"Stop the torture. Don’t blind the rabbits. Animals have rights, too."

     There were only two dozen of them, but their picket line blocked the main entrance, holding back a hundred employees. Four security guards, not the usual two, stood at the top of the steps in front of the main door. This time the door was closed. The guys looked worried. One was talking into a hand-held radio and the other three were looking warily into the crowd and fingering their night sticks.

     I’d griped before that Bryan Medical School looked like a police station, but today the security precautions were paying off. The demonstration was both threatening and ludicrous. Mounted on some rather formidable pieces of lumber were pictures of sorrowful-looking animals — monkeys with wires protruding from their heads, cats looking desperately out of cages, and a close-up of a rabbit with something wrong with its eye. Crudely lettered placards spelled out demands, like "Stop the torture." A couple of especially noisy male protesters might have enjoyed crashing their placards, cardboard and lumber, on someone’s head.

     Not that all of them were threatening. There were housewives, a few with children, a handful of middle-aged men you might classify as eccentric intellectuals and their long-haired female counterparts. Under other circumstances, I wouldn’t have viewed them so critically. In fact, they reminded me of Coconut Grovites and people I’d seen on Jazz-and-Yoga Nights at the Unitarian Church. But organized protesting brings out the worst in all of us.

     They marched in a 30-foot oval, screaming their slogans and looking at no one in particular.

     "They’re killing innocent animals in there!"

     "Stop the torture!"

     "Cats and dogs and rabbits have a right to live, too!"

     "Stop the murder for profit!"

     They had to scream it, because it would sound too ridiculous chanted in a normal voice. When one started to falter on "stop the murder," the others shouted back, "Yes! Yes! Stop the murder. We have to stop the murder. Please stop the murder."

     A throng of laughing, joking medical students shared my perceptions. One medical student was a real mesomorph, right out of a bodybuilding magazine. He called out at the protesters, "You ever heard of penicillin, you morons?"

     One of the protesters stopped dead in his tracks, balled his fists and glared into the crowd. He reminded me of Oregon eco-terrorists I’d seen on television, chaining themselves to a bulldozer. Perhaps it was his plaid shirt, blue jeans and ankle-high work boots.

     "Yes, we have, snot-nose," he shouted back. "And I’m a nurse, you fuck-ass."

     "So you’re a nurse, and you just named yourself," shot back the Medical Mesomorph.

     Eco-Terrorist broke ranks but was restrained by a grandfatherly protester. Grandpops scooted around in front of him, whispering admonitions, shaking his head and glancing furtively into the crowd. The chanting stopped, and the mood became serious.

     Medical Mesomorph was joking with his buddies, but he kept his eyes on Eco-Terrorist. "If you’re a nurse, you should be able to tell me what a GOMER is."

     Eco-Terrorist looked confused.

     Another med student yelled out, "Maybe he’s just a bedpan nurse and doesn’t even know what an ER is."

     Some members of the crowd laughed. The expression GOMER had been making the rounds of Dade General. It stood for Get Out of My Emergency Room, and was applied to lower-class rabble.

     While Eco-Terrorist fumed, Medical Mesomorph delivered a new taunt.

     "Okay, then, Mr. Nurse who doesn’t know about GOMERs and doesn’t believe in antibiotics. I know what you are. You’re a fecal peri-anal!"

     Laughter caught fire among the critical mass of clinical types who could translate this as "shit ass." Eco-Terrorist shrank visibly. Medical Mesomorph stepped towards the door, clearing a path through the protestors and coming dangerously close to Eco-Terrorist.

     "Now if you’ll just excuse me and let me by . . . I’ve got to go in and practice brain surgery on the computer. You see, tomorrow I’m operating on my first patient."

     Eco-Terrorist strained unconvincingly against Grandpop’s hold, but it was nevertheless a tense moment.

     One of the guards seized the opportunity and shouted with authority, "Now, if you people could just move over a little and let the students get to their classes."

