Burning Time (9 page)

“You’ll have to talk to my supervisor.”

“That’s fine. What’s your supervisor’s name?”

After a brief discussion with the supervisor, April faxed an official Police Department request for information to the MasterCard office. An hour later, she received a printout of charges to the account for the last month. Among them was a charge to American Airlines on the date Ellen left her dorm. And a number of charges to a restaurant and shops in—bingo: San Diego.

Jason slammed his appointment book shut on the five worrying letters to Emma that had come in the five days since his return from Toronto. Then he masked the movement by rearranging a few things on his desk and checking the answering machine to make sure it was on. As he did this, he realized it was absurd. Harold wouldn’t notice his office under any circumstances. Harold never commented on anything but himself. Jason looked quickly around anyway.

His was the usual sort of psychiatrist’s office, with a leather analyst’s couch, a leather Eames chair behind it, a large desk covered with papers, and a rolling desk chair, also leather. He had covered the windows to the outside world with bamboo blinds, but left open a few tiny windows into himself for those patients who truly needed to find him. Antique clocks came and went as he added to his collection and moved them about. But none in here distracted by ticking loudly or chiming the hour. A number of prints, needlepoint pillows, knickknacks, and mementos in a wide variety of tastes and quality, given him
over the years by his patients, companionably coexisted with his books on every available surface in the room. Years ago he used to hide everything away, as if personal things from his patients might reveal their names and crowd the space with their voices. But now he knew therapy did not require empty spaces and blank walls to be successful.

For people like Harold, the walls were as good as blank anyway. He didn’t care what was on them. Today he nodded at Jason, but didn’t actually greet him, look at him, or ask how he was. As far as Harold was concerned, his psychiatrist had absolutely no life beyond taking care of him. Jason knew this, and knew that Harold didn’t see the dark shadows under his eyes or the turmoil behind them.

He stood as Harold crossed the room with a loping walk and sat in the Eames chair next to the desk. Harold had always been meticulously dressed and was now. Very distinguished. He was wearing a dark suit with a gray silk tie, a white shirt, and black shoes. His hair was cut very short. He was an inch or two taller than Jason, and ten years older. His hair was almost all gray now. Two years ago when Harold first came to Jason, his hair had been black. He had been a big beefy man. Now he was caved in. His cheeks looked as if they had been deflated. His mouth had thinned out into a line. Often—several times in a session at least—he sucked his lips inside his mouth and closed his teeth over them as if to stop himself from saying or doing something. Jason had a French clock on the shelf that was a brass bull standing on a clock face. That was Harold two years ago, bullish on himself.

“I had a dream about Marilyn last night,” Harold said.

Jason sat in his chair and rolled it away from his desk into the center of the room, trying to quell his anguish. Emma had appeared in a quirky and sexual movie, and
now somebody was writing upsetting letters to her. He shifted in his seat but couldn’t relax.

One letter came every day on the dot, very strange and rambling letters that no psychiatrist could read without being concerned. They were signed,
The Friend That Saved You
. Jason kept asking her to think,
think
about what this might mean, but Emma drew a blank on ever being saved by anybody.

“Tell me about the dream,” Jason said to Harold, and thought about the letters.

There was a lot of Right and Wrong in them. Maybe they were some religious thing. They mentioned right path, wrong path,
the fire that burned but didn’t consume
. In the Bible that might be the burning bush. But hellfire also burned without consuming.
Once saved, now damned to burning
. That sounded pretty vengeful to him.

Emma thought they were equal to the kind of chain letters they got as kids that threatened bad luck if you didn’t copy them and send them to fourteen friends. Curses like, your mother wears army boots. Drop dead. Burn in Hell. She argued there was nothing to it. Jason knew she was wrong; there was something to this. He just didn’t know what.

“How long will this go on?” Harold asked.

“A long time.”

“I thought when she died I would get some relief. But, I don’t know. I feel worse.” Harold let his chin sink down on his chest.

“You’ll feel worse for a while, and then you’ll feel better,” Jason murmured.

