by Edward Lee
“Well, then,” Alice stammered. “That’s you! So do it! Get me out of here! You can’t let them take me to a mental ward!”
“Sure I can, and I ought to,” Holly came back, leaning forward tauntingly. “I ought to let you sit in the nutshack for a few days, so you can think about what you’ve done.”
“But you won’t!”
Holly’s brows raised sharply. Then she turned around and began to march out of the hospital room.
“Holly, please!” Alice nearly screamed. “I’m sorry! I’ll never do it again! Don’t let them take me!”
Without turning to face Alice, Holly said, “Say please.”
“I did say please!”
“Say it again.”
Alice was fuming. She was so angry and terrified, she thought she could feel her eyes crossing. “All right, please!”
“That’s better,” Holly said, and turned back at the door. “Now get your clothes on so we can get out of here. I’ve already signed you out.”
Humiliated, Alice slid out of the high hospital bed, stood up, and falteringly removed the white gown. Thank God whoever had undressed her had been decent enough to leave her bra and panties on, and thank God, too, that Holly had brought her jeans and a blouse so at least she wouldn’t have to leave the hospital in the nightgown in which she’d tried to kill herself. Her right bare foot felt cold against the tile floor. Her left foot…itched.
Damn her, she thought. Holly and her mumbo jumbo. Phantom limbs, transitive suicidal, state custody. What a little smartass…
Holly stood with her arms crossed under her bosom. “Hurry up. I haven’t got all day,” she said.
“You mean all night,” Alice replied, sitting down to pull her jeans over her prosthesis.
“No, Alice, it’s just past noon.”
Jesus, Alice thought. Noon. But she felt so tired, as though she hadn’t slept for days. She buttoned up her blouse, the faintest faded pink. Then slipped on her shoes.
“I’m ready,” she peeped.
“All right then, come on,” Holly replied, but before she made for the door she pointed her finger at Alice, like a gun.
“And let me tell you something. If you ever, and I mean ever, pull another stunt like this, so help me, I’ll kick your ass…”
««—»»
They rode in total silence, back up Cathedral Street, away from the hospital. The blue Maserati’s engine purred, nearly as silent. Holly hated being the heavy, but that was just the way it had to be. She didn’t believe in pampering patients.
Patients, she thought, her hands tight on the steering wheel. Patient. But Alice was more than that; she’d always been. She was also a friend.
Maybe the only real friend I have, Holly considered. Professionally, there was no one. And socially? What a joke. She hadn’t had a social life in ages, not since school. No time. But it was more than that, wasn’t it? She could always make time if she wanted to. But—
She didn’t. She didn’t want to.
She had no desire…
No desire for what? she wondered then, taking a left onto Conduit Street. That could mean any number of things.
No desire for friendship? For love, for sex?
She shrugged to herself.
“What are you shrugging for?” Alice finally spoke.
“Some people talk to themselves,” Holly answered, checking street signs. “Well…I guess I shrug to myself.”
“Oh.”
“I still have two patients to see today,” Holly said. “So I’d like you to—”
Alice lurched in the padded leather seat. “Holly, you’re driving right by my street!”
”—so I’d like you to stay in my back office,” Holly continued. “You won’t be disturbed. You can rest on the couch back there.”
“That’s really not necessary, I’d really much rather go back to my—”
“It’s not a good idea for you to be alone at your house just yet, not right after coming out of the hospital. You’ll stay in my back office. I don’t want you in a situation where you’re by yourself, having to reconfront the locale of your—” Holly paused, dismissively eyeing the Taylor Watch House on the corner as she drove past Alice’s street. “I don’t want you in the same place,” she rephrased, “where you tried to hurt yourself.”
“You mean kill myself,” Alice said with a smirk.
“Was that what you were really trying to do?”
Alice’s smirk only deepened. “No, Holly, actually all I wanted was attention.”
“You don’t have to be so cynical. I was only asking you an objective question. No matter. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about how you feel.”
“Gee, I can hardly wait.”
“Stop being a smartass.”
