Judging Time

6

Jason, the last thing in the world I want to do right now is go in that room by myself and lie down." Rick Liberty shot Jason an angry look. "What do you think I am?"

Emma saw Jason check his watch and gave him a pleading look not to abandon them.

"I think you've had a terrible shock," Jason replied calmly. "And you're going to have a really rough day." He glanced at Emma to assure her he would stay as long as he had to.

"A shock! My wife and best friend go to my own restaurant with my own people all around. Now both of them are dead. No one can tell me what happened. And you want me to lie down!"

Dr. Jason Frank, psychoanalyst and professor of psychiatry, was a man well accustomed to hearing other people vent their grief and rage. He ached for his friend and didn't argue. His own wife was still alive. She sat on the white sofa clutching one of Merrill's sweaters and holding Rick's hand as if he were a child. Emma had been Merrill's best friend, a bridesmaid at her wedding. She'd left the two victims to come home to him only minutes before they were killed. He ached for Emma, too.

Jason stood with his back to the window and the dawning day. Over the years as a psychoanalyst, he had seen a lot of illness both physical and mental, and a lot of self-destruction played out in a wide variety of ways. He'd seen death come in many forms. The endless repetition of tragedies and sorrow that constituted the human condition had always affected him, but until a year ago he had never experienced the catastrophe of a vicious crime against anyone he knew.

He had grown up with a basketball in his hands, a street kid in the Bronx always looking for a pickup game. He'd carried a knife in his pocket and been in fights, but he'd never cut anybody and nobody had ever cut him. Until he was in medical school he'd never seen a gunshot wound or a knife wound or a battered body. Since then he'd seen a number of them, but none of the violence had been connected with him. He was a thirty-nine-year-old psychiatrist who wrote scholarly papers and taught medical students and psychiatric residents and now even Ph.D. candidates how to think about the mind. His had been an orderly life, and though he would never have admitted it, a cerebral one.

He was also a collector of antique clocks. He would have liked to meet the person who invented the first mechanical device to measure time. He himself was ruled by time, obsessed by it. For many years his only fear was that his own time would run out before he was finished with his life's work. But a year ago he'd learned there were many worse fears than that.

A year ago Emma had starred in a film that triggered her kidnapping. Until then, his only connection with the police was as a source of directions when he was lost. Now he was so close to several NYPD detectives that he had actually been relieved when Rick told him an Asian woman called Woo and a Hispanic with a big mustache were in charge of this case. That meant every step of the way Jason would know what was going on. That gave him some comfort.

Jason checked his watch again, wondering when he could get in touch with April. It was the first Monday of the new year. Jason's day was completely booked with eight patient hours, an hour and a half of teaching, and thirty minutes with the psychiatric resident he was supervising. He had canceled his first four patients and was now debating canceling the class. He was still hoping he could get Rick to take something to calm down before having to view Merrill's body at the medical examiner's office.

"Do you know how many needles were stuck into me so I could run down that field?" Rick demanded angrily. "Sometimes an eye or my nose swelled up— twenty degrees outside—and I could feel the blood on my face so hot it burned." He shook his head at his old life of the killer instinct: eleven broken bones, countless sprains, and constant physical pain. He turned his back on Jason to stare out the window.

The spectacular city view of the present embraced lower Central Park from the west. The high-floor apartment faced east, and the three of them could have watched the sun rise at 7:03 if there had been one to see. But there had been no visible sunrise that day. The light had come slowly, almost painfully slowly, and only revealed a morning as bleak and silent as the night had been wild.

"I took so many painkillers. . . . God, by the time I was eighteen, nineteen, no one had to tell me anything about what was going on inside of my body. I knew it all. I could hear things happen. Does that sound weird? I could hear the injuries. And there was a lot of screaming going on, a whole lot all around me, from the coaches, my family, every human being who had ever been a slave in all of history."

Liberty paused, looking back on himself and the burden he'd carried for every slave in all of history. "I knew they would get together and kill me if I stopped. I knew if I stopped, if I cried, if I said anything, my life would be over. I had to play the game, because it was the game of life. You know what I'm talking about? Everybody was nice to me. I heard nice things, you know, but I knew I had no friends. I was alone. I couldn't do anything else but take the needles and play ball. I had no choice."

Jason was surprised to hear this. They'd talked about football before, had even watched games together, but Jason had not heard him talk like this before.

"Maybe I shouldn't tell you this," Rick muttered, glancing nervously at Emma as if he feared he'd just ruined his image.

"You forget that I know you from then," Emma reminded him. "I know who you are."

