The Delilah Complex

by MJ Rose

  I watched my daughter’s delicate throat as she swallowed, drank again and swallowed once more. It was eight o’clock in the evening and she was starving. Between working on the play, the tutoring that interrupted the rehearsals, and homework, she was burning energy. I didn’t like her having to wait this late for dinner as it was.

  “Dr. Morgan Snow, please.”

  “Yes, this is Dr. Snow.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was get stuck on the phone and delay it even longer.

  “I’m sorry for bothering you at home, Dr. Snow. Dr. Butterfield gave me your number. My name is Gail Danzig. I’m a producer for the Today show. I was hoping you’d agree to do a segment on Friday morning.”

  While my name and involvement had made it into the news last June, when I’d been pulled into a hunt for a serial killer after one of my patients had disappeared, I’d refused to be interviewed. Dr. Nina Butterfield, my mentor, my closest friend and owner of the Butterfield Institute— the sex therapy clinic where I work—had supported my decision not to comment in the press. But lately she had been pushing me to become more visible in the psychoanalytical community. This obviously was one of those shoves. As with the paper she’d asked me to deliver on women’s aggressive sexual tendencies at an upcoming conference, Nina wanted me to get out there. Success as a therapist was something that mattered to me. But notoriety? It had never been on my list.

  “Dr. Butterfield didn’t mention it to me.”

  “Oh, damn. She said she was going to call you—she felt this was something you would be interested in. First, let me tell you we’re very sensitive to what you do, and don’t want to exploit your profession at all.”

  From the refrigerator and the cabinets, I took what I needed for dinner and put it on the countertop. “I’m sure the Today show is a big draw and that there are a lot of therapists who would jump at the chance, but I really don’t think that television is something I want to—”

  Dulcie spun around from leafing through the mail and walked over to me, standing so close I could feel her breath on my neck as she whispered, “They want you on television? On the Today show?” Her eyes shone with admiration.

  I nodded to her.

  “Why?”

  I shook my head—I couldn’t listen to what the producer was saying and what Dulcie was saying at the same time. “Excuse me, Miss Danzig, could you hold on a second?”

  I put my hand over the mouthpiece. “Dulcie, wait till I get off the phone, okay?”

  Her words rushed out of her. “You have to do it, Mom. You have to. The Today show? How could you say no to that?”

  My daughter’s eyes didn’t typically shine over anything having to do with my occupation. Quite the opposite. She thinks my being a sex therapist is embarrassing. Occasionally, she even calls me Dr. Sin, in the derisive way that only a thirteen-year-old can. All too often, she’s introduced me to her friends or their parents as a heart doctor.

  But here was something that involved me professionally that Dulcie wanted me to do. And I’m a sucker for making my daughter proud of me. I’m a softie for bending my own rules to see her smile.

  “What is the subject of the segment, Miss Danzig?”

  While the producer explained that the show was doing a week-long series on the sexual dissatisfaction of women in long-term relationships, I filled a pot of water and put it on the stovetop to boil.

  “It’s a trend we’ve spotted. Women seem more frustrated sexually than their male partners. Especially working women. For many of them, their interest in sex increases the more they work, while men have the opposite reaction.”

  I poured salt into the water. Supposedly salt makes the water boil faster and the pasta taste better. I saw that once on an episode of Martha, and anything I can do to make the food I cook taste better, I remember. I seem to be missing the cooking gene; I can even ruin prepared food.

  “It’s not a new trend as much as women’s sexuality is a hot topic now, thanks to drug companies who are making huge public relations efforts to hype their female sexual-dysfunction drugs.” I tried not to sound as if I was educating her, but I wasn’t sure I’d succeeded.

  “That’s a good point. I’m making a note of it and will pass it on to our writers and researchers.”

  I cut through the plastic of a package of precooked chicken breasts and started to slice them into strips. I was probably using the wrong knife—they were shredding.

  “So, is that what you want me to discuss?”

