"Then, well. . . what do you mean? ... I mean how did he know you so well... I mean . . . how did he even know you worked at the club in Paris? How did he qualify for lunch here? No, I mean, does he even have an account here? How does he pay?"
"Is there some problem, sir?"
"Yes, and it is related to your pretending to know him so well, pretending to be such old friends."
Emil looked troubled. He glanced at his watch, then looked about him. The rotunda was empty, the club quiet. "Dr. Streider, I have a few free moments before luncheon. Please, let us sit and talk for a few moments." Emil gestured to a closet-sized room just off the dining room. Inside, Emil invited Marshal to sit down and asked permission to light a cigarette. After exhaling deeply he said, "May I speak, frankly, sir? And off the record, so to speak?"
Marshal nodded. "Of course."
3 o 6 / Lying on the Couch
"For thirty years I've worked at exclusive clubs. Majordomo for the past fifteen. I am witness to everything. Nothing escapes me. I can see, Dr. Streider, that you are unfamiliar with such clubs. Forgive me if I presume too much."
"No, not at all," Marshal said.
"One thing you should know is that, in private clubs, one person is always trying to get something—some favor, an invitation, an introduction, an investment, something—from another person. And to . . . let us say ... to lubricate that process, one person has to make a certain impression upon the other. I, like every majordomo, must play my role in that process; I have an obligation to be certain that everything runs harmoniously. Thus, when Mr. Macondo chatted with me earlier that morning and asked whether I had worked at any other European club, naturally I responded cordially and told him I had worked in Paris for ten years. And when he seemed extremely friendly in greeting me in your presence, what was I expected to do? Turn to you, his guest, and say, 'I never saw this man before'?"
"Of course not, Emil. I see your point exactly. No criticism meant. It was only that I was astonished at your not knowing him."
"But, Dr. Streider, you mention a problem. Not a serious one, I hope. I should like to know if it is. The club should like to know."
"No, no. A minor matter. Only that I have misplaced his address and wish to contact him."
Emil hesitated. Obviously he did not believe it was a minor matter but when Marshal volunteered no further information, he rose. "Please, wait for me in the rotunda. I shall do what I can to get some information for you."
Marshal sat down, chagrined at his own awkwardness. It was a long shot, but perhaps Emil could help.
The majordomo returned in a few moments and handed Marshal a slip of paper on which was written the same address and phone in Zurich that Marshal already had. "According to the desk, Mr. Macondo was given a courtesy membership here since he was a member of the Baur au Lac Club in Zurich. If you wish, we can fax them and request more current information."
"Please. And, if you will, please fax the reply to me. Here is my card."
Marshal turned to leave but Emil stopped him and added, in a whisper: "You asked about payment. I tell you this, also in confi-
Lying on the Couch ^ 3 07
dence, Doctor. Mr. Macondo paid by cash, and generously. He gave me two hundred-dollar bills, instructed me to pay for lunch, leave the waiter a generous tip, and keep the rest for myself. On such matters as these my prodigious memory is entirely dependable."
"Thank you, Emil, you've been most helpful." Marshal reluctantly tugged a twenty from his money clip and pressed it into Emil's talcumed hand. He turned to leave and then suddenly remembered something else.
"Emil, may I ask one final favor of you? Last time I met a friend of Mr. Macondo, a tall gentleman dressed somewhat flamboyantly—orange shirt, red-checked jacket, I believe. I have forgotten his name, but his father was once mayor of San Francisco."
"That could only be Mr. Roscoe Richardson. I saw him earlier today. He's either in the library or the game room. A suggestion. Doctor: do not speak to him if he's at backgammon. That will make him cross. He's rather intense about his gaming. Good luck, and I will personally see to your fax. You may count on me." Emil bowed his head and waited.
"Again, thank you, Emil." And, again. Marshal had no choice but to peel off another twenty.
As Marshal entered the oak-paneled game room, Roscoe Richardson was just leaving the backgammon table and heading toward the library for his preluncheon newspaper.
