EIGHT
Three days later, they were ready to knock on It’s door. Three days of Leah making several trips to the hospital to check on a private investigator who had the perfect name for a private investigator (or perhaps an action star): Archer Drake.
“Really?” she couldn’t help asking. “You didn’t make it up? Or legally change it?”
A shadow had crossed his face when she wondered aloud if he’d changed it and why, but it was gone so quickly she wondered if his wounds were bothering him and she had misinterpreted his expression.
“Go away, it’s my real name, stop coming around and challenging the reality of my name, you awful—Laffy Taffy! Mmm, bring banana-flavored next time.”
“I will not. There is no worse taste in the world than artificial banana. Well. Lava, perhaps.”
Two days of frustrating sessions with clients while all the time wondering what nonsense patient Archer Drake, condition satisfactory, was getting up to. Two days of anticipating and dreading the confrontation with her mother. Ha! Confrontation . . . her mother would never stoop to acknowledging any of Leah’s righteous fury. What was the word to describe a confrontation of one?
And as if all that wasn’t nerve-racking enough, two days of repeatedly staring hard at Archer Drake and verifying that, yes, she could not see him.
Unprecedented.
All that to say, for three days she almost forgot to be resigned to her untimely murder.
Upon discharge, Archer had insisted on taking a taxi to his apartment, and they’d agreed to meet at her office later that day. “Are you sure?” she asked for the third time, walking him through the hospital lobby. He was wearing scrubs, a reluctant gift from the admitting physician (his clothes were, of course, ruined), and walking carefully but energetically. “Perhaps you should take the day to rest.”
“Cluck-cluck, Leah. No. I want to get this over with. Also, I have a thousand questions for your mom. Your mom! I still can’t get over that.”
“Ugh.”
“Yeah, well, it’s happening, honey.”
“Do not,” she warned, “call me honey.”
“Whatever you say, sugar bear.”
“Good God.”
“Hey. Thanks for taking care of me.” His odd eyes were sparkling at her—she was unaware that people’s eyes could actually sparkle in real life. He was like a live-action anime cartoon. “Which you should have anyway since you put me in the hospital with multiple stab wounds but I’m beginning to see you had your reasons. Maybe. I dunno. You’re a weird chick, Nazir.”
“Call me a chick again, you will be right back in here.”
“I believe you, duckling. See you in a few hours.” He dropped a fast kiss to her right cheek and she was so surprised she played statue and watched him hurry out the door and back into the world.
Odd man. A very odd man.
NINE
Her nine o’clock was disgruntled. He had been waiting in the parking lot until the office opened, and Deb, used to dealing with aggrieved clients, let him in. Not for nothing did they have a metal detector at the entrance, as well as security guards, and once he’d been cleared, she called Leah to warn that her 3:00 p.m. was six hours early.
Leah knew from experience that making them wait not only didn’t work, it often backfired. They sat out front and struggled with whatever hidden nastiness Leah had been able to help them unearth. Follow-up care was not yet mandated by law—some compared a post-Insighting session to sub-drop—but patients had to sign waivers indicating their refusal of treatment.
So she knew the best way to handle it was to see Charlie Reynolds at once. He declined beverages and a chair, Leah made sure to keep the desk between them, and he got right to it: “You didn’t help me even a little. You just made everything worse.”
“How is that possible?” she asked mildly, “when I only spent forty minutes with you months ago and you never came back? You can’t even get stitches in forty minutes, and I ought to know. So much paperwork.”
“You were supposed to help me,” he continued doggedly. Reynolds was neatly dressed in a dark gray suit, white dress shirt, black tie, black shoes. He had a fedora and was turning the rim over and over in his hands as he played with it and wouldn’t meet her eyes. She remembered during their session that the few times he could look at her, his gaze almost immediately skittered away.
“You came to me because your nightmares were starting to bleed into your waking hours. Your daydreams quickly became as bad. You feared you would lose your job as a corrections officer.”
“You have to be alert,” he told his hat, “all the time.”
“Yes, I imagine.”
“They have nothing to do but watch and figure out your patterns. Most of them don’t mind hurting you; it’s their version of pay-per-view. Not personal, just entertaining.” He shivered a little. “Not a good time to get lost inside your head.”
There was a long silence and just as Leah decided to break it, he continued. “But after you told me those things—those terrible things—it just got worse. And the pictures in my head—they’re always there now.” He shivered again. She knew it wasn’t the air—the office, with all the windows, no shades, and crap air-conditioning—was usually a brisk seventy-eight degrees in the summer. “Always there.”
“Yes, well, I warned you about that. Your subconscious is forcing you to face what you did in the thirteenth century.”
“That’s not what I wanted!”
“But it’s what you paid for,” she said gently, “and it’s what you got. You expected me to take away your nightmares and I told you that wasn’t how it worked. All I can do is pull away the curtain between your last life and this one. Once you see past it, you can do something about it. Or not, as is your choice. But you’re the one who has to take the next steps.”