  “No. We’d like you to be on the show the final day of the series to talk about when it’s time to stop trying to cope with your sexual frustrations yourself and seek a sex therapist.”

  The water wasn’t boiling yet.

  “We’ll need you here at 7:30 a.m. for hair and makeup. Your segment will probably air between eight-thirty and nine. Is that doable? Do you need a car to pick you up?”

  Dulcie’s face broke into a grin as I gave the producer my address. Meanwhile, the water in the pot still wasn’t boiling. I checked for flames. I’d forgotten to turn on the burner. I sighed.

  “Something wrong?” Miss Danzig asked.

  Once I hung up, I continued making dinner: pasta with chicken and pesto sauce.

  When the penne was almost cooked, I opened the last of the prepared food—the sauce. Scooping the emerald paste into another pan, I turned the heat on, added the chicken, and gave it a quick stir. Then I left it on low to find Dulcie and tell her it was time to eat.

  She wasn’t in her room. Or in her bathroom. And she wasn’t rummaging around in the makeup box in my bathroom, which was one place I found her too often.

  Our six-room apartment, on the fifth floor of a prewar building on the corner of Eightieth East and Madison Avenue, was not that big. Since she wasn’t in either of the two bedrooms or bathrooms, and obviously not in the kitchen, she had to be in the den.

  I’d taken the formal living room and dining room— spaces we’d never used—and had the walls ripped down, creating a large, cozy, book-lined space with comfortable couches and an entertainment area in one corner and my ersatz sculpture studio in the other.

  Dulcie was standing in the dark, looking out of the windows that faced the street. Her shoulders were slumped and her forehead was pasted against a windowpane. She was too preoccupied to sense my presence.

  Too often I can feel my daughter’s pain. Both physical and mental. I can’t read her mind—I am not psychic—but we’re in sync in this way. So without knowing why, I knew she was sad, because I was suddenly sad.

  When it comes to my daughter, I’m not a good therapist: I’m just another parent. All I could think of as I stood watching her was how treacherous the world is for a thirteen-year-old girl. Especially one like my daughter, whose parents are divorced, whose mother works full-time, and who has aspirations of becoming a serious actress. Anything could shift her into melancholy. Just as anything might shake her out of it.

  “Hon?”

  She turned. Her face was in shadows and I couldn’t read her expression.

  “Dinner’s ready.”

  “Okay, I’ll be right there.”

  I could hear the worry in her voice. As much as I wanted to ask her what was wrong, I held back. The direct approach didn’t usually work with Dulcie, just as it hadn’t worked with her father and, in most cases, didn’t work with patients. Most people don’t know what’s wrong unless they’ve been educated through therapy to identify their feelings, express them and work through them.

  Being the daughter of a psychotherapist, Dulcie was better than most teenagers at dealing with her feelings and naming the issues, but she still preferred to talk around her problems and let them surface on their own.

  Back in the kitchen, I gave the heady garlic-and-basilscented concoction one more turn, then dumped the pasta into a colander. Quickly—I always take too long and the pasta gets cold—I emptied the colander into a wide ceramic bowl, added the sauce and the chicken, tossed it and scooped it on two p
lates.

  I was just putting everything on the table in the kitchen—we are luckier than many New Yorkers, who live without eat-in kitchens—when Dulcie came in and sat down.

  I poured her a glass of milk and myself a glass of wine and joined her at the table. She took the first forkful and her nose wrinkled slightly. This came as no surprise. I’d probably burned the pesto, or hadn’t gotten it hot, or there had been too much water in the pasta. Rather than ask her, I took a bite.

  Something really was wrong. It definitely didn’t taste right. The meat was sour and salty and didn’t work with the pesto. I put my head down. It’s usually faster for me to smell what’s wrong.

  How had I missed it? Had the scent of the garlic in the pesto overpowered everything else? Or was it because I was on the phone when I’d been cutting up the food? Because I’d been thinking about the sexual frustrations of women in relationships? Because I’d been wondering why Nina Butterfield was suddenly pushing me to make a bigger name for myself? Unlike my father, who lived in Palm Springs with his second wife and was simply satisfied that I was productive and healthy, Nina had aspirations for me.

