by Nick Cole
If the possible killer was out there, waiting and crying in the parking lot, thought Mandelbaum, which he had to be, because Mandelbaum had been having sex with a lot of people’s wives lately, he could send a patient out there. Maybe the assassin would think it was Mandelbaum, and then the killer could start blasting away.
Mandelbaum felt an uncontrollable giggle rising within.
Wow, he thought. What I wouldn’t give for a patient like that right now. A guy who looks vaguely like me. I could even give him my sweater—tell him it was part of the therapy or something. “Put on my sweater and look at yourself through my eyes. The sweater will help you become me.” Then KA-PLOW! I’m off the hook.
He looked at the Great Director for a long moment, wondering. Then he erupted with one of his huge, irrepressible sighs.
The Great Director stopped for a moment, looking at him suspiciously. Dr. Mandelbaum covered quickly, using a new technique he had recently mastered.
“Listen, I want to stop you there and go back to…” He held up his hand, buying time as he scanned his pages. He’d made only one note during the three therapy sessions they’d been patient and doctor. The note read: “Perfect Robot Wife.” He had no idea what it meant, or when he’d made the note for that matter. He forged ahead regardless.
“I want to go back to this Perfect Robot Wife you mentioned.”
This was his new technique for managing the accusations of his patients when they became indignant at his lack of attention. He would quote a note reference and ask the patient to explain it. Lately he had been writing down the first thing they said and then tuning out for the rest of the session.
“That’s really interesting. I want to talk about that,” said Mandelbaum. Then—this was the part he really loved—he said nothing. Now the patient would start talking about themselves and he could go back to what mattered most, which was thinking about the possible assassin in the parking lot probably waiting to kill him.
“I don’t know why I call her that. I didn’t… hey, wait a minute. I haven’t even said that today. I said that last session!”
“I know you did. Of course. It was just very interesting.” He said it in a calm, intrigued voice of concern he’d learned to affect.
The Great Director stared at him.
“What, do you think I’m not listening to you? That’s crazy!” laughed Mandelbaum, too vigorously.
An awkward pause followed while Mandelbaum composed himself.
“Continue.”
The Great Director resumed. “I call her that because… well… because she’s perfect. Too perfect, know what I mean?”
“I do.” He did not. “Go on.”
“Well, have you ever been to a funeral?”
Dr. Mandelbaum was already not listening. He was trying to decide which of the three husbands of the three patients he was currently sleeping with could be waiting in the parking lot for him. It had to be one of those three, because he was sure the personal fitness trainer who had been indulging him in the morning had multiple boyfriends, none of whom would want him dead. Or would they? And he felt confident it was not the seventeen-year-old girl from the fast food joint near his house. No boy from high school would try to settle accounts with him here, in the middle of the afternoon. Plus, his home was in the suburbs, not in the city near his practice.
He thought for a moment about having more affairs near his house—that way he wouldn’t have to worry so much at work. He thought about the young fast food girl and her Technicolor polyester outfit. He wanted her again. What if her father was waiting in the parking lot? Maybe Mandelbaum had gotten her pregnant… and the father—a real gorilla type, he imagined—was out there right now in his sweat-stained coveralls, loading a shotgun and in his seething rage spilling the cartridges onto the floor of his wife’s fuel-efficient hybrid they could never have afforded on his salary, but which he had reluctantly agreed to purchase anyway because let’s face it, who really wears the pants in these modern marriages…
Mandelbaum sighed heavily.
That had to be it.
Why had he had unprotected sex with a seventeen-year-old girl? Why? he wailed inwardly.
“Doctor?”
“What?”
“Have you?”
“Hmm. I think everyone has. I’m just trying to decide how best to answer your question. Let me make a note.” Dr. Mandelbaum wrote a note to himself. “Swing by burger stand. See if she’s…” He drew a large question mark. Then added: “PU condoms.” He circled that twice.
“Okay, go ahead. Continue,” ordered Dr. Mandelbaum.
