Hope to Die

THIRTY-THREE

The woman is driving him crazy.

She is the type of patient he ought to cultivate. She comes twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, at ten in the morning, an hour that is generally hard to fill. And she pays full price, one hundred dollars an hour, two hundred a week, ten thousand a year, and, most remarkable of all, she pays him in cash. Always a fresh new bill with Benjamin Franklin's avuncular portrait beaming out at him. She's a dominatrix, and gets paid in cash herself, by the men she abuses verbally or physically.

She seems oddly cast for the role, a small, slightly built woman of forty-two, who tends to dress down for her appointments, often turning up as she has today in sweats and sneakers, often capping her session with a run around the Central Park Reservoir. She wears no makeup and her long black hair is pulled back in a ponytail and secured by a fuzzy yellow elastic.

On the job, she has told him, she wears a lot of black leather.

You would think, given her occupation, that she would have interesting stories to tell, but no. Her voice is grating, and impossible to ignore, or fall asleep to, and she is hopelessly neurotic, incapable of making the most trivial decisions without agonizing endlessly over them. She whines, she drones, she repeats herself. And, God bless her, she adores him, and is sure he's saving her life, and perhaps he is.

He is, after all, quite good at this.

When his watch beeps he gets to his feet, signaling that time is up. She breaks off in the middle of a sentence, as well trained in obedience as her own clients. In no time at all she's out the door, and he tucks a crisp hundred-dollar bill- green love, he likes to call it- into his billfold.

Ten minutes to eleven. His next appointment isn't until two. He turns to the computer, turns away from it, reaches for the phone.

"Peter," he says, "I'm at a loss here. I don't understand."

"I left a message, Doc."

"You left a message."

"On her answering machine. I asked would she please call me, I said I really wanted to talk to her. But she hasn't called back."

"And this was yesterday that you left this message?"

"Yes, yesterday afternoon."

"And she hasn't called back."

"No. I think maybe she's out of town."

"I rather doubt that, Peter."

"Oh."

"I'm sure she's in town, and in her house, and feeling very lost and alone."

"Oh."

"And most likely depressed, and overwhelmed, all of which are entirely appropriate responses to her situation. She's had some devastating losses. And she's only now beginning to feel the enormity of the first loss of all."

"The first loss of all?"

"The loss of your love, Peter. The two of you separated, for reasons that may have been inevitable at the time, and in due course all of her misfortunes followed."

"Oh."

"Do you see what I mean?"

"I think so."

"You have to break through her resistance, Peter. You don't call once. You call until you get a response."

"You want me to keep calling?"

"I think you must."

"Then I will, Doc."

"What do you get, Peter?"

"You get what you get."

"Precisely. You take the action and accept the result. But the way you take the action determines the result. Peter, when her machine next invites you to leave a message, I want you to visualize Kristin standing right next to the machine. And this time don't speak to the machine. Speak directly to Kristin. Picture her taking in every word even as you are speaking to her."

"I will."

"Tell her to pick up the phone. Get her to pick up the phone."

"Yes, Doc."

"And call me back after you've spoken to her."

He's on the computer when the phone rings. There's nothing interesting at alt.crime.serialkillers this morning, but he's found several Web sites dealing with various aspects of the topic, and he's visiting one of them. What he's reading is interesting, fascinating really, and he's tempted to let the machine take the call, but knows that it's Peter Meredith.

And of course it is, and he's calling to report success.

Success and failure.

"I did what you said, Doc," he begins, "and it worked. Instead of talking to the machine I talked to Kristin, as if she could hear every word I was saying. And I didn't stop, I went right on talking as if we were having this long one-sided conversation, and I said some of the things we talked about yesterday, about family and destiny and, well, I just kept talking."

"And?"

"And I wore her down, I guess. She picked up the phone and we talked."

"When are you going to see her?"

"I'm not."

"What's that?"

She doesn't want to see him, Peter says. She has good feelings for him, good memories of their time together, but it's a closed chapter for her. She has her life to live, and he has his own life, at the house in Williamsburg, and she wishes him the best of luck in that life, but she doesn't want to share it with him.

"And Doc," Peter says, "I'm so glad you made me make that call. You always know just what's right for me."

"Oh?"

"Because I am so relieved. Doc, I'm over her now, for the first time. When she said there was nothing there, that she had zero interest in getting back together again, I just felt completely liberated. Like I could get on with my life in a way I couldn't up to now."