     Like a cop directing traffic, he signalled "halt" to the protesters with his left hand while his right hand made a "come on" motion to the employees who streamed in behind the med student. The guard was a little shy of six foot and must have been over 200 pounds, most of it muscle. Like many Cuban-Americans working in law enforcement, he looked like the type who enjoyed working out, shooting guns and injecting steroids.

      A frail-looking fiftyish lady protester beseeched, "Please don't, please don't torture the cats. Please don't blind the rabbits."

     But it sounded so ridiculous, since about half of the people walking past her were office types. The two med students had Parthian shots:

     "Do you think he’s a canine shithead, or a feline shithead or a murine shithead?" asked the buddy.

     "I think he’s a gerbil intra-anal," replied Medical Mesomorph.

     The guard probably didn’t understand the words, but he did understand the tone. He put his hand on the guy’s shoulder — one mesomorph to another — and moved him gently to the door.

     "Now guys, just chill out and go to your classes."

      In the elevator, I overheard a middle-aged woman with a sympathetic face telling her companion that she didn’t mind them working on rats. But they shouldn’t work on cats. She proclaimed herself a cat lover, with a pair of Siamese and a tabby who were "just darling." A graduate student from Physiology/Neuroscience butted in, telling her that his dissertation research was on the cat brain. He said putting in electrodes is the only way you could study visual processing. The woman asked how you could move electrodes in the brain while the cat was awake and could see. The student said the cats were heavily sedated with sedative/hypnotic drugs. The two became disgusted with each other.

     I worked hard that day and didn’t leave the building until after six. Just as I put my ID card into the sensor to open the door, I noticed, behind the desk, the guard who broke up the demonstration. I stopped to congratulate him.

     "You did a good job this morning. You said just the right thing at the right time to keep them from fighting. You brought in the crowd just like you were breaking up a traffic jam."

     He glanced up only for a second. Then his eyes returned to his monitors, and he crossed his heavily muscled arms over his enormous chest that merged seamlessly with his shoulders, neck and head. After a few seconds, he looked up and broke into a big grin.

     "So, you woes there!"

     "Yes, I was there. And I thought you handled a tense situation very professionally."

     It might have been the nicest compliment he’d received in months.

     "Oh that’s no-thing," he said with a smile. "I’ve had a lot tougher things out in Hialeah."

     He seemed to be in the mood to chat for a while, and so was I.

     "I worked for Hialeah for a while," he said. "Hey, out there everyone’s got a gun, and it don’t take much for them to pull it out."

     "Hey, that’s what I heard, too."

     "When me and my partner, we have duty on New Year’s Eve, we just stay in our car and get under a bridge, man! The old Plymouth, he have nine bullet holes before the evening is done. Hey, when those people celebrate, they don’t stop for shit!"

     "Yeah, it’s a tough turf, just like Opa Locka."

     "We had a lot of drog work. And they’s real bad guys. They used me undercover when I first joined the force. But that gets old fast. I mean it gets old like you can’t stand it. Not like Miami Vice. And after a while everyone on the street gets to know who you are. And then you got to get your lieutenant to give you something else to do, if you want to get old yourself!"

     He shrugged his heavy shoulders, and his head moved slightly.

     "You were undercover?"

     "Yo. But not always for drogs. Sometimes they put you on stakeout on top of a warehouse for them hijackers. Burning or freezing your boat off all night, waiting for some bad guys to come up with a van and knock over some warehouse. Boy, those roofs get hot in the summer and cold in the winter. And when them drain spouts get fulla leaves and they have a thunderstorm that day — you’ve got six inches of water on those babies. Have to give the owner a free roto-rooter job just to get a place to sit!"

     "I guess it’s a lot better job working here and guarding the medical school."

     "Yo! Every once in a while we get a bum outside. Maybe a mugger. But it’s no-thing like Hialeah. Yo, Mr. Candidi, this is a lot better job. But you got to use your brain here. Lots of paperwork, and the boss don’t like it when you foak up."

     "How did you know my name?"

     "Oh, when you put your card up to that machine, your name come up on the screen and that puts you in the log. You stuck it in the box on the exit side, so the computer knows that you went out."

     "So, it’s not a dumb system. It really keeps track of people."

