his reflection. But the embrace would be an empty one: water is cold, it runs though your fingers, and in its depths there is only darkness.
Munin knows the unattainable wasn’t what killed Narcissus. It was need. Or rather the realization, as he stared at his image, that the pool was endlessly deep. The water reflecting eyes reflecting water, on and on. We can never satisfy our desires. The empty search, the thirst that cannot be quenched, the pool of need that cannot be plumbed. It overspilled its banks, flowed from pool to stream to river. It was a vast flood, enough to fill an ocean, drowning everything and everyone.
They meet at eight for cocktails in the hotel’s grand ballroom, an intimate gathering of a thousand guests. They have been specially selected by tonight’s host, Janus Pharm, a Swedish pharmaceutical company. They are the experts, the key opinion leaders, the high prescribers.
The theme tonight is “Go West!” The room is decorated with a mock Apothecary Shop stocked with modern-day detail aids — when the healing needs help — along with flashlights and free pens. In the Dry Goods Store there are sombreros sporting the product logo, lapel pins, key slides, interactive software. There are Conestogas filled with souvenir serapes featuring a two-headed Janus that Hughes calls Mr. What?What? as if the head were a cartoon freeze-frame looking ahead to the future but also behind at something in pursuit.
In the far corner of the room there’s a three-piece combo playing cowboy tunes. There’s a lariateer doing tricks with rope. Waiters in western gear sidewind through the crowd, spurs jingling, serving Tex-Mex hors d’oeuvres — fiesta mussels, guacamole, stuffed chayote. Young women in Navajo vests are pouring California wine, margaritas and Mexican beer, open bar courtesy of an educational grant. The food stations are chuck-wagons with tenured professors waiting in the chow line, paper plates overflowing with fajitas and refried beans.
At the reception desk they are branded with ID cards, invitees only: the wagons are circled tonight. Munin and Hughes are spotted at once. “Good — you made it. I’m glad you could come.” A petite woman in a black cocktail dress identifies herself as Judith Moore. She is vibrating with nervous tension. “Your flight — I saw it arrived on time. Any problems?” But before they can answer she is interrupted by the squawk of her walkie-talkie. “They’re here,” she tells it. To Munin: “Soren has been very anxious to meet you.”
“Not too anxious — he’ll be his own best customer,” Hughes says. Well, Judith’s smile is a little forced; her client’s product is a drug to treat anxiety disorders.
“Soren and I have talked on the phone,” Munin says, intentionally bland, “about my presentation.” He can see she’s stressed, too thin, terribly intense as she scans the room; slight exophthalmia there, perhaps a thyroid deficiency.
Judith hands them both a small binder that will be distributed at the meeting. She flips it open to show Munin the page with his postage-stamp photo, brief bio, an abstract of a case that he recalls having reviewed a few months ago. The session is a satellite to the annual meeting, all content sponsored by Janus Pharm. “I’ve sent welcome packages to your rooms. The event is Thursday evening, 6:00 p.m.”
“We got the package, thanks.”
“We’re expecting a good turnout. We’ve got about six hundred people pre-registered.” She doesn’t mention that many of the delegates have been paid to attend.
Munin uses the binder as a makeshift table, balancing his drink, a cocktail napkin, and something that appears to be a miniature quesadilla. He nods to familiar faces — that histrionic psychodramatist from New York, an interpersonal therapist from Texas with his third wife — that he last saw at the meeting a year ago.
An outsized Swede in a Stetson comes over, introduces himself as Soren, tips his hat to reveal reddish-brown hair — “You see?” — but is greeted only with mild curiosity. He looks marvellously out of place. Quite a feat in Vegas: no one belongs here, so everyone fits in. Says he was transferred to this country just over a year ago. How are you liking it? It is never home, ja? A stranger in a strange land, and each week the people grow stranger, ha-ha. Voice a little loud; Munin can tell he’s been drinking. There are other signs — there in the eyes, in the complexion — not hard for Munin to imagine those long Swedish nights, Soren shit-faced and singing along Sveavägen on the long walk home. Here he drinks because it’s too quiet, the light is different somehow, it keeps him awake; restive as myoclonus at 3:00 a.m., he imagines product positionings and repositionings as he tosses and turns in bed.
“At last the famous Dr. Munin. I have wanted so much to meet with you. And Dr. Hughes — you are in your element. This bedlam,” he adds, meaning Vegas. Until recently the psychiatry association had boycotted the city for its conventions.
“Coals to Newcastle,” says Hughes, and is greeted by blank expressions. Soren blanker than most — a bit too slangy for the Swede.
Judith feeds Soren the translation. “The association was concerned that a meeting here would be seen as endorsing gambling.” Vegas is the Mecca of madness: the Strip is a slow march of the multiply addicted, Hughes’s speciality; or of the obsessional, Munin’s bread and butter. The association’s past president, a specialist in seasonal affective disorder, pushed for a return to Seattle or San Francisco — rain was good business — but he was outvoted.
Judith tells them that the registration this year is reported to be a record. Vegas is a draw: bigger even than Miami last year before the hurricane hit, Soren hosting a rooftop soirée in South Beach when the rains came, driving his guests indoors to cold canapés and warmish white wine until power was restored, the host himself remaining alone in a poolside cabana drenched in Gulf stink and saltwater rain like tears.
Yes, far from home in a foreign land, feeling a little at loose ends in his Middle American middle manager’s office, his view of a parking lot with not a Saab in sight, feeling off balance when Judith made her pitch for this year’s satellite symposium. Vegas? Western theme? Thirty-eight-litre hats? It sounded terribly foreign to him, fetishistic even. In the Tunnelbane he has seen them, those slim boys with white-blond hair sporting bandanas and leather chaps, tall as the actor Randolph Scott and with that same expression, faces frozen in a rigor that was almost neurologic in origin.
Judith tried to get her client back on track. “We’re not talking tunnels here, Soren, just wide-open spaces. The meeting will be the key pre-launch event, the last promo hit before the new indication.” The plan was to corral the key opinion leaders — those cagey KOLs — and get them to present case examples of patients: obsessive-compulsive disorder, generalized anxiety, gambling addiction. Let people hear the success stories. Learn who has responded favourably to the drug. But just a soft push, the marketing had to be low-key until the product was actually approved for OCD.
Soren: “We’ll need an opening talk. Neurobiology. How the drug works. Bioavailability, pharmacokinet —”
“Who cares?” said Judith, quick to nix it. “I’m sorry, Sor, but you’re competing with the most entertaining city in the world. Leave the details to the reps in the field. The important thing is to have your key doctors do their thing. Each case is a product endorsement,” said Judith, moving in for the close, laying her hand earnestly on his sleeve. “The touch of Lady Luck.”
No luck for Soren lately; he’s got issues back at head office and he’s pissed away his per diem rolling them bones. Apologizes for being late to the dinner, says he was at a competitor’s session. “I forgot my watch,” winking now, “and you know there are no clocks in a casino.”
“They want you to lose track of time,” says Judith.
“Is