“Oh, right, you cuss me out at the hospital, make me feel like a little baby—”
Holly shrugged. “Then stop acting like one.”
“Goddamn you.”
“Hey, you’re the one who hates to hear people cuss.” Holly suppressed the urge to laugh. That probably wouldn’t come off too well, not while Alice was in such a hostile state. Her hostility, she knew, was reversional. Alice’s only genuine hostility was focused on herself.
“The reason I cussed you out at the hospital was because I care about you,” Holly said. “I know you don’t particularly care for some of my therapeutic methods, but that’s hardly the point. Believe it or not, in spite of what you did to yourself last night, you’re making a lot of progress. It’s best if we don’t talk at all right now. Your thoughts aren’t collected; you’re wound up, off track, and you’ll only react defensively in any mode of conversation. So just sit back and relax. Enjoy the ride. Enjoy this beautiful day.”
Alice looked on the verge of another spattering of vocal ejaculation. But instead she scowled once, then relaxed against the seat.
It was like Mutt and Jeff. Holly could play the bad guy only for so long before she had to become the good guy. But there was plenty of time for that. She felt bad about talking to Alice the way she had at the hospital; she hated making Alice challenge herself. But, then, that was the chief purpose in antagonistic therapy. Take some of your own advice, Holly, she told herself then. Just relax. Enjoy the beautiful day.
And it was beautiful. The world, all around her, seemed bursting with color, with sedate splendor. Holly took the long way around the area, which was called the Federal District. All that gorgeous old architecture, meticulous hedgerows, sprawling trees planted as seedlings two and even three hundred years ago, making a canopy over this tiny world of its own. Though she loved the scenery, the area didn’t suit Holly herself. She lived in a luxury town house on the water, guarded, sterile. It seemed more like herself.
A few minutes later she pulled the Maserati into the tiny brick-walled court behind her office. Birds chirped from trees as they got out. Alice lethargically followed Holly up the short flight of encased stairs. They went in through the back way. Holly’s office had three rooms: a waiting area, her own office, and a smaller office in the back, which she used mainly to store books and medical and psychiatric journals. An old black patent-leather couch rested against the paneled sidewall, beneath a Mondrian print of spikes and dots. “Lie down there,” Holly said. “Go to sleep. I’ll only be a few hours.”
The couch upholstery squeaked as Alice lay down. Her exhaustion seemed to effuse into the sedate room.
Her eyelids fluttered. “Holly. I’m sorry.”
“I know,” Holly said at the door. “I am too.”
“I just—”
“Shh! Go to sleep.”
With that, Holly left and quietly clicked the door shut behind her. Her first patient, Robert, was a thirty-six-year-old white male, a magazine writer. Robert came to Holly for hypnotherapy, to control his weight, and was rare in that he was one of the few patients Holly had signed on who didn’t harbor some sexually related disorder. He’d lost thirty pounds over the last year, and always came back for a few sessions whe
n he started to gain weight again. With drug-assisted hypnotherapy—a mild 2-mg. dose of Scopolamine—she’d regressed him back to early childhood. Robert’s mother, it seemed, had well-indoctrinated her son to food, claiming that it was a sin not to eat everything on one’s plate, since so many people in the world were starving. Hypnotic age-regression was easier than most people believed. With a proverbial “Deep Blue Lake” image as the precursor, Holly had merely regressed Robert back to his earliest childhood memory of food, planted a counteractive hypnotic block, and that was all it took. Whenever Robert felt the desire to eat excessively, that same desire now functioned as the block. Hence, the desire died. Subsequent visits involved a simple refurbishment of the hypnotic command. Simple. Holly had learned the technique at Johns Hopkins.
