The Curing Room

By Michael Winn

Nothing is what is seems. A horrific accident. A dead girl. A long-held secret. All the lies and deceit lead to the same mysterious room. This psychologically astute, character-driven thriller unfolds within a sleepy New England college town where Ava Marie Stassi is a young, adjunct professor struggling to advance her career while coping with a recent break-up. After tragedy unexpectedly strikes, Ava is forced by circumstance to match wits against a volatile student, Jared, who brings pent-up hostility fueled by a dark past into her quiet, mundane life...and into The Curing Room.

THE CURING ROOM by Michael Winn is smartly written and expertly crafted novel written in the tradition of Megan Abbott, Ian McEwan, Kate Atkinson, Sarah Waters, and, of course, Gillian Flynn. Fans of the great, modern thriller authors will be enthralled by Michael Winn’s foray into the dark recesses of the human psyche.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Winn
• Release date: Nov 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9780984026944

Michael Winn

Michael Winn is a writer who lives in Long Island, NY with his wife and two children.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Ava

Without warning, a defined yet fleeting opportunity to do something important might come about. A chance to do something noteworthy. To momentarily be someone noteworthy. All your personal shortcomings, past transgressions, and limited capabilities, notwithstanding, you can be significant. Significant in some significant way, perhaps even to a young woman walking a stretch of sidewalk. This kind of life-affirming event is what Winston Churchill described as a special moment when one is figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing…

My tap came on June 2nd at 7:43am, but I’d been dozing. Well, sleepwalking, actually, traversing the same sidewalk as the pretty girl, though in the opposite direction, content to be immersed within the streaming Netflix series, the perpetual, self-indulgent mini-movies that formed my conscious mind. And, like the intrepid wartime prime minister said, what a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour… But I’m not all to blame. To be fair, what should have been my hour was only five seconds long, and it wasn’t heralded by the deafening roar of an invading squadron of bombers. My moment came via the engine rumble and sooty exhaust of a garbage truck. Sometimes, I wonder if I’d known what was about to happen, would I really have responded differently, more decisively, more courageously instead of being mentally paralyzed? Obviously, I like to think so, but I’ll never be certain. You may know something is coming, yet it catches you with both thumbs crammed up your butt—the phrasing is mine, not Churchill’s, but I’m sure he’d roll over and shout out a hearty hear, hear in support. This classic non-reaction is akin to winding the crank of a Jack-in-the-Box; the spindles inside turn slowly, the tinny melody plays, and the rhyme singing itself within your head…

Here we go ‘round the mulberry bush

The monkey chased the weasel.

The monkey thought 'twas as all in fun…

I owned one as child—a Jack-in-the-Box, not a monkey. I suppose most small girls do at some point. I still have mine. Everyone knows how it goes. You turn the crank and know it’s coming. You know what to expect… By the way, I’m the monkey. Molly the monkey. Actually, my name is Ava. Molly is my mother’s inexplicable pet name for me. Who's the weasel? Don’t worry, you’ll meet him soon enough. So, am I mixing metaphors by simultaneously talking about the toy and the words of the song that plays within its hidden music box? Yes, and I should know better. I’m a college English professor. Well, an adjunct professor, but that’s a thorny topic. Anyway, even though you’re winding the crank and expecting it to happen, knowing it will happen, waiting for it to happen, in perfect sync with the tune, it’s always a jolt. The latch flips, the trapdoor flings open, and the sinister clown’s torso explodes into view, head bobbing on a spring. What wasn’t there suddenly is: the jester’s twin-pointed hat, the white ruffled collar, the sneer of the wooden face above it, the malevolence in those red-painted eyeballs.

So, what happened before the pop?

I was walking, about a block away when it began, thinking about my legs. Yes, I know it’s pathetic. Hardly a great JFK assassination-type recollection, but I like my legs, and I hadn’t worn a skirt in two weeks. So there I was, engaged in a vigorous stride, making the long trek from my Explorer parked in lot 9c towards Cutler Hall, musing that many of the young coeds would be envious of my legs. My legs, arms and shoulders, too, if you care to know, are shaped much the same as Madonna’s, circa 1985, during her public-masturbation prime. Remember the torpedo bras and garter belts? Madge flaunted muscles thick and rounded in a marginally manly way. Mine are a tad masculine, too, but I don’t care. I’m proud of the time I spend on the leg press machine at the Flab Factory. At 5’4, I’m two inches shorter than the height required for people to take a professional woman seriously, but I’m a sculpted 125 pounds without a single dimple on my hamstrings. But that’s where the resemblance to the Material Girl stops. Where she was a chic blonde with a ghostly look of perpetual irritation, I’m a more Southern European, copper-skinned, brunette with a bright disposition. Though my features aren’t highlighted with the same flair for mascara and lip gloss, my face is warmer and prettier, despite having inherited my father’s large, dark, tired, and thick-lidded—I prefer the term soulful—Italian eyes.

