Privileged Conversation

by Ed McBain

  Bursting into tears again, trying to choke the tears back while David listens in amazement to the recited contents of the letters as she’s memorized them, the voice of a man obsessed if ever he’s heard one, and he most certainly has heard plenty of them. Once again, he listens to the familiar symptoms, altered to accommodate the scenario with Kate, the expected shift from reality to fantasy, Kathryn becoming Victoria, Victoria becoming a kitten and then a pussy, the repetitive fixation on the slang expression for the vagina, the slavish supplication, the reversal of roles so that he now becomes lord and master, the possessiveness and jealous rage, the abusive language and escalating obscenity, the initially veiled threats, the later open sexual invitation-cum-threat, the final threat against Rickie …

  “Rickie?” he says. “Who’s Rickie?”

  “The kid from the bike shop,” she says.

  How’d he get into this? David wonders.

  “How’d he get into this?” he asks aloud, and turns to her in puzzlement, his knees banging against the dashboard in this goddamn toy car. He should be listening to this in the limo she promised, he should be holding her in his arms while somebody else drives, telling her he’s here, assuring her that everything will be all right.

  Well, she goes on to explain, crying more fiercely now, frightening him because it’s raining very hard and there’s quite a bit of traffic heading into the city at this hour of the morning, and he doesn’t want her to run into one of the trucks rolling ponderously toward the George Washington Bridge, but how can she see through this driving rain and her own veil of tears, her vale of tears? Well, she says, I got very scared when he sent the letter to my building because that meant he’d followed me from the theater and he knew where I lived, and it sounded very threatening, the business about my wanting it as much as he did and now he knew where to get it and all, it sounded like somebody getting ready to rape me, for Christ’s sake! And you were away, David, don’t forget that, you weren’t here, you hadn’t even called, where the hell were you?

  She is beginning to sound hysterical, he has dealt with hysteria before. “Honey,” he says, “calm down, I’m here now,” but she keeps ranting about how she had to go to someone and the only one she could think of was Rickie, the kid from the bike shop, who was kind enough and brave enough to take her for something to eat after the show, and walk her home afterward, so that fucking lunatic would think he was her boyfriend and get scared off.

  “Kate, watch the road,” he warns.

  “It isn’t as if I have a brother or a father I can turn to,” she says, “and my sister is helpless, of course, and even if my mother wasn’t in San Diego, she wouldn’t give a damn if an ax murderer was following me. You don’t know what she’s like, David …”

  And now he listens to a furious recitation that truly could come from any one of his patients, a conversation so privileged that it transforms this teeny-weeny car into a psychiatrist’s cubicle, or, more accurately, a priest’s confessional. Patiently, he listens. This is the woman he loves, and she is in serious trouble. As the windshield wipers snick at the incessant rain, he listens.

  The fury she expends on her mother has one dubious side effect in that it stanches the flow of tears and forces a hunched-over-the-wheel concentration on the road, as if Kate is driving this tiny car not only through the fiercely slanting rain but also, like a sharpened stake, directly into her mother’s heart. Her mother’s name is Fiona, but it could just as easily be Shirley, or Rhoda or Marie or Lila, who are the respective reviled mothers of Arthur K, Alex J, Susan M and Michael D, or for that matter David’s own mother Ruth before he went through the extensive analysis that put his hatred for her to rest. (A father named Neil lurks in the background of Kate’s fiery recitation, somewhat like a shadow lingering offstage, a fact that brings him immediately to prominence in David’s trained analytical mind.) But her rage seems exclusively directed toward Fiona as the car approaches the bridge in a similarly raging storm that buffets it with wind and water. Everywhere around them, rumbling trucks lumber like dinosaurs.

  According to Kate, her mother was—and is—a demanding, ungiving, unforgiving bitch who would rather kick a cripple than light a candle in church. “We used to call her Fee the Fair,” she says, virtually grinding the words out through essentially clenched teeth …

  … not only because she was an extravagantly beautiful woman, but also because she was so fucking unfair with the girls, and even with their father (Neil still skulks in the shadows, a figure reluctant to take his proper place on the stage of Kate’s mind), accusing them of plots to thwart her will or topple her carefully organized plans. Bess was the true beauty in the family—with their mother’s red hair and green eyes, of course, which both of them had inherited—but also with a rare sort of radiant inner beauty that shone on her face like something beatific. Maybe this was why Fiona tended to pick on her more often than she did Kate, who, to tell the truth, was a scrawny, skinny kid who looked more like a boy than the girl she was supposed to be … well, he knows that, she’s already told him what she looked like at thirteen. Even so, Kate really was her father’s favorite, as her mother never failed to point out to poor Bess (Neil taking a step closer, into the spotlight, and then retreating swiftly into the shadows again).

  “Here, I’ve got it,” David says, and hands her the change for the toll.

  Kate rolls down the window, hands the coins over to the collector, and quickly rolls it up again before they both drown. The brief interruption serves as an end to the first act. But when the curtain goes up again after intermission, it is on another scene entirely, perhaps another play entirely.

