Loving Time

thirty-five

Jason sat on the bed in his shorts and tee shirt, the Raymond Cowles file open on his knees. It was thick and quite detailed, and he wasn’t much further along in it than he’d been when he set it aside to make love to Emma seven hours earlier. Since then they’d done a lot of talking. They’d had dinner, talked some more. Then she’d gone for a run on her treadmill in the tiny room behind the kitchen. Now he felt her eyes on him as she padded into the bedroom.

He looked up from the page he’d read four times. “Hi.”

“Hi yourself.” Her shorts and the white cropped shirt that showed half her abdomen were wet.

Emma had a beautiful body that Jason had never been able to resist, no matter how hurt or angry he was with her. Her hair was blonder now, short. She had real movie-star hair and a real movie-star body—not too thin. Her face could be anything. Now it was a little tense. She shook her hair out as he watched her. She’d had all day to rim and finally gotten to it after dinner and half a bottle of wine. He didn’t know how she could do it.

She spread out the towel on the floor, sat on it, and starting doing sit-ups. He figured she’d throw up soon, must be scared to death.

“What time is your audition?” he asked, watching her crunch and grimace.

“Really early,” she grunted.

“How early is really?”

Grunt “Eleven-thirty.”

He laughed. For him, by eleven-thirty half the day was over. She had twelve hours to prepare. “Nervous?”

Grunt. “Always.”

“You really want to do a play, the same thing over and over every night—and twice on Wednesday and Saturday?”

“You do the same thing over and over, with the same people year after year. Don’t you get tired of it?”

“Mmmm, no.”

“So, it’s a night job instead of a day job. Might be fun for six months. Then I’ll do another film.”

Jason felt a chill and shivered. Six months. His wife planned on being around only six months. Thanks for letting me know, he didn’t say. What did she think, that she could just come and go in the marriage without consulting him? What was he, a piece of furniture? His brows came together in a single angry line. Passivity wasn’t exactly easy for him. A part of him wanted to throw the baggage out, let her have her brilliant career on her own. Fine.

Emma stopped midcrunch, staring at the fringe on the bedspread.

Fine. He could live without her. There were lots of women in the sea. He’d find another. His jaw set.

“What?” she murmured.

“What yourself?”

“You know, I’ve been thinking. How would you like a different look in here?”

He looked around at the cream-colored walls and tasteful prints, the teal bedspread and chair, the many coordinating pillows. “Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s time for a change.”

“Humph.” Jason went back to the file. He’d never really liked the strange blue-green bedspread and drapes she’d chosen when they married. But he didn’t like change. He liked his life the way it had been before. He didn’t want a new bedspread or a new and different wife. If Emma got the part in this Broadway play, she’d be an even bigger star. If she didn’t get the part, she’d go back to California to her pretty rented house on the beach and make stupid movies, leaving him alone in limbo. The whole thing pissed him off.

Jason understood his ambivalence and conflicts about connection, but after all his training and two wives, at almost forty he still wasn’t sure what made love sometimes conquer all. Was it a sensory thing that could be regenerated over and over by sight or touch or smell, or was love driven by fantasy, the secret things that happened in a person’s head?

“Well, what do you think?” Emma said.

“About what?”

“Never mind.” She pointed at the Cowles file he’d been lugging from one room to another all day. “What’s the case?”

Jason was still on Intake’s descriptive assessment of Raymond Cowles’s analyzability. He’d noted in the part on family history that Ray’s mother’s father had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for most of his life and had died under suspicious circumstances when Ray was two. Out of a lot of routine information, in the middle of his annoyance with his wife, that piece jumped out at him. It was important because it meant there was a possible history of suicide in Cowles’s family. It also meant that his mother might well have experienced a profound depression herself when her father died. The grandfather’s cause of death was unclear and was stated in the most perfunctory way in the assessment. No further questions about that seemed to have been asked because there was no elaboration.

The chart read:

Diagnosis deferred in 20-year-old man with what appears to be a character neurosis and identity confusion. In addition, the patient has repetitive and recurrent ego dystonic homosexual fantasies that he has never acted on. Masturbation fantasies have been homosexual. Patient is likable, highly intelligent, responsible, and intends to stay in the area since he has a job waiting for him, and his fiancée is getting a doctoral degree at the same university. He has limited financial resources.

“Jason?”

“Huh?” Jason looked up. He realized Emma was waiting for an answer to something or other. He dropped the report guiltily.

“Plus ça change.” She laughed.

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing, darling. I know. I know. If I want you, I have to take you the way you are.”

“And it appears I have to do the same. Is that fair?”

She nodded. “You have your life. I have to have mine.”

Is that fair? he wanted to whine. Was that the deal? Damn, she was gorgeous. “What’d you ask?” he muttered.

“Nothing. I just asked about the case. I can’t know, right?”

“Wrong. I can tell you about this case. A former patient of Clara Treadwell committed suicide last week, and Clara asked me to review the file.”

“Oh, my. The Clara Treadwell?” Emma pulled off the cropped shirt and the bicycle shorts, rolled them up in the towel for the laundry.