It was the first day of summer session, and there I was on campus, decked out in a herringbone gray, fitted blazer and matching skirt. The skirt’s fabric swished as I walked the stark-white sidewalk. I’m dressed with impeccable care because I’m being interviewed by the search committee at three-thirty. I’m looking to be promoted to associate professor. After fourteen years, here’s my chance to finally be officially admitted to the faculty. At age thirty-eight, it may be my only chance to be considered, but I’m purposely not thinking about that. Like I’ve said, I’m thinking about my legs.

A penny for a spool of thread, a penny for a needle…

An uncharacteristic lookin’ good air of self-confidence came over me as I hiked-up the strap of the leather satchel hooked around one shoulder. My Madonna thigh muscles contracted with each click of my heels as my Rocky Balboa eyes scanned the sparsely populated campus grounds, enjoying the cherry trees in bloom flanking each side of the walk. The girl was still ahead at a distance, studying the paper map, the colorful one they give new students during orientation. She twirled, trying to get her bearings, letting the map lead the way like a divining rod to water. She also wore a skirt, but it was only blue denim.

Up and down the city road, in and out of the eagle…

I would ask if she needed help when we met. Provide directions to whatever building her first class was being held. Make her feel fortunate to have run into me. Give a good first impression of the staff. I stopped two feet from where the sidewalk was intersected by the black asphalt of the service road and waited. The garbage truck had come from the outer circular perimeter of campus, beyond the parking lots, the unimaginatively named Loop Road.

There were lots situated closer to Cutler Hall than number 9c, but it was a temperate, breezy day and brisk walking was part of my exercise regimen—twelve thousand steps per day is the recommended daily amount; chew on that if you want to feel like a slug… So I make a deliberate effort to walk whenever I can. Our cool, often rainy climate permitting, I usually opt for the furthest stall from the automatic glass doors of the Tom Thumb. It’s a supermarket, in case you don’t know. A lot of stores in my hometown have names that embarrass me. Yes, I grew up here in Port Arthur. Yes, I’m a townie. I’m also an alumnus of Arthur Hill College, named after the great Chester A. Arthur, but I’m not completely sheltered. I did attend two years of grad school at Hunter College in New York before speeding back, diploma in hand, begging Helen Incandela, the college’s human resources director for a job.

Yep, having seen the dilapidated buildings and crumbling civilization within urban America, I came to appreciate, ironically, after deriding its sterility as a snotty adolescent, the feelings of coziness and tidiness our community offers. We have nice things and nice people. It is a wonderland. This can be said without even reciting an ode to unlocked car doors and properly functioning toilets. I like to believe I’d left and got lost in order to find my way home. Of course, no home is perfect. I occasionally suffer acute attacks of smallness and corniness when I walk past the shops and eateries that run the length of our six-block merchant district. Although spaced close together at either side of Harborview Boulevard, each one is a separate, pastel-colored, little shingled cottage with a stone chimney and gridded windows. The parallel strings of shops are comprised of specialty food stores, ice cream parlors, souvenir shops, sidewalk kiosks, and cafés. This is what the town offers. I know it’s not New York or Boston, but at least it’s not just another endless, colorless, suburban strip mall. Our village is a storybook land. I mean this in a good way. Not a make-believe world—the Lido Deck, as Paul called it, suggesting my beloved downtown mirrored a cruise ship. What I saw as quaint, he saw as commercial and creepy. Vastly differing perceptions is a reason we’re no longer together; that, and Paul’s penchant for young blondes.