Her second patient was far more unique: a battered husband. Gary was married to a woman whose carnal longings revolved around a dominant sexual role. “I married a goddamn top,” Gary had first complained. “She beats the shit out of me almost every night.” “Why don’t you leave her then?” Holly had asked. But her patient had looked back at her absurdly. “I can’t leave her, I could never leave her,” he attested. “I love her.” His wife’s therapist had her on Depo-Prevera, which not only functioned as adequate birth-control but lowered LH and FSH levels in the brain, reducing sex drive. Gary came to Holly only once a month now, for recovery psychotherapy. He still had terrifying memories to deal with: his wife’s S & M forays, which included bondage, sexual asphyxia, skin-cutting, sleep deprivation, and burning with cigarettes. It’s a strange world, Holly thought. She herself had only toyed with light bondage once—a bossy girl she’d had a brief affair with during her post-graduate work—and she hadn’t liked it at all. The oddity of the scenario, and all its handcuff and leather trimmings, had been too distracting, had reduced her orgasms to feeble pelvic hiccups. At times, the image even seemed laughable.
The pair of sessions passed quickly. Twice Holly stuck her head into the back office only to find Alice sleeping quite soundly, so she didn’t wake her. Sleep was what she needed most right now. Suicidal tendencies could be as devitalizing as a marathon run, the long-term exhaustion taking a monumental toll once the crisis was over and done with.
Thank God she didn’t die, Holly thought only now. Alone in her office, the professional veneer eroded to expose the true earth of her soul. Suddenly she was crying.
I should’ve been more alert, more observant, she blamed herself. I should’ve anticipated this, seen it coming, nipped it in the bud. How could I have been so stupid?
The longer she maintained this professional shell, she knew, the harder it would be to reveal her true feelings— her love—for Alice. And what might Alice’s reaction be?
Holly shuddered.
She’s straight, and I’m a closet lesbian. It would probably drive Alice away, infuriate her. It might even disgust her. To get Alice’s psyche, and hence her life, back on track, Holly knew she had to see to Alice’s resocialization. Urging her to reacquaint herself with men, to start dating, seemed the most likely route to success. If Alice found that men were interested in her, her self-esteem would slowly rebuild, as would her ability to view herself as a whole woman rather than an amputee. But here was the biggest contradiction: men, Holly thought. The entire situation was a cyclic trick bag. Holly was in love with Alice and wanted nothing more than for Alice to love her, but the only therapeutic method to break Alice’s depression was to get her dating again…
Dating men, Holly thought with a helpless grimness. What could she do? Urge Alice to date women? That would be absurd, of course. She probably has no gay longings at all, and never has, never will. But in truth it wasn’t men that Holly wanted Alice to reconnect herself with, it was her sexuality, and men would provide the surest avenue. Holly could only hope that one day Alice’s sexuality would broaden.
But would that ever really happen?
Holly slumped at her desk, her cheeks damp. She almost died last night and here I am trying to think of a way to make her love me. At once she felt disgusted with herself; she felt like a charlatan. As a doctor of psychiatry her only legitimate concern could be Alice’s mental well-being. Holly was being torn by opposing poles, her love and her professional obligations, and she knew that the latter was all she could ever ethically project to Alice. Anything beyond that could get her license pulled, have a restraining order slapped on her, get her kicked out of the state. Things like that happened to psychiatrists every day, the stupid ones who dared to break the cardinal rule: Never get involved with a patient.
Holly felt lost, aimless, a disgrace to her profession. I love her. I can’t help it!
She dabbed a Kleenex at the tears in her eyes.
How could I have let this happen?
— | — | —
13
He’d quit his dumbass job a few days ago. A going-nowhere job tending the cash register at a local boat shop—big deal. Selling yacht supplies all day for $5.50 an hour. But that was part of the plan; every so often Steve was wise to pick up some flunky job; he needed the W-2 as proof of income, to keep the IRS off his ass. He jumped from one to the other: cashier, pump jockey, salesman, security guard; he’d even worked in a video rental place once. These jobs were just cover.
Steve’s actual career goals were quite different.
He was a burglar.
Small-time, sure, but he did all right. One or two jobs per month; he worked solo. He went mainly for jewelry, silver, gold, computer busses and laptops—small stuff he could carry out that pulled a good penny; he had a quality fence in Eastport who dealt strictly out of town. Steve rarely hit the rich joints—too many alarm systems—but the better middle-class neighborhoods were perfect. He’d stake them out a few days first, get the routine, check the backyard for dogshit, get a look at hubby and all that.
