Head To Head

by Linda Ladd

  I put on the silly red getup and burrowed into bed again. Where the hell were Black’s little white tranquilizers when I needed them? I ignored the big silver tray of fresh fruit and cheese and crusty bread someone had left on the bedside table. The same silent phantom who’d left the clothes, I suppose.

  Black was being thoughtful, I guess, providing for all my needs but leaving me strictly alone to work through my problems. Which was exactly what I wanted, but maybe it wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t know what I wanted, except not to think anymore.

  By the time midnight announced itself on the bedside ebony-and-crystal clock, I was pacing the floor, my emotions in a jumble, my numbness turning into rage at everybody and everything.

  I decided maybe I didn’t like being alone so much after all, so I opened the door and walked down the hall to Black’s private office. The door was open, a dim light coming from the lamp on his desk, where he was sitting and sorting through newspaper clippings. Clippings about me. I guess he was starting his own personal scrap-book with separate pages for every awful thing that had ever happened to me. I saw red and decided not to keep my feelings to myself.

  “Well, well, let me guess. I bet all those newspapers are about little old me and my so sad life. Tell you what, you can quit snooping into my past on the sly. I’m here now in the flesh, in this cute little nightie you picked out, your latest head case reporting for duty.” Not very nice, but somehow it made me feel better.

  Black looked surprised to see me. Then he looked wary and for good cause. Maybe it was the scowl all over my face, which said I might be going to kill him. No gracious mood anywhere in sight. I guess he decided to ignore my sarcasm, because he remained quite calm.

  “I hope you’re feeling better now.”

  “Oh yeah, I’m much better now. Now it just feels like somebody ran over me with a cement truck. How do you feel, Doctor? Is your blood pumping hard with professional glee now that you know what a basket case I am?”

  He stood up. Frowned, concerned, but that didn’t stop his eyes from dropping down to the plunging front of the sexy little number I had on. “Have you eaten anything today?” Maybe he was just looking at my empty stomach.

  “For some reason, I lost my appetite. Wonder why? You’re the shrink. Why don’t you tell me?”

  “You’ve been through a lot. You need to eat. Why don’t we go down to the kitchen and see what we can find?”

  “What, Doctor? You don’t want to stick your pins in me?” I waited a beat to see what he’d say. He said nothing, and that made me even angrier, as did the cautious way he was looking at me, like I had a bomb strapped on under my slinky attire. Somehow I knew I was taking my frustration and pain and anger out on him, even that it wasn’t fair, but I couldn’t help it. I needed to jump on somebody, and he was the closest, I guess. Hell, he could take it; he was a psychiatrist. “Let’s see, where should we begin? What should I do first? Lie down on the dreaded couch, maybe? Or should I go over these nice little inkblots you hang around your office to help you spot the crazies?”

  I turned to the wall where the framed inkblots were displayed and contemplated them, tilting my head and placing a forefinger under my chin. Sometimes I could get obnoxious down to an art form. “Wow, these are just fascinatin’, Doctor Black.”

  Black said nothing again, which annoyed me some more.

  I said, “Maybe we should finish what we started on the dock. Everybody in the whole US of A thinks we’re having an affair. Maybe we shouldn’t disappoint them.”

  “Is that what you really want?” he asked quietly. Man, now he was tiptoeing around me like I was a split personality or something. Maybe that’s what he thought, that this latest catastrophe in my life had sent me plunging headfirst over the edge, and I had turned into my uncivil, unpleasant alter ego. Maybe he had a straitjacket hidden under his desk, just in case I went nuts.

  I didn’t answer his question, because I wasn’t sure that’s what I really wanted, wasn’t sure why I’d just asked him to make love to me except that I just wanted him to do something to make me quit hurting inside.

  He crossed the room until he was a few feet away and stood staring at me. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and said, “I’m not sure this is the best time for that. But I’m here for you. I’ll help you any way I can…we don’t have to jump into bed to make you feel better.”

