Zachs looks unperturbed and almost a little excited about the idea of hacking into a bank. “What are our other options?” I ask.
“I set a tracer on the email. Maybe he’s left a review about bad service in the city or something. We’ll see. People leave unintentional tracks all over the place.”
“You think it’s a he?”
He furrows his brow. “I guess so. What’s he get out of it anyway?”
I tend to agree with him. “He likes the power, the feeling that he can make her afraid at any time, which is why I want you to look into Joshua James Terrance. He’s a psychiatrist. His offices are on Madison and East 59th Street.”
“So you think he’s the asshole?”
“I don’t know. But it’s someone who knows her very well, and currently her circle of people is small.”
“What about the ex-boyfriend?”
“Our tail on him doesn’t think he’s the guy. We can’t find any connection between him and the clown.”
“If it’s the doc, man, that’s so wrong. You make her sick so you can keep treating her? That’s fucked up.”
“I’ll have the boyfriend tail take a look at his other patients. See if we can’t identify them and then see if they’ve made any harassment reports. Maybe we can nail him on pattern and practice.”
“On it, boss.”
I leave Zachs to his work, silently berating myself for not asking more questions instead of flirting with her. This is why you don’t get involved with clients. But backing away now isn’t going to happen. I spent the night hard thinking of her in the ratty clothes she described with all that smooth golden skin underneath. I can tell she wasn’t ready, not ready to open the door and not ready to have dirty sex with me over the phone. But I am. Fuck, I am.
I can’t stop thinking about her. I’ve never talked to anyone on the phone so long. Not my mother, not my sisters, not Laura Severson, the girl I dated for four years before I signed up to join the army. We’d made it two years into my deployment before I broke it off. The man she thought she’d fallen in love with didn’t exist anymore. I’d changed from a snot-nosed kid with an Ivy League degree to someone who felt more comfortable sleeping in a ditch than at home in his parents’ multimillion-dollar townhouse.
We’d done those things I’d told Natalie about—the Skype sex, the phone sex. It’d been good. Shit, after days and nights of seeing nothing but the grimy faces of my fellow soldiers and acres of dust, any slight reveal of a boob or ass would’ve gotten me hard back then. She only had to smile or toss her $600 salon-colored, wheat-blonde hair over her shoulder to get me ready. Until it didn’t work anymore. Until I began to dread those phone calls, those Skype sessions, the visits with her back home.
She’d wonder aloud when I was getting out, suggesting various investment firms that would love to have me.
We’d have sex on those visits and I’d wonder how soon I could leave. And the answer was not soon enough. She felt like she couldn’t break up with a patriot, so I did it for her. I was the asshole who left her and she could move on without guilt. I was glad to hear she had gotten married.
At the bottom of the stairs, Victoria greets me. “Jake, do you have a minute?”
I open my mouth to say yes, and then I recall Ian’s warning from last night. The tentative smile on her face signals that business is probably not what she intends to talk to me about. Suddenly I remember I have an appointment.
“Not right now. Just leave me a message.” Victoria has dyslexia and her hastily scribbled notes are a conglomeration of letters and little pictures that only Ian understands. Her partner writes the reports and Victoria leaves me voice messages. In my office, I grab my jacket, phone, and keys.
“It will only take a minute,” she says.
A highly uncomfortable minute, I think.
“Sorry, leave a message.” I brush by her, but she’s dogged and follows me out to the car.
“You can’t escape me this easily. I work with you. I know where you live.” She points upstairs.
“But I have a car so I can escape.”
“You’re going to have a bitch of a time parking.”
“Maybe so.” I move her to the side and unlock the black four-door Audi A8 that she eyes with undisguised interest. Ian had been teaching her how to drive and she’s developed a new interest in cars—a good replacement after she’d traded her cycling shoes in for a private investigator’s license.
I didn’t lie to Victoria, though, because I did have an appointment to see Dr. Crist. It occurred to me after the game that he might have some insight on Natalie. I worry that her doctor is doing her more harm than good. There are good therapists and then there are assholes. I served with assholes and I served with good people. No organization or group of people is devoid of the dreck of humanity, the ones who like to kill for shits and giggles or the ones who are so irresponsible, they’ll shoot themselves in the face by accident. Problem is that sometimes you have difficulty discerning who’s the good guy and who’s the fuckstick.
The tree-lined street where Isaiah’s office is located is already full of cars. Victoria was right. I probably should’ve taken a cab or a car service, but I prefer to drive. I don’t like to be dependent on anyone for anything, including my own transportation. I maneuver the car into a parking spot two blocks away, but halfway to Isaiah’s office, my leg begins to ache—part of the drawback of getting up early and staying out late with a prosthesis.
I climb the steps of the brownstone and press the buzzer, announcing myself.
His secretary releases the lock. Sylvia has been with Isaiah for as long as I’ve known him, and she never looks like she’s aged a day.
“Dr. Crist is running late. May I get you something to drink?”