  “Mom—what is this?”

  “I was on the phone…” I started.

  Dulcie was stifling a laugh. She was such a good kid; she was trying so hard to hold it in.

  “It’s awful. What is it?” she asked.

  “Instead of chicken, it’s filet of sole cooked in soy sauce.”

  “Soy sauce and pesto?” Dulcie couldn’t hold it back; she was laughing out loud and I laughed with her. I think I would cook badly on purpose to make my daughter laugh like that. There wasn’t very much that could bother me when she was happy.

  “Peanut butter and jelly?” I asked.

  “Let me help you. Or else it might be peanut butter and mustard.”

  We scraped the food into the garbage can and started from scratch. And while we made the sandwiches, I watched her from under lowered lids to see if the shadows fell upon her face again. But they didn’t. Not that night. We were safe. For at least a little while longer.

  Four

  The usual two-inch stack of mail was waiting for her when Betsy Young sat down at her desk in the newsroom at the New York Times. She threw her worn brown suede jacket on the back of her chair, popped the top on her can of diet soda, took a long drink and started going through the letters.

  She was tall, and her wiry body fit her high-energy personality, but at forty-six she was fighting the years. Her streaked hair was cropped to hang in a flattering curl, hiding her slackening jaw line, and her blue-tinted glasses concealed some of the tired lines around her eyes. There were younger people in the newsroom, but there were also reporters and editors older than she was. These were mostly men.

  She left off perusing the mail to watch a breaking news report on the TV monitor next to her desk. A newscaster announced the jury had returned a verdict in a murder case that had been in the headlines for weeks.

  “The jury has come back with a vote of guilty for Mary Woods, who, for the last six weeks, has been on trial for the murder of her brother, Daniel Woods. Women are less likely to be convicted of murder…”

  “Blah, blah, blah,” Betsy responded, to no one in particular.

  Robby, a twenty-something crime reporter new to the Times from Florida, whose desk was next to Betsy’s, looked over at her. She caught his eye and they laughed. He was still looking at her ten seconds later when she slit open the large manila envelope that had been next in the pile of mail. She was used to young reporters watching her, knew they admired her Pulitzers and wanted to soak up whatever they could by observing her. She thought about telling them that much of it wasn’t talent but the sheer luck of having been in the right place at the right time, except she didn’t really believe that. If luck was involved, it was because she made her own.

  She didn’t know what it was about her reaction to what she pulled out of the envelope that made him get up out of his chair, walk to her desk and peer over her shoulder. Normally she’d be observant enough to know if a man was sniffing her perfume.

  But this time, she didn’t. The eight-by-ten-inch glossy made her forget everything.

  The corpse was lying on a simple metal gurney, his skin so white it was almost pale green. A halo effect of shimmering light forced her attention to the man’s black pubic hair and shrunken penis.

  Your eyes couldn’t help being drawn there, she thought. And not just because of the lighting. The shot had been designed to emphasize the man’s genitals. You were viewing the cadaver from between his legs, staring up past his crotch so that the perspective was skewed. The man’s head was diminished. His sexual organs exaggerated.

  “Oh, God,” Robby whispered.

  “There is a famous painting of Christ that shows him from exactly this perspective—his feet to the viewer, the rest of him foreshortened. It was painted by Mantegna.” Betsy held the photograph at arm’s length and squinted at it.

  Gingerly, she laid the photo on her desk and picked up the next one.

  This photograph had been taken from a more traditional angle, from overhead, looking straight down. The man’s penis was still dead center so her eye went there first, but everything else in this picture was in proportion and she could see the man’s drawn face.

  He appeared to be about thirty-five and in excellent physical condition. His naked form showed muscle and sinew but no fat. His hands were crossed on his bare chest, his eyes were closed. He might have been asleep if not for the pallor and pose.

  The third shot focused on the soles of the cadaver’s feet, each with the number 1 handwritten in bright red marker.