"Ah, Mr. Richardson, perhaps you may remember me: Dr. Strei-der. I met you a few weeks ago when I lunched here with an acquaintance of yours, Peter Macondo."
"Ah, yes. Doctor Streider. I remember. The memorial lecture series. My congratulations. Wonderful honor. Wonderful. Join me for lunch today?"
"Alas, no. I have a full schedule of patients this afternoon. But a favor, please. I'm trying to reach Mr. Macondo and wonder if you know of his whereabouts."
"Heavens, no. I never saw him before that day. Delightful chap, yet, odd thing, I sent him material about my new startup but FedEx returned it as undeliverable. Did he say he knew me?"
"I thought so, but now I'm not sure. I do remember his saying that your father and his, a professor of economics, played golf together."
"Well, who knows? That's very possible. My father played with every well-known man in the Western world. And . . . "—here he
3 o 8 ^ Lying on the Couch
scrunched his heavily jowled face and produced a large wink—"and with quite a few women, too. Well, eleven-thirty. Financial Times should be arriving. There's always a mad rush for it, so I'll be on my way to the library. Good luck to you, Doctor."
Though the conversation with Roscoe Richardson provided no comfort, it did provide some ideas for action. As soon as he arrived at his office. Marshal opened his Macondo folder and extracted the fax announcing the Streider Memorial Lecture Series. What was the name of that provost at the University of Mexico? Here—Raoui Gomez. Within moments he had Mr. Gomez on the phone—the first thing to go well in days. Though Marshal's Spanish was limited, it was sufficient to understand Mr. Gomez's denial that he had ever even heard of a Peter Macondo, let alone received a large grant from him for a Streider lecture series. Furthermore, as for Peter Macondo's father, there was no Macondo on the faculty of the Department of Economics, nor, for that matter, in any department of the university.
Marshal collapsed into his chair. He had absorbed too many blows and now leaned back, trying to clear his head. After only a few moments his efficient temperament took over: he reached for pen and paper and made a "to do" list. The first item was to cancel his afternoon patients. Marshal placed calls and left messages for four patients canceling their hours. He did not, of course, cite a reason. The proper technique. Marshal was certain, was to remain silent and to explore the patients' fantasies of why he had canceled. And the money! Four hours at one hundred seventy-five dollars. Seven hundred dollars in fees lost—money that could never be made up.
Marshal wondered whether canceling his afternoon schedule represented some turning point in his life. The thought entered his mind that this was a watershed decision. Never before in his career had he canceled a clinical hour. In fact, he had never missed anything—a football practice, a day of school. His scrapbook was full of attendance awards going back to grammar school. It was not that he was never injured or sick. He got sick just like the next man. But he was tough enough to gut it out. But one cannot gut out an analytic hour in a state of panic.
Next item: call Melvin. Marshal knew what Melvin would say, and Melvin didn't miss a beat: "It's bank time—take that note immediately to the Credit Suisse. Ask them to make a ninety-thousand-dollar direct deposit into your bank account. And be grateful.
Lying on the Couch ^ 3 09
Marshal, kiss my boots, that I insisted upon this note. You owe me. And remember—Christ, I shouldn't have to tell you this, Marshal— you're treating meshuganahs: Don't invest w^ith them!"
An hour later Marshal, bank guarantee in hand, was w
alking down Sutter Street on his way to the Credit Suisse. En route he grieved lost dreams: wealth, additions to his art collection, the leisure to give written expression to his fertile mind, but most of all he grieved the key to the insider world, the world of private clubs, brass mailboxes, and insider bonhomie.
And Peterf Was he of that worldf He would not profit financially, of course — or, if he did, that was between him and the bank. But, Marshal thought, if Peter had no financial motive, what were his motives? To ridicule psychoanalysis? Could there be a tie-in with Seth Pandef Or Shelly Merrimanf Or even the whole breakaway faction of the analytic instituted Could this possibly be a prank? Sheer sociopathic maliciousness? But, whatever the game, whatever the motive, why hadn't I spotted it earlier? I've been a fucking fool. A fucking, greedy fool!