  David wishes they were someplace else, anywhere else, anywhere but inside this claustrophobic car hurtling through the rain. He longs to hold her, kiss the drying tears from her face, comfort her and console her, tell her how much he loves her, promise he will be here to take care of her, she has nothing to worry about, he’s here now. Somehow they make it over the bridge and are heading downtown on the Harlem River Drive. Out on the river tugboats move listlessly through the shifting mist on the water. As Kate sifts sobbingly through the tattered tissue of her memory, the windshield wipers swipe ceaselessly and ineffectively at the rain. He is truly afraid she will crash the car into any one of the vehicles everywhere around them, certain tomorrow’s headline in the Daily News will read LOVERS PERISH IN FLAMES.

  Flames.

  Flames have suddenly become the thesis of this large-screen, full-color extravaganza. Flames are what now envelop Kate’s sister on a night in August long ago, everything seems to happen to Kate in August, wasn’t it a wet and steamy day in August when she was just thirteen—yes, the theater’s business manager, or accountant, or whatever the hell he was, his small office, yes, her blatant, brazen seduction of her father’s best friend. But the fire is … what? Three years later? And flames are consuming her fourteen-year-old sister as she runs out of the burning house she herself has set on fire. Flames are everywhere, the house, Bess’s gown, her hair, red as fire anyway, redder now with flames that lick and bite at curling crackling strands. Flames are the theme, flames are the plot, flames are the horror. In hot and almost comic pursuit, like a small band of inept Keystone Kops chasing a human torch, Fiona and a shrieking Kate come running across the lawn after her. Bess is yelling, “Let me die, let me burn in hell!” Kate can hardly breathe. Her father suddenly rushes out of the house with a wet sheet trailing from his hand. He chases his younger daughter, tackles her, brings her to the ground, her nightgown in flames, her hair on fire, Jesus, oh Jesus, holds her pinned to the ground as Kate screams “Leave her alone, you son of a bitch!” and Fiona, all wide-eyed and shocked, stands by appalled as Bess repeats over and over again, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned … bless me, Father, for I have sinned … bless me …” He wraps her in the cool wet sheets, the sheets beginning to steam around her, the smell of her scorched and smoldering hair stinking up the August night, the sheets steaming on the humid August
night, everything happens in August, August is the cruelest month.

  “I almost told Rickie last Wednesday,” she says.

  “Told him what?”

  “All of it.”

  And now young Ricardo Alvaredo Diaz boldly takes the stage, suddenly stepping out to tumultuous applause, grinning at the audience and flexing his muscles, the feathers rippling on the tattooed Indian’s headdress as Kate steers the car off the drive and onto East Ninety-sixth Street.

  “Where were you, David?” she asks, turning sharply from the wheel. “Where the hell were you last Wednesday? Doing it to Julia up there on the Vineyard? When you should have been doing it to me?”

  How did this get to be this? he wonders.

  All I wanted to do was kiss you.

  And who the hell is Julia?

  “If you’d been here,” she says, “I wouldn’t have let him,” and suddenly yanks the car over to the curb and throws her arms on the steering wheel, and lowers her head onto them, and begins sobbing uncontrollably.

  It is now almost ten A.M. Across the room, Kate is on the couch, the little girl on the Les Miz poster staring sorrowfully into the room from the wall behind her. She has stopped crying. She has taken off the black raincoat and the yellow rain boots, and she is sitting cross-legged in jeans, a white cotton T-shirt, and white socks, the man’s gray fedora still pulled down over her hair. It occurs to him that she covered her hair so that it wouldn’t signal blatantly to the man stalking her. But they are now in her apartment, where she is safe, so why is she still wearing the dumb hat?

  He is inordinately, and unprofessionally, angry with her. He is supposed to be a psychiatrist, trained and caring and concerned, but instead he is reacting like a jealous schoolboy. After all she told him in the car, and knowing now the very real trouble this son of a bitch letter-writer has been causing, all he can think of is that last Wednesday she let that kid from the bike shop … the very word infuriates him. Let him. Like kids on a goddamn rooftop. Will you let me, Katie? Sure, Rickie, just let me take off my panties, dear. The Miss Saigon helicopter is waiting to take him out of here, perhaps back to the Vineyard. The cats in the apartment—the real one nuzzling his leg, and the yellow-eyed one in the poster above the sofa, and the green-eyed one sitting on the sofa opposite him, still wearing the goddamn hat—are all waiting for his next move. He’s thinking if she doesn’t give him the right answers, he just might …

  The problem is he wants to hold her.

  Touch her.

  Kiss her.

  The problem is he has missed her desperately.

  “All right,” he says, “tell me what happened last Wednesday.”

  “I don’t wish to discuss it further,” she says.

  Then go to hell, he thinks.

  “Then why’d you bring it up?” he says.

  “Because I wanted to get it out in the open.”

  “It’s not in the open yet. Not until I know what happened.”

  “What do you think happened?” she asks.

  “Just tell me, okay? Was Gloria here, too?”

  “No. How’d Gloria get into this?”

  “How’d Rickie get into it, is what I want to know.”

  “Then why’d you mention Gloria? Can’t you wait to get at her again?”