Her nudity was a conversation-stopper in more ways than one. The body was lovely, but around Emma’s navel were the broken images of the tattoo started by her abductor. They were just bits of black now, more than half removed by the laser surgery she was having in California. It was no longer possible to decipher what the tattooed picture had been, but Jason had already seen it. The thing that really startled him was how his formerly modest and reserved wife—who used to hang back never wanting to annoy him with too much of herself—was now a bold temptress. He wanted to maintain his equilibrium and not be bowled over by it, but the balance was gone. A renewed surge of enthusiasm for the woman driving him crazy jolted through Jason.

“Very nice,” he muttered. “Show off.” He cleared his throat, wondering if she wanted more love—just at this moment. And if he was up to it. Yep, his body indicated he was up to it.

But Emma was just kidding. She grabbed a shirt, tugged it over her head, and perched on her side of the bed. No panties. She crossed her legs. Now he was sweating.

“Is this the Clara Treadwell, the one who once leaped upon you in Seattle—”

“Ah, it was L.A.,” Jason said modestly.

“Wants you to review her case? After all the trouble she’s made for you at the Centre? Why?”

Jason beamed. “You know. You remember. Darling, you’re still jealous.”

“And you’re still mine,” Emma said loftily. “Even with the beard.”

He scratched the beard, pleased she was taking it seriously. “Hey, nobody owns anybody, you know that.”

“So why did she come to you?”

“Clara? I have asked myself that question.” He did not think it wise to say Clara wanted to be his mentor and improve the quality of his life. He smiled at the thought of anyone but Emma succeeding at that.

“What’s the story? Is she responsible for this patient’s death?”

“This is the question his wife and insurance company might ask a jury to consider.”

“Malpractice.” She shivered and was silent for a moment, then asked, “Why?”

Jason shrugged. “Money.”

“What do you think?” Emma lay back against the pillows and considered the ceiling.

Jason shrugged again. “I have no idea. When Clara asked me to look at the file Wednesday, there was some doubt as to the cause of death—they thought it might be a homicide—and because of my ties to the police—”

“Ah. April Woo.”

Jason nodded. “April Woo. But now they seem sure it’s a suicide.”

“So what now?”

The first of many clocks started chiming eleven.

“I missed the clocks,” Emma murmured. “I didn’t think I would. But it was so quiet at night. Sometimes I thought of getting a grandfather clock.” She raised her hands in a helpless gesture. “But you know how they all have to be wound every five minutes …”

“I’m glad you came, Em. I missed you, too.”

The phone joined in with the ding-dongs. Emma frowned. “Your girlfriend?”

“I don’t have a girlfriend.” He reached for the phone. “Dr. Frank.”

“Oh, Jason, I’m so glad you’re there. I hope I’m not disturbing you. This is Clara Treadwell.”

“Oh, hello, Clara.”

“Oh, my,” Emma murmured.

“I’m sorry to call so late. But I have some bad news,” Clara said.

“Oh?” Jason glanced at his wife. Emma raised an eyebrow.

“Yes. Harold Dickey died this afternoon.”

“What?” Jason was stunned. He’d seen Dickey only two days ago at the meeting in Clara’s conference room. He’d looked more than healthy then.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jason said. “He looked so well. It’s a shock.”

“Yes, well, a man over sixty … I thought you should know.”

“Thank you for calling. Can you tell me what happened?”

“It was very sudden, very sad.” Another long pause. “It happened in his office at the Centre. Massive MI. Now we’ll have to look for someone to take over his position.”

There it was, the offer of a staff position, coming less than a week after Clara had raised the subject as a vague possibility.

“Thank you for calling me,” Jason said again. He wondered what Harold had been doing in his office on a Sunday afternoon. Harold had never worked on Sunday, even in Jason’s day. He played tennis on the weekends, was known for it. Everybody knew he liked his booze and his tennis on the weekends. Jason thought about that.

“Of course, you had to know.… Jason—?”

“Yes?”

“Um, did you hear from the police about Ray Cowles?”

Jason was surprised. “Yes, late Friday. Didn’t they call you?”

“I’ve been out of town. Well—?”

“They’ve closed the case as a suicide.”

There was a pause. “That’s a real disappointment. Well, good night, Jason. We’ll be in touch.”

Clara hung up before he could say anything else. He put the receiver down thoughtfully.

“What’s going on?” Emma asked.

“Harold Dickey died of a heart attack this afternoon.”

“That’s too bad. I’m sorry.” Emma got up, heading for the bathroom, then stopped.

“Ah, are we heading toward a hospital appointment, or have you two”—she wrinkled her perfect nose—“just suddenly gotten very chummy for some reason?”

“God, you women are competitive. Clara’s sixteen years older than you.”

“And you rejected her once, Jason. Women don’t forget things like that. Maybe she hasn’t heard your wife is back.” Emma disappeared into the bathroom and slammed the door.

Distracted by the memory of something April had once said, Jason scratched his beard. April once told him that in police work it helped always to think dirty because very little in life is really clean. Suddenly, the back of his neck prickled at the recollection of an old rumor about Dickey and Treadwell. Not to mention the possible job materializing almost instantly. He heard the shower come on and Emma begin to vocalize in the steam. Without meaning to, he was beginning to think dirty.