That's the way the money goes…

The garbage truck passed in front of me on the narrow service lane, a wall of orangey-yellow, in route to the rear loading zone of Braxton Hall. It was new-looking and remarkably clean considering its function. Sanitation trucks are probably required to be painted saffron. Like beer sales being restricted to liquor stores and prohibitions against lawn jockeys and car-washing on Sundays, the Incorporated Village of Greater Port Arthur has volumes of peculiar ordinances. Though they may be outmoded, the rules don’t really affect civil liberties to the degree people complain they do. Paul was a rule-breaker and a complainer… Life rolls onward. The truck passed, broad and tall, taking up the whole narrow lane. The pungent smell of diesel fuel enveloped me, and I worried about the odor tingeing my clothes and hair prior to my interview. The truck proceeded to its destination, a large green dumpster at the rear loading dock doors of Braxton Hall. I’ve witnessed the awesome mechanical ballet-to-come many times. The truck’s operator would use the giant, hinged, arms to hook and hoist the heavy dumpster, overturning it, emptying it into the truck’s retracted top in a series of jerky, clanging, robotic movements. The process would then be reversed and the emptied metal bin would be returned to its three-sided concrete house with a resounding, hollow thud.

I crossed the service road, stutter-stepped, dismayed to see the lost girl talking to an older boy. He’d materialized from nowhere and I felt cheated. If he knew the campus layout, he would give directions. He would be the hero. I continued walking towards the duo. He was clearly an upperclassman. I could tell by the way he was chatting-her-up, cool and casual, like they were pals. The clothes were also a giveaway. His ensemble was something of a uniform for the young men attending summer session at Arthur Hill—a long, gray tank top, snug like a second skin, tucked into a pair of knee-length khaki cargo shorts with a hundred pockets snapped shut. Everything about him was long. His limbs were stretched and sinewy. The length of his feet and toes were accentuated by heavy leather sandals. His hands were that of a pianist, fingers slender and tapered. His torso was especially long, showcasing a flat abdomen. And the boy’s neck! It was that of a greyhound. As I drew nearer, I could see he had an Irish-immigrant face with round, cheerful cheekbones high above gaunt hollows and a chin cleft. With his blue eyes, easy smile, and perfect teeth, he’d look great in a turtleneck. He was attractive, no doubt, made even more so by his defects: the unruly ringlets of black hair he’d combed back and the longish, slender nose.

Welcome the weasel.

As I neared, I could hear fragments of conversation, and I wondered if he’d pause to check out my legs. After being tortured by a million toe-raises, my calves, like mini buttocks, now clench and unclench as I walk—a lot of men take notice. He didn’t. I moved closer, stopped and leaned backwards, crouching to adjust a strap on my shoe that didn’t need adjusting.

Deal? I tell you how to get to Cutler and then we meet later for lunch, he said.

She smiled with a wide open mouth, shaking her head in disbelief, speechless.

C’mon, why not? he added.

’I’m only here until August. I just want to stay focused, she said.

It’s just pizza. I’m not looking to whisk you away in a golden carriage. When does your second class end? You’re gonna eat lunch sometime today, right?

His smile was disarming. She was young. Up close, she was more cute than pretty; large, brown eyes adorned with too much eye-makeup, a dusting of freckles forming a veil across her nose. The coy manner she tilted her head, the small smile, all served to tell she was flattered and possibly interested. Although she leaned back and rotated the heel of one shoe on the sidewalk expressing impatience, I noticed she wasn’t leaving. I stood, squared my shoulders, and continued onward, envious. I wished I was on campus to attend my first class rather than to teach my thousandth.

I’m going to be late for my eight o’clock. Are you going to help me or not? she said.

Her whiny tone only feigned annoyance. She was obviously flirting now, but the tall, older boy didn’t pick up on it. His smile waned—for only a flash—as the jester normally compressed inside the box was released, revealing the bobbing head, the grin, and the red-painted eyes.

POP goes the weasel…

Before the moment could darken, however, the smile returned, broader, sunnier. I smiled, too, and nodded as I passed, but my presence yielded only vague head bows.

Hey, whatever, the boy said to the girl. Just keep going the way you’re going. Cutler will be the third building on the left.