  “Look, Kate, don’t try to shift the goddamn guilt here …”

  “I’m not trying to shift any guilt. I don’t feel any guilt.”

  “Then why were you bawling in the car?”

  “Not because I was feeling guilt. Don’t give me guilt, okay? I had enough guilt with Jacqueline. I’ve been through guilt and back again, David, okay? I’m fine now, okay, so don’t …”

  “Why’d you go to bed with him?”

  “Go to bed with him? Are you dreaming?”

  “You said …”

  “I said …”

  “You said if I’d been here, you wouldn’t have let him.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Let him what?”

  “Kiss me, for Christ’s sake! Anyway, are you so celibate up there on the Vineyard?”

  “You know I’m married.”

  “Yes, and you know I’m single.”

  “What is that supposed to be? A license to kill?”

  “Nobody killed anybody, David.”

  “Oh, I’m sure of that.”

  “Anyway, we’ve been through this before.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I told you he’d asked me out.”

  “You also told me you didn’t give him your number.”

  “I didn’t. Not then. I went to see him right after the letter was delivered here. That’s when I gave him my number. He was helping me, David. Anyway, we’re not married, you know.”

  “So I’m beginning to understand.”

  “You make love to her, you know. So you can’t …”

  “That’s something altogether …”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “So you have no right …”

  “That’s right, I don’t. So I guess if there’s nothing further to discuss, I’ll just …”

  “We’re having another fight, you know. About Rickie again.”

  “With a difference this time.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Last time, you hadn’t kissed him.”

  “It didn’t mean anything.”

  “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s the cliché of all time. If it didn’t mean anything …”

  “It didn’t.”

  “Then why the hell did you do it?”

  “To thank him.”

  “For what?”

  “For helping me. For being here! Where the hell were you, David?”

  “Look, what’s the sense of this?”

  “None. Not if you want to keep on fighting.”

  But she seems delighted that they are fighting. He senses the argument adds a dimension of domesticity to their tottering romance, perhaps provides it with the promise of longevity as well. After all, if they’re having their second fight, and if they survive it, the implication is there’ll be a third fight and a fourth and a fifth ad infinitum. Just like Mum and Dad, kiddies. Having their cute little fight, so they can kiss and make up afterward. Except that he has no intention of kissing her now, not after she kissed her young toreador last Wednesday night. And God knows how many times since.

  “Have you seen him since?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “Has he called you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll bet. Give them a taste of honey …”

  “Stop it, David! I’m not a whore!”

  “Who said you were?”

  “I’m not a whore!”

  He has not even mentioned this word, and he wonders where it comes from now. A whore? Simply because she kissed …

  “What kind of kiss?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A friendly kiss, a brotherly kiss, a paternal …”

  “A goddamn soul kiss!” she says angrily.

  The room goes silent.

  “I thought you loved me,” he says.

  “I do.”

  “In your fashion.”

  “No. Completely and utterly.”

  He looks at her.

  He wishes he could believe her, but then why the Wednesday night Latino? Besides, she’s correct in maintaining there are no strings on her, mister, she is as free as a bird and entitled to kiss whomever the hell she chooses. The thing is … he thought … he assumed … mistakenly, it now turns out … but nonetheless …

  “Do you plan on seeing him again?” he asks.

  “Not if you don’t want me to.”

  “Never mind what I want!” he shouts. “What the fuck do you want?”

  “I want you.”

  “Then why …?”

  “I want only you.”

  �
��Then …”

  “I want you to love me.”

  “Kate, why don’t we just …?”

  “Don’t say it!”

  “I think we should just …”

  “Don’t say it!”

  She is staring at him now, looking small and vulnerable and tired and pale in the blue jeans and white cotton shirt and adorable gray fedora, hands folded in her lap, green eyes wide and beseeching. He does not want her to cry again, he does not believe he can bear it if she starts crying again. She sits there on the very edge of dissolution, the tears standing in her eyes but not spilling over, and in a barely audible voice, she says, “Don’t leave me, David.”

  He stands watching her.

  “Please,” she says. “I beg of you.”

  He takes a step toward her.

  “Love me,” she says. “Just keep loving me.”

  He calls Stanley Beckerman at a little before eleven.

  “Boy, thank God,” Stanley says. “I thought you weren’t coming.”

  “There was a lot of traffic,” David says. “The rain.”

  “The sun was shining in Hatteras,” Stanley says.

  “The Vineyard, too.”

  “Any trouble getting away?” Stanley asks, lowering his voice though David suspects he is alone in his office. Or perhaps his little nineteen-year-old bimbo has already joined him. Perhaps she is already sitting on his couch like Sharon Stone, legs wide open, no panties.

  “No trouble at all,” David says.

  Stanley believes that he alone is the one who needs protection and cover in the days ahead, and David doesn’t plan to disabuse him of the notion. Therefore, the responsibility of working out a series of fictitious lectures and whatnot has fallen to Stanley as presumed solitary philanderer and liar in this four-day subterfuge. David has given Helen only the scant information Stanley provided in his one invitational call to Menemsha two weeks ago. Now he listens carefully, eager to protect his own ass, but playing to the hilt the role of Stanley’s beard.