  I stared at him for an instant and felt pretty damn humiliated by his polite rejection. I hid all that with an uncaring, unaffected, huh-uh-I’m-perfectly-in-control little laugh. I clamped my teeth and shoved my fingers through my damp, uncombed hair. “Well, Doctor, I should’ve known you’d turn me down flat. It’s just been that kinda day.”

  Again, he was silent. Again, I was pissed. I guess I needed somebody to hold on to, and he was balking, wanting to analyze me instead. Maybe I could go down on the dock and pick up Tyler.

  “Why don’t you tell me exactly what went down that night with you and your husband and Harve? The newspaper clippings aren’t very detailed.”

  “They always seemed plenty detailed to me.”

  But the question brought awful pictures back into my mind of my little Zack lying lifelessly in my arms, of Harve on life support. I shut out those images and perched on the back of a white divan, where he could get a better glimpse of the lacy, low-cut gown underneath the red robe. He obliged me by glancing at my cleavage, then looked at me with a question in his eyes that asked why I was baiting him, and I wondered the same thing. It wasn’t my style. Well, maybe it was sometimes. I felt out of control of myself, and I was so angry inside that I couldn’t stop with the attitude.

  He sat down in a big leather armchair and crossed his long legs, the picture of serene, controlled manhood.

  “If you’re so interested in my story, maybe I ought to just set up house here with you and let you play Freud games all day and all night. Is that what you had in mind? Maybe I could be the star in your next book, huh, Doctor Black? What do you say?”

  His jaw got all tight and started flexing, and I thought I’d finally gotten to him, until he spoke, still calm, still pleasant. “I think you hide behind jokes and sarcasm like you’re doing right now, so you can bottle up all the real emotions you’re feeling. Then you feel nice and dead inside, just the way you like it. You’ve got defense mechanisms built on top of defense mechanisms until you can’t function like a normal person. I think you’ve made your job your whole life, because you won’t let anybody within two inches of your feelings. And now your job’s been pulled out from under you, and you feel alone and lonely and miserable and angry, but that’s the way you like it because you’re so full of survivor guilt, you think you deserve the bad things that happen to you.”

  I didn’t like hearing any of that. “Here we go at long last: Super Psychiatrist flexes his muscles and heaves a five-cent diagnosis over his head. Bravo, Doctor.” I clapped my hands.

  “That’s right. I am a psychiatrist, and that’s exactly what you need at the moment, whether you can admit it or not. You need to talk this out and let someone help you before it completely destroys you.”

  “I’m not going to weep and rend my clothes, if that’s what you’re thinking. Sorry, been there, done that.”

  He frowned. “Why don’t you just explain why we’re going through all this? You came down here to find me; you obviously want to talk about it.”

  The fury inside me was building and I hated the way it felt. I hated the way I was acting. Why didn’t I just leave and go back to my room? Or just get dressed and go home? Maybe I should talk about it. Maybe it would put out the magma fire burning under my breastbone.

  “Okay, what would you like to hear first about the worst night of my life? Would you like to hear how my ex-husband looked after my 9mm blew a hole through his chest? Or would you like to hear how the lady who was keeping my baby that night looked after my husband beat her to death with a baseball bat and kidnapped my baby?”

  Black didn’t move a
muscle, and our eyes held as my voice involuntarily dropped to a whisper. “Or how Harve looked hooked up on all those tubes and monitors at Cedar Sinai, with a bullet lodged in his spine? Or, most terrible of all, how Zackie, my little baby boy—”

  I couldn’t go on, not about my son, and I felt my arms and legs begin to tremble. Sick inside, I clamped my eyes shut and wrapped my arms around my shoulders, my anger dying away. I tried to get hold of the pain that held me every day and every night when I thought of him lying limp and tiny in my arms, and of the way his blood soaked my uniform on the way to the hospital, his big blue eyes staring up at me, hurt and confused, until they closed forever.