The Credit Suisse was a bank office, not a commercial working bank, on the fifth floor of an office building on Sutter Street. The bank officer who greeted Marshal inspected the note and assured him that they were fully authorized to deal with it. He excused himself, saying that the branch manager, who was tied up with another client, would attend to him personally. Besides, there would be a slight delay while they faxed the note to Zurich.
Ten minutes later, the manager, a slim, solemn man with a long face and a David Niven mustache, invited Marshal into his office. After inspecting Marshal's identification and copying numbers from his driver's license and banking cards, he examined the bank guarantee note and then rose to make a photocopy. When he returned. Marshal asked, "How will I receive payment? My attorney has informed me—"
"Excuse me. Dr. Streider, may I have your attorney's name and address?"
Marshal gave him the relevant information about his cousin Melvin and continued, "My attorney advised me to request a direct deposit into my Wells Fargo account."
The manager sat silently for several moments, inspecting the note.
"Is there some problem?" Marshal asked. "Doesn't that guarantee payment upon demand?"
3 I o ^~^ Lying on the Couch
"This is indeed a note from the Credit Suisse guaranteeing payment upon demand. Here, as you see," and here he pointed to the signature Hne, "it is issued from our Zurich office and signed by Winfred Forster, a senior vice president. Now I know Winfred Forster quite well—very well, indeed: the two of us spent three years together at our Toronto branch—and, yes. Dr. Streider, there is a problem: this is not Winfred Forster's signature! Moreover, Zurich has confirmed this by fax: there is hardly any resemblance. I'm afraid it is my unpleasant duty to inform you that this note is a forgery!"
TWENTY-THREE
fter leaving Ernest's office, Carol changed into jogging clothes and shoes in the restroom on the first floor and drove to the marina. She parked near Green's, a trendy vegetarian restaurant efficiently run by the San Francisco Zen Center. There was a path by the yacht harbor that fol-low^ed the bay for two miles and ended at Fort Point under the Golden Gate. It was Jess's favorite run and had become hers as well. The run started at the old Fort Mason buildings which house small galleries, a library-overflow bookstore, an art museum, a theater, and a drama workshop. It continued past the boat slips and along the bay where brazen gulls dared runners to trample them. It passed the grassy field where kite fliers launched kites, not the simple triangular or box kites she and her brother, Jeb, had flown, but avant-garde models shaped like Superman or a pair of women's legs, or sleek, high-tech metallic triangles that hummed as they sharply veered, changed directions, or plunged straight down, braking
312, Sir Lying on the Couch
instantly to pirouette delicately on their tails. After that, a tiny beach containing a few sunbathers surrounding a surreal sand sculpture of a mermaid, then a long stretch by the water where wet-suited windsurfers prepared their pleasure crafts; then a rocky shore with dozens of stone sculptures—mounds of stones exquisitely chosen and precariously balanced by some unknown artist to resemble fantastical Burmese pagodas; next a long pier teeming with diligent, somber Asian fishermen, not one of whom, as far as Carol could tell, ever caught anything. Then the final stretch to the underbelly of the Golden Gate where one can watch the long-haired, sexy surfers bobbing in the cold water waiting to mount tall dark waves.-
Almost every day now, she and Jess ran, sometimes along trails in Golden Gate Park or along the beach south of Cliff House, but the marina trail was their regular route. She often saw Jess several evenings as well. Generally when she returned home after work, he was there preparing dinner and chattering with the twins, who were growing very fond of him. Despite her pleasure in Jess, Carol worried. Jess seemed too good to be true. And what would happen when he got closer yet, close enough to see what she was really like? Her insides, her inner thoughts were not pretty. Would he back off? She distrusted the easy way he had insinuated himself so deeply into her home—and the way he made himself so important to the children. Would she have a free choice if she decided Jess were not the man for her? Or would she be trapped by what was best for the children?
On the rare occasion when Jess's work precluded his running dates with her, Carol took the hour-long run on her own. She was astonished how much she had come to love jogging: perhaps it was the buoyant feel it gave to her body for the rest of the day, or that exquisite exhilaration that swept through her when her second wind appeared. Or perhaps it was simply that she had come to care so much for Jess that she liked the activities he liked.
