“We most certainly have. There’s a dozen of you at every daily in America. Pseudo-journalists like you aren’t made, they’re pressed from molds. They’re not educated, they’re indoctrinated. You’re not taught to think, you’re taught to regurgitate the party line, then pat yourself on the back for your moral supremacy.”
Her face tensed with anger. “Is that what you’re telling the attendees of the Charles James Wealth Seminar? To think for themselves? Or are you doing that for them?”
“I’m not going to dignify that stupid a question with an answer.”
She checked her recorder, then said, “You claim to be a descendant of Jesse James. Is that true or showbiz? Bear in mind, I do plan to fact-check.”
“Fact-check away,” I said. “I can send you my ancestry chart if you like. Yes, I’m a direct descendant. Jesse James is my great-great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side. And yes, it’s also show business.”
“Tell me about your childhood.”
“I already did.”
“Dumpster diving aside, what else should we know about your life?”
I looked at her for a moment, then said, “No.”
In spite of the tone of the interview, my response seemed to surprise her. “Why not?”
“That little boy has suffered enough. I’m not going to let your smug, elitist attitude inflict judgment on something you can’t even come close to understanding. You claim to champion the poor, the underclass, the minorities. But when one of us actually succeeds, you show your true racism.”
She adjusted her glasses. I guessed that she had had enough. “One more question.”
“Yes.”
“Do you ever feel guilty for ruining people’s lives?”
I stared her down. “Do you?”
She turned off her recorder and put it in her satchel, then abruptly stood. “Thank you for the interview.” She turned and walked out of the restaurant.
I was in no hurry. I finished my drink. When I walked back out to the hotel lobby, Amanda was sitting on a side chair near the concierge desk. She stood when she saw me.
“How’d it go?”
“Usual witch hunt. You need to vet these reporters better.”
“Believe it or not, they don’t usually tell me they’re planning on attacking you. Besides, I did warn you that I didn’t trust her.”
“When?”
“On the phone this morning. I warned you explicitly.”
“Well, it’s done,” I said. “Let’s get over to the conference center.”
“You still have an hour. Don’t you want to go to your room first?”
“No. I want to see what kind of audience we’ve got.”
The Charles James Fabulous Wealth Seminar had been going nonstop since nine o’clock that morning. I found Carter Sears, my show manager, behind the stage. He looked up as I entered.
“How are we doing?” I asked.
“About five-fifty so far,” he said. “Not bad. Especially since the best is yet to come.” From his unctuous smile I gathered he meant me. He was always sucking up.
Five hundred fifty thousand dollars was good, but not stellar. At my best show, last spring in Los Angeles, I’d brought in more than a million dollars in forty-five minutes.
“How’s Paulie’s new shtick?”
“Good. He went ten over—”
“Ten? I gave him five.”
“—but he’s increased sales thirty-one percent so far.”
“Good. I won’t have to fire him.”
Carter grinned discreetly. “Are you ready for your new presentation?”
“I’m always ready. I’m just going to wing it.”
“Nobody does it better,” he said. “Good luck.”
“I make my luck,” I said.
Less than an hour later my theme song started to play and our announcer did his spiel. “You’re up,” Amanda said.
I stood up and put in my earpiece.
Carter walked up to me. “You’re going to have to use this mic. There must be a short on the stage one. It keeps cutting out.”
I took the microphone. “Is it on?”
“It’s live,” he said.
“All right. Showtime.”
“Knock them dead,” Amanda said.
“Don’t I always?”
I walked out from the side of the stage as the music faded, replaced by the crowd’s applause.
“Thank you. Thank you, thank you very much. We’ve got things to talk about, so let’s get started.”
As usual, I waited for the crowd to quiet. Then I said, “There is one great truth in life. One truth that will determine whether your life is one of success or one of quiet desperation.” I held up a finger. “Just one. Do you want to know that truth?”
“Yes,” someone shouted.
Just then, as I looked out into the audience, I saw the old man who had been in my office that afternoon. The one whose son had committed suicide. His arms were crossed at his chest and he was just staring at me. What is he doing here?
“Tell us the truth,” the audience shouted.
I gathered my composure. “You want to know the truth?” I shouted. “Let me hear you!”
The crowd roared with excitement.
I looked back at the old man. He just stood there, glaring at me. Then I saw that he wasn’t alone. Next to him was another man, a younger man. Except for their age, they looked almost exactly alike. It could have been his son. His son? His son was dead. Suddenly, every part of my body froze. There was a noose around the younger man’s neck. Just below his jaw, I could see grotesque rope burns and purple-and-red bruising. The young man stared at me with black eyes as a malevolent smile lifted the corners of his mouth.
“Tell us!” the crowd shouted. “Tell us the truth!”
I was paralyzed with fear. Then I raised my trembling hand and rubbed my eyes. When I looked again, he was gone. They were both gone. Whatever I thought I’d seen had vanished.