“Have you ever gone to a funeral? I asked you that! Aren’t you listening?”
Think, Mandelbaum. Think!
“I have,” he said slowly, nodding and replacing the furtive, trapped look he was sure he was wearing with one he hoped would be more distant and wise.
“Good,” said the Great Director. “Then you know what I’m talking about.”
Rats, thought Mandelbaum. He had no idea what this guy was talking about. That was the problem with all these patients. It’s always, me, me, me! What about poor Mandelbaum? Someone’s trying to kill me, I know it!
“Well. I do and I don’t.” Dr. Mandelbaum was pleased with this noncommittal evasion for a brief moment. But he would need to reinforce it. “I think we’re almost on the same page. But I want to hear more from you. You know. How do you see it?”
Perfect, Mandelbaum. Perfect!
The Great Director sighed and started again. “It’s like this. Most of the people you know in life are not nice people, especially if you know them well. People lie, cheat, steal, and generally try to get ahead in life on the backs of someone else. Then they die. Everybody dresses up and goes to their funeral. We go, we cry, we say, ‘He was such a good man,’ or something to that effect. Every funeral. Just once I’d like to go to a funeral and have someone say, ‘This guy wouldn’t have crossed the street to piss on you if you were on fire. He was a liar and a cheat. He never did an honest day’s work in his life, and he had a propensity for kicking over small baskets full of adorable puppies.’ Just once I’d like to hear a eulogy along those lines. But you never do. Instead you hear what a saint! A true humanitarian! They broke the mold! Blah, blah, blah.
“And sometimes I worry that those people might be right. Maybe once you start living right… y’know… ka-pow. The second those things are actually true about you, that’s it. You’ve signed your cosmic death warrant. If you’re a liar and a cheat then you keep swimming, but the minute you’re a saint, that’s it—outta the pool.”
The words “liar” and “cheat” jerked Mandelbaum upright. He readied his defense against the accusation that he was indeed a liar and a cheat. The cuckolded husband who surely awaited him in the parking lot had again occupied his thoughts, and consequently he’d paid little attention to most of the Great Director’s rant. Attempting to recover, he moved swiftly to his notes.
“What does this have to do with ‘Perfect Robot Wife’ and picking up condoms?” he said, quickly looking up from his notes.
“I don’t know about the condoms. Do you have bad penmanship?”
“No, excellent. Why? Oh, I see.” Mandelbaum realized his mistake. “I’m sorry. ‘Pick up condoms’… is therapist code for ‘find out what your emotional defenses are,’ you know, that sort of thing, very Freudian.” He tried a wise chuckle that ended unconvincingly. “I guess you got a sneak peek behind the curtain there.”
Once again the Great Director paused, scrutinizing this explanation. Not altogether satisfied, he lay back on the couch and continued.
“Well, she is one. She’s a Perfect Robot Wife. Everyone I know, every last one of them, man, woman, and child, is imperfect. I watch them do horrible things to each other. I have literally had moments where I could not distinguish between the horror of the nightly news and wha
t was really happening right before my eyes. I see them on the streets, cutting each other off, racing past the poor, heedless of hitting pedestrians, mindless of snuffing out the light of existence, all so they can get somewhere to someplace to satisfy themselves. I listen to them as they tell me of exploits filled with a greed and malice they’re proud of. I listen as they spew out the bile of their own personal hatreds and secret love for anonymous revenge and the misfortune of others. In the most exclusive neighborhoods in the world they tell me about the horrible things they do to other people. I cheated with this person. I stole this. I want to kill so-and-so. They smile and laugh as though it were a joke. But it’s not.
“I know they’re testing me to see if I agree. If I understand. If I’ll help. It scares me to death, and sometimes when I’m not trying, I catch myself thinking like them, plotting like them. Late at night I get home and realize I’m just like them. I’m no better. Maybe I’m even worse. If everyone were like that, if there were no exceptions, then maybe I could be okay with it. Chalk it up to the norm. It’s shocking, but that’s the way it is, so be it. Everyone is like that. Except my wife. She’s perfect.”