I continued a step or two. Coming from behind my back, I heard her bubbly, good-natured thanks and his casual no problem in response. I heard her hopeful see ya’ around and his indifferent yup… I took another two steps before it registered; one of my new pumps skid on gritty sidewalk as I stopped short, turned. Cutler Hall was, of course, on the Arts and Humanities side of campus. It housed the classrooms, lecture halls, conference rooms, and offices for the English Department. It was my building, where I was heading. I could show her the way; he’d made a mistake. Even as the girl hurried away, he remained pointing, arm stretched, extended finger indicating the wrong direction, sending her further into the Science and Engineering section of campus. He lowered his limb and turned towards me. The crooked smile wasn’t sinister, per se, but showed a peculiar self-satisfaction, an unlikely glibness considering he’d just been rejected—this was my tap. He strode my way smoothly, rapidly, legs gliding and elbows pumping as if wearing rollerblades. As he brushed by, the marked blueness of his eyes challenged the sky above for supremacy. I stood idle, watching the girl walk in the direction from which I’d come.

Now comes my Churchill five seconds.

But something happens to time—it slogs. Or maybe it’s just my perception, but things happened in a slow, fluid manner and suddenly, I’m viewing the girl moving away under water. The scene then becomes a tableau. It’s an old western’s climax in reverse; instead of the hero riding west into the sunset, the rescued damsel is walking east into the sunrise. She now has the paper campus map in one hand and a cell phone in the other. She’s skillfully operating the device with a single thumb—texting. The garbage truck which has deposited the dumpster back into its concrete holder is backing. The driver has to navigate the long, narrow service road, for there is no turnaround area at the rear of Braxton Hall. The girl walks. It is a warm spring morning. The grassy areas are dark green; the sky is an unambitious, pale, periwinkle. The sun’s rays are electric and tingly on the skin. Objects within my peripheral vision—the cherry trees, the grass, the mirrored windows on the buildings—are showered in light. Everything is the same yet somehow better. The world is made divine, placed within a golden corona. The girl walks. Her hair bounces on her shoulders and backpack. The mammoth truck speeds backwards. The girl will stop at the edge where sidewalk meets service road. She must. Because if she doesn’t… In a millisecond, I mentally calculate their respective trajectories—they intersect. I want to call out. STOP! YOU’RE GOING THE WRONG WAY! My mind is screaming LOOK OUT FOR THE TRUCK! But I remain still, silent, staring, and open-mouthed. She will stop. She has to. Because if she doesn’t, the unthinkable would… The rest occurs simultaneously. The girl steps from the sidewalk onto the asphalt. The truck is barreling towards her. The steel bumper becomes a battering ram. It makes contact just above the knees. Startled, the girl emits a comically short, high, airy shriek. Her body is turned to face the truck; her arms are thrown outward and she falls backwards. The doubled set of thick treaded tires catches her feet and she’s pulled under. She shoots between the giant wheels and pavement like an envelope through the rollers of a post office letter sorter. Only upon hearing the crunch of her skull does the driver know he ran something over. The small, dark-skinned man grips the steering wheel tight, rises from the seat and pushes on the brake pedal. There is a metal-on-metal grinding sound and a noise like the release of steam. Then silence.

I walk towards the immobile vehicle, and then trot, clutching the strap of my satchel with both hands. The driver is stationed high in the cab. He’s holding something… He’s thumbing a rosary and making the sign off the cross. I see he’s praying. I imagine he’s praying he hit a dog, though he knows he didn’t. He’s praying the unseen person he rolled over will be OK, though he knows it’s not possible. He prays to God to make everything be OK…

I slowed, stumbled as I approached, and looked.

Chapter 2

Jared

Holy fuck…

Did what just happened really happen? I’m not sure. It’s like when those guys in the orange jumpsuits get beheaded on video—you keep watching it over and over, wondering if it’s real. I mean, I heard the girl shriek—damn, I’ll always hear it—and turned to see the truck… But I thought it had to have been a near miss. She had to be alright. I was just talking to her. I wouldn’t let myself think about the meaty thud and the hiss of brakes... So, at first, my curiosity is formless, not morbid. I’m not a psycho. I don’t take pleasure in the pain of others. I don’t hate anybody, even people who deserve to be. I simply stopped, leaned forward on my toes, and peered in the direction of the garbage truck. But I couldn’t make out what happened. I was a distance away because I had been hauling ass towards Thompson Hall. I’m repeating Applied Statistics because I flagged it twice and it’s required to graduate. I’m finally getting off this dunghill at the end of December. I’m stuck with Dr. Donatello—again—because he’s the only one who teaches it. I didn’t want to be late because he’s a pompous, old douchebag. The kind of professor who’d say something like well, good afternoon, Mr. McCabe, glad to have you back in class… He’d say good afternoon even though it’s only eight in the morning because he thinks it’s a clever way to let my classmates know what a tight-twat he is about lateness. The glad to have you back part would be to point out that I failed before—a warning to others to take the course seriously. So, when I heard the shriek, I reacted without regard for Donatello or being late for his six-week class, not sure what happened, and found myself bolting towards the truck.

