Missing Persons

14

Bob’s connection to the Millers didn’t appear to be particularly unique or interesting. He hadn’t baby-sat Mallory, nor had he gone to high school with Mrs. Miller. He wasn’t a family friend, hadn’t played Santa at any Miller family holiday gatherings. In fact, his particular connection to the girl’s disappearance seemed to be a relatively common affliction that he shared with many viewers of cable news TV stations. Bob, it turned out, had quickly grown obsessed by Mallory’s disappearance, which, I feared, meant that for at least forty-five minutes a week I was likely to be forced to be vicariously obsessed by Mallory’s disappearance, too.

I was less than thrilled by the revelation that Bob was transfixed by Mallory’s plight. As he described his fascination my silent protest was a pathetic No, please no. At a clinical level Bob didn’t need the obsession; his pathological casserole was certainly not wanting for the addition of an obsessive crust of any description. At a more selfish level, I’d already begun hoping-like the great majority of Boulderites-that the case of the disappearing girl was going to go away gently, that Sam and his like-minded police colleagues were right and that this time the case of the disappearing girl wasn’t really a case of a disappearing girl at all. Like ninety-nine percent of Boulder’s residents, I was hoping that Mallory Miller-despite what I’d learned about her recent history from Diane-was just a girl who’d left home for one of the many bad reasons that young teenage girls choose to leave home.

But I wasn’t to be so lucky. From the first time Bob mentioned her name-“Do you think she ran? Or do you think she was kidnapped? Mallory?”-I became concerned that Bob and I would begin to spend some unknown number of Tuesday sessions rehashing the latest news and gossip about her. Since Bob devoured the Enquirer and the Star-he didn’t buy them; he scoured the student union looking for discarded copies-I was even going to be force-fed tidbits about Mallory that I wouldn’t have been exposed to in the more reputable news sources.

How did I know all this?

Because Bob had been transfixed by the Kobe thing, too. And the Michael Jackson thing. Not to mention the Scott Peterson thing. That’s how I knew.

I was realizing, almost even begrudgingly accepting, that it was beginning to look like I couldn’t get away from Mallory Miller no matter how hard I tried.

The Tuesday session with Bob during the week between Christmas and New Year’s was like dozens before it. Bob was distracted and distant, and we spent a chunk of the allotted time in silence. He surprised me by ending the appointment with a request he’d never made before: He asked if we could meet again later that week.

Could I actually be witnessing nascent signs of attachment, the therapeutic Holy Grail in the treatment of a schizoid personality? Highly unlikely, but I gladly offered him an additional session on Thursday, the penultimate day of the year.