The two friends made an interesting contrast. Emma was like a ghost, bleached white, with her blond hair a little darker than usual for her theater role and her deep blue eyes now dulled with shock. Beside her, Rick Liberty was a warm medium brown. Both white and Indian blood showed in his cheekbones, his jaw-line, his lips and nose. Everything about his speech, his gestures, the confidence and grace with which he moved, bespoke a man who had grown up not far from where he sat right now. Nothing about him seemed tutored or strained. He was like a white man with brown skin, a man who never talked about his color, and didn't want to be asked. Jason suddenly thought that pretending there was absolutely no difference between them except exceptional athletic prowess had probably been a very bad thing for them all.

"You know you can tell us anything, Rick," Jason said.

"Then don't think I'm proud of myself. Everybody used to tell me I should be so proud of what I've accomplished. That's bullshit—" Rick held his head with the hand not restrained by Emma's.

"No one should be proud of begging to be anaesthetized so they can hurt themselves some more. You know, I used to tell them to give me the max. 'Gimme the damn max,' I used to say." He snorted derisively. "I had a knee injury once they didn't pick up for a year. They stuck me so full of shit sometimes I didn't feel my legs at all. Everybody says I was so fucking fast in that game against the Cowboys. So fast, I ran with the ball farther than anyone in history. Well, I still don't know how I even stood up that day. I wasn't there. Part of me just wasn't there. The other part was doing what it always did—looking down the field, looking to get through that wall of defense to the other side. Just looking for a hole.

"Hell, it didn't matter to me. I just kept going even when there was no hole. I didn't care if I died, and that's the truth. If I'd died then it would have been over. I used to hope for it. I used to hope every three-hundred-pound linebacker would pile up on me at the same time and crush me to death. But I was a valuable player. They wouldn't let it happen." Rick's face showed pure rage. "Shit, man, I'm not taking any more pills to hide from anything."

"How's that head?" Jason asked.

Rick ignored him. "And don't tell me about the good part, the adrenaline rushes, the thrills, the cheers, the money. Truth was I just didn't give a shit. I wanted to die and end it."

"How's the head?"

"I don't know. It doesn't matter."

Jason raised his hand to scratch the three-month-old beard he couldn't seem to get used to. He was worried that Rick would collapse soon. And Emma was not in any better shape. When she'd come into the apartment several hours ago she'd been trembling so badly that Rick offered her one of Merrill's sweaters to put on.

No! Jason almost grabbed Rick to stop him. Possessions of the dead are powerful things. Each object resonated with meaning. Jason knew many families that had been torn apart over a few dollars no one needed but someone didn't want to give up. Or a vintage car, a table, an antique chair, a crystal necklace, a china plate. Some of the most precious memories people have live on in objects. Survivors often have no idea how much feeling they have invested in a certain something until the person who owned it is gone.

Rick went into the bedroom and returned with a tan chenille sweater with black trim. He was holding it to his face as he offered it to Emma. "Here, she loved this one. It smells like her."

Emma took it with a sob and buried her face in the sweater, holding it in her arms for a long time, her cheek pressed against its softness. Jason, the shrink who couldn't stop analyzing everything, knew he had no control over what would happen next. He was surprised that the scent and the feel of the dead woman's sweater eventually calmed Emma, and she put it on.

"You know, Rick, you were an inspiration to watch," Jason said softly, knowing they were discussing Rick's career to avoid dealing with his wife's murder.

"Well, the truth was I was depressed, Jason. I was so depressed I didn't know life existed. I'm telling you I kept hoping one day they'd all pile up on me and break my neck so it would be over. I didn't know any better."

Jason gave him a crooked smile. "You were a great football player. You accomplished more in those years than ninety-nine percent of the population. And look what you've accomplished since. You're quite a guy and a lot of people love you."

"Uh-huh. Well, he let me stop."

"What?" Jason asked.

"Tor. It was Tor who showed me life outside. Tor and Merrill. They showed me I could have a life. I could do something without hurting myself. They made me even—equal. Do you know what that means? I stopped being a black boy who could play ball. They gave me my life, man. They were the only ones who loved me. And now they're dead. I swear to God. Jefferson is going to pay for this."

The phone rang. "You stay here. I'll get it," Jason told him. He went into the gallery to pick up. It was a woman from a tabloid-sounding TV show, wanting to set up an interview. Jason told her none would be forthcoming. When he hung up, the phone rang again. Jason repeated the same thing, then checked his watch. It was 9:07. The switchboards of the world were open.