The lady in the nice clothes stood at the side of the truck, gawking at the ground, fingertips covering her mouth. I panted as I slowed to a walk, coming to a halt—I’m in shit-shape—and I looked where she was looking.

What I saw might seem exaggerated, but I swear it’s true. The girl was so perfectly positioned beneath the truck’s chassis, had the driver continued backing, he would’ve ran her over with the single front driver’s-side tire in addition to the doubled set of rear ones. With arms spread from the body at right angles, she lay crucified on the asphalt. The truck loomed high above her. Had she lain down in the center of the road and let the truck pass over her, she would be unscathed. But she hadn’t, of course, and the back wheels ran over her long ways. The truck had come to a stop with her small body midway between the front and rear bumpers. Her arms and hands were the only part of her unchanged. The right hand, knuckles resting on the blacktop, held a campus map. The left hand, extended outward into the sunlight, red-painted nails brushing against the grass adjacent to the road, loosely held a cellphone, no time to drop it. The rest of her was demolished. Her body flattened like in an old cartoon by a falling safe or from being steamrolled. Starting at the open toes of the shoes, she’d been compressed. All of her, the entire length of her legs, torso, and face, rolled flat. The skin on the shins beneath her denim skirt marked with black squiggles and cross-hatchings. At first I thought this was fishnet stockings I hadn’t noticed her wearing or some strange tribal tattoos, but then I realized the marks were the imprints of tire treads. Jesus. The thighs were flattened… The pelvis, too… The abdomen and chest… She’d had disproportionately large, round boobs for a petite girl; it’s what attracted me in the first place, but they’re no longer there—just gone. Her face is hers but not hers… There are no tire marks, thank God, and her eyes are shut, eyelashes long, and she looks peaceful. No, more than that—she looks angelic. Except for the nose, that is. Her nose is impossibly broadened, a pressed piece of clay. The girl is recognizable as the girl I’d met two minutes earlier, but also a deflated, rubber-skinned version of herself. Only the crown of her head proves she is real. It’s been blown open at the top. Her wet, matted-hair, jagged-edged scalp resembles a chewed off cigar tip. The girl’s brains had exploded out of the opened top of this cracked skull. On the slick, black pavement, her gray matter wasn’t gray, but instead glowed in several big, soupy, squashy lumps of bright magenta goop. At first, I took the growing black puddle on the pavement to be motor oil. It wasn’t. The yellow truck hadn’t sustained a ding. The girl’s organs and bones had offered no more resistance than baker’s dough to the rolling pin.

And this is where it gets really weird.

I’m a psychology major, but I suddenly remember a poem from freshman English. Yeah, I’m looking at this fucked-up, macabre scene and these verses I hadn’t read in years start running through my mind. The poem was by Dylan Thomas and it talked about refusing to mourn the death of a child in a fire. The line that kept repeating was the majesty and burning of the child's death…The majesty of death—I felt it. Breathed it like oxygen. I refused to mourn her loss. This girl underneath the garbage truck was a queen. Her death was magnificent in its carnage and finality. Tears would be an insult. She should be honored, revered, and memorialized… The thought excited me. The particles making up the early morning sunshine became positively charged. I was electrified. Everything was good. All was as it should be. My normally disjointed cognition suddenly was linear, each tooth of every gear properly aligned. Of course, I tried to resist. But resist what?

The rightness of it.

This was no accident; the freshman girl was meant to die. If this weren’t true, it wouldn’t have happened. The kid was called to leave and she left, nothing unusual. The shocking, absurdly lurid scene was destiny. The odds of the walking girl and the backing truck converging at the exact spot, at the identical point in time, were infinitesimally small, yet it happened. The result was unreal in its ultra-realism, beautiful in its gore. It heightened the acuity of my vision and hearing, sharpened all of my senses. Although I felt no fear, I was jumpy. I put my hands in my pants pockets because I felt like I should be doing something but didn’t know what it was. I rocked from the balls of my feet onto my heels and back again. What was this clear-thinking, tingly feeling of hyper-awareness called? Lucidity. I felt it. A curtain lifted. A light shone in. I offer no apologies for being invigorated. The girl’s death made sense. It was right and good. The only thing that didn’t make sense was why the lady hadn’t just shown the kid the way to Cutler Hall.