     "Oh, yeah! They say one boss, he want to use the system to check up on a professor that says he is always having to work on weekends! But we don’t use it for that. But it comes in handy sometimes, like when a piece of equipment is missing. We’ve used that computer to get some bad guys here, too. One guy working here, he get his boat kicked out of here because of that computer. Stole a lot of shit before we got him — student doing cocaine — but we got him! Followed his tracks back to his lab."

     "You put fluorescein powder on the floor and traced his tracks with a black light?"

     "Hey, you know that story? Maybe you go down to the Cop Shop, too!" he said with a grin.

     "No, I don’t know that story, but I know a little bit about everything."

     "Hey, are you some kinda student?" he asked scrutinizing me this time.

     "Used to be a technician, now I’m a beginning graduate student."

     "So you are one of those guys that are working with those animals that they woes complaining about today."

     "I’m just in the first year, and I’m not doing any animal lab work yet."

     "Yo. I guess you have to get yourself pretty advanced before they let you work on them animals. Some of them doctors get pretty upset when someone messes around with their animals and does the wrong thing. Some of those animals are pretty valuable too. That’s what we got this one hundred thousand dollar computer system for. To keep out guys like those guys this morning, so they don’t come in and take away some animal that you got twenty thousand dollars worth of work in. Them folks would have to steal your card. But between you and me, I don’t think they has enough brains in their heads to figure out how to use the card and get in the animal room. They’d need a regular key for the door, too."

     "You mean that the computer keeps track of who goes into each animal room?"

     "Night and day. Hey! If you don’t got no authorization from Veterinary Resources to go into that room, the computer don’t let you in."

     "That seems a little restrictive. You have to get some sort of authorization."

     "Hey, if you got animals in that room, and you and Veterinary Resources knows that you got to get in that room, then they program that computer to let you into that room any time you put in your card, day or night. But if you don’t have no animals in that room — and you don’t have no business going in that room, then you don’t get in that room, I don’t care if you’re the boss of this place. Since we got this computer, it stops a lot of stupid shit from happening."

     "What kind of stupid shit?"

     "Like one scientist takes a rabbit from another scientist and kills it to study its muscles. But the other scientist, he’s been injecting that rabbit every day for a whole year to make a special serum in its blood. Boy, was he mad when he find his rabbit was gone! But the computer told who it was. Because there was just two guys that go into that room that night! And one was working with rabbits and the other was working with cats. Hey, that computer clears up a lot of problems. We keep the tapes on everything that goes on here for a year. Yeah, there ain’t nothing that somebody do with those animals that we don’t know about."

     "Sounds really interesting. Nice talking with you."

     "Tú tambien, amigo," he said with a flourish.

     "Bien gracias para la cuenta y hasta luego," I replied.

     This prompted another searching look. He shook his head, smiled and said, "I never know about you scientist guys! You’re hard to figure out."

     I biked to the Westley’s in anticipation of a decent dinner. It was now October. The days had changed from steamy to bearable, and the evenings changed from sultry to room temperature. This made the English cuisine much more attractive. During sherry, Westley played a Brahms symphony.

     "It somehow expresses both the romantic and the darkly emotional side of the German character," he said.

     At dinner Margaret was ebullient. Our conversation started with the "more civilized weather," moved to her attendance of meetings at Fairchild Tropical Gardens, to English gardens, to "little patches of garden" with roses, to the natural politeness and decency of English people, to the centuries of tradition and good breeding which make this possible, to the poor state of American manners.

     "Mrs. Westley, why do you think that the Americans became less polite than the English?"

     "Ben, you are so clever at turning the conversation around! Gracious me! I feel as if I am now being called upon to come up with a theory!" She thought for a minute, and then began slowly: "Perhaps it is because there were so many other groups which came — Germans, Polish, Irish, Italians — that they just lost their sense of what good manners were."

     I became sufficiently irritated to ask, "What about the Australians? They were mostly Englishmen. They didn’t get a lot of Germans, Polish, Irish and Italians."

     "Oh, Ben, I fear you are much too sly for an old woman like me. I really do not know what to say in answer to you."