A drop of sweat rolled down my back. I looked out at the audience, unable to speak. I could hear Carter in my earpiece. “Charles, are you okay? What’s going on?”
The entire audience went silent. I slowly lifted my microphone.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not feeling well.” I turned and walked off the stage.
Amanda met me near the edge of the curtain. “What just happened?”
“Get me out of here,” I said. “Now.”
Chapter Eight
Does crazy know it’s crazy? Does the fact that I asked that question implicate or exonerate me?
—CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY
Thirty miles south of Milwaukee there was another accident, again slowing traffic. There were multiple emergency vehicles, and the night sky was illuminated by red and blue flashes of light.
“Who’s teaching these idiots how not to drive?” I grumbled. Amanda said nothing. As we neared the wreck, the traffic slowed still more. “Stupid rubberneckers. They’re like vultures.”
At a walking pace, we passed two ambulances. Paramedics were lifting a stretcher into the back of one of them. The body was completely covered by a sheet.
“It looks like people were hurt,” Amanda said softly.
“They deserve it,” I said, “for driving like idiots.”
Amanda waited until we were past the wreck, then said, “No, they don’t.”
A few minutes later I said, “I don’t know what’s wrong.”
“You froze on stage. It happens.”
“Not to me. Never to me.”
“I knew this was a bad idea. You’ve got way too much on your plate, Charles. You’ve got a ton of money at stake on this upcoming tour, you’ve been woken every night with the same nightmare, and in the last twenty-four hours you’ve been attacked by a reporter, found out that your mentor is dying, and been blamed for a suicide. That’s too much for anyone. Even the great Charles James.”
After a moment I said, “I didn’t freeze because of the pressure.”
I glanced over at her. “I saw him.”
“You saw who?”
“The man who committed suicide. He was seated in the second row, next to his father. He had a rope around his neck.”
Amanda just stared. “You’re scaring me.”
“You think you’re scared.”
Amanda put her head down, covering her eyes with one hand. A few moments later she looked back up at me. “Charles, you don’t have to be crazy to talk to a psychiatrist. She could help you put things in perspective. It’s no different from what you do for the people you coach.”
I was quiet for a moment, then said, “You said she. Do you have someone in mind?”
“Her name is Dr. Christine Fordham.”
I drove a while longer, then said, “All right. Give her a call.”
“I already did.”
I glanced over at her. “You already called her?”
“She’s not easy to get in to see. I wanted you to have options in case you changed your mind.”
“When’s the appointment?”
“It usually takes six weeks to get in, but she had a cancellation. She had an hour tomorrow afternoon, so I booked it.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow.”
“What if I had said no?”
“Then I would have taken it. You’ve been driving me crazy.”
The traffic had begun to clear, and we drove awhile more in silence. “Thank you.”
Amanda put her hand on my knee. “You’re welcome. I care about you.”
“I know. You always have.”
Chapter Nine
Perhaps our true psyches are revealed in much larger print than we wish to believe.
—CHARLES JAMES’S DIARY
TUESDAY, APRIL 26
Dr. Christine Fordham, the psychiatrist Amanda had recommended, had office space at a clinic about a half hour from my downtown office. I arrived ten minutes before my appointment.
The office design was clean and simple with bright, abstract art hanging on neutral-hue walls, blazing like Technicolor Rorschach tests. The lobby had sand-colored Berber carpet and a brown fabric sofa with two simple, matching armchairs, all situated around a white cubicle coffee table strewn with magazines.
Along the hall there were three closed doors, each with a doctor’s name engraved on a brass plaque. Dr. Fordham’s office was nearest the waiting area.
A middle-aged receptionist sat behind a desk in the corner of the room. She glanced up at me as I entered. “May I help you?”
“I’m here to see Dr. Fordham.”
“Dr. Fordham’s still with a client,” she said. “Are you Mr. James?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“She’ll be with you shortly. Please take a seat.”
As I sat down on the sofa, my anxiety was through the roof. I arranged the magazines on the table into two neat piles of equal height, then picked up an old issue of Sports Illustrated.
I was still leafing through the magazine when Dr. Fordham’s door opened. I looked up to see a woman dabbing her puffy eyes with a handkerchief. A thin, pleasant-looking woman I guessed to be Dr. Fordham stood behind her. She wore a pale herringbone skirt, a black silk blouse, and round, narrow-rimmed glasses. In a subdued way she was actually quite attractive, like one of those models who dons glasses and puts her hair up to look less appealing.
“I’ll see you next Wednesday,” she said to the woman.
“Thank you, Doctor,” the woman said. “You’re a godsend.”
As the woman walked out of the waiting area, Dr. Fordham turned toward me. “Mr. James?”
I set the magazine back down precisely in line with the others, but then, seeing that the two piles were no longer the same height, I created a third pile before standing. “You can call me Charles.”