Chapter 3

Ava

All I’m saying is, if I were a black man who received a letter threatening to lynch him, it would be taken more seriously, Quinn said.

He sat at the far side of the conference table, next to the head, and I sat diagonally, a distance away, close to the door. Everyone positioned along the sides was rapt. I ground my foot into the carpet, my impatience growing with each passing minute. This was supposed to be my job interview, and here I was trapped in a narrow, unventilated room for more than thirty minutes without being asked a question.

Quinn clutched the printout in one hand, waving it, rapping the knuckles of his other hand on the tabletop like a gavel. I’m not letting this one go. It says she plans to string me up!

Dr. Randy Pearlman and Dr. Michelle Mathers leaned back, relaxed in the rolling, swivel chairs, partly amused but mostly embarrassed by the spectacle.

I want this poisoned penned perpetrator dealt with, Quinn shouted.

I smiled. Even when angered, Quinn couldn’t get mad. Not convincingly, anyway. Maybe it was due to his voice. Dr. Rutherford Michael Quinn spoke in a singsong, theatrical intonation. It sounded as if he were inhaling while he should be expelling his words. My father met him once and called him an odd duck afterward. Most people called him Quinn, an exception being his age-old nemesis.

Rutherford, Veronica said. When someone says they’d like to string you up like a piñata, they are speaking figuratively. She picked off tiny morsels of a muffin and popped them into her mouth one at a time Shouldn’t you know this?

Veronica was the one who wanted to string Quinn up. I know only because I’m the lone adjunct staff member added to the English Department faculty listserv. A week ago, Quinn had mailed Dr. Josephine Jordan, the department chairperson, a list of his grievances and suggested remedies. JoJo, as she liked to be called, forwarded Quinn’s latest litany of complaints—workload distribution, room assignments, curriculum changes, course catalog descriptions, academic advisement hours—to the entire department faculty, soliciting feedback. Veronica responded with suggestions of her own, one of them being to stuff Quinn with hard candy and string him up like a piñata during Accepted Student Orientation. Veronica had intended to only respond to the department chair, but unfortunately, Veronica hit the REPLY ALL instead of the REPLY button—the email was sent to every faculty member’s inbox. In addition to suggesting Quinn be beaten with a stick by incoming freshmen, Veronica questioned Quinn’s competency and relevance, referring to him as Quinnosaurus. She also included something abstract, saying if he were any more backward thinking, he’d serendipitously invent time travel. She’d also remarked on his dubious work ethic, calling him a prima donna penguin.

All I know is I’m being harassed! Quinn fired back.

Veronica showed no reaction. I’d wanted to offer Quinn support, to tell Veronica her criticism was petty, immature, and unprofessional, but I’m not a fighter. I envied Quinn’s capacity for confrontation. How amazing it must be to live without fear.

When first reading the email, I didn’t get the penguin reference but I now saw it. Quinn did resemble a penguin. He was a genteel, shorter man with a somewhat rotund torso, who was most comfortable in business attire. At the moment, he wore a cream-colored suit with a gold silk tie. During the winter months, he’d usually opt for a full-length black overcoat, which, when worn over his hunched shoulders, made him look more like a penguin—a cartoon penguin, a Tennessee Tuxedo, because he always wore matching red gloves, scarves, and earmuffs. His face only bolstered the comparison. Although Quinn’s complexion was wan, his slender nose came out straight, but then angled downward at a small bump, forming a bird beak. Heavy jowls pulled down a recessed chin and nonexistent lips. None of it mattered, however. His faults notwithstanding, Quinn’s compassionate, hazel eyes, and flawless style more than compensated for how unattractive he was. Dr. Rutherford Quinn dressed and lived with enviable flair. Even his hair provided testimony to this fact; his coif was a full, feathery blonde plume he flipped backward, high and proud. Quinn wasn’t an odd duck, but an exotic macaroni penguin.

"How do you like the