by S. D. Perry
He felt a sudden stab of real heartache, remembering that time—the days of polite distance, sporadically interspersed with long and dismal conversations about what she wanted. Turned out, she’d wanted not to be married. They’d been together for eight years; he’d expected to be with her for the rest of his life.
He felt his throat lock up, his eyes sting—and for the first time in months, he really missed her. He shouldn’t be here, he decided abruptly, he should just go home. He could spend the afternoon puttering around the house, watch TV, maybe take a nap.
He hesitated near the last line of cars, frowning. Other than the standard array of maladaptive reactions when Lauren left—sleep issues, a depressive mood episode, some off-and-on body aches—he hadn’t suffered any real adjustment troubles once the final decision had been made. It was a little strange, the sudden re-edged sharpness he was feeling…though that was how emotions worked sometimes. God knew he’d said as much often enough to his clients. Still, it felt…unexpected, somehow.
“Hey, Doc!”
He saw Bob Sayers standing near the trail entrance, smiling widely. John smiled in turn, suddenly very glad to see him. Bob had been an acquaintance before the divorce but had become a friend since. Almost immediately since, actually; John had happened across the older reporter a few days before Christmas the year before, about half an hour after he’d signed the final papers and dropped them in the mail. They’d both stopped at the gas station, were pumping their own in the cold, bitter sunlight, bundled against the icy wind, and when Bob had asked his friendly how’s-things, John had blurted out the inelegant truth—that his divorce was final, and he therefore felt like a big pile of dog shit. Bob had raised his eyebrows, his gaze mild and warm, and offered to bring over a pizza and a bottle of really good whiskey, anytime, so they could chat about it. That very night, as it had turned out, and the dinner and multiple nightcaps had been more enjoyable than John could have expected. One or the other of them had made a point of getting in touch every few weeks after that. Sometimes they went out for a drink, usually they just shot the shit for a few over the phone, but their conversations had proved a welcome break from the loneliness. For both of them, John thought. Bob didn’t talk much about his personal life, but he’d let a few things slip about a long-deceased wife, a relationship he still mourned, however gently.
“Are you leaving?” John asked, as he got closer.
Bob grinned. “Just taking a breather. Seems like everyone wants to talk about the Billings thing.”
John nodded. He’d read the story, even caught the news clip on the local affiliate, and three of his clients had brought it up in the last few days. “Lot of dumb questions?”
“Nope. Lot of people wanting to tell me what I left out,” Bob said. “Billings and the teenager were having an affair. They were in love, he was stalking her, she was pregnant, he was on drugs, his wife liked to watch.”
He lowered his voice melodramatically. “There were videos. Apparently still on the net, if you can believe it.”
“I can’t,” John said.
Bob shook his head. “Buncha gorehounds. I’m as curious as the next, don’t get me wrong, but a lot of our friends and neighbors seem to want to wallow in it, if you know what I mean. Isley, you know?”
“Yeah, I do,” John said. Port Isley wasn’t all that big, and not all that exciting, either. A bit of gossip about the artist’s colony or some scandalous affair would be passed around for weeks in various circles, squeezed for every detail. A double murder–suicide would be making all the rounds well into next winter. He assumed that most small towns were the same…although that assumption was based on fiction, he realized, more than on experience. He’d lived in Seattle most of his life. The Last Picture Show, a high school production of Bus Stop, pretty much anything by Faulkner—his concept of smalltown community was what he’d been fed. He’d been in Port Isley for six years, and while he did have clients who liked to gossip, he’d had just as many of those when he’d practiced in the city. The only difference was now he usually knew who they were gossiping about.
Bob swept his arm back toward the picnic—“Shall we?”—and John nodded. Whatever emotional tic had hit him, it had passed, and he was still hungry. They started walking the short trail and passed a fashionably dressed young couple with two small children, heading back to the lots. The woman carried a young boy, perhaps a year and a half old, on one hip; the father had a six-month-old—a girl, by the profusion of pink she wore—in a chest carrier. Both children were crying, redfaced, and snotty and vaguely adorable in spite of it; the parents seemed entirely exhausted. John had wanted kids pretty early on, but Lauren had wanted to wait. She’d been working on her master’s a few classes at a time, general sociology. They’d fought about it, more than once. Considering how things had turned out, it seemed that she’d had the right idea.
“The best one I heard was that the whole thing was foretold,” Bob said.
John refocused. “What? The murders?”
Bob nodded. An elderly woman walked past them, also headed for the east lot, wearing an expensive lightweight pantsuit. Summer folk. She glanced at Bob’s shapeless shorts and golf shirt and looked away with a sniff. Bob didn’t appear to notice.
“Heard it from more than one source, too,” he said. “The night before, some teenager at a party told the other kids that Ed Billings was going to kill that girl.”
They reached the turn in the trail and stepped around the last stand of trees. Much of the fairground opened up in front of them, vast and green and crowded. There were hundreds of people—brightly dressed families, couples, groups of teenagers. They milled about or sat on blankets or at tables eating off paper plates. At the far side of the grounds John could see concession tables and the large fire pit, presumably manned by one or both of Elson’s co-owners/chefs; they were too far away to tell. Mick was one of his clients. A hundred-plus conversations, laughter, and shrieks from a band of little kids racing by all competed for air, which was pleasantly warm. Nice.