You fucking idiot, he thinks. But he says, "That's wonderful, Peter. I'm proud of you."

"You did it, Doc."

"No, you did it, Peter," he says automatically, thinking, Yes, you did it, you fat oaf. You stepped in it with both feet.

"Everything you said, about destiny and all? It was like those were my own inner thoughts, but I didn't even know it until I said them and she shot them down. And that released me from them. I think…"

"Yes?"

"I know you said it was just rebound, but Caroline- "

"The sculptor."

"Yes."

"On Wythe Avenue."

"Yes."

"You want to pursue that."

"Unless you think it's a bad idea."

God, he feels tired. "I think it's worth exploring, Peter. If it's a failure, well, every failed relationship is preparation for a successful relationship." He takes a deep breath. "Now you'd better get back to work on that house of yours, hadn't you?"

The shower pelts down on him. Great water pressure in this building, much better than the last place. He lets the spray hit him in the back of the neck, feels the tension drain away. He showered on arising, he showers first thing every morning, but it's not rare for him to take a second or even a third shower in the course of a day, and it seems very much in order now.

You get what you get.

Physician, heal thyself. Is the catchphrase he feeds his patients any less applicable to himself? You get what you get, and whatever comes your way is an opportunity.

You can go to the ocean with a teaspoon or a bucket. The ocean does not care.

Peter is all wrong for Kristin. That had been his first reaction when he met the woman for the first time. This preppy goddess, this daughter of privilege- what was she doing with this jovial fat man?

And so he'd engineered their separation, only to see it in the fullness of time as a mistake. They should be together. While Peter toiled on that sow's ear of a house in Brooklyn, Kristin languished in a silk purse of a brownstone, worth more every day in New York 's dizzying real estate market. Now if her inconvenient parents were out of the picture, so that the house and everything else were Kristin's, and if Peter were then to make himself once more available…

He gets out of the shower, pats himself dry. Applies deodorant, dabs a little cologne on his cheeks.

How interesting, he thinks, the way the mind has reasons that the mind knows nothing of. He'd arranged everything for Peter, so that the fellow could win the fair maiden and occupy the castle. (And Peter would be grateful, of course, and would love him more than ever. And, when the castle was Peter's alone, why, he'd show that gratitude in the most concrete way.)

But why go through all that? All along- and he must have known this, albeit unconsciously- all along he has been preparing this banquet not for Peter but for himself. It is he who will win the maiden, he who will own the castle.

How could he ever have thought otherwise?

He puts on all clean clothes, choosing a deep-toned blue shirt, a red tie. The tie is knotted and he's reaching for his jacket when he remembers the amulet, the talisman, the disc of rhodochrosite that so sharpens his perceptions and boosts his mental clarity.

Shall he be angry with himself for having forgotten it at first, or shall he congratulate himself on having remembered? The choice is his- the ocean does not care.

Congratulating himself, he puts down his jacket, loosens his tie, unbuttons his shirt collar, and fastens the gold chain around his neck.

He looks up a phone number, dials it. The voice of his destiny: "No one can take your call right now. Please leave a message at the tone."

And what a tone, hers, not the machine's- cool, regal, but promising so much.

He dials another number. A man answers, and he recognizes the voice as Lucian's. "It's Doc," he says. "Is Ruth Ann handy?" And, learning she's gone to the hardware store, "That's all right, you can give her a message for me. Tell her I'm canceling my appointments for the rest of the day. She's down for two o'clock, so just tell her to call me and we'll shoehorn her in some other time."

On the way out the door he strokes his cheek, holds his hand to his nose, breathes in the smell of his cologne.

What a splendid house it is!

He has come on foot this time, and stands on the opposite side of the street, looking at his future home. And it's nothing new for him to think of it in those terms. Within its walls, watching the barbarian Ivanko spilling drawers, tipping over tables, he'd wanted to caution him against doing any damage to the house and its furnishings.

And, when he cut the woman's throat, didn't it bother him to think of her blood spoiling the carpet?

Well, no, he admits. At the time he never gave it a thought, he was too utterly involved in the act itself to give a thought to its consequences. Afterward, though, he had time to regret that blood, spoiling that carpet.

His carpet.

How circuitous his original plans seem now! A reunion of Peter and Kristin, and a wedding, and Peter moves in, and then, after a suitable interval, something unfortunate happens to Kristin. And Peter, wanting only to get back to his beloved friends on Meserole Street, makes the house over as a gift of love to him, for the foundation he will establish.