She looked at the magazines, then said, “Charles. Come in, please.”
I walked in past her.
“Take a seat,” she said, motioning to a leather couch. “You’ll want to turn off your phone.”
“Of course.” I took it out of my pocket and turned it off.
She shut the door behind her and sat down in front of her desk in a simple black vinyl swivel chair. She lifted a notepad. “Thank you for coming today. How are you?”
“Fine,” I said, though I sounded a little ridiculous. If I was really fine I wouldn’t be there. Maybe I should have told her I was miserable. There’s way too much psychobabble going on in my head.
“Tell me about yourself.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How severe is your OCD?”
“You noticed that?”
“That’s what I do,” she said. “Notice things.”
“I’ve had it since I was a child.”
“Are you on any medication for it?”
“No. I took Zoloft for a week, but it made me feel flat.”
“Do you ever find it debilitating?”
“I usually don’t even notice it anymore,” I said. “What else do you want to know?”
“Are you from Chicago?”
“No,” I said. “I was born in California.”
“What part of California?”
“Near Santa Monica.”
“It’s beautiful out there.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Just once. What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a professional presenter. I own a seminar business.”
“I’m not familiar with that industry. What do you present?”
“We sell wealth education packages that teach people how to make money.”
“How is business?”
“Lucrative,” I said.
She wrote something on her notepad, then casually asked, “Do you like what you do?”
“Usually,” I said, fidgeting a little. “So can we get on with the psychiatry stuff?”
She nodded calmly. “Why don’t we begin by you telling me why you’re here.”
“I’m here because someone suggested that I see you.”
“Who?”
“My assistant, Amanda Glade. She’s one of your patients.”
“Clients,” she corrected. “Do you always do what your assistant tells you to do?”
“No.”
“Then perhaps you came here because you thought you should come?” She just looked at me for a moment. When I didn’t respond, she said, “One doesn’t take their car into the mechanic unless it’s not acting right. So may we assume that something in your life isn’t going the way you expected or hoped it would?”
“That’s an accurate assumption.”
“Can you think of a specific time or incident that demonstrates how you feel?”
“Let’s just say that I’m troubled.”
“Troubled,” she echoed softly. “That’s a beginning.” She wrote something and leaned back. “What’s troubling you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Tell me what this troubled feeling feels like.”
“It feels like I’m doing something wrong.”
Her forehead furrowed. “Doing what wrong?”
“I don’t know. Living. People are supposed to feel good. Happy. Fulfilled. Isn’t that what mentally healthy people are supposed to be?”
“The measure of mental health isn’t happiness or sadness, it’s appropriateness. If you’re happy when something tragic happens, that’s not healthy. And vice versa. But you’re right, our goal, overall, is to find joy.”
I remembered what McKay had said about joy.
“And you’re not happy?”
“I’m not even sure what that means.”
She looked at me over the rim of her glasses. “You must have some idea or you wouldn’t know it’s missing, right?”
I nodded. “You really would be good on the stage,” I said. I reclined in my seat. “So, you guys like to talk about dreams, right?”
“Dreams can be interesting. Some people believe that dreams are the subconscious mind??
?s search for clues to their inner lives—that they are messages trying to be recognized by the conscious mind.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Sometimes. Not always, but sometimes. Do you have a dream you’d like to tell me about?”
I nodded. “I keep having this recurring dream that I’m walking.”
“You’re just walking?”
“Basically.”
“Where are you walking?”
“I think I’m on Route 66. Do you know Route 66?”
She nodded. “Headed west?”
“Yes.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Do you finish your walk or are you just walking?”
“Sometimes I get to California.”
“What do you see at the end of the road?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head. “I can’t see beyond that.”
She wrote on her notepad and looked up. “You mentioned that you were born in California. Is there something specifically in California that would take you there?”
I thought of Monica. “Not really.”
“What was the first thing that came to mind when I asked that question?”
I hesitated. “Monica.”
“Who’s Monica?”
“My ex-wife.”
She nodded as she wrote on her pad. “Do you ever see her in your dream?”
“No.” I suddenly felt angry. “It’s not about her.”
“There are many things you could have said about California, and you chose to mention your ex-wife.”
“It’s got nothing to do with her.”
Dr. Fordham leaned forward. “You’re agitated. Why?”
“Monica doesn’t have anything to do with this. I made my choice. I’m good with it.” The doctor didn’t say anything. Something about how she was looking at me made me uncomfortable. “You don’t believe me.”
“Your body language seems a little incongruent with your words. Usually if we are at peace with a decision or action we’ve taken, we don’t become agitated talking about it. You obviously have strong feelings about your ex-wife.”
“Everyone has strong feelings about their ex.”
“Not everyone.”
“I told you, she’s not important.” I stood angrily. “I’m done with this.”
Dr. Fordham didn’t say anything as I walked to the door.