“You believe it?” John asked. He thought he might get a beer first, even if it meant having to chat with Rick Truman for a few moments, which it likely did. John made a serious effort not to try to categorize people, clients or no, but he suspected an array of unspecified personality disorders in Rick’s case; he was passive-aggressive and obsessive in turns. On the other hand, he always ordered top-notch microbrew…
He had expected an immediate no to his question. Registering Bob’s silence, he turned, smiling, expecting a punch line. Bob had slowed, his expression thoughtful.
“You really think someone prophesied the murders?” John asked.
Bob finally smiled back at him. “No, not really. But stranger things have happened. Remind me to tell you sometime about my brother.”
John nodded, keeping his own thoughts on the subject to himself. In his line of work—for anyone’s line of work, really—it didn’t pay to scoff at another’s beliefs. Not everyone had the training he did, understood how the subconscious could create a convincing reality from barely perceived details, give the seer a sense that he or she knew the unknowable—when, in fact, they were only picking up on things that their conscious mind hadn’t registered. Combine that with a universally felt desire to believe in something greater than oneself—God, family, love, government conspiracies, or extraterrestrial life, real or unreal…everyone had their greater-than of choice, and belief in psychic phenomena wasn’t particularly uncommon. Telling that to someone who believed, though, that was beyond patronizing, and while he knew what he knew, he wasn’t in the habit of being as ass.
They walked slowly toward the food tables, stopping several times to chat with other locals. Bob got most of the waveovers; he was well liked and well known. John got a few friendly hellos. He saw several of his clients around and about and was careful to let them acknowledge him first, mindful of their privacy.
“John!”
He turned, smiled. Karen Haley stood
up from a rumpled plaid blanket on the ground where another woman and a young boy were sitting. She waved him over, and seeing that Bob had been waylaid by one of his cronies, John headed in her direction.
She looked good, fit and smiling. Karen had suffered terribly after the death of her husband three, four years before. Guiding her through it, watching her slowly regain herself through months of therapy, had been professionally and personally quite rewarding for him; she was a strong, capable woman, a bit blunt at times but a pleasure to work with.
They hugged briefly, exchanged pleasantries, agreed that it had been too long, and then Karen was introducing her sister and nephew. The other woman stood and leaned in to shake his hand. Her own was slender and warm.
“This is Sarah, Sarah Reed,” Karen said. “And my brilliant nephew, Tommy.”
“Jeez,” Tommy muttered, but smiled agreeably. He looked about eleven or twelve. Sarah, John remembered, was four or five years younger than Karen, perhaps late thirties. His age. She was a teacher, married, lived in Seattle. Karen had spoken of her fondly.
“Sarah, this is John Hanover. Dr. John?”
“Oh, right,” Sarah said, her smile deepening. “Karen’s had good things to say about you.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” he said. “Are you here for the summer?”
“Yep. Got a job to get back to in September,” she said. He noticed how blue her eyes were; she had tiny fine lines just starting to etch at the corners, accenting them. When she brushed an errant dark-blonde strand of hair out of her eyes, he saw she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.
“Not if I can talk her out of it,” Karen said. “I finally got her here, I want to keep her around for a while. Well, and my nephew, of course. He’s the brains of this operation. He’s been working on the inn’s web page for us.”
Tommy managed to shrug without moving his shoulders, a kind of eye flick and smirk, but John could see that a smile lurked there as well.
John nodded at him. “Impressive. Mac or PC?”
Tommy grinned. “Mac by choice, PC by necessity.”
They all laughed. Tommy asked if he could go get a Coke. His mother gave him a
few bills and he mumbled a rote “nicetameetcha” before disappearing. He seemed like a nice kid. Bright. John hadn’t spent a lot of time around children, but he found he generally liked them.
“Susan, you should totally hook up with John,” Karen said abruptly.
Susan raised her eyebrows. “What?”
“You said you were looking for a good therapist since the divorce,” Karen said, matter-of-factly. “You should call John.”
Blunt as ever. There was a brief silence, John trying to think of something to say, but Sarah managed to smooth it over.
“Thanks, Kare,” she said, sarcastically but with no real bite. “Way to make me feel totally awkward. Is your gynecologist around?”
John laughed, deciding he liked her. And those extraordinary eyes…it was the second time in a week that he’d noticed a woman’s eyes, he realized. Or cared whether she was married.
And only a few minutes after you were ready to go home, depressed over Lauren. Aren’t we the bipolar bear?