And, sometimes at least, there was a fringe benefit.
When practical, he’d hit a joint where hubby was out of town and wifey was all alone…
Burgling’s hard work, he’d reason. A hard-workin’ boy like me deserves to cop a nut every now and then. Hell, I probably give it to ’em better than their hubbies do anyway.
Tonight he’d marked a colonial in Hillsmere. There’d been a small cabin cruiser on a trailer sitting in the side yard last week, and it wasn’t there now. Vacation, he deduced. Should be a piece of cake.
At one-thirty a.m., Steve paid his tab at the Undercroft and split. This was the perfect time to hit a house. For the next hour the city cops on midnight shift would be cruising the downtown bars and nightspots, watching for drunk drivers, and the same for the county pigs. Not once had Steve ever seen police in the residential areas during this prime hour. He pulled out of the City Dock parking lot, passing one of the Naval Academy gates. He remembered a couple of years ago, they’d shot some Harrison Ford movie in town, and one scene right on this corner by the gate. Pretty cool. He drove immediately onto Bay Ridge Road, which took him straight out of the downtown hub. A minute later he was crossing the bridge, then passing the Rocks, a big singles joint east of downtown. The parking lot was emptying, he noted. Lots of girls getting into their cars and going home.
Alone, he thought. Too bad, girls. He would’ve liked to cop a piece of ass tonight. Lay a few lines on some bar floozie, then give her a hammering. The alkies were always easy to spot: over the hill, sitting alone. Easy marks. His fence in Eastport had sold him a big bottle of downers. Steve would ply a girl with drinks for a few hours and, toward last call, when she got up to go to the ladies’ room, he’d pop one in his mouth, let it dissolve to paste, then bring her glass to his lips. It would look like he was just taking a sip of her drink, but what he was actually doing was spitting the downer into it. Then the bimbo would come back and finish it and—Lights out, he thought in recollection. By the time they were out of the bar and heading for their cars, she’d be losing consciousness. Then Steve would stuff her into his wheels and take her someplace nice and romantic, like a d
ark alley or one of the parking lots behind the industrial complex. Put the seat down, put the blocks to her, then dump her. Once he’d even dumped a girl off at the Millersville Dump, which only seemed appropriate. Technically, sure, it was rape, but what did he care? A nut’s a nut, he reasoned. If it wasn’t me raping these floozies, it’d be someone else. They’re all asking for it anyway…
But— No time for love tonight, he thought. Tonight was a work night. With any luck he’d be able to pinch a grand or two worth of stuff. It was amazing, back when he was dating Alice, that she’d never had a clue as to what he actually did for money. What? Did she think I could afford this new Honda working checkout at Radio Shack? But he’d always played the Poor Boy pretty well. Trying to save up enough to go back to college, he’d told her. “Honey, I’m a little short on rent this month. Could you loan me fifty?” Then she’d write him a check for five hundred and forget about it. What’s it to her, anyway? he thought. She was pulling a couple hundred grand per year from her law firm. Yes, Alice Sterling was one gravy train he sorely missed. So what if she was lousy in bed? Steve copped all the pussy he wanted behind her back, and the occasional rape on a job. Too bad she’d caught him butt-boinking that bimbo last winter.
Yeah, and too bad about her leg.
Hey, you win some, you lose some. Poor little Alice lost in spades that night. But now she was really rich; he’d read somewhere—the Capital or the City Paper—that she’d won a settlement for over a mil. Steve shrugged. Oh, well, I was getting tired of her fat ass anyway.
A long median of rowed trees divided Hillsmere Drive. A nice, quiet little community and dark; not many streetlights. Steve cruised by his mark once, just to eyeball the place a final time, make sure everything was still square. All the lights were out save for the family room. A timer, he realized. A telltale sign that they were on vacation, and the trailered power boat was still gone. Steve parked on the corner, on the next street.