Bad Love

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Meredith Bork was in the last booth, her back to the wall, a mug in her left hand. A big, beautiful, dark-haired woman sitting high and straight. The moment I walked in, her eyes were on me and they didn't waver as I approached.

  Her hair was true black and shiny, brushed straight back from her head and worn loose around her shoulders. Her face was olive tinted like Robin's, just a bit rounder than oval, with wide, full lips, a straight, narrow nose, and a perfect chin. Perfect cheekbones, too, below huge gray-blue eyes. Silver-blue nail polish to match her silk blouse. Two buttons undone, freckled chest, an inch of cleavage. Strong, square shoulders, lots of bracelets around surprisingly slender wrists. Lots of gold, all over. Even in the weak light, she sparkled.

  She said, “Great. You're cute. I allow you to sit.”

  She put the mug down next to a plate bearing an oversized muffin.

  “Fiber,” she said. “The religion of the nineties.”

  A waitress came over and informed me the coffee of the day was Ethiopian. I said that was fine and received my own mug.

  “Ethiopian,” said Meredith Bork. “They're starving over there, aren't they? But they're exporting designer beans? Don't you think that's weird?”

  “Someone always does okay,” I said. “No matter how bad things get.”

  “How true, how true.” She smiled. “I like this guy. Perfect mixture of sincerity and cynicism. Lots of women love it, right? You probably use it to get laid, then get bored and leave them weeping, right?”

  I laughed involuntarily. “No.”

  “No, you don't get laid, or no, you don't get bored?”

  “No, I'm not into conning women.”

  “Gay?”

  “No.”

  “What's your problem, then?”

  “Are we discussing that?”

  “Why not?” Giant smile. Capped teeth. “You want to discuss my problems, jocko, fair is fair.”

  I raised my cup to my lips.

  “How's the java?” she said. “Those starving Ethiopians know how to grow 'em?”

  “Very good.”

  “I'm so veddy glad. Mine's Colombian. My regular fix. I keep hoping there'll be a packaging error and I'll get a little snort mixed in with the grind.”

  She rubbed her nose and winked, leaned forward, and showed more chest. A black lace bra cut into soft, freckled flesh. She wore a perfume I'd never smelled before. Lots of grass, lots of flowers, a bit of her own perspiration.

  She giggled. “No, I'm just joshing you, Mr.—sorry, Doctor No Con. I know how touchy you healer types are about that. Daddy always had a bovine when someone called him mister.”

  “Alex is fine.”

  “Alex. The Great. Are you great? Wanna fuck and suck?”

  Before my mouth could close, she said, “But seriously, folks.”

  Her smile was still on high beam and her breasts were still pushing forward. But she'd reddened and the muscles beneath one of the lovely cheekbones were twitching.

  She said, “What a tasteless thing to say, right? Stupid, too, in the virus era. So let's forget about stripping off my clothes and concentrate on stripping my psyche, right?”

  “Meredith—”

  “That's the name, don't wear it out.” Her hand brushed against the mug and a few droplets of coffee spilled on the table.

  “Shit,” she said, grabbing a napkin and blotting. “Now you've really got me spazzing.”

  “We don't need to talk about you, personally,” I said. “Just about the school.”

  “Not talk about me? That's my favorite topic, Alex, the sincere shrink. I've spent Godknowshowmuch money talking to your ilk about me. They all pretended to be utterly fascinated, least you can do is fake it, too.”

  I sat back and smiled.

  “I don't like you,” she said. “Way too agreeable. Can you get a hard-on on demand—no, scratch that, no more dirty talk. This is going to be a platonic, asexual, antiseptic discussion . . . the Corrective School. How I spent my summer vacation by Meredith Spill-the-Coffee Bork.”

  “Were you there for only one summer?”

  “It was enough, believe me.”

  The waitress came over and asked if we wanted anything else.

  “No, dear, we're in love, we don't need anything else,” said Meredith, waving her away. A wine list was propped between the salt and pepper shakers. She pulled it out and studied it. Moving her lips. Tiny droplets had formed over them. Her smooth, brown brow puckered.

  She put the list down and wiped the sweat from her mouth.

