Panic Attack

by Jason Starr

  Johnny looked toward the front of the stage, thinking she’d be up there with the other groupie types. He didn’t see her—but wait, there she was, standing next to a few other girls. She looked better in person than she did in the pictures. She had a sweet little body and what looked like a pretty nice ass. He didn’t look at her for very long, though, knowing how important it was for her to notice him first. He got into a good position, off to the side about ten feet away from her, and looked toward the stage. After a little while, although he was still staring straight ahead and couldn’t see her at all, he could feel her eyes on him. He knew she was checking him out, noticing how hot and sexy he was, but he had to play this right. Timing was everything with a pickup, and he had to give her a chance to really notice him, build up a fantasy in her head about who he was. She didn’t just have to like him, she had to want him.

  At the perfect moment, when he sensed she was about to look away, he turned and gave her the Johnny Long smile. He knew that the way a woman reacted to his smile was as good as him asking her to have sex with him and her answering yes or no. If she looked away quickly the answer was no; the door was closed. If she didn’t look away but reacted like she’d been caught doing something, the door wasn’t completely closed, but it would take some work to open it all the way. Ah, but if the woman smiled back and didn’t look away at all, then the door was open, and in Marissa Bloom’s case there was no doubt about it. Her door was wide, wide open.

  He went over to her, maintaining lots of eye contact, and asked her if she wanted to get a drink at the bar, and naturally she said yes. He let her walk ahead of him, loving the way her little ass looked in those tight jeans. He liked the little tee she was wearing, too, how it showed the angel tattoo on her lower back. Tattoos on the lower back were always a good sign. He’d never met a girl with one of those who didn’t love to screw.

  At the bar, he put his greatest asset to work—his irresistible charm. As he expected, she loved that he’d shortened his name to Xan, and saying that he’d call her Rissa from now on had been unplanned but ingenious. Having a pet name for her communicated to her that he wanted to see her again, that he expected to see her again, but he didn’t have to come out and say it, which would’ve made him seem way too pushy so early on. He bet he was the only Casanova in the world who knew this trick.

  When the conversation got into art, he really hit his stride. It was obvious that she was thrilled to meet an artist, and it impressed her more than if he’d told her his last name was Trump. He dropped all the names of her favorite painters but did it in a casual way, like Wow, we both love the same painters, isn’t that a big coincidence? Man, she ate that shit right up. Every time he mentioned Pollock or van Gogh or Kahlo or whoever, he was one step closer to scoring. He knew so much about her, had so much information to drop, it almost seemed unfair. But then he reminded himself—she wasn’t just some innocent girl, she was the daughter of Adam Bloom, the daughter of the guy who’d killed Carlos in cold blood. She deserved everything she had coming to her.

  Things were going so well that he knew he could’ve scored with her tonight if he wanted to, but he had to stick to his game plan. This was a long con after all. Yeah, he was going to nail her good, but he had to build her trust completely to accomplish everything he wanted to accomplish.

  So he kept the BS flowing, telling her everything she wanted to hear, and then her boyfriend came over. This was too perfect. Johnny figured it was that Darren guy she’d been blogging about. Johnny had been in this situation many times before and knew there was no better way to win over a girl than to get rid of her pissed-off ex. It helped when the ex was a skinny little weasel. So Johnny took Darren aside and squeezed his hand as hard as he could and told him very calmly that if he didn’t leave Marissa alone he was gonna cut off his dick and feed it to him. He said this with steel in his voice, looking right into the wimp’s eyes, and he could tell he was getting his point across. Finally he let go of the guy’s hand and watched him hightail it out of there.

  Johnny could tell Marissa was impressed, and he scored more points when she went to tell her friend that she was leaving. Her friend looked over at Johnny, and he grinned and read her lips: He’s fucking hot. Now Johnny had gotten friend approval. Was he the greatest pickup artist in the world or what?