  I felt Black’s hand on my back, and I stiffened under his touch.

  “Please, Claire, let me help you get through this.”

  “You’ll never see me cry.” I don’t know why I always said that, but somehow it helped keep me dry-eyed and in control. “Nothing will ever make me cry again.” I shivered all over and felt cold, suddenly drained of anger and energy and even pain. “I’m just so tired, that’s all, tired of thinking about everything. Can you help me not to think about it? That’s what I need from you.”

  He pulled me into his arms, and he felt strong and solid and like a haven to sink into. I put my arms around his waist and rested my cheek on his chest, then held him tightly, needing someone to cling to just for a little while. He stroked my hair and turned my face up and put his lips on my mouth, soft, tentative. My arms came up around his neck, and we kissed until it deepened into a release of our mutual emotion. Then the bad things came spiraling back into my head, and I pushed away.

  Instantly, he dropped his grip on me and stepped back, giving me space. I kept my palms braced against his chest, separated but still connected. “I can’t do this,” I said. “People who love me end up dead, or hurt, or missing. I’m dangerous…You need to know that.”

  “It’s already too late,” he said.

  We stared at each other a long moment, and then I went back into his arms. After that, neither of us thought much about anything but the warm, naked skin under our mouths and hands, and I held on to him desperately throughout the heat and urgency of our lovemaking, as if he were my only lifeline to sanity.

  Later in his bed, Black slept peacefully, his arms loosely around me. I lay awake, worried, but glad, too. Tonight we had made our relationship even more complicated than ever, but I’d opened up to him in a way I never had to anyone else, and it felt surprisingly good. The knot in my chest had loosened a little, and when Black turned in his sleep and pulled me closer, I closed my eyes and snuggled into his bare chest. Who knew, maybe he could help me come to terms with myself. Maybe tomorrow I might tell him about the horrible nightmare that was my life.

  25

  When I woke up the next morning, Black was sitting beside the bed, fully dressed, black pin-striped Italian silk suit, starched white shirt, solid gold cuff links, in full regalia, ready for important things. We shared coffee and croissants and great big strawberries and smiled at each other a lot, but we didn’t say anything much that meant anything. Maybe he was as uncertain as I was. Then he left, and I went back to bed and slept for about five hours. And I felt a hell of a lot better.

  He called a couple of times to check on me, which sort of pleased me, and said he’d be back in time for a late dinner with me. I said, “Make yourself at home, really, I mean it,” and he laughed, and then I fell asleep on the chaise lounge in the shade for four or five more hours. Yes, I was sleep deprived, and I had grown accustomed to the pleasure of being unconscious.

  I didn’t wake up again until I heard Black enter his office. I was lying on a big, wide leather sofa, covered with a black velvet blanket. It was dark outside, and I hadn’t turned on any lights, so he didn’t see me at first. I watched him snap on his desk lamp, then shrug out of his dark suit jacket, loosen the top buttons of his still-crisp white shirt, then jerk off his gray tie and head for the wet bar. He got out a bottle of Scotch and set it on the counter. He poured a short glass and knocked it back as if he needed it.

  I said, “Do you work this hard all the time?”

  He turned quickly, and I sat up on the couch, still half hidden in shadows. He looked distinctly relieved. “I thought you’d gone home without telling me. Nobody’s seen you for hours.”

  “I fell asleep on the balcony, then came in here at some point. I’ve been trying to think everything through, the way you suggested.”

  He poured himself another drink, walked over, slouched down in the wing chair beside the sofa, and propped his foot on his knee. He rested his glass on the arm of his chair, but he didn’t offer me one. “And?”

  I’d been thinking about him all day, about us, about what I really wanted. And what I wanted was to be honest with him, quit hiding inside myself as he accused me, and if he could help me feel better about myself like he said he could, I was all for it. “You changed something in me last night. I can’t figure out how you did it, and I don’t know if I like it or not. But I think I do like it.”

