Shadow Traffic (14 page)

“All right,” she said.

“Did you hear my prayer last night? It was windy where I lived, almost a storm, and I didn't know if you heard it.”

“Yes, I heard it. I hear everything, my son,” she added, smiling.

“Go on. It's your turn now.”

“OK, OK. Did you enjoy the stars I made last night? Did you notice the patterns they formed over your head?”

“When I remembered to look up I did, though it was just for a few seconds because I live so far away from them and I don't know exactly what they're for and why you made so many of them in the first place. You never tell.”

“Good line,” the woman said, hoping her compliment might lighten his mood, which had turned serious again just when she was feeling encouraged.

“Sometimes I wonder if my prayers bounce off them on their way to you—if your stars just bat them back and forth so they never get to you.”

He looked at her and noticed a sour expression on her face. “Are you upset by my implicit criticism of you … my
God
,” he added, to be sure she understood.

“No, no, my Phil, I understand and forgive everyone.”

“Since I can't do either, that puts me at a great disadvantage. Go on, it's your turn again.”

She looked at him uncertainly. “Did you enjoy the flowers I created that were in Tower Grove Park near the restaurant where you ate last night?”

“I did enjoy the flowers,” he said, “as well as the stars, though they require two opposite motions of my head to see. You've made so many things but you've placed them too far apart and in so many directions I'd have to have a very flexible head, like an owl, to appreciate them all, or even a hundredth of them.”

“One billionth of them would be more like it.”

“Yes, my head would be very sore even noticing one
trillionth
of them. My head would be sore and useless and probably fall off.”

“I wouldn't let that happen to you, my son,” she said, adjusting her skirt again so it revealed more of her leg.

“But you do let many people's heads fall off all over the world. I watch this on my giant television and am puzzled.”

He looked at her quickly and noticed her sour expression was back. Her name was Courtney, he suddenly remembered. He didn't know why he kept forgetting it tonight—didn't think he had on their first date. He could see she was a little high, too, which had originally been one of his goals, but now it didn't matter. He was thinking of Melanie, the woman who left him. Courtney asked her question and he heard himself say, “I don't think my game is a big hit with you.”

“No, no, Phil, it's really interesting. I'm just not very good at playing God or talking to Him either.”

“Even though you're a therapist?” he said.

She forced a laugh then excused herself to use his bathroom,
leaving him alone with his thoughts. When she returned he said, “I'm sorry for what I said about you being a therapist. It was just a little joke.”

She made a disparaging little gesture with her left hand. “I know, it was a joke. It was funny, really.”

“I respect you a lot for being a therapist. It's very important work.”

“Thank you,” she said, smile intact.

“You know, I prayed about our date last night.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I prayed that you'd like it and would want to see me again.”

“Well, I did like it, but now it's getting kind of late so I'm afraid I …”

“Why didn't you tell me before?” he screamed. She thought he might have pounded the table with his fists, too. It had all happened so fast—like a lightning flash—that she couldn't be sure.

“I'm sorry,” she mumbled.

“Excuse me, do you suppose we could have a little sincerity here? Wasn't that one of the points of the game we just played, the game that bored you so much?”

“It didn't bore me and I have been sincere,” she said, raising her own voice, although it trailed off by the end of her answer.

“What I'm asking is, once you wanted to go home, why didn't you say so? Why did you only bring it up after playing the game much longer than you wanted to? This, after all the questions I asked you before to try to find out what you liked or didn't, trying to tell exactly what pleased you just so I could avoid this kind of humiliation.”

“No, no,” she said, gesturing vaguely with her right hand.

“No, no what?” he said. “You've got to explain better than
that. You're a therapist, for Christ's sake. It's your job to explain things, isn't it?”

“I enjoyed playing the game. I enjoyed all the other things we did tonight, too, so much that I didn't realize about the time and then as soon as I did, I merely said I needed to go home to get some sleep, 'cause I have clients in the morning.”

“And whose home are you in now?”

She said nothing. She thought she'd made a diplomatic answer but it didn't seem to have made any difference.

“You're in my home now, aren't you, which I guess makes you
my
client.”

“Yes, of course.”

“And a man's home is his castle, am I right? I didn't pluck that saying out of the air, did I?”

“No, you didn't pluck it out of the air,” she said softly, feeling that her lips were starting to quiver and wondering if he noticed because he was looking at her in a kind of inhuman way, like a camera recording everything.

“I can stay a few more minutes,” she said.

“I'll say how long you can stay.”

“I don't understand what's happening.”

“Seems clear enough to me,” he said, staring directly at her.

“I don't understand why you're talking this way to me—it's scaring me.”

“It's a pity,” he said.

“What? What is?”

“That understanding so often lags behind activity, or to put it another way, a therapist understands but a God acts.”

“OK. That's interesting. All your ideas are, but now I really do have to go.” She said this in what she considered a fairly even tone of voice, though she felt she was shaking a little when she
stood up and that he noticed it, of course, looking at her the way he was, like some kind of x-ray machine.

She took a definitive step or two before he sprang up from his chair tiger-like and, grabbing her arms just below the shoulders, forced her down on the sofa. She let out a little half scream just before his hands fastened on her neck.

“Be quiet. Don't ever scream again in here or things will get a lot worse for you.”

She said nothing. She was breathing heavily, felt for a moment that she might pass out. His hands were holding her firmly—not quite causing pain, but more like a relentless pressure.