  Johnny had to be careful not to get too cocky, not to shoot himself in the ass. At the café he almost went a little too far, saying that he’d lived in Hampstead at the same time she did. Of course, he’d picked up this info from her blog, and he’d been smart enough to do a little extra research about it earlier, checking out the neighborhood on a map of London and picking up the name of a street in Hampstead near where she lived. But that was all he knew about the area and he had to change the subject quickly before she asked too many questions.

  He had to be more careful from now on, make sure he didn’t get boxed in like that again. He saw her checking her watch, saying she had to get home. He knew she was just being the Good Girl, trying to make him think she wasn’t the type who went home with guys she hardly knew. Yeah, right. He knew if he tried to get her back to his place, hit her with some more charm, he could’ve scored, no problem. He almost pushed for it because he was in the mood to bang her, but he knew that would be taking a risk. She might feel bad in the morning, freak out, not want to see him again, and he didn’t want to take that chance.

  So he insisted on taking her back to Forest Hills, and he could tell she was impressed. She’d met a hot guy who was nice and thoughtful, too. She probably felt like she’d struck gold. What woman wouldn’t?

  At the house, Johnny was glad to see the police car parked in front. He’d expected Bloom would panic when he found the note under his door and try to get some kind of extra protection, but little did he know this was gonna backfire right into his face. This was exactly what Johnny wanted, for the cops to see him coming home with Marissa, kissing her good night, and walking away. Now he could get as close to the Blooms and the house as he wanted to because as far as the cops were concerned he was clean.

  He told Marissa all the right things, how he wanted to see her again, and he knew she wanted him to kiss her. He let her want it a little longer, making her really want it, and then he gave it to her. He was holding both her hands and was gentle with his lips and slipped in just enough tongue. She was pressing her body up against his in a way that told him she was ready for him, but he stuck to his plan and said good-bye, leaving her wanting more.

  As he walked away, he saw the cop looking over at him. Johnny looked down, avoiding eye contact. Man, Johnny couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a rush like this. He couldn’t wait to see Marissa’s blog tomorrow. She’d write about how she’d met this great guy named Xan and how excited she was. Just thinking about that name, Xan, cracked Johnny up. But nothing was funnier than picturing Dr. Bloom sitting there in his fancy house. He’d probably jazzed up his alarm system, gotten new locks for the doors, and thought he was safe with the cops sitting out there. Yeah, like anything could protect him now. Pretty soon Johnny was gonna be inside his daughter and inside his house, and that would only be the beginning of the pain he’d make that man feel.

  ON FRIDAY morning Adam decided that shooting Carlos Sanchez ten times had probably been a mistake. Shooting him the first two times had been necessary—he had no doubts about that—but he wished he could take back the other eight shots.

  But, unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about that now. What was that Shakespeare quote, what was done can’t be undone? It was so true. And ruminating about it incessantly was just causing anxiety and stress, so why not just let go?

  Adam was getting dressed to go to work when Dana sat up in bed and said, “I want to go to Florida.”

  She had just woken up and her voice was deeper than normal, more gravelly.

  “Come on,” Adam said, “you know we can’t do that right now.” “We can do whatever we want. We’re not trapped here.”

>   Buttoning a red pinstriped shirt, Adam said, “Clements said he doesn’t want us to leave.”

  “I want to talk to a lawyer today. We’re not criminals, for God’s sake, we’re not suspects in anything. We don’t have to stay around here, putting our lives at risk, because he wants us to stay.”

  “I think you’re being a little melodramatic—”

  “We can be available by telephone. We can be available by e-mail. We can teleconference with him. This is the twenty-first century, for God’s sake.”

  Adam, sitting down in a chair, putting on his loafers, said, “If there was a reason to go to Florida I’d go.”

  “Your life was threatened,” Dana said. “If that’s not a reason to go, what is?” “Okay, just relax, take some deep breaths,” Adam said. “It’s very difficult to talk to you when you get like this.”

  Adam was looking down at his shoes, but he knew exactly what Dana’s expression was—she was staring at him in mock exasperated disbelief.