     She returned to American manners, commenting on American table manners at fast food restaurants which she had observed among rednecks on their "motor trip through Florida, Georgia and the two Carolinas." I semi-sarcastically asked what would Queen Caroline think about her two colonies. The Old Man frowned and quickly interjected that Carolina is derivative of Charles under the proper rules of English grammar, although he could not recall if it was Charles I or II.

     Margaret started to deliver a mini-treatise on the decline of manners, with special reference to portable telephones. But in the middle, she stopped abruptly and said, "But I must be boring you both to tears. An old English lady, crippled with arthritis, fluttering on about things which couldn’t be of the least use to a young man. I’ll return to the kitchen."

     I hastened to assure her that it was not so. The Old Man acted embarrassed and suggested that we "repair to the balcony." Outside, he said a few scrambled words of apology, to which I offered some inarticulate words of assurance that no apology was necessary.

     Seated comfortably, I started my debrief, telling the Old Man that I had not learned any new applied pharmacology but had now had a chance to observe Ledbetter. I described the rip-snorting seminar and the verbal thrust and parry during the question-and-answer period.

     "Well, this Ledbetter would seem to be a most interesting fellow," Westley said, arching his eyebrows. "Can you tell me more about him?"

     I said that Ledbetter was truly brilliant, that he devised ingenious experiments, and that he had little tolerance for people who misinterpreted his work.

     The Old Boy said, "It sounds as if he can divine gold from baser metals. You say that he is a real master of his art, but also a bit of a Toscanini."

     "Toscanini?"

     "Yes, Arturo Toscanini, the famous conductor. He threw fits on the podium."

     "Yes. Ledbetter seems to be quite a prima donna. He’s very arrogant with those who are not up to his level."

     "‘Up to his level?’ Would that make him a good Mensa candidate?" the Old Man asked, never seeming to tire of a good jest.

     "He would get in to the Society based on his IQ. But he would have little patience with our foibles. The guy is very purposeful and seems to live for his science. As if he has everything wrapped up in it."

     "Does he have no friends among the faculty?"

     "He seems to get along with all of the Old Guard except Manson. Ledbetter reveals something in everyone. He reacts to each individual in a different way. He makes fools out of some and praises others. Ledbetter seems to take everything to its logical conclusion, even if it means telling people in public that they are hopelessly stupid."

     "Do you think that he could take a very serious thing to its logical conclusion?"

     Neither Westley’s voice nor his face yielded the slightest indication that he was asking a most important question.

     I answered, "He’d be emotionally capable of it, particularly if he were threatened or impeded in something important to him."

     "Then it will be interesting to hear more about him," Westley said.

     "Okay, but I thought that we were considering Ashton."

     "One should always remain open-minded."

     "Ledbetter was out of town for as long as I’ve been here. Do we even know that he was here for . . . I called it D-Day last time and you didn’t like the expression. So please tell me, was Ledbetter present at the Last Supper?"

     Dr. Westley liked that expression even less, and it took me a while to get him back on track.

     "Was he here or was he out of town on the day in question?" I asked.

     "I am not sure I can tell you at the moment," was the evasive answer. "But he seems like a very interesting chap. Does he have a good command of ‘practical pharmacology,’ as you so deftly put it a few weeks ago?"

     "There’s no ‘pharmacological principle’ that jumps out at me. His selectins are useful as diagnostic devices because they get accumulated in different tissues."

     "Well, he sounds very interesting. Perhaps you should give him a closer looking over." It didn’t sound like a marching order to me.

     "I suppose. But how are you making out with the information I 'inadvertently' left here at your apartment a few weeks ago?"

     The Old Man became agitated, as if I had been too direct.

     "Ben, you must simply be patient," he chided. "The wheels turn slowly. It might be a few weeks more."

     "Then I will keep my eye on Ledbetter but try to drag out my rotation with Ashton until you are done. But Ashton made me turn in a written report on my work a couple of days ago. Once I leave Ashton’s lab, it would be awkward to try to come back on a hands-on basis."