“No, thank you, ma’am,” I answer. I take a seat to stretch out my leg and give my thigh and knee a quick rubdown. I’m still squeezing it when Dr. Crist comes out.
“Looks like you’re not taking care of yourself,” he says in his deep baritone. Crist is slightly under six feet, but his wide shoulders create an imposing presence.
I rise and give my leg a little shake. “Just spending a little too much time on my leg. Thanks for throwing me under the bus the other night.”
He grins. “I thought you’d enjoy that. Come on in. How’s business?”
“Good. I’ve got more clients than I have employees.” I decide against sitting. Sometimes the burning or ache goes away if I walk it off, other times I just have to live with it. It’s the price an amputee pays for being mobile. I don’t know of one person who is pain-free with their prosthetic. At some point during the day, it starts to ache, but if you embrace the pain, it can be a sweet reminder of what you survived. “I’m guessing it’s the same for you. Sylvia sighed a lot before she told me I could see you at ten.”
“Unfortunately,” he admits, “there is no end of customers. The demand for your type of services may always be high.”
Isaiah’s office takes up almost half of the floor, and one side is lined with books. There are fiction, nonfiction, academic texts, and popular self-help books that rest side by side on the shelves. Toward the end, by the French doors leading to a garden terrace where Isaiah sometimes holds his sessions, I even find a set of Natalie’s books. I pull the first one out. Don’t Sleep by M. Kannan.
I’d have to ask her some time how she came up with her pseudonym. I hold out the book. “You plan to see the movie?”
Isaiah settles behind his desk and puts his feet up as I wander. “Opening night with my wife, I hope. You?”
“Yeah. Opening night,” I echo.
I wonder if Natalie would go or if that was one more thing that she would miss due to her illness. On the other side of the room are pictures. Some are of Isaiah when he was in the army, some when he was in college, but many are pictures of his family—old, deceased, and new. Isaiah lives the life dreamed by every soldier. His wife is literally a supermodel. She doesn’t model anymore but hosts her o
wn reality-TV show. They have three beautiful children. In their wedding picture, the one that he has chosen to showcase in the middle of the wall, his tux pants are rolled up and you can see the titanium leg and blade that served as his foot that day. His wife is holding his hand tightly, her dress pulled up to reveal her perfect ankles and toned calves.
Isaiah is the perfect doctor to talk to if you’re a soldier who thinks his life is over. He will tell you it has just begun.
“I have a friend.” I put the book back in its place and turn around to lean against the shelves. “She suffers from severe anxiety. To the extent that she is housebound. She has difficulty even opening her door at times for fear of what unknown may be on the other side.”
“Anxiety disorders can be seriously debilitating, as you already know.”
I nod slowly, trying to explain the situation as best I can without breaking a confidence. “It’s been going on for at least three years. Recently she had gotten the courage to leave her apartment and go to places close by. A couple weeks ago she was able to make it to the subway entrance but not down in the tunnel. A subway attack was the trigger to her current situation.”
“Then something happened to impair that?”
“She received a threatening note. It disturbed her to the extent that a lot of the advancements that she had made were eradicated.”
He rocks in his big leather chair, the ancient brass ball bearings squeaking with each rotation. “And you want to know what? How to help her? I’ll certainly see her, if that’s what you’re asking. Although my schedule is full, I would make the exception for you.”
“She already sees someone her family trusts, but I don’t have a good vibe about him.”
Isaiah sighs and sits up. He folds his hands on his desk and peers at me over his glasses. “A patient’s relationship with their doctor is a unique one. Particularly when you’re talking about psychotherapy. Many people believe the type of therapy I do for soldiers is inappropriate and that in the long term, even if I solve some of their problems, they will suffer. And I’m sure that some of them would rather go back to the front line than enter my office.”
“She wants to get better and he’s holding her back,” I state plainly.
“How so?”
“Yesterday she told me she wanted to try some of her aversion therapy again and slowly start the process of going outside, but her doctor refuses and has told her to take a bunch of drugs that numb her out. His advice to her is to avoid new people and stay inside.”
“New people like yourself?”
I make an impatient noise and push away from the bookcase to stand near Isaiah’s desk. “He doesn’t know I exist. But her circle of acquaintances and friends is otherwise quite small. It’s two people—one she works for and one who is a family member. He’s tightening the bonds around her, corralling her into a spot where she only has a few contacts vetted by him. I don’t like that.”
The good doctor replies with an evenhanded tone, “Being patient has always been difficult for you. You wanted to be walking before you had the prosthetic on.”
“I did walk before I had the prosthetic.”
He laughs. “I remember you hobbling around the halls with your one crutch, nearly taking out nurses and aides with your recklessness.”
I felt my cheeks heat slightly. “It was one time. I almost ran into a nurse once.”
