Chapter 27
Peter sat in the same spot for a long time after the detectives left. He couldn’t think of anything to think about. He blacked out with his eyes wide open.
After an hour or two, or maybe a day or two (Peter had lost track of time), he roused himself and mixed a stiff Jameson Irish Whiskey highball in a very large non-highball glass and sat down at his laptop to write. The only thing he could write about was How to Kill Your Wife. He wrote for hours until the glass was empty. He filled page after page and finally fell asleep on the sofa. When he woke up, he made a pot of coffee, poured himself a big mug of java with a double shot of Bacardi 8 rum on top of it and wrote some more. When the mug was empty, he poured himself a second mug, this time with rum on the bottom and a little coffee on top. He wrote without noticing the time, until the phone rang.
“Peter here.”
“It’s Bobby. How’s it going?”
“They’re all dead.”
“Who, Peter? You sound like shit. Are you drunk?”
“Yes. No. Dudley and Marty are both dead.”
“Who the fuck are Dudley and Marty?”
“He was here for dinner once when you were here.”
“That weird guy with the funny look in his eyes? Really quiet?”
“Bobby, just shut up. He was a good guy. Marty went on two combat tours in Afghanistan and was messed up. I sort of found him dead. I was the one who called the cops.”
“Who was that Dudley person you mentioned?”
“His dog. I cry every time I think of that dog, but not when I think of Marty. Funny, eh? Fuck me, I’m crying now. You’d think I was a fag. Why do dogs make me cry, but not a person? What kind of crappy friend am I, Bobby?”
“You’re not bad, just crazy. Look, you just shot your own dog, so dogs are naturally on your mind. And you haven’t shot any people yet, except in that bad-shit crazy book you told me you’re writing for your shrink. Do you want to go out for a drink and some food with me tonight?”
“Fuck, I don’t know, Bobby. What day is it?”
“It’s Tuesday, Peter.”
“I’ve been writing and drinking and falling asleep over and over again for awhile now. I can’t remember the last time I ate.”
“Do you need someone to come over and hold your hand?”
“No.”
“I’ll come over after work.”
“Sure. Thanks Bobby.” And Peter immediately forgot that Bobby was coming over.
Peter started writing again and wrote for the rest of the day. Peter didn’t look back and read what he was writing because he couldn’t let himself stop. He knew that if he did, he would have to think, and he didn’t want to think. So he wrote straight ahead.
When Bobby picked him up, Peter was surprised to see him, having forgotten their conversation. Peter was so touched by Bobby’s gesture in showing up that he started to cry. Bobby held him in his arms until he was done, then Bobby marched him to the sink and washed his Peter’s snotty face as if he was a little boy. He made Peter sit in a chair while he put Visine in his eyes to clear them up. He took Peter’s hand and drove him to dinner. Peter never spoke.
Bobby and Peter drove to Billy Jack’s for wings and pitchers. Bobby was dressed like an ordinary guy and hadn’t put on a hint of makeup. Bobby talked about his new friend and asked Peter for dating strategies, as though Peter had any idea what a useful dating strategy was. Bobby avoided mentioning Marty’s death. Bobby didn’t like yucky stuff.
Peter remained mostly silent, and wished he were still at home writing and not in this tacky place, eating tasteless food with Bobby. Peter excused himself halfway through Bobby’s description of a particularly energetic sex act and went to the can. He looked in the mirror and saw eyes that were still somewhat red-rimmed in a face that he could barely recognize. Peter was beginning to look dead.
He returned from the can with no appetite for wings and no thirst for beer. He pushed one cold, blood-colored wing around on his plate and listened to Bobby prattle on about his new boy toy.
Peter needed to see his therapist. Bobby was a good friend but no substitute for therapy. Peter couldn’t expect him to understand the hell his life had become.
Chapter 28
Peter called Lisa’s office that night and left a message saying that he was about to start sleeping with a loaded shotgun - something he had actually done, years before, during a previous bout of depression. Peter thought that sleeping with the gun focused him. It made him sharply aware of Camus’ words: “The only true philosophical question is suicide … after that you’re bound to be an optimist.”
Lisa phoned back first thing in the morning. “Peter, do you have a loaded gun in your house now?”
“No, just 10 unloaded ones.”
“Are you trying to tell me that you’re going to kill yourself?”
“No, shit, sorry, I was just being dramatic. I’m frightened that I’m becoming depressed again and I did sleep with my gun when I was depressed before. I’m not going to kill myself; I’m just frightened. A friend of mine just killed himself and his dog and I’m the one who phoned the cops. I walked into his house and smelled death. I can still smell it on me no matter how much I shower. I went on a bender and blacked out for a day or two and wrote about fifty pages of stuff about killing the previous administration, but that’s not what’s so weird …”
“Peter, listen to me. Are you sure you don’t want to hurt yourself now? You have to tell me in plain English.”
“Lisa, I won’t hurt myself. I just want to see you before my scheduled appointment. Things are getting really weird. You know that writing I’ve been e-mailing you about poison? Well, my friend poisoned himself and his dog. He was on a dozen kinds of pills. And I’ve been getting these weird phone calls.”