“I don’t know. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I walk around at night. I can’t even concentrate on a movie or anything. I just keep thinking about those nights, you know, when she was so sick. She didn’t want anybody else to touch her.
I told you that. I had to take her to the bathroom. And she—” Harold covered his face with his hands.

“What was the dream?” Jason asked again.

There was another letter sitting with today’s mail on the table in the hall. Emma was out having lunch with someone, and hadn’t seen it yet. Jason felt a deep pang of jealousy over the lunch. He never had lunch. Now she was always out at lunch, had lunch every day and was never hungry for dinner. He looked at the bull clock on the shelf. Definitely still at lunch.

“I was with a prostitute. We were having drinks. We were negotiating her price. Marilyn came in. She was very angry. Then she went into the kitchen and started washing dishes. I think we were on an ocean liner. But it had no captain. It was sort of drifting, wallowing in the water. I took the prostitute out on deck. It was, like, all foam rubber. We started, uh, doing it on the foam rubber deck. She was very skinny and small. She felt like a little girl. My dick was tiny, about as thin as a pencil. It was … horrible. It didn’t feel like my own.”

Jason sighed and shook his head.

“I mean really
numb.”
Harold frowned. “What do you think?”

He couldn’t understand why Emma wasn’t alarmed by the intrusion of the letters into her life. It didn’t take years of training to see they came from a disturbed mind. Jason didn’t like the idea of a disturbed mind fixated on Emma.

“What do you make of it?” Harold demanded.

The postmarks were all impossible to read. You couldn’t see where they came from, or even the date. That didn’t worry her either. Maybe it was the military upbringing. You just didn’t withdraw from danger in the military.

“Dr. Frank, why are you looking at me like that?”

Jason focused. Harold’s face was red. His lips were
caught between his teeth, and he was breathing loudly through his nose. He was being frowned at by his doctor. He didn’t like that.

“Am I going crazy? Is that it?” he demanded wildly.

“No,” Jason said, alarmed that once again he had slipped away in the middle of a session. “You’re not going crazy.”

“Then why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m just concentrating,” Jason said. “I wasn’t looking in any particular way. Tell me about the dream.”

“I just did, didn’t you hear me?” Harold gnawed his lips again.

Shit. Jason bit the inside of his own lip with fury at himself. He was having trouble concentrating. It was his fault, not Harold’s. There was steam coming out of Harold’s every orifice. Jason could see it. Harold was an important man. Very few people dared to thwart him in any way. That was one of the reasons Marilyn’s death hit him so hard. Death hadn’t spared him, and he couldn’t take it.

“Can you remember anything else about the dream? Any other details?” Jason asked. He hadn’t been listening to the whole thing and couldn’t begin to comment on it. Shit and shit again.

“What does it mean? You really think I’m in trouble, don’t you?” Tears filled Harold’s eyes.

Jason shook his head with horror. He was making his patients cry. One after another. They were having dreams about ships without captains and rudders, about trains off the rails. Pilotless airplanes. Wallowing in quicksand. Jesus.

Jason had been thinking about the letters in his appointment book, and the unopened letter on the mail table. Harold had lost his wife. She died after a long and
terrible decline. Harold was trying to get over it. But he, Jason, was the one in trouble.

“I did go to a prostitute.” Harold wept. “First time in my life.” He blew his nose. “And I couldn’t feel it. Couldn’t feel a thing. You think I’m disgusting, don’t you?”

“No,” Jason said empathically. Normal, all normal. “We’ll have to talk a lot about this.”

There was a click on the phone, the answering machine kicking in. He wondered if it was Emma, calling to say she was back from another glamorous lunch. His eyes moved to the carriage clock on his desk. He had fifteen minutes to get Harold’s ship back on course. He got the ship back on course and ushered Harold out, then punched the button on his answering machine.

“Jason, it’s Charles. Listen, Brenda and I would love to have you and Emma over for a social day. We’re in town this weekend. How about Sunday?”

It was a hot, clear, California day with a deep blue sky and no sign of smog north of Pacific Beach when Troland took the second of his many steps to make things Right. He headed up the Five to sell his bike. Looking back, he saw a gray haze over the city.