“Sit down, Jake. You’re looming.” He gestures toward one of the big leather chairs and I drop into it. “You care for this woman, which is wonderful, but I cannot tell you whether this other therapist is doing right or wrong without knowing more about your friend, without talking to her. It may be that she won’t respond well to aversion therapy at this point. My best advice to you is to listen to her. Be encouraging. Don’t force the issue. Everyone has their own timetable for healing.”
“That’s it?”
He stares at me and I stare back. I’m far better at this than Crist. He’s been out of the army too long. “Distractions are good. She can’t focus on two things at one time. If you distract her, completely, then she won’t be able to focus on her anxieties.”
I can do distractions.
“Thanks, Isaiah.” I stand and hold out my hand.
He rises, takes my hand but delivers a slow, disbelieving laugh. “I don’t think you heard anything I said but the last part.”
“You’d be wrong,” I reply cheerfully. “I heard it all.”
I just planned only to follow the last part. Once back in the car and armed with new information, I shoot off a message to Natalie.
Me: What would you like for dinner tonight? Rice or noodles?
Her: Noodles.
She answered immediately. I let out a long breath that I didn’t even realize I was holding.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
NATALIE
Good, I’ll be there with the food at six.
I’m having a date? Oh crap, I’m having a date. The first one in years. Although to say that Adam, the gaming software developer I’d slept with before my subway attack, and I had dated was a stretch. We were two individuals who spent a lot of time with one another who ended up in bed and decided it felt about as good as pizza and a beer after a long day at work.
But my stomach never filled with butterflies at the thought of eating with Adam. I never thought about Adam when I wasn’t with him. I never fantasized what it would feel like to run my hands over his chest or tangle my fingers in his hair.
I didn’t touch myself at night wishing it were him. I spent last night with my old vibrator, which had run out of batteries. I was too embarrassed to ask the doorman to run and get me new ones because it felt tantamount to asking him for tampons. I couldn’t ask Oliver because he would wonder what I needed the batteries for. I ordered a bunch off the Internet, so last night I had a dead vibrator but an active imagination.
And imaginary Jake did things to me that I’m sure are illegal in several states, and if they aren’t, they should be. He licked me and sucked me and spent hours running his hand all over my body. He took me hard and then gentle and then hard again.
I went to sleep excited and woke up hungry for him.
I still wasn’t convinced when I got up that yesterday wasn’t a mirage, that I hadn’t dreamed up the whole conversation, the flirting, the mere existence of Jake. But then he texted me and I couldn’t type my reply fast enough.
The only problem remains whether I can open the door. As I stand here looking at it, I think I can. I’ve spent hours looking at it and psyching myself up to open it. As I walk toward the white metal rectangle, I remind myself that the hallway is empty. I haven’t heard an elevator ding since this morning when everyone on my floor left for work. There’s no one out there. Not a clown. Not a faceless tormenter. Not even Jake.
You can do it. I tell myself. Just a step. Just one. Take just one!
But I’m frozen, three feet from the door as if there’s an invisible shield.
I steel myself to make a mental push, to break through that wall, when my phone dings, alerting me to another message.
I rush to read it, thankful for the reprieve.
Don’t open the door, it says. Or the curtains.
Me: Why?
Him: I’m going to install sensors on your balcony and after I’m done, I’m going to sit there and have dinner.
Me: On the balcony?
Him: Affirmative.
Me: Where will I be?
Him: Inside. Eating the food I bought you.
Me: That’s—
I don’t know what to type after that. Ridiculous? Thoughtful? Outrageous? All of the above?
He texts again before I can reply.
Him: Don’t stress over it. See you tonight.
I can’t let it go, so I call him.
“Natalie,” he answers.
God, I love the way he says my name. It sounds so seductive rolling off his smooth tongue.
“Is it because you think I’m not ready? Because I�
�m ready,” I tell him. “I can open the door or if not the door, at least the curtains.”
Thankfully no one is here to call me a liar.
“I know you can and I want you to open the door, sweetheart. I have plenty of ideas about the things that we could do once we are face-to-face. But there is no hurry. So no door. No curtains. No stress tonight.”
My entire body tingles at Jake’s words. Apparently I’m not the only one who has an active imagination. “You sound like Dr. Terrance,” I grumble, but inwardly I’m so relieved.
“As reluctant as I am to push advice on you from someone that you don’t like very much, I have to agree. I know you want to get out there and do stuff, but there isn’t any hurry. There is no time line by which everyone should be recovered from a trauma they’ve experienced.”
“You don’t think three years is too long a time?” I say in a small voice. Dr. Terrance has said the same to me for years, but I never believed him, not really. Hearing Jake say that is balm on a wound in my soul, one that I didn’t even realize was so painful and exposed until now.
“No, I don’t. I think the more that you press yourself, the harder it is to push past it because then your anxiety builds on your anxiety. That’s like a girl who can’t come. Every guy that she’s with becomes a new test for her, but because she puts so much pressure on herself, she can’t relax and enjoy the moment.”
His reference to other women and orgasms makes me scowl. “You sound like you have a lot of experience with women who’ve never had orgasms.”
Revealed to Him Page 10