“Peter, I’m solidly booked today and tomorrow, but I can see you in the evening if you need to talk.”
“No, I can wait. Really. I just panicked, that’s all. I can wait.”
“Okay, Peter, if that is what you want. However, I’ll give you top priority if anyone cancels. Will that be all right? Are you all right?”
“I’m okay now that I’ve talked to you. I feel a little foolish for that message I left.”
“Don’t feel foolish about calling if you’re really in distress. I don’t think you were being ‘dramatic.’ Hey, I have a doctorate in psychology and I know what drama is. I’ll see you soon.”
“Okay. Goodbye and thanks, Lisa.”
Chapter 29
Peter did feel a little better, but he was still broke, desperate and dogless, so he went back to doing the only thing that made him forget: writing about killing his wife. He had been working on some ideas about “fixing” a car so it would go out of control at high speed. He was too frightened to even think about poison again. Marty had killed himself with poison or pills; that freaked Peter out. He liked violence, but he liked it at some remove - like in a movie or book. Real-life violence scared the hell out of him.
The writing came easily. When he had gone as far as he could in his online research about “fixing” cars and dabbled in writing some speculative scenes, Peter went over his earlier musings on murder and began to organize them into readable form. But he was distracted; something was amiss in his universe. It no longer operated on rational principles he could understand. The two ugly murder plans he had written as fiction came true in real life - not exactly as he had written them, but close enough to chill him deeply. Shootings and poisonings in fiction had become shootings and poisonings in real life. He speculated that hallucinations and dreams were becoming his new reality.
When the time came for him to see Lisa, Peter was anxious to hear what she would say about these coincidences between fiction and real life. He needed someone who knew what sanity was to check the “realness” of his reality.
Chapter 30
“Come in, Peter, and take any seat you like but mine. Are you feeling any better than when we talked on the phone? Or
maybe we should start by discussing your friend’s suicide.”
“Strangely enough, I’m not dwelling on it. It was his decision, but he shouldn’t have killed his dog. I would have taken Dudley.” Peter was numb. His voice was blasé, emotionless.
“What about your dog? Do you think about him?”
“Strangely, I’m not dwelling on that either.”
“Why do you say ‘strangely?’”
“Well, I think I should be more upset, but I’m not. Do you think it might be a bad thing?” Peter thought it was.
“Bad … how so?”
“Maybe I just can’t feel things like other people. Maybe I’m as bad as the previous administration says I am.”
“You told me what you were feeling when you called me about sleeping with your shotgun. In this office, you’ve told me how deeply you feel about your dog. I wouldn’t call that ‘not feeling.’ Remember how I told you the mind has a way of sealing off the hurt to protect itself? Do you think you could function on a day-to-day level if you were thinking all the time about sleeping with your shotgun? It’s not a bad thing; it’s just a neutral thing to recognize and deal with.”
“Okay. But where does all the hurt and anger go? It can’t just go away, can it?” Peter was mystified by his lack of emotion sitting there in his therapist’s office.
“Do you think you might be putting some of these emotions into your writing, Peter? I must admit, I didn’t read that huge document you sent me recently in its entirety, but I did read part of it. Unfortunately, I just don’t have time to go through that much material without charging you for it. Do you remember saying to me that writing makes you ‘feel better?’ Am I quoting you correctly?” Lisa consulted her notes.
“Yeah, I do feel better. The hurt and pain go away when I’m writing – at least, they aren’t right there in my face the way they are the rest of the time.”
“Your feelings might very well be going into the writing. I’m not your personal literary critic but I will say that you not only write well, you write with feeling - and that’s a gift. What you write is very serious and deadly but also very funny. That’s a gift, too. My sister-in-law is a senior editor at Bachman & Bates. Let me send this big chunk of text to her - anonymously, of course - and maybe she’ll agree to give you some feedback. I don’t really need to see your writing any more. I think you and I should concentrate on what goes on when we’re face to face.”
“Okay. You’re the one who holds a doctorate in psychology. You can send it to her. If she tells me she hates my writing, you might get another call about me sleeping with a shotgun.”
Lisa shot Peter a quick look.
“Just kidding … I love rejection; why else would I design my life to provide me with so much?”
“‘Rejection.’ Who has rejected you, Peter? Let’s start with ancient history. Do you remember your first rejection?”
“Shit, it all goes back to the mother, doesn’t it? All that Oedipal stuff. How ordinary! I fucking hate being ordinary.”
“Tell me about that rejection.”
“No.” Peter remembered every detail but didn’t want to talk about it.
“Why not? What makes you uncomfortable about telling me?”
“I know it’s ‘unhealthy,’ blah blah blah, but I don’t want to go there, okay? Let’s move on.”
“I’ll have to respect that. Tell me about your second memory of rejection, then.”
“My father. Let’s move on.” Another ghost rose from the grave. Peter sent him back in a hurry.
“You won’t tell me about that either? Why?”
“Look, they’re both dead. We shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
“Fine, we’ll play your game here. What was the third one you remember?”
“A girl. Cheryl Rowley. She left me for my best friend, Jerry.”
“How old were you?”
“Nine.”
