PARTISAN REVIEW
551
Hyde before he moved to a rural slum upstate. Certainly Hyde
before he fell in love, with a redheaded ex-Go-go dancer recently
turned respectable who had become a stewardess on Mohawk Air–
lines and who, two years later, fatigued by Hyde's amorous abuses,
left him for a Volvo dealer in Great Neck. Jekyll supposes that Hyde's
unexpected fall into love--invulnerable, lascivious, jaded, heartless
Hyde, in love!-was what finally broke his spirit. And not the ministra–
tions of Utterson, as is so often claimed. Jekyll longs to see again the
old Hyde, careering through the dark dock-side streets of the West
Side on his Harley-Davidson, grinding his teeth, gunning his motor,
an Andean-Indian woman's bowler on his small head, his ridiculous
black cape blowing behind him in the wind, bearing against his slight
back the weight of some leather-jacketed apprentice hoodlum with
three switchblades who hugs him around the waist, running down old
ladies, delivering dope, tossing Molotov cocktails through the win–
dows of anti-war organizations.
Jekyll is explaining how much preliminary work on the potion
he's done in his own laboratory, why he is unable to push his research
to a conclusion, and exactly how his sister, who has the newest and
best technology for genetic code-breaking at her disposal, can help.
His sister, wearing a white smock, her firm back (like Jekyll's) aligned
with the metal doorframe of her shiny laboratory, is turning him
down cordially. With the new Defense Dept. grant, the team is too
busy now. She looks terribly pretty, reminding Jekyll that good looks
run in their family. He lingers a moment longer, more chagrined by the
nature of his request than by her refusal, hoping to cover it up with a
joke. "Prof. Guest. My brother Dr. Jekyll," she murmurs as one of her
assistants squeezes past them through the doorway they're blocking,
bearing a rack of test-tubes fllied with reddish, dark purple, and
watery green liquids. While shaking Guest's free hand, Jekyll remem–
bers that he has promised to drop by to see Lanyon and give him a
quick examination and a shot before checking back at the clinic. In
Lanyon's midtown office thirty minutes later, bending over the eld–
erly lawyer with his stethoscope, he imagines it is Utterson's heart
which he hears thumping.
Somewhere else, a suburb of London, a once famous opera
singer is explaining Utterson to a skeptical friend . "Though he could