  “Caught me,” she said. “Dyslexic. Not illiterate—I probably know more about what's going on than your average asshole senator. But it takes effort—little tricks so the words make sense.” Another huge smile. “That's why I like to work with Hollywood assholes. None of them read.”

  “Is the dyslexia why you went to the Corrective School?”

  “I didn't go, Alex. I was sent. And no, that wasn't the official reason. The official reason was I was acting out. One of you guys' quaint little terms for being a naughty girl—do you want to know how?”

  “If you'd like to tell me.”

  “Of course I would, I'm an exhibitionist. No, scratch that. What's it your business?” She moistened her lips and smiled. “Suffice it to say I learned about cocks when I was much too young to appreciate them.” She held out her mug to me, as if it were a microphone. “And why was that, Contestant Number One? Why, for the washer-dryer and the trip to Hawaii, did a sweet young thing from Sierra Madre besmirch herself?”

  I didn't speak.

  “Buzz,” she said. “Sorry, Number One, that's not quick enough. The correct answer is: poor self-esteem. Twentieth-century root of all evil, right? I was fourteen and could barely read, so instead, I learned to give dynamite blow jobs.”

  I looked down at my coffee.

  “Oh, look, I've embarrassed him—don't worry, I'm okay. Damn proud of my blow jobs. You work with what you've got.” Her grin was huge but hard to gauge.

  “One fateful morning, Mommy discovered strange, yucky stains on my junior high prom dress. Mommy consulted with learned Doctor Daddy and the two of them threw a joint shit-fit. The day school ended I was shipped off to the wild and woolly hills of Santa Barbara. Little brown uniforms, ugly shoes, girls' bunks separated from the boys' bunks by a scuzzy vegetable garden. Dr. Botch stroking his little goatee and telling us this could turn out to be the best summer we ever had.”

  She hid her mouth behind her mug, broke off a piece of muffin, and let it crumble between her fingers.

  “I couldn't read, so they sent me to Buchenwald-on-the-Pacific. There's juvenile justice for you.”

  “Did de Bosch ever diagnose your dyslexia?” I said.

  “You kidding? All he did was throw this Freudian shit at me: I was frustrated because Mommy had Daddy and I wanted him. So I was trying to be a woman, rather than a girl—acting out—in order to displace her.”

  She laughed. “Believe me, I knew what I wanted, and it wasn't Daddy. It was lean, young, well-hung bodies and James Dean faces. And I had the power to get it all back then. I believed in myself until Botch botched me up.”

  All at once her face changed, loosening and paling. She put the mug down hard, shook her hair like a wet puppy, and rubbed her temples.

  “What did he do to you?” I said.

  “Tore my soul out,” she said glibly. But as she spoke she brought strands of hair forward and hid her face.

  Long silence.

  “Shit,” she said finally. “This is harder than I thought it would be. How did he mess me up? Subtly. Nothing he could go to jail for, darling. So tell your police pals to go back to giving parking tickets, you'll never pin him. Besides, he must be ancient by now. Who's going to drag a poor old fart into court?”

  “He's dead.”

  The hair fell away. Her eyes were very still. “Oh . . . well, that's okay by me, pal. Was it long and painful, by any chance?”

  “He killed himself. He'd
been sick for a while. Multiple strokes.”

  “Killed himself how?”

  “Pills.”

  “When?”

  “Nineteen-eighty.”

  The eyes tightened. “Eighty? So what's all this b.s. about an investigation?”

  Her arm shot forward and she grabbed my wrist. Big, strong woman. “Fess up, psych-man: Who are you and what's all this really about?”

  A few heads turned. She let go of my arm.

  I pulled out ID, showed it to her, and said, “I've told you the truth, and what it's about is revenge.”

  I summarized the “bad love” murders, throwing out names of victims.

  When I finished, she was smiling.

  “Well, I'm sorry for those others, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “Bad love,” she said. “Turning his own crap against him. I like that.”

  “Bad love was something he did?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, through clenched jaws. “Bad love meant you were a worthless piece of shit who deserved to be mistreated. Bad love for bad little children—like psychological acupuncture, these tiny little needles, jabbing, twisting.”