“What kind of relationship did you have with Cheryl?”
“I was in love with her and wanted to marry her. I spent weeks fantasizing about killing Jerry for stealing my girl. I wanted to smash his head with a brick. But then her family moved to Michigan, and Jerry and I were friends again.”
“You wanted to kill your best friend over a girl when you were nine? Tell me about that.”
“Wow. You’re good! No shit. I haven’t thought about this in decades. I had all the same kinds of elaborate killing fantasies I’m now having about Kathryn.”
“Amazing what a doctorate will do. Have you had any other rejections that stand out, that have triggered these kinds of fantasies?”
“One more that I can remember. A woman who left me to live with another guy … same old shit.”
“So this is a pattern. You recognize that. That’s good. I asked you once if you have ever physically harmed an animal or person and you told me you hadn’t. Is that still true?”
“Yeah. I tried to kill myself when I was 19, but obviously failed.”
“What brought that on, Peter?”
“My university roommate left for a semester abroad and I got depressed. We were very close, but we weren’t gay or anything.” Peter hadn’t thought about this in years. He started to envision the inside of his skull crawling with snakes. This was just one of the snakes.
”How did you try to kill yourself?”
“With a shotgun. I pulled the trigger and nothing happened. The gun won’t fire from the left barrel to this day, even though I’ve had it repaired twice and spent a lot of money on it. It has never worked. I think it has a ghost in it.”
“What did you mean by ‘we weren’t gay or anything?’ Did you have feelings for him? Sexual feelings?”
“Not actual sexual feelings as in, I wanted to actually touch him or any part of him. Not like that …” Peter couldn’t find the words to explain what it was like to love another guy. All the words he could think of seemed wrong. He surely wasn’t gaga about anything in pants like his buddy Bobby.
“But you got depressed when he left.”
“Yes.”
“Were there any other rejections followed by depression?”
“No. I got really good at getting rid of the women first, so I wouldn’t get dumped. Maybe that’s what I did with the previous administration, huh?”
“Is it?”
“Yeah. I was addicted to her body. I hate being addicted to anything. I’ve had dreams about addiction since I was a little kid - dreams about old-time gangsters in fedoras and trench coats holding me down and then shooting me up with heroin. I woke up after those dreams with an erection. Weird, huh? So, I was addicted to Kathryn’s body, and I started fooling around with a different body to break it. Then I got addicted to Frannie’s body. Shit. Addiction, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anger; I’m going to have to be in this office for years, and I can probably only afford another few weeks.”
“Peter, did you hear what you said to me today? I think you told me some very important things. Unfortunately, our time is almost up.”
“Yeah, okay, but before I leave, what I really want to know - what I really came here for - was to find out about witches.”
“Peter, I’m very sorry. We don’t have time to talk about that now. I’ll note that thought for the next time. And Peter, I just want to be very clear that you did tell me it would be okay to send this recent writing to my sister-in-law the editor, anonymously of course?”
“Yes, it’s okay.”
“Peter, I think you’re making real progress here with what you’re bringing me. I don’t think you will have to see me forever. It’s you doing all the good work; I just have the diploma.”
Peter left, still wondering about witches.
Chapter 31
When Peter got outside Lisa’s office, he checked his phone and found a message from Elaine Madison. He phoned back immediately and Elaine answered on the first ring with a snarly, “What do you want?”
“Elaine, you have to work on your phone manner.
It’s Peter Broviak returning your call.” Peter tried to imagine what Elaine was wearing. Everything he imagined was sexy.
“You’re on the clock now, boy. Be as pleasant as you want for as long as you want.”
“No, thanks. I get it. What did you call me for?”
“I want to see you about some additional papers I received from Kathryn’s lawyer.”
“When?”
“I can see you right now, but I imagine you’re in that snuggly little town you live in, huddled around your computer, making up ads to fool a gullible public.”
“No, I’m in the city and three blocks from you.”
“Then hang up and get your ass over here. I have 19 minutes to spare and the clock is running.”
Peter walked into Elaine’s office without knocking and sat down. “Give me the bad news.” Peter was treated to a view of Elaine in a severe black suit. The skirt was short and hiked way up on her thighs. She had on tastefully patterned black stockings. He could see the tops of them hooked to a garter belt. His earlier fantasy hadn’t gone below her chest.
“At the risk of sounding corny, I have good news and bad news. I’ve gone over all of your documentation and financials and your wife’s material. You two are miles apart and one of you is lying a lot. I reckon it’s your wife, even though I get paid no matter what my personal beliefs. I’m not a fortune teller and judges are capricious creatures, but at the end of the day - which may be three years from now, during which I’ve pocketed $100,000 in fees - you will probably win your case to a greater degree than you will lose. Do you have all that time and money?”
Peter let out an involuntary burst of laughter. He had not been listening with his whole mind, but got the gist of the message: “Peter is screwed.”
“So, you have no money?” Elaine asked in an innocent voice.
Receiving no answer, she went on, “Peter, well, look, I’ll give you back your $5,000. I won’t bill you for what I’ve already done. I can’t do anything for you in court or file anything or schedule pre-trial conferences for $5,000.”
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