  “Fine, you do whatever you want to do,” she finally said. “But I’m leaving, and I’m taking Marissa with me. If you want to stay here that’s up to you.”

  Adam stood back and checked himself out in the mirror. He didn’t look the best he’d ever looked. He appeared tired, worn, burnt-out—the stress of the past few days was getting to him. He could see Dana behind him, sitting at the edge of the bed. She didn’t look so terrific either.

  “Let’s discuss this later when you’re calmer,” he said. “I have to get to the office.”

  “I’ll let you know what hotel we’re staying at,” Dana said. “Oh, come on, can you please just stop it with the posturing?” “He’s using us as bait. I refuse to be bait.”

  “There’s no one to bait us. The note was a prank.” “It was a death threat, Adam.”

  “It said nothing about killing me. It said, what, I don’t even remember. Oh, yeah, it said I was going to wish I was never born. Come on, that means nothing. It’s something a kid in a schoolyard would say.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re not taking it seriously.”

  “Not taking it seriously? Come on, I had Clements down here right away, I had cops outside all night. I think I’m taking it very seriously, but I still think it was a prank.”

  “A kid from the neighborhood wouldn’t do something like that.” “You don’t know that. It sounded like a kid, I mean the language.” “It sounded like somebody who’s angry, who wants to hurt you.”

  “Explain to me how that makes any sense. Please just try to explain it. Somebody who robbed our house would come here the next day and put a note under the door? Why? To scare me? If somebody’s angry, wants revenge, why leave a note? See, so if you think about it, logically, it doesn’t make any sense. It had to be a prank, maybe not a kid from the neighborhood but maybe some nut who read about me in the paper. I’m sure that happens all the time when somebody’s front-page news. That’s why, you noticed, Clements wasn’t very concerned. He probably sees this kind of thing happen all the time. If our number was listed I bet we would’ve been getting threats all night.”

  Dana had a strange look. She was zoning out, looking like she was barely aware he was in the room.

  “What’s wrong?” Adam asked.

  She seemed far away for a while longer; then she focused and said, “Nothing.”

  “You see my point now, don’t you?”

  “Gabriela didn’t rob our house.” She sounded oddly distant. “What? What’re you talking about?”

  “She wouldn’t do that,” she said. “I could see her getting desperate, wanting to help her father, but I can’t see her actually breaking into our house. That isn’t something she’d do.”

  “I disagree,” Adam said. He glanced at the clock—8:26. Damn, he had to get going. “She had a relationship with Sanchez, she made him copies of our keys and got him the code to the alarm. It makes sense that she broke in.”

  “Then who killed her?” Dana asked.

  Adam didn’t have an answer to this, so he said, “I agree there are some holes.” “Oh, really,” she said sarcastically. “You’ve come to that conclusion, huh?”

  Adam couldn’t remember—was his appointment with David Rothman at nine or ten? If it was at nine he’d never make it.

  Turning on his BlackBerry to check, he said, “You have to give the police a little more time. Clements seemed confident last night that they’ll get a break in the case. I bet you they’ll make an arrest by the end of the day. Meanwhile, the cops are right outside.”

  Dana said something, but Adam was distracted, looking at his BlackBerry.

  Shit, it was at nine. “Sorry,” he said, “what was that?”

  “I said I think this is all about your ego. You think if you run away you’ll be admitting you did something wrong.”

  Adam considered this, then said, “When I was in junior high and kids threatened to beat me up every day after school, I never had a problem at all running away from them. Trust me, if I believed I was in any danger at all right now, or you or Marissa was in any danger, I’d have no problem running away. But in this case I just don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “Yeah? And what if you’re wrong?”

  It was 8:28.

  “I know you don’t like it when I leave in mid-discussion, but I have no choice,” he said. He gave her his usual quick kiss good-bye and then said, “I’ll call you in a couple of hours, okay?” and left.