     "I quite understand, Ben. One must do what one can."

     After leaving Westley’s, I thought of how solidly I had served the ball to his side of the court. Why was it taking them so long to analyze Cooper’s blood for the 13 lousy compounds? It wasn’t my fault if Burk had lost his touch and Brown was no help. And I didn’t want to waste time looking into Ledbetter. His seminar clearly showed that he had to inject his selectins for his diagnostic applications, and the Old Man was clear that there were no needle marks in Cooper. And the selectins weren’t toxic anyway. Why waste time on him?

     I needed the time for Rebecca. We were now seeing as much of each other as her demanding med-school regimen would permit. She seemed to carry gracefully the burden of the 16-hour med-student day, pacing herself with a certain quiet self-confidence. Our frequent lunch dates around the medical center confirmed my first impressions: She was beautiful but not spoiled, intelligent but not overcritical, serious but not moody, and practical but not harsh. Sitting down with a sheet of paper, I wrote down her lovable qualities, jotting down 15 adjectives without even trying. Rebecca was a "fifteen." I became fairly confident that she didn’t have a boyfriend in the medical school.

     We had our first dinner date a week after the bicycle date. We took a cab, since neither of us had a car. Rebecca voiced her astonishment at my nonchalance, as the meter topped $15 while we rode along the causeway with three miles to go before reaching Miami Beach. I remarked that money is to serve us, and not the other way around. How did she like the ocean liners going out Government Cut? Did she know that amphibious planes from Chalks Airline take off and land within yards of us? As the meter topped $20 at the South Beach, I told Rebecca that I sometimes rented cars.

     "Just like we do up in New York City," she said with a smile.

     Ocean Drive in the "South Beach" has a 10-block row of art deco hotels. The district starts at 5th Street with the Bentley, the Monaco, the Paradise Beach, the Park Central, the Avalon, and so on, all the way to the Netherland Hotel up at 14th Street. Most of them have outdoor dining on terraces overlooking Ocean Drive and the Atlantic beyond.

     I had updated my wardrobe with a white unstructured sports jacket and a collarless shirt. Rebecca wore a black one-piece sleeveless dress that reached mid-thigh. She walked slightly ahead of me with light, bouncy grace as we filtered through crowds of hip people and around the occupied tables of sidewalk cafés, stopping only to read the menu placards and squeezing by the valet parking peoples’ boards, bristling with BMW and Mercedes keys. Rebecca’s beauty was like her voice — subtle, slightly fragile and best revealed when she was in motion. As sea breeze blew through her hair and lights sparkled in her eyes, I felt like walking beside her forever.

     We stopped for dinner at an outdoor restaurant in a big courtyard, halfway up the Art Deco district. It was a real cosmopolitan scene, with Latin Americans and Europeans outnumbering the Americans, two to one. Entertainment was supplied by a jazz violinist, about my age, accompanied by a guy on an amplified keyboard. They played "Cinnamon and Clove," a bosa nova with a persistent beat and bittersweet melody. As Rebecca grooved to the rhythm, I remembered the exciting lyrics describing the magical essence of love on a tropical night. Every sense was shifted and blended into another. Moonlight warmed the sand, a seagull sailed in the air like a sailboat across the cove. A dip of the hand transformed the water into sparkling crystal, and the air carried a scent of spice. I sang along softly.

     "I know that one, too," Rebecca said. "‘Brasil Sixty-Six, back in the nineteen sixties. Two women and two men. Did a lot of bosa nova."

     "My folks had the record," I said. "Told me they bought it when they first got married. Used to play it a lot. I developed an adolescent fixation — a fantasy of love in an exotic, romantic setting."

     "Well, we sure have that here, with the palm trees, tropical sky and sea. And I would have missed it all, cooped up in that Bryan Medical School, if you hadn’t whisked me off my feet." She tapped my elbow, and kissed my cheek with an innocent Victorian charm which was magically in rhythm with the bossa nova beat.

     The set came to an end. Rebecca and I struck up a conversation with the violinist. She played second violin with the Florida Philharmonic and was getting well-known in the South Florida jazz scene. I bought a tape from the duo and gave it to Rebecca as a present.