  Her wrists rotated. Jewelry flashed. “But no scars. No, we didn't want to leave any marks on the beautiful little children.”

  “What did he actually do?”

  “He bounced us. Good love one day, bad love the next. Publicly—when we were all together, in the lunch room, at an assembly—he was Joe Jolly. When visitors came, too. Joe Jolly. Laughing, telling jokes, lots of jokes. Tousling our hair, joining in our games—he was old but athletic. Used to like to play tether ball. When someone hurt their hand on the knob, he'd make a big show of cuddling them and kissing the boo-boo. Mister Compassionate—Doctor Compassionate. Telling us we were the most beautiful children in the world, the school was the most beautiful school, the teachers the most beautiful teachers. The goddamn vegetable garden was beautiful, even though the stuff we planted always came out stringy and we had to eat it anyway. We were one big happy, global family, a real sixties kind of thing—sometimes he even wore these puka shells around his neck, over his pukey tie.”

  “That was good love,” I said.

  She nodded and gave a small, ugly laugh. “One big family—but if you got on his bad side—if you acted out, then he gave you a private session. And all of a sudden you weren't beautiful anymore, all of a sudden the world turned real ugly.”

  She sniffed and used her napkin to wipe her nose. Thinking of her Colombian coffee comment, I wondered if she'd fortified herself for our appointment. She cut me off midthought:

  “Don't worry, it's not nasal candy, it's plain old emotion. And the emotion I feel for that bastard, even with his being dead, is pure hatred. Isn't that amazing—after all these years? I'm surprising myself with how much I hate him. Because he made me hate myself—it took years to get out from under his fucking bad love.”

  “The private sessions,” I said.

  “Real private . . . he hit me where it counted. I didn't need anyone tearing down my self-esteem—I was already fucked up enough, not able to read at thirteen. Everyone blaming me, me blaming myself . . . my sisters were all A students. I got D's. I was a premature baby. Difficult labor. Must have affected my brain—the dyslexia, my other prob—”

  She threw up her hands and fluttered her fingers.

  “So now it's out,” she said, smiling. “I have yet another problem. Want a shot at that diagnosis, Contestant Number One?”

  I shook my head.

  “Not a gambler? Oh, well, there's no reason I should be ashamed, it's all chemistry—that was my point, wasn't it? Bipolar affective disorder. Your basic, garden variety manic-depressive maniac. You tell people you're manic and they say, oh yeah, I'm feeling really manic, too. And you say, no, no, no, this is different. This is real, my little pretties.”

  “Are you on lithium?”

  Nod. “Unless the work piles up and I need the extra push. I finally found a psychiatrist who knew what the hell he was doing. All the others were ignorant assholes like Dr. Botch. Analyzing me, blaming me. Botch nearly convinced me I did want to fuck Daddy. He totally convinced me I was bad.”

  “With bad love?”

  She stood suddenly and snatched up her purse. She was six feet tall, with a tiny waist, narrow hips, and long legs under a charcoal-colored silk miniskirt. The skirt had ridden up, revealing sleek thigh. If she realized it, she didn't choose to fix it.

  “He's worried I'm leaving.” She laughed. “Mellow out, son. Just going to pee.”

  She made an abrupt about-face and sashayed toward the rear of the restaurant. A few moments later, I got up and verified that the restrooms were back there, and the only exit a grimy gray door with a bar across it marked EMERGENCY.

  She returned a few minutes later, hair fluffed, eyes puffy but freshly shadowed. Sitting down, she nudged my shin with a toe and gave a weak smile. Waving for the waitress, she got a refill and drank half the cup, taking long, silent swallows.

  Looking ready to choke. My therapeutic impulse was to pat her hand. I resisted it.

  “Bad love,” she said softly. “Little rooms. Little locked cells. Bare bulbs—or sometimes he'd just light a candle. Candles we made in crafts. Beautiful candles—actually they were ugly pieces of shit, with this really disgusting scent. Nothing in the cell but two chairs. He'd sit opposite you, your knees almost touching. Nothing between you. Then he'd stare at you for a long time. A long time. Then he'd start talking in this low, relaxed voice—like it was just a chat, like it was just two people having a nice, civil conversation. And at first you'd think you were getting away easy, he'd sound so pleasant. Smiling, playing with that stupid little beard or his puka shells.”