Once again Dr. Mandlebaum snapped back to attention, this time at the mention of “perfect” and “wife.” His mind scrambled to associate these words with the patient’s whiny rant. He had no idea how the two words were related or what had brought the session to this point. He could only conjure up visions of yet one more bored and lonely homemaker, a perfect body, willing and ready to cross the bounds of sacred matrimony and throw away the life she knew for one hot moment with him.
This made him forget about the burger stand girl altogether, and he imagined it was one of the women from his wife’s pottery circle. He imagined leaving work early to hang out in the bar at the club. A few drinks, some mixed nuts, then she, the naughty homemaker or whoever she was, would appear. A joke, small talk, a few drinks, and back to her place. Back to the house where she lived with her family. Husband still at work. Kids not home from school. Completed homework on the fridge. A red A+, a happy face, an “Excellent Work!” She would dig through the cupboards looking for the bottle of brandy she keeps. She would need it to go through with this. The house is silent, still smelling of furniture, paint, and too much potpourri—and after a snort of brandy, the hot, torrid, regretful love.
Shortly they’d be lying next to each other, smoking and pretending. Women always want to pretend. Pretend it could be different for them. Different than all the other times. But soon they would both be dressing. Her first, then him, each wondering if they should kiss goodbye. Before her kids come home. Before the husband, whoever he is, comes home. Before dinner. Before the long night ahead. Kiss goodbye and ask, Is this a thing? Is it something between them? She would want to know—they always did. And Dr. Mandelbaum, even though he had no idea who this fantasy homemaker was, where she lived, when he would meet her, or how long it would take to seduce her, he would lie to her and tell her it did mean something. Maybe he would give up cruising the malls, telling young girls he was a talent agent. Maybe he would head back to the suburbs today, to the country club, to the bar. To her. Whoever she was.
“Hmmm!” uttered Mandelbaum deliciously, at thoughts of the Perfect Wife.
“I know it sounds crazy. But, she really is. She’s the opposite of all those people,” continued the Great Director.
Mandelbaum was listening intently now.
“She always looks great. Spectacular even. She’s in perfect shape and has been since the day we married. She changes her hair and clothing style at just the right moment to keep me interested. She’s never complacent. And the house, don’t even get me started on the house. Everything we could possibly need is in that house. I want for nothing. When I was single, just starting out, all I did was want. Even when I was single and had money, I was still wanting. I cooked my eggs with salad tongs, used beach towels for potholders, and ate cereal from a Bundt cake pan. Now we have everything, from the finest luxury soaps to the best olive oils. My house has every piece of furniture, electronic gadget, and specialty store utensil I could possibly want.”
“Sounds wonderful,” said Mandelbaum dreamily, a sleepy smile pasted below his bedroom eyes. Thoughts of the Great Director’s Perfect Robot Wife strutted across the inside of his fluttering eyelids.
“Do you know what a mandolin is for, Doctor? Not the musical kind, but the kitchen kind? I have no clue, but I’ve got one. How about a ‘copper spider’? Hmmm? Me neither.”
The Great Director forged ahead, taking the silences of Dr. Mandelbaum for intense future therapeutic possibility interest, or perhaps surprise at the variety of his culinary possessions.
“I know a lot of rich people. Super rich people. Celebrities. And you would think they’d have their houses all put together, you know, like ours. But if it’s some actor, he’s usually got a bunch of mismatched junk accumulated from various spending sprees. Or if it’s some director, it’s film geek heaven, movie posters and the actual prop monocle from The Werewolf’s Kiss in a glass display case as though it were a sacred relic from some defunct civilization. It’s a prop, not history! And whatever the latest luxury is, they’ve added it to their castle. Usually it doesn’t work, or it’s so crass it causes me to wonder exactly how this hillbilly ever got to Hollywood. But not me. Not my wife. Not our house. If it’s in our house, it’s perfect. It works, it matches, and it’s useful. My wife is perfect, and that scares the hell out of me. It makes me wonder.”