  “I’ve seen awful things but these are just…” Robby shook his head. Although he was a prolific writer he couldn’t find the right words for how these photographs shocked him.

  “I know. There’s something about the finality and pathos of a corpse—even in a flat photograph—that you don’t ever get used to.”

  Robby looked down at the envelope the photos had come in. Betsy saw him making sure it was addressed to her, and she smiled. She knew if it hadn’t been, he thought he’d have some shot at the story.

  But it had been.

  “The best you can hope for is that this will be so big that I’ll need some help,” Betsy told him. “Maybe there will be sidebars—”

  “Except you’re so tireless, you’ll probably do them all yourself,” he said sadly.

  Behind her back, they called her “the pug,” not because she was unattractive but because she was tenacious. In her dozen years at the Times, she’d won two Pulitzers, even if the last one had been more than five years ago.

  “Do you think this guy looks familiar?” Betsy finally asked.

  Robby stared at the man’s face. “Yes. But not enough to place him.”

  Betsy examined the photo with a magnifying glass.

  “So, are you going to go to the police?” Robby asked.

  “Of course…but not this very minute.”

  “Won’t you be an accessory if you got this and they didn’t—”

  “Robby, I said I was going to go to the police. But first I am going to do some reporting. Just enough to get a handle on this. Just enough so that no one can take it away from me.”

  They both looked back at the photographs on her desk. In death, the man’s features were slack, but his nose was prominent and the mustache that graced his upper lip was still glossy and lush.

  “He really does look familiar,” Betsy mused. And then she snapped her fingers. “Got it,” she said, her voice eerily gleeful. “Philip Maur. Chief operating officer of Grimly and Maur. The Wall Street firm. He’s been missing for a week. We ran his picture last Tuesday.”

  She picked up the empty envelope, examined the label, then turned it over and investigated the seal. Suddenly, she stuck her hand back inside.

  Betsy pulled out an ordinary household sandwich bag containing a two-inch-long, dark substance.

  Two se
conds went by. Three.

  She let out a short breath and dropped the bag on her desk.

  “Oh, my God, it’s his hair, isn’t it?” Robby asked in horror.

  Betsy nodded.

  Five

  Detective Noah Jordain sat at the counter in a Japanese restaurant with his partner, Mark Perez. Both had plates of sushi in front of them. Jordain dipped a piece of uni into the soy sauce and then smeared it with wasabi.

  “How can you eat so much of that without burning your sinuses?”

  “You are a wimp,” Jordain said in his slow New Orleans drawl, and Perez laughed. Since they’d been working together, Jordain had introduced his partner to all kinds of exotic food.

  Jordain loved to cook and to explore New York’s endless supply of ethnic cuisines. A Renaissance man, he not only cooked, but played piano, wrote jazz, collected antiques and managed not to get ribbed for any of it by a single cop in the department.

  There was just one reason.

  In police work, God was in the details.

  They all knew it.

  Jordain lived it.

  And they respected him for it.

  Jordain’s cell phone rang. Pulling it out, he looked at it as if it were an insect, put it down next to his green tea, speared another piece of sushi, dipped and smeared it, popped it in his mouth and chewed. The phone rang a second time.

  Perez, who was as reactive as Jordain was laid-back, glared at his partner. In the two years they’d been together, Perez hadn’t gained any of Jordain’s patience.

  “You want me to get that?”

  Jordain swallowed, smiled, shook his head and slowly reached for the cell, answering it on the fourth ring.

  As he listened, he ran his hand through his thick silvery hair. And then he did it twice again. Perez noticed and became alert. He’d learned to tell how bad the news was by how many times Jordain brushed the wavy hair off his forehead.

  “Okay, give me a number,” Jordain said as he reached for his notebook. He wrote the number down and read it back. Jordain was dyslexic. It hardly affected him now that he was an adult, but he was bad at retaining numbers in his head, and sometimes he reversed them when he wrote them down. Reading them back alleviated that problem.