Bipolar bear. His girlfriend in med school used to call him that. Katherine. She’d been the great love of his life before Lauren…
He shook himself mentally, dragging himself back to the present. Karen suggested that he join them for dinner sometime, and he went through the brief internal dance of whether to explain that it wasn’t likely to happen; even if it had been more than two years since their last appointment, what the APA guidelines recommended, he didn’t feel comfortable socializing with former clients. If one of them ever needed his services again, it could be problematic…not to mention, the client-doctor roles weren’t easily sidestepped, which caused its own set of issues. Luckily, she seemed to pick up on his hesitation, adding a cheery, “or maybe we’ll just run into each other around town.” John nodded, glad that she was as perceptive as he remembered. He said his goodbye and smiled at both women, his gaze meeting Sarah’s and lingering a split-second longer than he meant. She seemed to flush ever so slightly, quite prettily, although perhaps it was just the sun.
He headed back to where Bob was now standing alone, waiting for him, thinking that maybe he was due for a checkin with his therapist.
Maybe you just need to get laid, he thought, and tried to make it fit, but the thought wasn’t very funny, even in his head.
“Sorry about that,” Bob said, as they started walking toward the tables again. “Henry Dawes wants to drag me out on his boat again next week. I keep trying to get out of it; he likes to be on the water by sunrise, but he won’t let up and—hey, there she is.”
Bob nodded toward a couple standing in the shade of a narrow tree stand not far away, a pale teenage girl in black with short, choppy dyed-black hair and a tall, slender young man in a tight T-shirt. They were smoking, and both had the alternative look; the girl wore a ripped skirt and heavy boots, and the boy’s short hair was carefully mussed with product. He recognized the boy as Devon Shupe. The high school counselor had asked his advice two years before about dealing with an openly gay student and hadn’t been particularly careful about keeping the name to herself. Devon had been pointed out to him since then, by someone or another. Being gay, even flamboyantly so, didn’t come with the stigma it once did, but Port Isley wasn’t all that liberal. Not in winter, anyway.
“There who is?” John asked.
“The psychic,” Bob said. “Rita Fergus pointed her out. Said her daughter swore up and down that she—Amanda, I believe—told people that Lisa Meyer would be killed by Ed Billings.”
“Huh,” John said. The girl seemed tense, her shoulders up, her arms folded. As he watched, she dragged deeply off her cigarette and said something to her friend, smoke leaking from the corners of her mouth. “You going to talk to her?”
“No. I imagine some of her friends—or enemies, more likely—are playing a joke on her. I doubt she even knows. And I’d kind of like to get through the rest of my day without being scoffed at by a punk-rock girl.”
The girl looked up then, and right at John. Her face was soft and round and surprisingly innocent. Pretty, really. She stared at him for a minute, then reached up with her free hand and carefully scratched under her eye, using just her middle finger. John looked away, almost smiling, trying to remember if he’d been so hostile at her age. It seemed likely.
“So, beer first or food?” Bob asked, as they reached the small crowd that was breaking into lines, heading for hors d’oeuvres or grilled sea bass or microbrew.
“Beer,” John said, emphatically. It suddenly seemed like the perfect answer to his strangely wandering thoughts. Pure escapism in a top-quality IPA, and he absolutely refused to feel guilty about it. “And I’m buying.”
Sadie Truman ate a water cracker topped with smoked salmon, delicately licking her lips and smiling in Josh’s direction. It had been a busy day, but he was in between customers for the moment, the lunch rush mostly past, the restocking caught up. The beautiful Josh was packing ice around the perishables, but he caught the smile. He glanced around, saw that Rick was talking up some summer people, and smiled back at her, a hint of a leer in the expression. It had been six whole days since they’d had a minute together, with Rick barging around, sticking his nose into every corner, getting things ready for the picnic, and she missed him—missed “it”—terribly. What Josh could do with his hands, once she’d shown him how…
Rick’s boisterous fake laugh assaulted her ears, dragging her away from a particularly pleasant thought. She looked over at him, at his grinning, chunky face, and felt a chill of disgust. He was a wizard at managing their portfolio, seemed to know exactly what to invest in and when, and she had no doubt that without him, her restaurant dreams would have remained just that. Plus, he adored her. But God, she was sick of his lame jokes and aggressive social behavior and sad bedroom antics. If he had any idea how much d
isdain she felt, even looking at him some days…
Rick was shaking hands with another summer couple, his patented hearty grin plastered firmly in place. Sadie stole another look at Josh, now serving a new gathering of summer people, at his comfortably slouchy jeans, his too-long hair curling behind his ears, imagining the tight, muscular torso hidden beneath his silly Hawaiian shirt, and felt a tingling in her belly. He was fifteen years her junior, he was relaxed and handsome and passionate, everything that Rick wasn’t, and she couldn’t get enough of him. Couldn’t wait to get more of him, either. They only had the summer; he’d be going to graduate school in the fall, and it was unlikely he’d be back next year. There would be another Josh, of course—over Rick’s intermittent protests, she always insisted on doing the summer hiring for the shop—but some years she’d been forced to settle for much less. Worse, some years, there’d been no Josh at all.
A heavy hand crashed across the back of her neck, then rubbed briefly and viciously.
“How ya holding up, sweetheart?”
Sadie smiled automatically, moved away from the pinching fingers. How had he managed to sneak up on her? “Good, I’m good. How are you?”