dope, you incredible dope. Didn't you ever hear of any
other way of making love, far more ancient, far more civilized. Are you really that
innocent?"
"Oh that," she said.
"Oh that," he mimicked her. "Nice girls don't do that, manly men don't do that. Even in
the year 1948. Well, baby, I can take you to the house of a little old lady right here in
Las Vegas who was the youngest madam of the most popular whorehouse in the wild
west days, back in 1880, I think it was. She likes to talk about the old days. You know
what she told me? That those gunslingers (стрелки; агрессивные ребята; to sling –
швырять; метать из пращи; sling – праща; рогатка), those manly, virile, straight-
shooting cowboys would always ask the girls for a 'French,' what we doctors call fellatio,
what you call 'oh that.' Did you ever think of doing 'oh that' with your beloved Sonny?"
For the first time she truly surprised him. She turned on him with what he could think
of only as a Mona Lisa smile (his scientific mind immediately darting off on a tangent
(отклонился в сторону; tangent ['tжndG∂nt] – касательная; тангенс), could this be the
solving of that centuries-old mystery?) and said quietly, "I did everything with Sonny." It
was the first time she had ever admitted anything like that to anyone.
Two weeks later Jules Segal stood in the operating room of the Los Angeles hospital
and watched his friend Dr. Frederick Kellner perform the specialty. Before Lucy was put
under anesthesia, Jules leaned over and whispered, "I told him you were my special girl
so he's going to put in some real tight walls." But the preliminary pill had already made
her dopey and she didn't laugh or smile. His teasing remark did take away some of the
terror of the operation.
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Dr. Kellner made his incision (разрез, надрез) with the confidence of a pool (лужа,
прудок; омут, заводь) shark (акула) making an easy shot. The technique of any
operation to strengthen the pelvic floor required the accomplishment of two objectives.
The musculofibrous pelvic sling had to be shortened so that the slack was taken up.
And of course the vaginal opening, the weak spot itself in the pelvic floor, had to be
brought forward, brought under the pubic arch and so relieved from the line of direct
pressure above. Repairing the pelvic sling (ремень, канат) was called perincorrhaphy.
Suturing (to suture [‘sju:t∫∂] – накладывать шов) the vaginal wall was called
colporrhaphy.
Jules saw that Dr. Kellner was working carefully now, the big danger in the cutting
was going too deep and hitting the rectum. It was a fairly uncomplicated case, Jules had
studied all the X rays and tests. Nothing should go wrong except that in surgery
something could always go wrong.
Kellner was working on the diaphragm sling, the T forceps (хирургические щипцы,
пинцет ['fo:seps]) held the vaginal flap (что-либо, прикрепленное за один конец;
клапан), and exposing the ani muscle and the fasci (фасции) which formed its sheath.
Kellner's gauze-covered (gauze [go:z] – газ /материя/; марля) fingers were pushing
aside loose connective tissue. Jules kept his eyes on the vaginal wall for the
appearance of the veins, the telltale danger signal of injuring the rectum. But old Kellner
knew his stuff. He was building a new snatch as easily as a carpenter nails together
two-by-four studs (stud – гвоздь с большой шляпокй; штифт).
Kellner was trimming away the excess vaginal wall using the fastening-down stitch to
close the "bite" taken out of the tissue of the redundant (излишний, чрезмерный
[rı'dΛnd∂nt]) angle, insuring that no troublesome projections would form. Kellner was
trying to insert three fingers into the narrowed opening of the lumen (канал, проход
/анат./ ['lu:m∂n]), then two. He just managed to get two fingers in, probing deeply and
for a moment he looked up at Jules and his china-blue eyes over the gauze mask
twinkled as though asking if that was narrow enough. Then he was busy again with his
sutures.
It was all over. They wheeled Lucy out to the recovery room and Jules talked to
Kellner. Kellner was cheerful, the best sign that everything had gone well. "No
complications at all, my boy," he told Jules. "Nothing growing in there, very simple case.
She has wonderful body tone, unusual in these cases and now she's in first-class shape
for fun and games. I envy you, my boy. Of course you'll have to wait a little while but
then I guarantee you'll like my work."
Jules laughed. "You're a true Pygmalion, Doctor. Really, you were marvelous."
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Dr. Kellner grunted. "That's all child's play, like your abortions. If society would only be
realistic, people like you and I, really talented people, could do important work and leave
this stuff for the hacks (наемная лошадь; поденщик). By the way, I'll be sending you a
girl next week, a very nice girl, they seem to be the ones who always get in trouble. That
will make us all square (так мы сочтемся) for this job today."
Jules shook his hand. "Thanks, Doctor. Come out yourself sometime and I'll see that
you get all the courtesies of the house."
Kellner gave him a wry smile. "I gamble every day, I don't need your roulette wheels
and crap tables. I knock heads with fate too often as it is. You're going to waste out
there, Jules. Another couple of years and you can forget about serious surgery. You
won't be up to it." He turned away.
Jules knew it was not meant as a reproach but as a warning. Yet it took the heart out
of him anyway. Since Lucy wouldn't be out of the recovery room for at least twelve
hours, he went out on the town and got drunk. Part of getting drunk was his feeling of
relief that everything had worked out so well with Lucy.
The next morning when he went to the hospital to visit her he was surprised to find
two men at her bedside and flowers all over the room. Lucy was propped up on pillows,
her face radiant. Jules was surprised because Lucy had broken with her family and had