  Black grinned, and I could tell it was genuine. I felt the urge to pull him down beside me and forget about everything else. Maybe that was because he was one hell of a good lover and made me feel things I’d never even dreamed of, or maybe it was more than that.

  “Well, I know a good thing when I see it,” he said.

  “Speaking of news, have you heard anything else about the case?” I had a feeling I’d changed the subject because of the growing intimacy. Black would probably call that a defense mechanism.

  “The networks can’t get enough of it. We can turn on the television and listen to the experts if you want.”

  “You’ve been one of those experts, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, I have. At times.”

  I watched him watch me, but the quiet was not too bad or too uncomfortable.

  “I feel okay today,” I offered after a while. “I slept all day, longer than I have in ages.”

  “I wish I could have stayed here with you.”

  I did, too. I thought of all the enjoyable things we did through the night, and I felt myself wanting to do them all again. I sat up and crossed my arms over my chest, somehow feeling vulnerable. “I realize I came on a bit strong last night. I apologize for that. I’m not very good at seduction. I guess I looked pretty silly, didn’t I?”

  Black gazed at me a second, then gave a wry-sounding laugh. “You’re not too bad at it, considering what happened.”

  That both flattered me and embarrassed me, so I changed the subject again. “Did you see patients today?”

  He nodded. “Yes, and any colleagues in Paris had some complications with a case we’ve got over there. We confer on patients a couple of times a week.”

  “Do you consider me your patient now?”

  He hesitated, and that put me off a little. He sipped his drink and relaxed into the chair. “No, I’m too close to you now to be effective, but I have excellent therapists working for me that I can recommend whenever you decide you’re ready.”

  “No way. I won’t talk to anyone but you.”

  “Well, we can always talk.” He grinned.

  “That was pretty easy.”

  “I’m pretty easy in lots of ways.” He picked up my hand and kissed the back of it, and I shut my eyes when he turned it over and kissed my palm. But I didn’t pull away, and he threaded his fingers through mine.

  I had to know, so I said, “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Do you think it’d really help me to talk about everything, you know, what happened back then and other things that I went through earlier in my life?”

  “Have you talked about these things to anyone before?”

  “No.”

  “Then, yes. I think it’d be helpful.”

  “Do I have to lie down on the couch?”

  “No. We can talk wherever you want.”

  “Will you lie down on the couch wit
h me?”

  I was teasing, but it felt good to have him back, to have hope that I could actually grind to a halt the awful tape that had run nonstop in my head for years on end.

  “So long as you understand you’re not my patient.”

  “What am I?”

  “My lover, at the moment.”

  “At the moment?”

  “As long as you want to be. I know I felt like a million bucks after last night.”

  “You may not after you get to know me better.”

  “I know you pretty well by now. I just don’t know about your past.”

  “Do I get to ask questions about you, too?”

  “Sounds reasonable.”

  I sat up, made room for him on the sofa, and Black set his glass aside and stretched out his long frame beside me. When he put his arm around me, I snuggled in close the way I’d done last night.

  “You smell good, like the soap in my bathroom,” he said. “You know, I think we’ll do all our sessions like this, or maybe even in bed. What do you say?”

  “Sounds good. How do we get started?”

  “I’m going to let you make up the rules. Who do you want to ask the first question? Me or you?”

  Instead of answering, I plucked at the buttons on his shirt, and when it gaped completely open, I slid my hand over the warm, hard muscles of his chest. “Shouldn’t we discuss your fee? Bud said you charge a thousand dollars an hour.”

  “Tell you what, I’ll pay you a thousand dollars for every hour you lie here and touch me like that. Does that work for you?” He kissed the top of my head, and I felt something shoot through me that was closely akin to whoopee. There really was something about this guy. I used to think he rang my bell, but the truth was he melted my bell down to liquid metal.