Jogging alone was not as magical as jogging with Jess, but it provided something else: time for self-reflection. At first when she jogged alone she had listened to a Walkman—country music, Vivaldi, Japanese flute music, the Beatles—but lately she had been leaving the Walkman in the car in favor of a jogging meditation.
The idea of devoting time to think about her life was revolutionary for Carol. For most of her life she had done the opposite, filling every patch of free time with distractions. What was the difference now, she wondered, as she glided along the path, scattering gulls
with every step? One difference was the new breadth of her emotional Hfe. In the past, her inner landscape had been monotonous and bleak, consisting of a narrow, negative range of emotions: anger, resentment, regret. Most of it had been directed toward Justin, the rest toward most other people who crossed her daily path. Aside from her children, she almost never had a good thought about anyone. In that, she followed the family tradition: she was her mother's daughter and her grandmother's granddaughter! Ernest had made her aware of that.
And if she hated Justin so much, why had she, in God's name, imprisoned herself in that marriage and thrown away the key? She might as well have tossed it into the rolling swells of the Pacific, now just a few feet away as she approached the fishing pier.
She knew she had made a hideous mistake, and she had known it soon after she married. As Ernest—damn him!—had forced her to acknowledge, she had choices just like anyone else: she could have left the marriage, or she could have tried to change it. She had chosen, deliberately chosen—so it seemed now—to do neither. Instead she wallowed in a miserable mistake.
She remembered how Norma and Heather had insisted, on that evening after Justin had slithered out of her life, that he had done her a favor. They were right. And her rage that he, not she, had taken the initiative? Stupid! In the long skein of things—Ernest's pretentious phrase—what difference did it make who left whom? They were both better off out of that marriage. She felt better than she had in a decade. And Justin looked better—doing his feeble, pathetic best to be a decent father. The week before he had even agreed, with no questions asked, to baby-sit the twins when she and Jess went to Mendocino for the weekend.
How ironic, she thought, that the unsuspecting Ernest was working so hard with her now to do something about her fictitious marriage with Wayne—how indefatigable he was in his insistence that she confront her life situation and do something about it—either to change the marriage or to end it. What a joke; if only he knew that he was doing exactly the sa
me thing with her that he did with Justin, only siding with her now, planning strategy with her in the war room, giving her the same advice he must have given Justin!
Carol was breathing hard when she arrived at the Golden Gate. She jogged up to the end of the trail, touched the furthermost wire barrier under the bridge, and, without stopping, turned back toward
Fort Mason. The wind, as usual, was sweeping in from the Pacific and now, with the wind at her back, she flew effortlessly back past the surfers, the fishermen, the Burmese pagodas, the Superman kite, and the brazen gulls.
After lunching on a crisp Red Delicious apple in her car, Carol drove back to the law offices of Jarndyce, Kaplan, and Tuttle, where she showered, and prepared to see her new client, referred to her by Julius Jarndyce, the senior partner. Mr. Jarndyce, busy lobbying in Washington, had asked her to take particularly good care of this client, an old friend. Dr. Marshal Streider.
Carol saw her client, pacing, obviously highly agitated, in the waiting room. When she invited him in to her office, Marshal entered quickly, perched on the edge of a chair, and began: "Thank you for seeing me today, Mrs. Astrid. Mr. Jarndyce, whom I've known for many years, offered me an appointment next week, but this is too urgent a matter to delay. To go right to the bottom line: yesterday I learned I've been swindled out of ninety thousand dollars. Can you help me? What recourse is open to me?"
"Being swindled is an awful feeling and I completely understand your sense of urgency. Dr. Streider. Let's start from the beginning. First, tell me what you think I need to know about you and then let's review, in meticulous detail, exactly what's happened."
"Gladly, but first may I get clear about the frame of our contract?"
"The frame, Dr. Streider?"
"Sorry—an analytic term—I mean I'd like to be clear, before we start, about several things. Your availability? Fees? And confidentiality. Confidentiality is extremely important to me."