  She said, “Shit,” and drank coffee.

  “What did he talk about?”

  “He'd start off lecturing about human nature. How everyone had good parts of their character and bad parts and the difference between the successful people and the unsuccessful people was which part you used. And that we kids were there because we were using too much bad part and not enough good part. Because we'd gotten warped somehow—damaged was the way he put it—from wanting to sleep with our mommies and our daddies. But how everyone else at the school was now doing great. Everyone except you, young lady, is controlling their impulses and learning to use the good part. They are going to be okay. They deserve good love and are going to have happy lives.”

  She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. Funneled her lips into a pinhole and blew air out through it.

  “Then he'd stop. To let it all sink in. And stare some more. And get even closer. His breath always stank of cabbage . . . the room was so small the smell filled it—he filled it. He wasn't a big man, but in there he was huge. You felt like an ant, about to be crushed—like the room was running out of air and you were going to strangle . . . the way he stared—his eyes were like drills. And the look—when you got the bad love. After the soft talk was through. This hatred—letting you know you were scum.

  “ 'You,' he'd say. And then he'd repeat it. “You, you, you.' And then it would start—you were the only one who wasn't doing good. You couldn't control your impulses, you weren't trying—you were acting just like an animal. A dirty, filthy animal—a vermin animal. That was a favorite of his. Vermin animals—in his creepy Inspector Clouseau accent. Vermeen aneemals. Then he'd start calling you other names. Fool, idiot, weakling, moron, savage, excrement. No curse words, just one insult after another, sometimes in French. Saying them so quietly you could barely hear them. But you had to hear them because there was nothing else to hear in that room. Just the wax dripping, sometimes a plumbing pipe would rumble, but mostly it was silent. You had to listen.”

  A lost look came into her eyes. She shifted as far from me as the booth would allow. When she spoke again, her voice was even softer, but deeper, almost masculine.

  “You are acting like vermin animal, young lady. You are going to live like vermi
n animal and you will end up dying like vermin animal. And then he'd go into these detailed descriptions of how vermin lived and died and how no one loved them and gave them good love because they didn't deserve it and how the only thing they deserved was bad love and filth and humiliation.”

  She reached for her mug. Her hand shook and she braced it with the other one before raising the coffee to her lips.

  “He'd keep going like that. Don't ask me how long because I don't know—it felt like years. Chanting. Over and over and over. You will get the bad love, you will get the bad love . . . pain, and suffering and loneliness that would never end—prison, where people will rape you and cut you and tie you up so you can't move. Horrible diseases you will get—he'd go into the symptoms. Talk about the loneliness, how you'd always be alone. Like a corpse left out in the desert to dry. Like a piece of dirt on some cold, distant planet—he was full of analogies, Dr. B. was, playing loneliness like an instrument. Your life will be as empty and dark as this room we are sitting in, young lady. Your entire future will be desolate. No good love from anyone—no good love, just bad love, filth, and degradation. Because that is what bad children deserve. A cold, lonely world for children who act like vermin animals. Then he'd show photos. Dead bodies, concentration camp stuff. This is how you will end up!”

  She shifted closer.

  “He'd just chant it,” she said, touching my cuff. “Like some priest . . . throwing out these images. Not giving you a chance to speak. He made you feel you were the only bad person in a beautiful world—a shit smear on silk. And you believed him. You believed everyone was changing for the better, learning to control themselves. Everyone was on his side, you were the only piece of shit.”

  “Cutting you off,” I said, “so you wouldn't confide in the other kids.”

  “It worked; I never confided in anyone. Later, when I was out of there—years later—I realized it was stupid, I couldn't have been the only one. I'd seen other kids go into the rooms—it seems so ridiculously logical now. But back then, I couldn't—he kept focusing me in on myself. On the bad parts of me. The vermin animal parts.”

  “You were isolated right from the beginning. New environment, new routine.”