“I was sleeping maybe four or five hours a night, and showing up late a couple times a month. Now I’m lucky if I get two hours and I was late five days this week. I figure one way or the other, this time next week I won’t have a job. Might not have anything.”
She nodded. Here was a perfect example of how the laws of the land and HMOs had yet to catch up to the reality of psychological fallout from past lives. Reynolds’s job should have been protected under the Family Medical Leave Act. His past was inflicting psychological damage, he should be able to get penalty-free time off to deal with it. Leah saw it as no different than getting a diagnosis of chronic depression and needing time off to adjust: therapy, meds, related psychological issues.
In a perfect world (or at least a less awful one), yes. As things were now, it wasn’t illegal or discriminatory to fire people when their past lives were bleeding over into their jobs.
“Mr. Reynolds, I am sorry. But I explained all this to you at your session.” He still wouldn’t meet her eyes, so she addressed her comments to his tie. “And I strongly encouraged follow-up. I also sent several letters to your home. We don’t advise dealing with this on your own; it’s too much for most people. The system is in place to help you deal with resurfaced memories—even if it’s not yet in place to allow for job protection.”
“You have to make it stop.”
“You have to make it stop.” Leah couldn’t see his dreams, but she could imagine. Even now, historians weren’t sure how many blond, blue-eyed boys Gilles de Rais tortured, raped, and killed. Conservative estimates put it at sixty; some maintain the number is closer to six hundred. Charlie Reynolds knew, but Leah doubted he was interested in being forthcoming. Even one little boy murdered so horrifically would have been too many and she wasn’t without sympathy for his plight. But compassion warred with irritation. She had explained these things. He said he understood. She had warned him. He said it was fine. When he hadn’t returned for follow-up, she’d left messages that were never returned, sent letters which were returned unopened, finally sent o
ne by registered mail to be sure he was getting them. He was, and chose to do nothing.
“It’s all the time now, don’t you understand?”
“I do understand. And as I told you, your ‘batten down the hatches and wait for it to go away’ plan will not work. You have to face what you did. And then you have to—”
“It wasn’t me!”
She just looked at him.
“It wasn’t.” He took a breath and visibly calmed himself. “And now it never stops. Not just when I’m asleep and not when I’m daydreaming. I close my eyes and I see all those little boys, all those blond, blue-eyed . . .”
She nodded, wondering what it said about a man who killed small, helpless versions of himself over and over.
“. . . and they’re screaming and bleeding and the rooms stink of blood, reek of it, and it never never stops.” He had stepped up to her desk and was leaning over it and nibbling on his hat rim and his face had flushed to the color of a brick. “You made it worse. Everything’s worse.”
“Mr. Reynolds, please step back and calm down.” She’d pressed the white button (stand by outside office) at his “you just made everything worse.” If she hit the red button (swarm!) security would pile in. “No one here wants to hurt you.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.” Deep breath. “But I probably will.”
Hmm. That could be interesting. Was this man her destined killer? She knew she should have been tense, scared; instead she felt equal parts pity and irritation for the man who knew what he was but still wouldn’t face it.
No, she decided, looking him over. He’s not my killer. Though it’d be a rich irony if he were, if I were slashed because in my arrogance I didn’t see him as a threat. It’d serve me right, and then some.
“I don’t—” He took another breath, straightened, put his hat on. “I don’t understand how you can do this to people.”
He left without another word—and that happened sometimes, too. There’d be this big blowout scene and Leah would be prepared to defend herself, or unleash the forces of good (or at least the security detail), and then they’d just sort of deflate and wander off.
Regardless, Deb made sure he was off the property, security confirmed, and Leah flagged his chart and updated her clinic notes. It was unfortunate, and not uncommon. Just as car salesmen didn’t always advocate a new car for everyone, Leah didn’t think Insighting solved everyone’s problems every time. It was an unfortunate truth she’d been facing since she was old enough to understand it.
Her ten o’clock was a woman who had been a vestal virgin in 114 BC and again in 19 AD. Both times she had been wrongfully accused of having sex with a Roman citizen, which was considered treason, both times the accusations were false but she’d been found guilty due to the enormous political turmoil at the time, and both times she was buried alive, which was the traditional reprimand for treason (trumped up or otherwise).
As a result, she was a claustrophobic sex addict.
“Oh, Marcia,” she sighed. “Again?”
“Swear to God, Ms. Nazir, the cops just wait for me.”
“They really don’t.”
“They do!”
“This is Chicago. The police have better things to do than follow you around and wait for you to indulge in acts of public lewdness.”
“Nope! They’ve got nothing better to do than spy on me and wait for me to—to be attacked by my own disease and do stuff they know I can’t help. Buncha pervs. With all the porn out there for anyone on the Internet, they’ve gotta lie in wait for me?”
“Marcia.”
“I’m the victim!”
“Marcia.”
“And the poor guy I was with. He’s probably a victim, too. Mark, I wanna say? He looked like a Mark, right?”
“Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! You were busted having carnal relations in the dugout at Wrigley Field. The police take a dim view of such things. And also the public, presumably.”
“It’s not like it was the World Series or anything.” Her patient sulked. “Not even the playoffs.”
“Still.” Leah forced herself to soften her tone, though the urge to hit Marcia with her tape dispenser was strong. This was not her first arrest for sex alfresco. “I understand you have a disease—multiple diseases—”
“That’s right!”
“—but it is not and should never be a free pass.”
“Oh, here we go. You’re one to talk, Ms. Nazir.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Insighters get away with everything.”
“That is not true,” she said sharply, though an internal wriggling pricked her conscience. She hadn’t had to talk to a cop, post-stabbing. There had been no police report, and likely would not have been even if Archer had been inclined to press charges. Which, for some reason, he had not. “And if you have a problem with what I do for a living—which is strange, since you’re here of your own free will—I encourage you to seek help elsewhere.”
“No you don’t! You can’t get rid of me that easily.”
“Yes, well.” Leah, who had been prowling back and forth, sat behind her desk. “Worth an attempt. I have to write you up for this, Marcia, and I have to decide what to recommend to the DA. My inclination is to lock you up somewhere—”
“Hey!”
“—you can get help, somewhere good like Chicago-Read—”
“Good? Really?” Marcia, who had the hips and butt of an anorexic teenager and the breasts of an artificially augmented porn star, spun so fast her chest took an extra second to catch up. “You’re gonna lock me up to be starved to death?”
“That was in 1901.” Do not roll your eyes. And definitely don’t hit her with the tape dispenser.
“Are they even accredited anymore?”
“Your HMO takes them . . .” Not what she would call a ringing endorsement. “Very well, I’ll send you somewhere else. The point is, you’ve proven you won’t take steps to manage your illness. You’re like a cancer patient who refuses treatment and then is astonished when the cancer progresses.”
“Oh, fuck me.”
“Yes, well. Part of the problem. Don’t you want to get better?” A rookie question, but she couldn’t help it. She honestly couldn’t tell. “Don’t you want to control your urges instead of the other way around?”
“Why? So I can be a better person in my next life?”
“Well, yes, that is the general—”
“I got screwed—hilarious, kind of, since I didn’t get screwed but was found guilty of treason and executed anyway.”
“Yes, but—”
“So in my next life I was super careful, followed all the rules, did everything I was s’posed to—and got screwed again! Without getting screwed! Again!”
“All right, but—”
“The only thing following the rules got me was unjustly executed again. So you, and society, can fuck right off. Next you’ll tell me if I’m a good girl for the next six or seven lives, I’ll come back rasa.”
“Well—”
“Honk the other one.”
After ten minutes of cajoling, threats, pleading, threats, and lectures, Marcia sullenly agreed to an outpatient program and no jail time, provided she could . . .
“Keep my nose clean?” her patient suggested, her good humor restored now that she wasn’t going back to jail.
“It’s not your nose I’m worried about.”
“Ha! Good one, Ms. Nazir.”
“I wasn’t joking!” she shouted after her, but now she was shouting at a closed door. “Dammit.” It’s a cliché, but won’t someone think of the children? Several were traumatized—or at least hopelessly confused—by the sight of Marcia’s rake-thin thighs wrapped around her date’s head like a bony muffler. On the other hand, prisons all over the country had no room at the inn for serial rapists and pedo
philes, never mind a rich exhibitionist, so locking Marcia up seemed wasteful at best, and ineffectual at worst.
She knew her eleven thirty was there before he spoke; she sighed as she gestured for him to come in. “Harry, now really.”
“I can’t help it.” Harry Aguan scratched his thick beard, the bristly hair several shades darker than the hair on his skull. He was a trim brunet of average height immaculately dressed in a spotless sky blue short-sleeved button-down, pressed navy slacks, socks that still had the sale sticker on them, and new black loafers. And it was all a waste of time and money, because Harry smelled like seagull shit on fire. “Every time I get in the shower—gaaaaah!”
“Baby steps.”
“Which reminds me, the kiddie pool idea didn’t work.”
“Then we’ll have to come up with something else,” she said firmly. “Because you certainly can’t go on like this.”
“I can’t drink coffee on the street anymore,” he complained. He stretched, then plopped into the easy chair across from her desk, and the motion stirred enough body odor around to make her eyes water. “People keep dropping money in my cup.”
“Well, you do reek to the heavens, Harry,” she said kindly.
“You say that like I don’t know it.”
“I say it like you aren’t trying as hard as you could to overcome it.” There was that niggle in her brain again, the
(oh look who’s talking—you’re just killing time until your murder)
annoying voice pointing out that she was, at best, a hypocrite, and at worst, a terrible human being. Deb had reminded her of that with her usual cheer (“Yet another dissatisfied customer and if you were a restaurant, critics would give you minus stars.”) just that morning. Am I terrible out of self-defense? Or laziness? Are all Insighters in the wrong line of work, or is it just me?
“You’re actually ahead of the game, Harry.”