Or, if that won't fly, then Peter, despondent over the tragic death of the love of his life, takes his own life- after having willed everything he owns to the man who has always been there for him.

Well, the hell with all that. He'll marry the girl himself. He'll have to do some artful management of Peter's emotions, but by then he'll see to it that Peter is so mad for the Wythe Avenue sculptor as to banish any particle of potential resentment. The five of them could be wedding guests- six, if you included the sculptor, and why should she be left out?

And then there will be no rush to close the account, either. Kristin will be an ornament, her mind an interesting one to play with. Only when he tires of her will anything need to happen to her, and death, when it comes, will clearly be the result of natural causes. Nature, in her bounty, has provided no end of natural substances that can bring on wonderfully natural death.

He crosses the street, a smile on his lips. He mounts the steps, faces the door. His fingers touch the knot of his tie, checking its shape, and one slips inside his shirt for the quickest touch of the mottled pink disc. He extends a finger, rings the bell.

Stands there, waiting.

Waiting…

He slips a hand into his pocket, draws out a ring of keys. He finds the right one and slips it into the lock, and it goes right in, a perfect fit, but it won't turn.

Well, that's understandable. There's been a burglary, after all, and the brutal murder of both her parents. She's had the good sense to change the locks.

The bitch. The fucking cunt.

His eyes widen at his reaction. He feels the rage and steps off to one side, weighing it, assessing it. It's completely disproportionate to the fact of the changed lock, a fact he had already accepted intellectually as logical and to be expected. Ergo it has nothing to do with the lock, or the fact that no one has come to answer the doorbell.

Pressure. He's under pressure, and needs release.

Fortunately, that's easily arranged.

The massage parlor is on Amsterdam Avenue, one flight up over a nail parlor. Both establishments are owned and staffed by Koreans. He climbs the stairs, and a balding Korean behind the desk takes a pair of twenty-dollar bills from him and points at a door.

The girl is short, slender, flat-faced, with a mole on either side of her little mouth. One would be a beauty mark; two, so symmetrically arranged, cry out for a plastic surgeon. If she were a patient of his…

But it is in fact he who is her client, and as he undresses she takes his clothes and hangs them in the metal wardrobe. She's wearing a red-orange shift, easy-on easy-off, and she doesn't seem to understand when he asks her to take it off. He mimes the request, and now she understands, and, smiling, shakes her head, and points toward the table.

He gets on the table on his back and she leans over him, kneading the muscles of his shoulders and upper arms. Her hands are small, her arms spindly, and he doubts there's much strength in them. The girl couldn't give a genuine massage if her life depended on it.

Interesting turn of phrase, that…

Her touch turns light, lingering, and she strokes his chest and stomach. He's engorged, and her fingers flutter ever so lightly over his erection.

"So big," she says, and sighs. She touches him again, feather-light, and says, "You wan' spesho massa '?"

"Special massage," he translates. "Yes, that's what I want."

"Fi'ty dollah."

"All right."

"Fi'ty dollah now."

He gets up from the table, goes to the wardrobe, takes his billfold from his pants. He gives her the crisp hundred he just received from the dominatrix- what goes around comes around- and stops her when she starts looking for change. Through a combination of words and pantomime he indicates that she is to keep the whole hundred dollars, and that he wants her to take off her dress.

And, in a single motion, it's off. She's got a young girl's body, hairless but for the tiniest tuft between her legs. Little baby-doll titties.

She reaches out, touches his amulet. "You still wearing," she said.

"Yes."

"Pity."

That confuses him for a moment, until he realizes she's saying that it's pretty. He lifts it over his head, settles it around her neck. The rhodochrosite disc floats just above and between her breasts.

She giggles, delighted.

And now he gets back on the table, and, with skill beyond her years, she performs as required. She uses her hands, and, at the end, a Kleenex tissue. His orgasm is powerful, his ejaculation abundant, but for all of that he is curiously detached from it all. He is, in a sense, off to the side watching, and without a great deal of interest.

He gets up from the table and she hands him his clothes, watches him dress. Before he buttons his shirt he holds out a hand, pointing to his amulet.

She giggles, clasps both hands over the pink stone circle, hugs it to her heart. She says, "Keep?"

He shakes his head, and she giggles again. She never really expected him to give it to her, and she's not surprised when he reaches to take it from her. She's still smiling and giggling, in fact, as his hands position themselves on her throat.