He wore sunglasses but no helmet. He liked the feeling of the wind whipping at his face. He didn’t want to go all the way to Santa Monica or Malibu, so he got off the highway at Torrey Pines. He rode around Del Mar and Miramar for a while, then headed to the better bike shop. It was on a different planet from Stephen’s Motorcycle Salvage where he and Willy used to go. This was the kind of place with ads that said you meet the nicest people on a Honda.

There wasn’t another Harley like his either on the street or in the window of the shop. The only bikes he saw here were Hondas, Kawasakis—Yuppie Jap bikes with the guts all covered up. Riding a bike like that was like fucking a girl with all her clothes on.

He parked in front of the diner across the street. One of
his voices told him he was hungry, so he went inside. Bikers were scattered around at a few tables drinking beer. Troland sat at a table in the front by the window, where he could see his bike prominently parked by the door.

A short, tired-looking blonde in a white bikini top and denim shorts came over with an order pad.

“Hi, I’m Jean. What can I get for you?” she said pleasantly.

“I’ll have a pitcher of draft, double cheeseburger, and fries.”

“Sure thing.”

He looked at her retreating back. The round ass, jiggling under the short shorts, held no interest for him. He couldn’t concentrate on wanting to hurt her. It made him feel cursed. He couldn’t even think about taking her out on the desert where no one could see or hear anything and sticking her dry little cunt. He didn’t think of this one screaming, trying to kick him with sandy bare feet, and missing. Breaking her arm. It usually made him feel good to think about it.

The little blonde put the foaming beer down. “Anything else I can get you?”

“No,” he said flatly. He had been sitting very still, staring straight ahead since he came in.

She hesitated for a second, “You okay?” she asked.

“You got a problem?”

“No.” She turned away quickly.

He didn’t turn to look after her this time. He knew he’d been brought real low if he had no interest in sex. It was like they all got together and did something to his balls so his dick wouldn’t work anymore.

The girl returned with the plate and put it down gently in front of him. She moved the ketchup bottle closer and
took off without a word. Troland looked down at the plate, then drank some beer.

A kid with a cross dangling from one earlobe, stringy hair, and bare feet in holey sneakers approached the table cautiously.

“Nice scooter, man. Looks low.”

Troland nodded without looking at him. “It’s been stretched and lowered.”

“No shit.”

Troland picked up the cheeseburger and took a huge bite. He chewed and swallowed before answering.

“It’s for sale,” he said flatly. “Wanna buy it?”

“You’re kidding.”

“I don’t kid.”

“But it looks brand-new,” the kid protested. “It’s just last year’s. It’s not even a year old.” He sat down without being invited.

“It’s two years old, but I spent a year customizing it. Yeah, I guess it is brand-new.” Troland poured half a bottle of ketchup on his plate.

“Stretched and lowered, huh.” The kid watched him, eyes narrowed.

Troland’s plate became a sea of red.

“Hey, you really like that stuff.”

“Yeah.” Troland dipped his hand into it and licked his fingers. “Tastes better than blood.”

The boy laughed.

“The bike’s for sale,” Troland said flatly. He could tell by the way the kid walked he had money, probably even went to college. Poor kids didn’t look like that. “Want it?”

“Well, sure I want it. Who wouldn’t?”

Troland lifted the plate and stuck his tongue in the ketchup.

The kid watched him uncomfortably. “Uh, how much do you want for it?”

“You can’t afford it, out of your range.”

“I got enough out of my dad to buy a Fat Bob,” the kid said indignantly.

Troland nodded. That meant he had eleven grand. “This is better than a Fat Bob.”

The kid didn’t even pause. “Let’s have a look,” he said.

A few minutes later he was squatting in front of it, looking the Harley over, touching it here and there, smelling it even.

Troland answered all his questions in a dead voice. Yeah it was a real nice bike. He handed over the keys and let the long-haired freak go for a ride.

“You okay?” the kid asked when he came back fifteen minutes later.

Troland’s face was frozen behind his sunglasses. He had hardly moved during the whole process.

“You got a problem?”