She looked at him closely. The physique that he'd bragged about on the Internet, that had attracted and surprised her on the first date by being almost exactly what he'd described, was now her enemy. He was a little older than her, but still in his thirties, and he was taller and of course much stronger, too.

He released his hands and walked a little away from her.

“I'm sorry. I don't know what I did to make you so mad but I'm sorry,” she said.

“You tried to leave after all the reassurances and tawdry little compliments you threw my way.”

She nodded, as if acknowledging a crime.

“Even after I told you how I prayed about this date, how I bothered God Himself about it.
That's
why I'm keeping you like this. Do you think you understand now?”

“I understand,” she said.

“You should understand. You're a psychotherapist, aren't you? Isn't that what you told me?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn't your training cover people like me? People who are really in pain.”

She said nothing, and bowed her head. She suddenly felt exhausted and wondered if he'd somehow drugged her. She heard him walking across the room, but still kept her head down. Maybe he'll just go into his room and let me leave, she thought. But his steps were getting closer now instead of further away.

“I asked you a question,” he screamed, and her head jerked up and stared at him in disbelief. He was standing five to ten feet away from her, pointing a gun directly at her with one hand while gripping some kind of bag with the other.

“Jesus,” she said.

“No, it's Phil. Jesus isn't here now, Dr. Courtney, but I am.”

“What? What are you doing?”

“I'm commanding your attention. You were starting to fall asleep and I think therapists who fall asleep should lose their licenses, don't you? At the very least they need to be woken up.”

She gazed at him. He seemed much taller now—as if holding the gun had suddenly turned him into a giant.

“Please put the gun away, please, so we can talk.”

He shook his head no, so rapidly it was like a twitch. “I'll tell you what I
will
do,” he said. “I'll even things up a little.”

“Please,” she said. She wasn't aware that she was crying, and the tears falling down her face felt like another shock.

“Let's play a different game,” he said. “This one might interest you more than the last one.”

He was withdrawing something from the bag, then in one fluid motion it came flying at her like a bat, landing beside her on the sofa. She let out a gasp and saw the light come back into his eyes.

“Yes it's real, you can touch it if you want. It's a real gun and it's all yours to use as you wish as long as we play the game.”

“Please don't …”

“Please don't what? Play the game? Why don't you hear what
the game is before you reject it? The rules are simple enough. One of these guns has bullets in it, the other has blanks. If you have the gun with bullets you can leave now simply by shooting me. You look surprised, but don't be. And don't assume I know which gun is which. They're twin guns, have you noticed? They're linked forever, just like you and me.”

“I know that woman hurt you. I know you're feeling a lot of pain.”

“
Do
you know what I'm feeling? Haven't you already generalized me away into some psychological category—the better not to really know me.”

“There's some truth in what you say. I know there are psychologists who are too analytical and not always empathetic enough. I've had them myself.”

“Then you've had problems, too? Problems you apparently couldn't manage.”

“I've had issues I needed to have some help … dealing with. It's very frustrating when you feel a doctor doesn't understand the uniqueness of your pain, no question. Now could you please put …”

“And what side of the fence are you on as a therapist: analytical or emotional?”

“Can you put the gun away first?”

“No. Answer me.”

She could feel herself trembling slightly while she spoke. “I like to think I'm both, but if I had to be on one side I'd say I'm more on the feeling side.”

“Do we really get to choose which side we're on?” he said, taking one step closer. She looked at his gun, couldn't help it, then at hers a couple feet away from her on its side against the sofa pillow.

“I could talk about this a lot better if you'd put the guns away.”

“We've talked about that already. That's not an option for you.”

“OK, would you like to talk some more with me about this?” she said, feeling it was crucial to keep a dialogue going.

“I'm all ears,” he said tonelessly. “No, literally, I'm sometimes entirely made up of ears. I paid a doctor to sculpt some of my ears so they'd fool you by looking like other body parts. But that's just an illusion. Look at my mouth more closely. If you do, you'll see that it's really an ear.”

“Did your ex used to talk too much? Did you feel you weren't listened to?”

He laughed ironically.

“Your mother, too, perhaps?”

“When you're composed entirely of ears it's kind of hard to compete as a talker, wouldn't you say?”

She tried to force a smile to show she appreciated his humor. She had to still try to believe that empathy could have some impact on him, although he appeared to have none for her whatsoever.

“What's the matter? You're not saying anything. I thought therapists had mouths as well as ears.”

“I know that being disappointed by someone you love is the worst pain in the world,” she finally said.

“You're a fool if you only become disappointed
after
they leave you.”

“What do you mean?” She couldn't tell if he'd said something insightful or not. She kept looking at the gun that was still pointed at her, although its angle was less direct now.

“Disappointment begins way before a person leaves you. Even ear people know that. The question is: is there enough there to
counteract the disappointment? That's what love really is, it's just tolerated disappointment. You're lying if you define it any other way.”

“I don't know,” she said, thinking of the man who'd recently broken up with her (a professor of architecture at her university). “Maybe you're right.”

“Seems like I'm right about people more than you are. Of course, I don't have a license, so what good does it do me?”

“Insight is always valuable, what else do we have?”

“I have insight into what's wrong with a lot of things, but what good does it do if you can't ever fix any of them?”

“You can use your insight on yourself, can't you?” She was leaning forward, as she often did with her clients when she was excited about making a point.

“Sit back,” he said sternly. “Don't get too close to my gun. I already gave you your own, didn't I?”