  Adam arrived at his office at a few minutes past nine. David Rothman was in the waiting area, reading Newsweek.

  “Morning, David, I’ll be with you in one sec,” Adam said and went toward his office. He passed Lauren in the corridor; they exchanged good mornings, and he noticed that she didn’t seem quite as cold and distant as she had yesterday. Adam hadn’t bought a newspaper on the way to work, but he’d glanced at other people’s papers on the subway and knew that at least he wasn’t frontpage news again. Hopefully there were no mentions of him at all in today’s papers and the whole story was starting to fade.

  Adam got settled in, refilled the water pitcher, and then reviewed his notes on his previous sessions with David. Things had been going well in David’s therapy lately. He had been seeing Adam for over ten weeks now with various issues, including some associated with middle age, as he had recently turned fifty. His wife had a drinking problem, and he had associated codependency issues, as well as difficulty expressing his anger, to his wife and in general. When he started seeing Adam, he’d been acting out by having a series of one-night stands with women he’d picked up at bars, and Adam felt he exhibited several telltale signs of sex addiction. They’d been working on techniques for expressing his anger, and, with Adam’s guidance, he had managed to convince his wife to go to AA. While he still expressed the desire to philander, they had been working on various behavior modification techniques, and David hadn’t cheated on his wife at all under Adam’s care.

  Adam returned to the waiting room and said, “David, come on in.”

  David entered the office and settled on the couch, and he and Adam exchanged their usual small talk. David worked in advertising, and his company had a skybox at Madison Square Garden, so they discussed the Knicks for a minute or so. Adam was hoping the shooting wouldn’t come up, but those hopes were dashed when David said, “Oh, yeah, so I heard about what happened. Is everything okay with that?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Adam said. “It was a difficult situation, but my family’s handling it.”

  He was trying to sound professional and curt and not to be at all evasive, though he was eager to get on to another topic.

  “That’s good,” David said. “I imagine stuff like that gets blown out of proportion in the news.”

  “It does,” Adam said flatly. “So how’re you doing?”

  David began by talking about an ongoing issue he had with a coworker he didn’t get along with, and Adam noticed that he seemed particularly agitated— shifting around a lot, crossing and uncro
ssing his legs. It was hard for Adam to be as attentive as he normally was during a session. He couldn’t help wondering if David’s agitation had to do with what he’d heard about the shooting or if it meant he didn’t feel comfortable with Adam as his therapist. Adam was mulling over whether to be assertive and ask David what was bothering him or to ignore the whole thing.

  But then Adam realized he was way off base when David said, “So anyway, I, uh, met a woman the other night.”

  Well, that explained the agitation; this was a major setback for David.

  Wanting to keep his patient feeling reassured and at ease, Adam asked in a very normal, nonjudgmental tone, “Where did you meet her?”

  “Online,” David said. He crossed his legs, then uncrossed them again. His forehead was glistening with sweat. “I mean, not online, I mean through an online service . . . Ashley Madison.”

  Adam knew of Ashley Madison and other similar extramarital dating services. Several of his patients frequently met sex partners through these sites.

  “Okay,” Adam said calmly, waiting for David to continue on his own.

  David explained how he’d registered with Ashley Madison and then had arranged to meet a woman, Linda—who was married with two kids—at a hotel and had sex with her. When he described what had happened, and especially when he mentioned the sex and how “hot and raw” it was, David started talking faster and louder, and Adam could tell how exhilarating the whole experience had been for him. It was very similar to the way a drug addict would behave when describing the experience of doing drugs; in fact, in a previous session David had told Adam about the coke habit he’d kicked several years ago. This had hardly been surprising to Adam, since most sex addicts have other addictions and are frequently codependent. All in all, David was just about as textbook as they get.

  As David finished telling the story, his lips started quivering, and then the tears came, flowing down his cheeks, and he said, “I don’t know why . . .” He was crying harder and had to get hold of himself. Finally he said, “I don’t know why I keep doing this. I don’t know . . . I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”