“About sex?” blurted out Mandelbaum, who was always wondering about sex.
“No. Death. Forget about the sex. She’s perfect there. If I want to make love, she makes love. If I want it spicy, it’s spicy.”
“Naughty?” interjected Mandelbaum hopefully.
“Reform-school-girl detention-hour naughty,” assured the Great Director. “No, it makes me wonder if her goodness and her sainthood are going to get me killed. If her perfect love for me is too good to be true. Maybe we’re not lucky enough to be a crabby old couple riddled with liver spots and getting by on rancor. Decades of infidelity, lies, slights, and abuse. Grinding out the years in hopes of outliving the other and enjoying a few quiet moments of solitary triumph at the duck park. No way. My wife loves me way too much and is too good for me to actually think for a second that anything but the cartoon safe of doom is being hoisted, twisting in the wind at the end of a very frayed piece of rope, outside high-rises all over town. Waiting for me to pass underneath.”
Mandelbaum whistled. “Boy, I wish I had your wife.”
“Huh?”
“I wish I had your life. Life. You’ve got it all. Success, career, money, mansion, the perfect wife; I’d be happy with any one of those things.” And Mandelbaum knew exactly which thing he’d be happiest with.
“But that’s the point. It’s too perfect. It makes me wonder.”
“About what?” Please be sex. Please be sex. Please be sex, hoped Mandelbaum.
“About death. I mean, aren’t we spending our whole lives getting it right? And when you get it right, when there’s no mountain left to conquer, isn’t that it? I’ve struggled my entire life to have a career, wife, and possessions. What’s left now except death?”
Mandelbaum was now completely uninterested and feigned making notes by drawing a cartoon of a naked woman without a head. He knew the session was almost up. He wrote the word “Death” where the head of the naked woman should be and then wrote “ME.” He made a big hopeful question mark which he circled, and hoped desperately that it might symbolize the Great Director’s suspicion his wife was being unfaithful. It would make for more exciting conversation in the next session. He might actually pay attention.
An egg timer went off and Mandelbaum stood up, flipping the cover over his notes. “Time’s up. We’ll pick this up next week,” he said officiously.
“Thanks. I really feel like I discovered a few things.”
“Any time. And I mean it. If you want to talk about your life, er, I mean, wife, no that’s not right. I meant life, that’s the correct one. Anyway, that’s what this is for.”
Mandelbaum ushered him to the exit, closed the door behind the Great Director, and lit a cigarette. He drank vodka straight from the bottle he kept in the bottom drawer of his desk and chased it with a mouthful of chalky antacid pills. He checked his schedule, reviewing his next patient. A new patient, a compulsive gambler. After that he would be free for the afternoon.
He thought about the burger stand, the mall, and the country club.
Chapter Seven
If
With therapy in full swing, it was decided by the studio and the Perfect Robot Wife that it was time for the Great Director to show up someplace he, and they, could call work.
A production office had just been established for the Fat Man’s book-slash-movie. Writers had already turned in drafts of scripts, script meetings had been held, rewrites ordered, notes given, more rewrites ordered, and still more notes given. Senior production staff were in the process of being hired, accounts were being set up, parking passes issued, and pencils sharpened. The laborious process of organizing an army that would become a film crew had begun.
The Great Director would direct.
On Tuesday, the Great Director’s personal assistant, Kim, arrived at his mansion to escort him to the production office. The Perfect Robot Wife handed the Great Director a sack lunch stylistically worthy of the celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck. She had also prepared a new Armani leather satchel full of Mont Blanc pens and Crane and Wilde stationery. As Kim punched the accelerator of the anthracite-gray Land Rover with sudden gusto, the Perfect Robot Wife waved goodbye in the rearview mirror. As the Great Director suspected her programming indicated she should.