     After dinner, we crossed Ocean Drive, took off our shoes and strolled across the sand, away from the art-deco neon and toward the dark shore. We stopped to gaze at a tall palm tree whose tasselled crown glistened in the light of the full moon. Rays of reflected moonlight seemed to jump between the gently arched and twisting fronds, each silhouetted by moon glow, as the tasselled crown gently swished in the wind. It was at once a rustling wind chime and an enchanting kaleidoscope in black and white. I could have lived this moment for eternity.

     We walked along the beach at the waterline. The gently surging and ebbing waves splashed our feet and sprinkled Rebecca’s face with reflected moonlight. Cruise liners, all white and lit up, large as office buildings, exited through Government Cut. Rebecca stumbled on a pile of seaweed, and I caught her in my arms. We shared a long kiss.

     Our next evening date was dinner at Captain Walley’s in Coconut Grove. I warned Rebecca to dress down. We went in through the restaurant without bumping into Sam or Lou, passed the outdoor bar and tiki hut, and spent two delightful hours at a table with a good view of Key Biscayne, four miles out.

     Afterwards we walked arm in arm along the Dinner Key Marina. I presented my little travelogue about the seaplane hangers, the Pan Am Clipper and its Art Deco Terminal, which now serves as the Miami City Hall. Then we passed my skiff, chained to a tree.

     "Ben, you mean that you have to row in this little boat every day?"

     "Come rain or come shine."

     I hadn’t realized how awkward it would be. Although the Diogenes lay 400 yards off shore, the skiff was like the front-door of my apartment. As much as I wanted to make love to Rebecca tonight, it was too soon. But inspiration didn’t fail me. I played the British seaman.

     "That is to say, when it’s only me-self to transport, I row out come rain or shine, blowing or calm."

     "Well, it probably wouldn’t be practical for the young officer to show me the HMS Diogenes tonight," Rebecca said with a trace of an English accent herself.

     Laying it on thicker, I said, "I must admit to Her Ladyship that I am but a bosun’s mate. And the Lady would find the liberty boat a bit small and wet, and the ship difficult to tour at this late hour."

     Rebecca rewarded my wit with a musical laugh in soprano register, worthy of an operetta. She cocked her head and said, "Then perhaps Her Majesty’s worthy seaman could suggest a time during the day."

     My next words required a moment’s thought.

     "HMS Diogenes is scheduled to sail for the faire isle of Elliott Key on Thursday in less than a fortnight, on the day which the colonial Americans call ‘Thanksgiving.’ The Goode Ship will ply the waters about Elliott Key for three days, returning on the following Sunday eve. Her Ladyship would be provided her own quarters but would be most welcome at the Captain’s table, which captain is a perfect gentleman."

     Now Rebecca needed a moment’s thought.

     "Her Ladyship would be most grateful to accept the Captain’s gracious invitation. She will bring her parasol and hopes the Captain can be counted on for food and amenities."

     And, thus, the Thanksgiving weekend was planned. It was a meditative cab ride back to her apartment as we silently reconsidered what we’d agreed to. But Rebecca’s goodnight kiss by the elevator told me she’d worked through all the implications. The taste of her kiss lingered through the bicycle ride to Dinner Key. Rowing to the Diogenes under a sky full of stars, I said an evening prayer: Dear Lord, let it be true.

     The Old Man agreed to reschedule the dinner for the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. He said he might have some news by then. The days to Thanksgiving vacation went so slowly, yet so quickly. Upcoming exams in Membrane Biophysics and Biochemistry had me worried. And there was work to ready the "goode ship" for the presence of a woman on board.

     The worthy sailing vessel had doubled as my bachelor apartment. Papers and books clung to its walls, in addition to the normal cabin barnacles which collect when a vessel has been too long at anchor. And regular barnacles and a coat of algae required me to grab my mask, fins, snorkel, brush and paint scraper. I worked like a madman, scrubbing and scraping to unfoul the Diogenes’ bottom.

     The next evening I learned that my investigation was fouled.